Nightingale (6 page)

“Then how else shall it be, Jemma? What else is there?” He thrust into her.

Her muscles clenched and then accepted him, closing around him and cocooning him to her. But the joy he'd experienced earlier was gone. This was a clinical act, a ritual to exorcise himself from his own demons.

He buried himself to the hilt. Jemma gave a start but didn't say a word . . . not one bloody word. He pulled back and entered her again and again, mechanically going through motions as old as time . . . and it meant nothing.

Too late, Dane glanced at the mirror—and froze. He barely recognized himself because his face was so contorted with anger. His lips were pulled back in a feral anticipation, and his every muscle was tense with rutting lust.

Jemma watched him, her face as pale as death, her teeth clenched tight. This was not the vibrant creature he'd made love to earlier but a woman who was accustomed to being used in this manner by a man. A woman who held her breath and waited for it to be over.

Abruptly he pulled out of her.

For a second, he stood, his breathing heavy as he struggled for control. This was not the man he wanted to be.

Nor was this the way he had ever wanted to treat Jemma. Ever.

Dane took a broken step back and slowly fell to his knees. He bowed his head, wishing he could disappear from the face of the earth. What came over him around her? He prided himself on his control, and yet Jemma had the ability to rip right through him.

He sensed her sitting up, could feel her watch him carefully. He felt little better than an animal.

“Dane? Are you all right?”

The empathy in her voice was almost his undoing. He needed to be alone.
Now.

“Go home, Jemma.” He didn't look at her. He couldn't. He'd proven himself to be a monster.

She slid off the desk and stood over him, her bare toes inches from his knee. He waited for her to leave. She took a step away, then knelt down beside him.

Dane turned away. Didn't she understand what he'd been about to do? What he
had
done?

Her arms came around his shoulders.

He stiffened, but she did not let go. Instead, she rested her head against his. Her hair provided a shelter for both of them. She didn't speak, but hugged him, and he was reminded of a Spanish painting he'd once seen of the Virgin offering solace to a sinner.

Then he felt her tears against his neck—and it was his undoing.

He was a man, one who had faced countless dangers, one who had done what he must to survive . . . and Jemma? She was his one vulnerability.

If she had made a different choice years ago, would he still be this same man? Or another? Perhaps he would have been one who didn't have to be so hard? One who didn't use his pride as a shield to keep himself from feeling or thinking too deeply?

And it was this man, the one he might have been, who let down his guard. Who, in a voice Dane barely recognized as his own, ground out the question that had driven him for years: “Why, Jemma? Why did you choose another over me?”

J
emma tightened her arms around Dane. She didn't want to answer this question.

For a second, she let herself drink in the scent of him. She pressed her lips to the crook of his neck, feeling his warmth. Her fingers were sensitive to the texture of his skin . . . and she wished she could stop time, to spend eternity right here in this moment and avoid the dangers of going forward.

He waited, as still as stone. Even his heart seemed to have stopped beating . . . and Jemma knew she could not evade the truth.

She sat cross-legged on the floor, bringing him to sit opposite her. Their knees practically touched, and she placed her hands on his thighs, feeling the strength there. Their nakedness underscored the need for unvarnished honesty.

Dane did not look at her. The candles in another wall sconce burned themselves out, and Jemma feared it was a sign. The lines on his face were hard, bleak with raw emotion.

She'd done this to him. She'd broken him.

The realization of what she had once so carelessly tossed aside overwhelmed her. His love
had
been true. Now, with the experience of life's hard lessons in greed, lust, selfishness, and desire, she understood exactly how rare and fine his love had been. This awareness made her confession all the more difficult. “I married him because I was too young to know any better.”

The words sounded trite, even to her own ears.

She wasn't surprised when he pulled back. “No one forced you?” He sounded as if he didn't believe her.

