Obsession (24 page)

If he kissed her, I would kill him.

Ah, but John Rees did so want to kiss her.

’Twas in his eyes, his smile, in the way he lightly touched one timid finger upon her cheek to nudge aside an errant lock of hair.

The child appeared then, a girl with long, curling dark locks and a cherubic face, cheeks blooming as pink as little rosebuds. Maria scooped her up in her arms and planted a kiss on her forehead.

Rees closed the doors, gently took Maria’s elbow, and escorted her and the child down the steps and along the pathway. They passed within feet of me, and I heard Maria speak.

“I shall call on Mave Smythe first thing in the morning,” she said to John. “Poor dear. She’s grieving so desperately over the loss of her husband.”

“She’ll welcome your company,” he replied. “You’ve been a Godsend to my parish. And to me, of course. And my daughter. You know how I feel.”

“You needn’t speak of your gratitude, John.”

I followed them through the dark.

“ ’Tisn’t gratitude I wish to discuss, Maria. You know that.”

“I know. And we
shall
discuss our future…someday.”

“When?”

“When I’m ready.”

“Six months have passed since you returned to Huddersfield. Six months you’ve worked at my side, mothered my daughter. Yet you continue to shield your heart from me. Why?”

She stopped short and turned to face him, yet she said nothing.

“Why?” he repeated. “You loved me once, Maria. I can make you love me again.”

“I do love you, John.”

“But you refuse to marry me. I deserve to know why.”

As I remained in the shadows, unable to breathe as I awaited her response, I saw in her face a despair as she looked at the child in her arms. Aye, despair. Sadness. Emptiness. Those radiant smiles she had bestowed upon the parishioners had been little more than a facade to hide her own pain.

I felt, in that instant, a shock of grief that rocked me back on my heels. The vision of Maria and the child robbed me of breath and I sank against a nearby tree. Heartrending sadness sluiced through my body as I stared at the image, woman and child. Loss. Irrevocable death. All that I might have cherished stood within my reach.

Maria hugged the child closely as they continued walking toward her cottage. I could no longer hear them. The fog swirled between us, occasionally obliterating my view of them.

I realized with brilliant clarity that she deserved better than some destitute duke, tainted of reputation and of lineage. She had found what she had lost: a home. A child. A decent, God-loving man who would cherish her.

I knew that I could not rob her of that.

Yet I remained, a prisoner of conscience as I watched her move farther and farther from me, watched the gentle sway of her hips, the adoring way in which she cradled the child.

I opened my mouth to call her name, yet remained voiceless.

She paused and turned.

For a moment—a brief moment—I felt as if our gazes touched. She seemed to look directly at me, yet through me. I would never forget her beautiful face, the gentle curve of her brow, the lushness of her lips. The sorrow that I had inadvertently caused her welled upon her countenance like spring water. The memory of those haunted eyes would lance me for the remainder of my life.

T
HE CHILD’S ARMS AROUND
M
ARIA’S NECK MADE
her heart ache. Her sweet breath upon Maria’s cheek caused her to smile, despite the impatient frown on John’s face.

As he stepped around her to open the cottage door, she looked back through the fog. Not for the first time, a tickling of anticipation touched her.

What or whom did she expect to see there?

Hope to see there?

John obviously noted her look as well, and the patience and compassion of his countenance turned hard and almost forbidding.

He took the child from her. “ ’Tis because of your father, isn’t it? Your reason for not allowing yourself to trust me.”

Maria stepped away and pulled her shawl more tightly around her. She wanted no reminders of her past.

“I shan’t speak ill of the dead, John.”

He watched as she strode to the hearth and sat on a chair.

“I’m not your father, Maria! He believed that God’s way of dealing with the corrupted soul is to hail painful retribution upon the sinner. Have I ever raised an unkind word or hand against you?”

Maria swung round to stare at him. “Are you saying, John Rees, that I’m deserving of such? Do you accuse my soul of being corrupted?” She nodded. “I think you do.”

“Don’t be daft, Maria.”

“Have I not sinned?”

“Aye. You have.”

