Simon studied the sketch and accompanying article for several seconds, then reached for another handful of the fallen papers. He thumbed through them one by one, his eyes growing ever more unreadable and his jaw more set.
These weren’t the sordid scandal sheets detailing his gleeful plunge into debauchery.
These were respectable articles from the
Times
and the
Morning Post
, their gushing prose lauding his heroic actions at the Battle of Trafalgar. Catriona could have quoted most of them word for word.
Letting the last of them drift from his fingers, Simon slowly straightened. She could almost feel the weight of his accusing gaze.
“You lied to me, didn’t you?” he asked softly, the words barely a question. “You told me that you sought me out because I was a rogue, a mercenary who ‘couldn’t resist turning a tidy profit for a minimal amount of effort.’”
She lifted her chin, forcing herself to meet his gaze. “It’s true, is it not?”
“Yes, it is. But that’s not why you came to the jail that day. You came because you were looking for this man.” He stabbed a finger toward the sketch of his own handsome visage, now lying abandoned on the cold ground. “This…this…imposter!”
“He wasn’t an imposter!” Catriona cried. “He was you!”
Simon shook his head. “Oh, no. He was never me. He doesn’t even exist.”
“He did. Once.” Both Catriona’s voice and her hands were beginning to tremble with passion. “He was the man who risked life and limb to defend his country against the French. He boarded the
Belleisle
knowing he might never return alive to England’s shores. When he realized his captain was in dire peril from a sniper’s musket ball, he threw himself in front of him with no thought for his own well-being. He was willing to sacrifice himself to save his fellow—”
“I tripped!”
Simon’s shout cracked through the clearing like a pistol shot. When its echo faded, the only sound was the popping and crackling of the campfire.
“You what?” Catriona whispered.
“I tripped,” Simon repeated, a sneer curling his upper lip. “I wasn’t trying to nobly sacrifice myself to save my captain’s life. I was trying to get the bloody hell out of the way before I got my fool head blown off by a cannonball. It was pure bad luck or perhaps a cruel joke of fate that I went dashing for cover at the precise moment a marksman fired at my captain from the rigging of a French ship.” He rubbed his fingers over the jagged scar on his brow as if it still pained him. “If I hadn’t tripped over a fallen lanyard and stumbled into the path of that musket ball, he’d be dead right now and I’d never have been hailed as a hero.”
“You tripped?” Catriona repeated stupidly.
“That’s right. I didn’t regain consciousness for over a week after the battle, and by the time I woke up, word of my so-called
sacrifice
had already spread through the entire fleet.
When I opened my eyes, my captain was standing at the foot of my hammock beaming at me. He said that if not for me, he would have met the same fate as Nelson on the
Victory
. He was the one who informed me that the King himself would be waiting to knight me for valor the minute I set foot on English soil.”
“I was there,” Catriona whispered, more to herself than to him. “I was there that day on the docks. I begged Uncle Ross to take the whole family on an outing so we could watch the
Belleisle
sail into port. Georgina napped the entire time and Alice did nothing but complain because she loathed being crammed into the carriage with the rest of us. She accused me of dirtying the hem of her petticoat with my big, clumsy feet. But I didn’t care.”
Simon was gazing at her as if her confession pained him more than his own.
A ghost of a smile curved her lips. “I’ll never forget how handsome you looked in your uniform when you came striding down that gangplank—like a young prince who had just saved his kingdom from some terrible villain. The crowd was calling your name and all the pretty young girls were throwing roses in your path.
“Uncle Ross tried to stop me, but I scrambled out of the carriage and snatched up a rose from the boardwalk. When you passed by me, I held it out to you and you took it. You smiled at me, but I knew you hadn’t seen me. Not really. I was just another face in the crowd.”
“Another fool, you mean,” he said harshly. “There were a hundred heroes in that battle—most of them genuine. Why in the bloody hell did you have to choose me?”
