Pendragon (27 page)

Meggie was smiling as she strode away from her mother-in-law, shoulders finely squared, her step light until she thought of Thomas and knew that his mother was right. He was bored with her, tired of her, whatever. What had happened? What had she done? Surely it couldn't have anything to do with Jeremy.

I'm not boring, she thought, and pulled an early blooming rose from a vase that sparkled with cleanliness and crushed it in her fist. I train champion cat racers. How can that be boring?

Madeleine called after her, “I will prove to you that I can train racing cats better than you can.”

Meggie didn't even pause. But she did smile, just for a moment. Madeleine just didn't give up.

 

The package from home—it was a painting of her family. She wasn't aware that she was crying until Thomas said, all stiff and hard, “It is a fairly good painting. I do believe though that Mary Rose's hair is not quite as red as that rendered by the artist. Also, Max has a sharper chin. As for Leo, he looks ready to vault over a fence and race around the fields. All in all, it is excellent. Stop crying.”

Meggie sniffed, then set the painting on a table against the wall, backed up, and stared at it. “It's just excellent. My father knew I would be terribly homesick. He's the best father in the world.”

Thomas didn't say anything. “Shall we take it downstairs and show it to everyone? Too bad your uncle the
earl isn't in it. My mother would surely appreciate you more if reminded of your high-ranking relatives. I forgot to tell her that your aunt is the daughter of a duke. Hmmm. Maybe you can salvage her yet.”

“She still calls me Missy. I've corrected her twice, just a bit on the snide side. I don't think she'll ever stop.”

Thomas nodded. “Probably not. Let's go.” He carried the painting all the way to the drawing room, set it atop the mantel, and stepped back.

Libby said, “Goodness, Meggie, your father is a fine figure of a man. Does he truly have silver wings in his hair?”

“I believe so,” Meggie said.

“She is too young to be your mother,” Lord Kipper said, both his eyes on Mary Rose. “Wonderful features, interesting the way she is leaning toward your father, you can feel it, even though she appears to be sitting straight.”

“You cannot seduce her, Niles,” Madeleine said.

Lord Kipper turned and smiled. “Would you like to wager on that, my dear?”

“Mary Rose is Meggie's stepmother. She's Scottish,” Thomas said, turned from the painting, and added toward his wife, “Would you be so kind as to serve us tea?”

And so she did. She knew everyone's taste in tea now and moved quickly. Cook had made scones for her, and they were really quite good. Cook now made, besides a brilliant breakfast, a very acceptable luncheon. She never sang except delivering the nutty buns to the breakfast table each morning. Dinner, however, still strained her abilities. She needed a song, Meggie knew, and felt guilty because she hadn't thought about it.

She said more to herself than to Thomas, “I should be receiving some more recipes from Mary Rose soon now.”

“Cook will butcher them,” William said, coming into the drawing room. “Give her a haunch of beef and she will turn it into a fence rail.” So saying, he cast Meggie a wary look.

Meggie frowned at him and began rearranging the
scones on the platter. “Oh, stop looking like a whipped dog, William. Would you like tea?”

He nodded and managed to slink all the way across the huge room to stand behind a very old wing chair that Meggie planned to replace just as soon as—She frowned into her teacup. She had to go to Dublin to the Gibbs Furniture Warehouse. She wondered what her husband of three weeks would say when she asked him about that.

“I say, that's your father, Meggie. The vicar.”

“That's right. You caused a very fine mess, William, and he was the one to resolve it, he and your brother.”

“What is this?” Libby said. “What did you do this time, dearest?”

“Mother, I haven't done a single thing since I've gotten home. Lord Kipper, you promised you would show me your new hunter. I should very much like to see it, sir.”

“Since your mother bought it off me for your birthday, I suppose you can see it.”

“The new hunter, Mother?” At Libby's nod, William swooped down on her and nearly crushed her into the sofa, so exuberant was he with his hugs.

“You are a good boy, William,” she said, kissing his cheek, “you always have been.”

Meggie nearly turned blue she held her breath so long so that she wouldn't say anything.

Near midnight, when Thomas finally came into her bed, making his way quietly from his own bedchamber, Meggie said from the depths of the goose down, “Thomas, we must go to the furniture warehouse in Dublin.”

He jumped a good foot.

To her delight, after he paced the room three times, he turned back toward the bed on his bare heel, frowned, and nodded. “All right. You'll probably be safer in Dublin than here. Make your lists, Meggie, and we will leave when you're ready.”