“You said once, the evening I returned to Huddersfield, that I had committed no sin that God, and yourself, could not forgive. Yet at each opportunity, you remind me of my past. You pound your fist upon the pulpit and rail on about the sins of the flesh and the demon of lust, without looking from me for so much as a second.

“I refuse to become like my mother, God rest her soul. Shamed by her husband for desiring his touch. Already you demand that I dress the drab. That I speak in whispers. That I not look directly into the eyes of a man, for doing so invites unmentionable attentions. Nay, John Rees, I could never be the wife you expect me to be.”

“You’re still in love with him, Maria. Why won’t you admit it?”

Her heart surged and her breathing quickened. She turned her back to him and stared into the embers.

Those dreaded thoughts and emotions continued to haunt her every waking and sleeping hour: memories of Salterdon.

John moved up beside her as his daughter skipped over to the bed and grabbed up a doll, which she hugged as fiercely as her little arms would allow.

Ah, Sarah. Sweet, beloved angel of Maria’s memories and heart. She could not look upon John’s daughter without thinking of the child who was lost to her. Imagining that Sarah’s hair would be the same color, would fall in luxurious coils and waves around her face—curls she would have inherited from her father. And her eyes—large, silvery gray orbs that sparkled with mischief. Had Sarah survived, she would have been the same age as John’s daughter.

John took Maria’s hand in his as he bent to one knee. How soulful were his eyes, how searching. She turned her face away, unable to meet them.

“It doesn’t matter, darling,” he murmured. “You’ll eventually come to love me like you once did.”

“I’m no longer a child, John. I’m no longer naive or innocent. You might take me as a wife, but there wouldn’t be a moment of our lives that you wouldn’t look at me and think—”

“Hush.” He placed one finger upon her lips. “Don’t speak of it.”

She ducked her head. “There are a dozen women in this parish who would make you a perfect wife and mother for Maria. You’d be scorned by your congregation, John. You know that. I’m a branded woman. The wife of a vicar should be of irreproachable moral character. I am not.”

“All will be forgiven if you marry me.”

“I doubt it.”

Maria sighed as she watched the child curl up upon her bed, nestling the doll closely to her little body. “You really should be off, John. The child is weary.”

“Contemplate it, I beg you. Marry me, Maria. I swear to God that you won’t regret it.”

“Very well.” She gave him a smile that she did not feel in her heart. “I’ll contemplate it, John.”

His face brightened and he stood, swept the child up in his arms, and quit the cottage.

How silent it was then. And cold. Empty.

She remained for long minutes occasionally glancing toward the staircase that led up to her small bed, dreading the moment she would be forced to climb between the covers and cradle her pillow against her bosom.

During the last long months she had transformed the little cottage, replacing the drab, heavy window curtains with a filmy robin’s-egg-blue material that allowed sunlight to spill upon the walls with golden color. In each previously gloomy nook and cranny reposed clumps of sweetly scented flowers—splashes of vibrant yellow, white, and pink.

God had provided her with a comfortable abode, and thanks to John Rees, she wanted for nothing—neither nourishment for her body nor for her soul.

Yet…

As she looked around the empty room, she felt shamed by a need that could not be filled by food or biblical verse.

She was fast becoming as yearning as her lonely mother for a man’s touch.

’Twas then the memories poured forth. The terrible yearnings to see Salterdon again. He would be married by now, of course. His and Edwina’s child might even have been born. This very instant he may be curled up against his wife, sleeping soundly, or…

Nay, she would not think it!

Maria stood and furiously flung the chair aside, and at that moment the door, bludgeoned by a gust of wind, flew open.

What odd sensations gripped her!

The fog swirled into a ghostly formation—a man, beyond the hedge wall and gate.

And music, like the tinkling of chimes.
Maria’s Song!

“Trey?”

She ran from the house, into the blast of wind that whipped at her skirts and tumbled her hair. Her eyes teared, her breath became ragged.

And still she ran, across the cobbled street and upon the green—running, chasing the ghostly chimes and the vision of the man who continued to haunt her, who would forever haunt her.