“I don’t know! You looked so handsome and noble in your uniform that day in the barn, especially when you stood up to Alice on my behalf. I suppose I convinced myself that if I’d had a champion like you five years before…” She trailed off, unable to voice her most secret conviction.
“What?” he snapped without an ounce of mercy. “Your parents wouldn’t have been slaughtered? Your brother wouldn’t have had to send you away? Do you think I would have battled the redcoats on your behalf? Come thundering up on my white charger and whisked you away to a place where no one could ever hurt you or belittle you or break your heart?” He leaned his shoulder against a tree, looking as beautiful and heartless as she had ever seen him. “Don’t you see, darling? I’m no noble hero from some ridiculous Scottish fairy tale, and I never was. I’m no Robert the Bruce or Bonnie Prince Charlie.
I’m the worst sort of coward, and now you know it, so you can stop sleeping with that silly box of clippings under your pillow when what you really need in your bed is a man.”
Unable to bear the cynical glint in his eye, Catriona dropped to her knees and began to gather up the remainder of the fallen articles, her hands painstakingly gentle as she handled the fragile newsprint.
Simon covered the distance between them in two steps, grabbed her by the shoulders and snatched her to her feet. His eyes were no longer mocking, but blazing with passion.
“Damn it to hell, Catriona! It doesn’t matter what those silly scraps of paper say. I’m no hero!” Reversing their positions, he backed her against the tree, imprisoning her there with the unyielding length of his body. The scent of danger roiled off of him, even stronger than the whisky on his breath.
“What are you going to do, Simon?” she whispered, meeting his challenging gaze with one of her own. “Ravish your own wife just to prove you’re a villain?”
Catriona had only the space of a ragged breath, a shuddering heartbeat, to gaze into the fierce depths of his eyes before his mouth descended on hers. Simon Wescott the legendary lover, the quicksilver-tongued seducer of women, had vanished, leaving behind a savage more suited to this wilderness than to a London drawing room.
If he’d thought to frighten her away with his kiss, he was doomed to disappointment.
She was no longer the starry-eyed child who had tenderly tucked those clippings into that box. Instead of shoving him away with a maidenly shriek of horror, she twined her hands through the silken strands of hair at his nape and welcomed the hungry thrust of his tongue even deeper into her mouth. She countered his fierce assault on her senses with tenderness, offering up her mouth, her heart, her very soul for the taking.
He responded to her invitation with a strangled groan. He kissed her again and again, drinking from the chalice of her mouth as if he were Percival and she the Holy Grail.
Without missing a stroke of his kiss, he slipped one arm beneath her hips, lifting her, spreading her, until he could stand between her legs and press the rigid heat between his to her tender core.
Catriona gasped into his mouth. That demanding pressure—so foreign, and yet so enticing—warned her that he wanted more from her than just a kiss. Much more. She had always known he was stronger than her. She just hadn’t realized he was strong enough to balance her weight with one arm while he bunched her skirt up in his other hand so he could slip his hand beneath it. The blistering heat of his palm glided up the cool satin of her thigh but did not linger. It was not her pleasure he sought on this night but his own. This wasn’t the elegant bedchamber at her uncle’s house or even that narrow bedstead in the Gretna Green inn. He hadn’t come to give, but to take.
When his fingers reached their destination, she was already swollen, already open, already wet with desire for him. The temptation was too great. Without a trace of the grace or finesse that had earned him his reputation, he thrust two fingers roughly into her. When he heard her breathless cry and felt her silken flesh convulse around his fingers, he was as shocked as she was.
Biting off an oath, he released her so abruptly she had to cling to the trunk of the tree behind her to keep from falling.
He backed away from her as if she were the one who had sought to trap him with some honey-baited pot, his chest heaving with reaction. “What do I have to do, Catriona?
How far do I have to go to prove to you that you can’t make me a better man just by believing I am?”
