Never Call It Love (34 page)

He
laid down his fork. "As my wife, you have certain rights. Those do not
include dictating whom I shall see or not see."

Certain
rights, she thought bitterly. She had a legal right to his support, and if he
had no male heir, to inherit his property. But she had no right to keep him out
of Moira Ashley's bed, or any other woman's.

She
had a heart-wrenching vision of what her life, if her path had not crossed that
of the saturnine-faced man opposite her, could have been by now. A quietly
happy life with a faithful husband in that vicarage at Hadley. A living child,
and perhaps another on the way. But as it was, she had no child. And even
though she had accompanied this man into exile, thus making herself an enemy of
her native land, even though she had striven to make this once slovenly house
pleasant, even though she had brought to their bed a passion that matched his
own, he still felt free to flaunt that tided strumpet in her face.

Head
held high, mouth set in a bitter line, she pushed back her chair and walked out
of the room.

***

A
few minutes after nine that night, wearing an almost transparent
champagne-colored peignoir of which Patrick had pleasant memories, Moira Ashley
admitted him to her room at the inn. He had speculated as to what she might
look like now. Tense and anxious, as befitted a woman who had lost a fortune?
Outwardly smiling, but with eyes holding a trace of the bitter fury he had seen
there at their last meeting? Instead, he saw a woman of undiminished beauty,
smiling the serenely seductive smile with which she had greeted him so often at
Wetherly.

She
said, "Well, Patrick how long has it been? Seven months?"

"Nearer
eight."

When
they were seated together on a wicker settee, glasses of the white wine she had
poured resting on a
nearby table, he said, "I gather that your diamond venture was a
disaster."

She
wrinkled her lovely nose at him. "Don't scold, Patrick darling. I didn't
come all this way to be scolded."

"For
what reason did you come?"

She
picked up her glass and looked at him over its rim. "At least two reasons.
I still have a little money. I hope to make more of it, perhaps enough to buy
Wetherly back. I hope you can guide me to making an investment in St.-Denis
sugar or rum."

"At
the moment, there are no such investment opportunities on St.-Denis."

"Not
even in your distillery? Wouldn't you welcome someone with five thousand pounds
to invest?"

"No.
My enterprise is still too small to return a reasonable profit to even my
brother and myself, let alone a third person."

"Then
I might consider another island, such as St.-Gertrude. It's less than
a hundred miles
away, and I have heard there are properties for sale there. Perhaps you would
be kind enough to make the journey with me. As I understand it, no large ships
call there, but we could take passage on one of the interisland trading
boats."

He
had been expecting her to make some such proposal. It would be at least a
twenty-four-hour sail to St.-Gertrude, in a boat manned by only one or two
natives. He pictured an English frigate, suddenly appearing out of the
darkness...

"Tell
me, Moira, how much did you lose in that South American venture?"

"Almost
sixty thousand pounds."

"Then
with fifty thousand pounds you would be nearly as well off as before."

She
appeared puzzled. "Fifty thousand pounds?"

"The
amount you would receive if you could manage to
lure me off this island, so that
the English could get their hands on me."

"Patrick!"

The
hurt shock in her face appeared genuine. But then, she must have known when she
first thought of the St.-Gertrude proposal that he might suspect her of a
trick. Knowing that, she'd had ample time to rehearse a response to his
accusation.

"Do
you believe that I would betray you to the English for any amount of money in
the world?"

"Perhaps
not." But if she had done it once for revenge, he told himself silently,
she might well do it again for money. He went on aloud, "Nevertheless, I
intend to stay safely on St.-Denis. I am sure you will find no lack of male
escort if you decide to make the trip to St.-Gertrude."

He
thought of the stir this beautiful and frankly amorous woman would make in
St.-Denis. Every unmarried planter or army officer, and many of the married
ones, would be panting after her. He felt a twinge of jealousy at the prospect.
True, she had ceased to be his mistress even before he left Ireland. And true,
under his tutelage his wife's slender body had become as eager for physical
love—and almost as skilled—as Moira's voluptuous one. Just the same, the
displeasure he felt at the thought of St.-Denis men trying to take her to bed
made him realize that he still felt a male possessiveness toward her.

Almost
as if she had read his thoughts, she leaned closer to him, full breasts
swelling above the peignoir's low decolletage. "Very well. Perhaps it
would be best if you did not venture off this island. But you have not asked me
my second reason for coming here."

Patrick
said nothing.

"I
thought I hated you when you walked away from me that last time. But when I
heard that you'd had to flee Ireland, leaving everything behind you, I knew
that I
loved you as much as I ever had. As soon as I learned where you were, I started
making plans to come to you."

Gaze
traveling from that proffered bosom up to her smiling face, he still said
nothing. After a moment she asked, striving for a light tone, "Are you
still besotted with that wife of yours?"

For
a few disquieting moments that afternoon, Moira had wondered if Elizabeth was
as cold and unresponsive to Patrick as she had always judged her to be. But
other factors could have accounted for the Englishwoman's obvious agitation
today. No woman, however cold, relishes the pity and ridicule that is the lot
of an unfaithful husband's wife.

Besides,
it did not matter what Elizabeth thought or felt. Only Patrick mattered. And
Moira knew that she attracted him as much as ever. The very air between them
seemed charged with his physical awareness of her.

He
said, "I never told you details about my relationship with Elizabeth. Nor
do I want to discuss her any more than I ever have."