At last she reached the canal, deep and wide and black. And there she fell, covering her face with her hands as she wept.

M
ARIA STOOD OUTSIDE
J
OHN’S HOUSE.

No more tears. No more hoping that Salterdon would show up on her doorstep and sweep her away into a fantasy that was only that…a fantasy. He was as dead to her as their daughter.

Aye, she was lonely, and lost. A shamed woman scorned by the folk who had once patted her on the head and called her an angel.

She should never have returned to Huddersfield. Why had her father even summoned her? He had died as he lived, gurgling harsh beratings of the sins of the flesh. He had gripped her arm so fiercely, his ragged nails had cut into her flesh. He had stared at her with such fright, it seemed he had looked beyond the gates of death and discovered there was naught but Hell’s fire awaiting his soul.

She blinked and looked up at the sky.

Even Paul had deserted her. Why?

Because she had lost hope, and faith?

I will show you miracles yet.

“Then show me, damn you,” she said through her teeth.

Only the moan of the wind and rustling of the trees replied.

Maria took a steadying breath, and moved to John’s door, beat upon it with her fist. She knew what she must do; what choice did she have? The images of her life winged ever wider before her with each passing day: a spinster, childless, abandoning frivolous dreams of loving and being loved in return. Dying of heartbreak and loneliness like her mother.

Yet, there was a difference. She had been too much in love with Hawthorne to acknowledge the reality. John loved her. Devotedly. Perhaps, in time, she would come to love him too. Not as a friend, but as a husband. She would cherish his child as much as her own sweet Sarah.

At last the door opened. John, brown hair tumbled over his brow and his nightdress stuffed into his breeches, looked at her sleepily, then with alarm.

“Maria? Merciful God, what’s happened to you?”

He took her by her arm and escorted her in, directed her toward the lit lantern on a table near the hearth, and sat her in a chair. Then he fell to his knees before her.

“For the love of…you’re damp through. Your face is scratched. What’s happened, darling?”

She forced a smile. “I was chasing ghosts.”

He rose to his feet and hurried to the windows, where he yanked the patterned curtains closed. God forbid that some voyeur pass by and see him alone with a woman at such an hour.

Then he slowly turned to face her.

How rigid he looked. And stern. And suspicious.

Maria rose from the chair and moved to a bedroom door. She nudged it open.

The child slept.

How beautiful she was! As delicate as a violet. A simple smile from her cherubic lips thawed the cold numbness of Maria’s soul. The child’s tickling whisper caused her heart to thump with such delight she was wont to crush her small, precious body to her and bask in the sublimity of the girl’s love.

She closed the door and moved toward John, whose brow was furrowed, his hands fisted.

Maria slowly dropped to her knees and ducked her head. Her eyes pooled with tears.

“Cleanse me of sin, John Rees, in the name of our Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.”

“A moment,” he whispered, and hurried from the room, returning with a vessel of holy water.

He prayed for her soul, and doused her head with water. It ran down her brow and dripped from her chin, onto her breasts.

When done, she lifted her head and stared into his eyes. “Now I’m worthy of being your wife, John. I will marry you.”

23

B
ARRISTER
D
OUGLAS
M. J
ACOBSON,
E
SQ., WAS A
son of a bitch, a pragmatical, bloated, officious, flippant coxcomb, with the
tout-ensemble
of a waiter. He had lorded over the Salterdon business and estates for forty years. He had been the dowager duchess’s legal and financial protector since the old duke had kicked up his heels.

As I paced the room, waiting for his tardy appearance, the door opened and Ernest Woodruff walked in. A small man with tired eyes that peered at me through wire-rimmed spectacles, he looked surprised as he smiled and bowed.

“Your Grace. What a pleasant surprise.”

I liked Woodruff. He reminded me of a sorely abused old lapdog. And he had a conscience—something I had never truly appreciated until that moment.

“Hello, Woodruff.” I smiled and offered my hand. “How are you?”

He seemed shocked by my proffered handshake, and beamed a tremendous smile as he shook my hand. “Very well, Your Grace. Thank you for asking.”