Jemma frowned. “There was pressure from my family . . . and from Alfred,” she admitted, referring to her husband by his Christian name. “At the time, he was wealthy—or so we thought—and I would be a Lady. Lady Mosby.” The title mocked her.

“But you could have said no?” he questioned.

“I could have,” she answered.

He reacted as if she had struck him. She understood. Even though he had spent years blaming her, a part of him, the part that had believed in their love, had rationalized that she'd had no choice. He pushed her hands off his thighs.

His reaction tempted Jemma to throw her arms back around him and swear that her parents had forced her to abandon him. She hated to destroy those last, remaining delusions between them. But she couldn't. She'd already hurt him too deeply.

“I was very,
very
young, Dane,” she stressed. “Alfred was worldly and promised a life in London. Remember, my family could not afford a season . . . there were the many advantages to Alfred over you. Especially to a young, naïve girl.”

“I thought you loved me.”

His words seemed to hang in the air around them.

“I did,” she said at last. “But I didn't know what love was. Nor did I have the courage to risk all.” She pressed her fingers to her temples and leaned over, wishing she could erase all the past mistakes. But she couldn't. What was done was done. “I wanted to wait until you returned from school for the break before I made my decision, but there was no time. I sent a letter to your school, but I later learned my parents intercepted it.”

“Then they were to blame.”

Jemma shook her head. “No. The letter was my telling you I had decided to accept Alfred's offer. Dane, you want to believe the decision was not mine. It was.” How it hurt to admit her own failings. “I was young and shallow and foolish. The day I married Alfred I knew I was making a mistake, but I lacked the courage to bow out of the marriage. And then you came to Faller Hall—”

She broke off, remembering the pain of Dane's visit. When he'd been informed she was not at home to him, he'd stood outside and called her name until its echo had reverberated through the house.

“Your husband ordered you not to see me,” he said tightly.

“Alfred didn't even know who you were,” she confessed. “By that time, I was living in my own Purgatory. If I had let you in . . .” She trailed off, unable, even now, to admit she might have run off with him.

“Did you hear me call for you that day?” he asked. “Was that your face in the window?”

She didn't answer.

Dane leaned forward. “I shouted for you until the bailiff arrived and threatened to send for the magistrate.”

“Alfred thought you a lunatic.”

“I was. I was half mad with grief and anger. If you would only have just seen me—”

She cut him off. “And then what, Dane? I was a married woman. What was done could not be undone. I would only have hurt you more.”

“But you
heard
me,” he reiterated quietly.

“I heard you,” she agreed. “And I refused you.”

Silence was his answer.

A knot as hard as stone formed in her chest, making breathing difficult. “I didn't realize what I had in you. Perhaps if I'd known more of the world, had traveled beyond Chipping or had been older or wiser or more beautiful or more ugly—” Her excuses tumbled out of her mouth, until she stopped. She drew a breath and looked him in the eye without apology. “Perhaps then, everything would have been different . . . for both of us.” She shook her head. “And I won't apologize anymore for marrying Alfred. I did what I had to do at the time. I had reasons. . . . Looking back, they are still valid. I'm sorry, Dane. I wish I had known my own mind better.”

“I would have done anything for you.”

“I know,” she agreed with a sad smile. “But look at us, Dane. We wouldn't be the people we are now if we hadn't made those choices years ago. We'd probably both still be back in Chipping.”

“We would,” he answered. “I wanted nothing more than you and a parish with good fishing.”

“I abhorred your fishing,” she admitted. “You'd spend hours at it. I was jealous. Can you imagine? I was so spoiled and petted, I envied fish.” She pushed her hair back over her shoulder. “You are fortunate you didn't marry me, Dane. Back then, I lacked the character to make a good parson's wife. I would have whined and thrown tantrums. You would have been forced to find another career. And, also, my family would have been a great trial. I know their faults and their weaknesses, but they are part of my life.”

He did not argue. “My mother told me once she'd feared of what would have happened if we had married.”