"Very
well. But what of me? Do you find that I have so fallen off in looks
that—"

"You
know you haven't," he said, almost harshly. He stood up. "But I am a
fugitive now, and a relatively poor man, straining every nerve to build up a
profitable enterprise. You are a distraction I cannot afford."

Nor
did he trust her. But she knew that There was no point in telling her so again.

Smiling,
she too rose. "Nevertheless, I shall stay here for a while. Thank you for
responding to my message."

***

Lying
in the darkened bedroom, Elizabeth heard Patrick come down the hall and into
the room. She had resolved to pretend to be asleep, but as she saw him, in the
dim light filtering through the blinds, begin to take off his coat, she asked,
"Did you see her?"

"Yes."

She
had also resolved that for pride's sake she would not allow herself to appear
jealous, and yet she heard herself burst out, "Did you make love to
her?"

"No."
But he knew that he might, if not at their next meeting, then at the one after
that.

Moira
Ashley was dangerous, perhaps to his neck, and certainly to much he had come to
enjoy these past months. Although Ireland frequently was in his thoughts, he
had achieved a certain amount of contentment here in his prospering enterprise,
and in the companionship and warm physical response of the gray-eyed woman
whom, no matter how reluctantly, he had married.

Moira's
presence threatened all that. And yet tonight he had felt as strongly attracted
to her as he had that day nearly a decade ago when she had walked out onto the
terrace where he stood talking with her elderly husband. Damn her! Damn that
beautiful—and probably treacherous—Irishwoman to hell and back. Why hadn't she stayed
where she belonged? If she had, he would have recalled less and less often, as
time passed, that wanton, teasing laugh of hers, and that pliant body with its
slender waist and flaring hips and bosom. But now she would be right here on
this tropical island, where even the warm, flower-perfumed air held a
disturbing sensuality. And those indigo eyes of hers always would be
challenging him to reach out for her....

He
shrugged back into his coat. "Go to sleep, Elizabeth." His inner
conflict made his voice harsher than he had intended it to be. "I am going
to take a few turns in the garden."

In
the weeks that followed, Elizabeth and Patrick by unspoken agreement did not
mention Moira's name to each other. And yet Elizabeth never lost her awareness
of the woman's presence on the island.

At
least two and sometimes more evenings each week, Patrick would rise from the
supper table with the announcement that he and Colin were riding up to the
distillery to work on accounts and correspondence. Whether or not he saw Moira
Ashley some of those evenings, Elizabeth didn't know. She rather thought not.
Otherwise the women at the morning coffees she attended would have contrived to
let her know about it.

In
mid-August she had become almost certain that even if Patrick had briefly
resumed his relations with Moira, he had broken them off. The Lady Moira,
Elizabeth learned from over-the-coffeecups gossip, had rented a secluded house
about a mile from the Stanfords'. Victor Serraut, the handsome young
lieutenant, was not only a frequent visitor. He also, it was rumored, helped
support the establishment.

Nearly
every hostess in St.-Denis had been plunged into conflict by Moira's presence.
On the one hand, they longed for a closer acquaintanceship with a woman who was
a peeress, and therefore of more exalted rank than the Stanfords. On the other
hand, they feared this beautiful and unabashedly seductive woman. In most
cases, social ambition won out over fear. Moira attended none of the
exclusively feminine gatherings, but soon she, escorted
by Lieutenant
Serraut, was the center of attention at many evening parties. Elizabeth saw
that Patrick's gaze, like that of every man present, tended to follow the
Irishwoman about the room.

Elizabeth
continued to keep busy with books, and letters to her mother, and helping
Jeanne keep the small house clean and sparkling. But she felt little of the
contentment, the joy in the island's beauty, that she had known for several
weeks before Moira's shadow fell across her there on the sun-flooded side
terrace.

At
night in Patrick's arms she sometimes, in spite of herself, was swept up to the
heights. Other times—when she had caught a glimpse of Moira in the town square
that day, or seen Patrick's eyes following the woman at an evening party—she
remained cold, inert.

On
one such night he spent several minutes trying to woo her, holding the length
of her body close to him, so that she could feel the hard warmth of his
arousal, stroking her hips, kissing her mouth and closed eyelids and then her throat
and breasts. She lay passive in his arms, silently enduring his caresses.

At
last he moved away from her. Staring into the darkness, he asked, "What is
the matter with you?"

She
burst out, "Moira Ashley is the matter!"

"What
has she to do with us? She has that Lieutenant What's-his-name now. Victor
Serraut."

"But
you still find her desirable!"

He
answered, after a moment. "Any man would. She's an extremely attractive
woman."

She
cried, "And Victor Serraut is an attractive man! So is Colin. So are half
a dozen men on this island that I could name. But I don't go panting after them
in my imagination."

Enough
light came through the blinds that she could see him shrug. "All that
proves is that men are different." She wanted to say: That's not true! You
would not be
different, as you phrase it, if you loved me. But she knew that if she said
that, he might reply, calmly and truthfully: I have never told you that I loved
you.

The
autumn rains came, heavier than those of the previous spring, rattling like
gunfire of the stiff palm fronds, drumming on roofs, and stilling for several
weeks that other drumming in the hills. Parties in the houses near town, and
the larger ones in the hills, became more numerous and livelier. The
inhabitants of St.-Denis had much to celebrate. A French fleet of twenty-five
vessels, assembling at Haiti in early August, had sailed across the Atlantic to
Chesapeake Bay and there defeated nineteen English ships of the line. Then, in
mid-October, England's General Cornwallis had surrendered his sword to the
colonists' General Washington at Yorktown. Although English troops still held
out in New York, it was obvious that they had lost the war.