With that, he bent to scoop up a thick handful of the fallen clippings and hurled them into the fire.
“No!” Catriona rushed forward with a broken little cry.
But it was too late. The clippings and sketches were already beginning to smolder and curl up around the edges.
Catriona stood there for a long time, watching all of her girlhood dreams go up in smoke. When she finally lifted her head to gaze at him, it was through a stinging haze of tears. “You’re right, Simon. You are the worst sort of coward. I just don’t know who you’re more afraid of—yourself…or me.”
Biting back a choked sob, she turned and fled into the forest.
******************
Simon stood with his hands clenched into fists as the sounds of Catriona crashing through the underbrush slowly faded. He knew he ought to go after her. That’s what any decent man would do.
He sank down next to the fire and brought the half-empty bottle of whisky to his lips.
With enough whisky and any luck at all, he might not even remember the cursed events of this night. Might be able to forget the stricken look in Catriona’s eyes and the tears that had spilled down her cheeks as she watched him destroy her sentimental treasures.
But he didn’t think any amount of liquor would drown out the echo of her breathless cry as she shuddered to completion beneath his hand—that one pure shining moment of grace when he had deserved nothing but her condemnation and contempt.
He reached into the fire and plucked out a charred scrap of newsprint, singeing the tips of his fingers but not caring. It was another sketch of that handsome young officer arriving at the docks in London, a plaster bandage adorning his brow like the laurel wreath of a conquering warrior.
Catriona hadn’t been the only woman waiting to greet him on the docks that day. He had never told a single soul about seeing that other ghost from his past. He might have recognized Catriona if he hadn’t already been numb with shock, his gracious smile frozen on his lips.
No matter how long or how intently Simon studied his face, the man in the clipping was still a stranger. He finally crumpled up the sketch and tossed it back in the fire. He took another searing gulp of the whisky, watching it burn to ash.
He hadn’t been completely honest with Catriona. He had wanted to believe the lies the paper had printed about him nearly as badly as she did. He had wanted to believe he could be a man of honor. The sort of man who would lay down his own life to protect his commanding officer. The sort of man who could make his father proud. The sort of man who deserved to have roses strewn in his path by pretty young girls who dreamed of noble princes and conquering heroes.
When he had first returned to London, he had even tried to convince himself that perhaps his own memory was faulty. That perhaps somewhere on the heaving decks of that ship, with the choking stench of gunpowder scorching his nostrils and the thunder of the cannons booming in his ears, he had made a split-second choice between his life and his captain’s. But when he had tried to live up to that legend, he had discovered that the one person he could not deceive was himself.
He was no hero. He was a bastard and a coward who would never be worthy of so much as a rose petal from a woman like Catriona.
He sank back on one elbow, determined to drink until he couldn’t see, couldn’t think, couldn’t remember what he was drinking to forget.
******************
Catriona couldn’t run far or fast enough to escape her own folly. A strangled sob caught in her throat. She didn’t even care where she was going, as long as it was away from
him
.
She had wasted five years of her life loving the ghost of a man who had never even existed. She had fallen in love with a pretty boy in a starched uniform, only to discover that the boy was nothing but an illusion and the uniform might as well have been hanging on a dressmaker’s dummy. She had been blinded by both the teasing sparkle in his eyes and the shiny braid on his shoulders and now she was left with nothing to blind her but her tears.
It was incredibly mortifying to remember how she had entertained any number of fantasies that involved dabbing a cool cloth on his wounded brow and spooning broth between his lips while he recovered from his injury and fell deeply and irrevocably in love with her. And what about all of the hours she had wasted kissing her hand and pretending it was his lips and practicing her penmanship by copying
Catriona Wescott
and
Mrs. Simon Wescott
into the pages of her journal?
She could have easily forgiven him for not intentionally saving his captain from that musket ball. But she didn’t think she could ever forgive him for deliberately trying to break her heart. For denying the truth she tasted on his lips every time he kissed her.