“Did she know all?” Jemma asked quietly.

“There are few secrets in Chipping.”

Jemma nodded. She'd thought as much. “My father didn't trust you because you were the one man who wouldn't get senselessly drunk with him.”

“I would rather have spent my evening with you.”

“He didn't see it that way. To him, a real man knows when to share a drink.” She paused, and then said, “Alfred liked the bottle.”

“Are you surprised?”

Jemma shrugged. “In a way. He never seemed to drink as much as my family, and yet the doctor said the overindulgence of spirits took him.” As it probably had cut short her father's life too. And her brother was all but lost whether Dane met him or not.

Neither of them spoke for a moment, letting the words they shared sink in. The silence was companionable. The fire was burning down in the hearth. Jemma knew it was time to leave. They had come full circle. They were done.

The harshness was gone from Dane's face. It seemed as if years had fallen away and he resembled again the boy she had once loved.

“Did you ever think of me, Jemma? Over the years?”

“Every day,” she admitted. “I suppose when things aren't good, we long for what might have been.” She reached out and pressed her fingertips on the point where the scar ended at his shoulder. “I fared better than you.” Then, because it was necessary, she added, “I'm sorry.”

He drew back, as if her touch burned him. He shook his head. “You didn't do this. If anything, you kept me alive. I should have died from the wound, but I couldn't. I wouldn't let myself . . . not until I saw you again.”

“Why? To prove me wrong?”

Dane leaned back. He stared at her as if her words had struck a nerve. His eyes were sharply focused, his brow frowning as if he didn't like what he saw. “I could have married. I almost did. Several times. There were others.”

The surge of jealousy surprised her. Then again, hadn't she felt a jolt of that unflattering emotion every time someone had mentioned the women he kept or the ones who'd set their caps for him? “Why didn't you?” She was proud her voice was steady.

He didn't answer immediately, and she realized he struggled with his own devils. “I told myself it was because you hurt me.”

“No woman can be trusted?” she quizzed him tightly.

“Maybe I didn't trust myself.”

He came to his feet and took a step toward the hearth, his manner preoccupied, as if he was working out a problem in his mind.

Jemma rose and tossed her heavy mane of hair back over her shoulders, waiting for his verdict and certain she would not like it.

He turned to her. “Perhaps I was making excuses . . . ?” He shook his head. “Everything I own, all that I've collected, every bleeding shilling has all been because of a Chipping lass who rejected me. I wanted to prove my worth and to prove you were wrong.”

Jemma didn't know what to say. “I—” Words failed her. She bowed her head and admitted, “Perhaps you are better off now.”

“Better than what?” he asked. “Than being the village clergyman I set out to be?” His gaze darkened, the line of his jaw hardening. “I've been many places I didn't want to be, Jemma. Places where I thought God had abandoned me. And there have been times when the faith I had once professed so strongly failed me.”

His confession touched her soul. No other man of her acquaintance had this strength of character, this complexity.
“I'm
the only one who failed you,” she whispered.

He reached out and ran a hand over her head, pushing her hair back. “No, Jemma. You were right. We had to take our separate paths. We'd not have been good for each other.”

Jemma thought her heart would break. She loved him.

But she had done the right thing all those years ago.

She and Dane would not have been good for each other. Her immaturity would have held him back from being the man he could be, the man he
was.

On one hand, she felt freer than she had in years. On the other, she couldn't wait to escape his presence, find a spot where she could be alone, and have a good, soul-cleansing cry.

Conscious of her nakedness, she moved away from him, pulling her hair down to cover her breasts. “I think the time has come for me to leave.” She searched the floor for her dress.

“Jemma—,” he started, but she cut him off by holding up her hand. The tightness in her throat was a warning that she'd best escape quickly if she wanted to keep her pride intact.

“Please, Dane, enough.” She scooped up her dress and awkwardly hunted for the sleeves. “We've both said enough.”