“Would you like to come lie beside me and we can discuss it?”

He looked over at his wife. She was sitting up now and she wasn't wearing one of her usual white muslin
nightgowns. She was wearing something that looked sinful, the color of a peach, and fit her so well he could clearly see her breasts. He was so hard he hurt. By the time he reached the bed, he was harder than Lord Kipper's pipe stem.

He stopped cold. “No.”

“No what?”

“I want you, Meggie. You can look at me and I am incapable of hiding it from you.”

“I am your wife. I want you as well. Please, Thomas, if you can't tell me what's bothering you, can't you at least come here and make love to me?”

He felt himself shaking, beginning at his feet, those shakes working their way up. “You're trying to seduce me,” he said slowly, the shakes now to his knees.

“Well, yes,” she said, and smiled at him. “If you won't talk to me about what's bothering you, why then, I might as well enjoy you in other ways.”

She'd brushed her hair out and it was curling and falling down her back and over her right shoulder, framing her right breast, her hair and that wicked nightgown she was wearing that was now in danger of falling off her right shoulder.

He swallowed. “If a man doesn't have pride, he has very little.”

“Pride? Whatever are you talking about?”

He said at nearly a shout because it had been festering inside him for so very long now, and he just couldn't hold it in anymore, it was corroding his innards, “Jeremy, that damned almost cousin of yours! That's what I'm talking about, as if you didn't know.

“You betrayed me in your heart, Meggie. You married me when you knew you loved him, and you still love that damned bastard, and here he is married and will have a child soon. You married me because you couldn't have him and thus it didn't matter to you. I knew you didn't love me, but I thought I could bring you around. But it had nothing to do with anything, did it?

“I was the fool who was ready to offer you everything. Did you even hesitate, Meggie? Did you feel the least bit guilty when you agreed to marry me? I don't think much of you for doing that, Meggie, I really don't.”

29

M
EGGIE SAID
,
HER
voice dull and accepting, “I loved him beginning when I was thirteen years old.”

“Why did you marry me, dammit, when you loved another man?”

“I liked you very much, Thomas, you pleased me, you made me laugh, better still, I made you laugh. I esteemed you. I admired you and knew you were honorable. I wanted to marry you.”

“You loved another man.”

Slowly she nodded. “You didn't love me either.”

“How do you know?” He slashed his hand through the air. “Not that it matters. Is that your defense? Let me tell you, Meggie, I wasn't cherishing some other woman in my heart, which is balderdash, naturally, but that is the way one says it, I suppose. I didn't marry you under false pretenses.”

Meggie felt her heart pounding slow deep strokes. Her mouth felt dry. “May I ask how you know about Jeremy?”

“Yes, I'll tell you. We had been married all of an hour when I happened to overhear you speaking to your father about how very noble Jeremy was, how you admired him, how you would have loved him forever, if only he hadn't met Charlotte.”

Meggie squeezed her eyes closed, remembering each word, feeling the pain each one brought her, pain that just
by saying them had flowed over her husband. “You remember so very much. I'm sorry, Thomas. You see, my father was very worried about me and about you as well. He didn't want either of us to be disappointed. When he asked, I admitted that I knew Jeremy had been playacting when he'd come to the vicarage, that he'd just told me he wasn't really obnoxious at all, that it had all been an act to help me get over my feelings for him. He was telling me then since it wasn't important any longer since I'd just married, and he didn't want me to dislike him anymore.”

Thomas wanted to yell down the moon, which was bright overhead tonight, not a single cloud in the Irish sky, a perfect spring night, the air soft and fragrant with the scent of new flowers, but he didn't want her anymore now. His sense of betrayal was greater now that she'd admitted to it.

“Well, damn you, you didn't get over your feelings for the bastard. Then you married me.”

“Yes, I did.”

“But he was married and he didn't want you?”

“No, but he was betrothed, something I didn't know about until it was too late.”

“I see. If Jeremy walked through that door this very instant, told you he wanted you, would you go with him?”

“No.”

“Because you're a damned vicar's daughter.”

“Because I don't break my promises.”

He plowed his hand through his hair, making it stand straight up. Meggie smiled.

“So I am stuck with a wife who loves another man,” he said finally, and hated the words as they poured out of his mouth, hated them to his gut. They were stark and ugly, those damnable words, sounded like nails in a coffin lid.

“Listen to me, Thomas. I have a very high regard for you. I very much like it when you kiss me, when you love me. You have given me great pleasure just as, I trust, I have given you. Jeremy isn't part of my life now. Only
you are. I am your wife and I will protect you and honor you until I die.”

“Wonderful,” Thomas said, and began pacing, his dressing gown flapping at his ankles. “Just bloody wonderful. An honorable wife who's already betrayed me. Damnation.” The fingers went through the hair again.

She said suddenly, “That is why you were so very rough with me on our wedding night, wasn't it? You were thinking about Jeremy and you wanted to punish me.”

“I'm not proud of it, but yes. I heard you talking about him and I couldn't bear it. I hurt you.” He paced again. She could feel anger radiating off him. She realized fully what she'd done to him.

“I'm very sorry, Thomas.”

“Yes, naturally you are because you're so damned honorable and you recognize that you've done a very wrong thing.”

“Yes, but you are my husband, Thomas, forever.”

“Isn't that just dandy?”

“Why did you withdraw from me again? Two weeks ago.”

“You dreamed about him. You said his name aloud.” He slammed his fist against the wall. “Damn you, Meggie, I had just given you immense pleasure and you dreamed about that damned bastard! I wanted to kill him—I still do.”

“What do you want to do to me?”

“I don't know. I've thought about it, but I just don't know. I don't want to hurt you again, not with sex. Never with sex again.”

“I don't remember dreaming about Jeremy. To be perfectly honest here, Thomas, I don't think of him all that often anymore. You are my husband. Pendragon is my home. I want to be your wife, in all ways. I hate that you distrust me, that you blame me, that you don't want me anymore.”

“Oh, God knows I want you, Meggie. I am a young man, young men are randier than goats, and I have grown
up hearing that goats will bed anything that wags a tail or chews a boot.”

“That's vulgar,” Meggie said, and laughed. It dried up very quickly. She said slowly, looking at him intently, “Do you think perhaps that we can start over, Thomas?”

“Start over? Start over what? This sham of a marriage?”

She'd been wallowing in guilt, knowing she'd been profoundly wrong. She'd been trying to exert reason and logic, trying to make him see how hideously sorry she was, but now she felt anger filling her, coming right out of her mouth. “This isn't a sham marriage! Blessed Hell, Thomas, I wouldn't let a man do what you do to me, and I surely wouldn't let a man hear me scream in pleasure, if this were a damned sham marriage! I am your bloody wife. Do you hear me? I will grow old with you. Get used to it!”

She was breathing so hard that she was panting now. She realized in that instant that he was looking at her breasts, heaving and pressing against that wicked peach satin. She, the vicar's daughter, straightened her shoulders, stuck her chest out, and said, “So what are you going to do about it, Thomas?”

He slammed out of the White Room.

Meggie stared at the still vibrating door. This was not good. She knew she'd hurt him very badly. But she couldn't control her dreams. She tried and tried, but she simply couldn't remember even dreaming about Jeremy. Oh yes, it had been after he'd sent her the carved statue of Mr. Cork. What could it have been?

And then she remembered.

She bounded out of bed and burst through the adjoining door into his grand and massive and very gloomy bedchamber, which she'd had cleaned, but not really paid much attention to since Thomas spent so little time in here. He was standing by one of the long skinny windows, staring out over the sea.

“Thomas, I remember.”

He turned slowly. “You follow me, even into my bedchamber, where I should have privacy if I wish it?”

“Climb down from your hobbyhorse, you ass. I remember the dream about Jeremy.”

“You have had time to make something up, Meggie.”

She ran straight across the room, right at him, and grabbed his dressing gown lapels. She stood on her tiptoes and said right into his face, “I haven't made up a single thing. Listen to me. I dreamed about him right after he sent me Mr. Cork. Naturally he was on my mind, but not in the way you think. I dreamed about a cat race.”

“Ha.”

“Shut your trap, curse you. I dreamed that Mr. Cork was running, he was way ahead of the other racing cats. Then he began changing—he turned black, his eyes were bright orange, and then, he was suddenly fat, his belly nearly hanging to the ground. I just couldn't believe it. And then Jeremy was saying that he would have to rewhittle him, make me a whole new statue and it would take him more time than he had, but he had to so he could be faithful to the real Mr. Cork. And I was begging him not to. I wanted my own Mr. Cork back, not this monstrous thing.”

“Do you honestly want me to believe that, Meggie?” He spoke very quietly.

She backed away from him, a good two steps. She said slowly, “Have I ever lied to you?”

“You lied by omission.”

“Ah, that's a grand sin, isn't it? Will you chew on that until your jaw locks? No, that was rhetorical. Have I ever lied to you, Thomas?”

He was silent. She opened her mouth, but he raised his hand. “No, be quiet. I'm thinking. We were together a goodly amount of time before we married. I'm trying to remember if you lied to me.”

Now it was Meggie who began pacing that dismal gloomy room. It was filled with shadows and every step she took sent her into deeper gloom. She hated gloom, she knew too well how it felt inside her. He turned to look out the window again, at the beautiful moon that glistened over the water.

It was magic, a night like this.

“No,” he said at last. “I don't remember you ever lying to me.”

“Well, good,” she said, nearly at a loss for words since she'd fully expected him to come up with something. She was only human, after all. “Then may we please try to begin again, Thomas?”

“Meggie,” he said, staying where he was, which was very far away from her indeed, “what if I loved another woman and couldn't have her, then I married you, all without telling you a thing about her?”

Meggie stopped cold. She was shaking her head, then she stopped that too. She stared across the gloom at him. “Oh dear,” she whispered. “Oh dear.”

“Yes,” he said. “There is that, isn't there?”

“I would throttle you if I found out. I would stomp you into the mud. I would shave your head and blacken your eyes, both of them. Oh dear. I hadn't thought of the shoe on the other foot.”

He was pleased, but he wasn't about to let her see it. “What I did to you was bad enough—forcing you on our wedding night.”

“No, what was worse was the last time when you just went away from me and didn't say a single thing. That is horrid, Thomas. Please, don't do that again. If you want to stomp me, I will allow it.”

She'd walked into the moonlight again, and that peach thing she was wearing shimmered all the way from her breasts to the floor. He could see too much of her.

“If I slam out of this room, I will be in the White Room again, your room.”

“Please don't leave me,” she said and came up to him. She didn't touch him, just stopped an inch short and looked up at him. “Thomas, why did you marry me?”

“Because I love you, you twit, because I believed you loved me as well.”

“But you never said anything about love to me.”

“No.”

“Why?”

He said very slowly, “Because there was just something about you, Meggie, something that made me understand how very young you were, how very innocent, untouched. You weren't ready for that.”

“All that young and innocent, yet you believed I loved you? That it wasn't some sort of schoolgirl infatuation?”

“I sometimes hate the way your brain works.”

“So does my family.” She sighed. “There is so much going on here at Pendragon. There is the someone who doesn't want me here, enough to try to kill me. Then there's you, Thomas. You don't know whether you want to strangle me or kiss me or just slam out of the room.”

“If you are giving me a choice, then I would prefer to kiss you.” He had to touch her breasts, had to mold his fingers around her through that satin, and so he did and he closed his eyes as he cupped her in his palms, as his fingers roved over her.

He felt her pushing against his hands, and he opened his eyes. He smiled down at her. “I believe you want me as badly as I want you.”

“More,” Meggie said. “You taught me, Thomas, and you taught me well.” She went up on her tiptoes and kissed his mouth. “Please open to me,” she whispered and he did, and all his heat, all the strength of him, all his passion and the immense hurt she'd dished out to him, it was all in that kiss, in the way he held her so tightly, she believed her ribs would crack, and then she just didn't care.

The huge old bed was only ten feet away. When he lay her on the Aubusson carpet that was so threadbare she felt pricks of cold air touching her shoulder blades, he forced himself to stop, just for a moment, and said, his voice thick and deep and guttural, “I want this to be hard and fast, Meggie.”

Meggie couldn't think of a single word, she was thrumming, mewling like her racing cats she was so excited, she felt so very urgent, it was beyond anything she could begin to understand. She grabbed him around his neck and pulled him down to her. “Please, now, Thomas. Now.”

He was a wild man, all over her, not a touch of gentleness, and Meggie hummed with power and urgency. She also hummed with something else, but she didn't know what it was.

Meggie would swear that the gloomy room lightened, that the air itself lifted and fluttered when she yelled to those beams in the darkened ceiling. But he wasn't through, bless him, and within a very short time, she was breathing hard again, beside herself, her hands all over him, pulling and caressing and hitting, and her cries heaved out of her mouth against his shoulder.