Authors: Cynthia Bailey Pratt
Emma Kirwan looked like a child in the plainest of Blanche’s nightgowns, the only one she could spare out of the dozen or so she owned. The glass of milk sat untasted on the table, while the girl lay flat and straight as a rail under the covers, her eyes fixed on the ceiling, but not as though she drew pleasant pictures there. She did not look at Rietta, even when she sat on the edge of the bed.
“Pray believe me, Miss Kirwan, I have no desire to pry. Whatever you were doing, I’m sure you had sufficient reason for your actions.”
“I thought I had,” Emma replied in a deadened tone. “I thought I was in love, but now ... I don’t believe there is such a thing.”
“Then the cause was a man?”
The lower lip trembled but the girl controlled it. She nodded. “I had such grand dreams. He said he shared them. Now I realize he was praying for the day he could leave me. He said ... he said ...”
“Don’t think of it.”
“He said I was a millstone around his neck. He said I was so earnest that I scared men away. He said he’d rather take a cold poultice to ... He gave me a drink. I didn’t like it.”
“Did he strike you?”
The bloodless hand touched the corner of her mouth. “Yes,” she whispered, then the tears came, breaking the unnatural composure that had brought her this far.
Rietta could not let the tears fall on a pillow when she had a perfectly useful shoulder. She rocked the girl who might have been her sister one day as she would have comforted her own blood sister, had Blanche ever known such strong emotions.
In between bouts of tears, Rietta heard enough to put her in command of the whole story. What little bits were left out, she had imagination enough to fill in for herself. This Robbie sounded like a thoroughly selfish creature who had found himself entangled with a wholly self-sacrificing woman. A receipt for disaster, whether he used her or discarded her.
In her opinion, Emma Kirwan was very well out of the affair even though he’d broken it off so cruelly. Every day would have brought tears and she had to admit that Emma had not the gift of being beautiful while she cried. A selfish man would use any means to escape from a woman who expected him to sacrifice anything at all for her. No marriage in which one partner did all the giving would be anything but hell on earth for both of them.
There was no use in trying to make Emma see that—not yet. She couldn’t understand how her love and sacrifice could be rejected. “All I want to do is make him happy!” Emma said over and over.
At last, exhausted, she fell asleep. Rietta could go and change once more into dry clothes. She cast a longing glance toward her own bed but she had a letter to write and it was not, after all, to Nick.
“Dear Lady Kirwan
—
Quite by accident, I met your daughter Emma this evening. Finding her to be slightly indisposed, I prevailed upon her to return with me to my home. You would do me great honor by permitting her to remain with me tonight.
Yours, Rietta Ferris.”
* * * *
Lord Bellamy not only gave Nick his son’s address in Galway, he accompanied him into the city, early though it was. “Never fear; he’ll receive from me the thrashing his mother would never let me give him at home. Then I’ll pack him off to America and not a soul will hear from me about your sister.”
“Thank you, my lord.”
“On the contrary, thank you. You have every right to call him out and I’d not blame you for it but... he is my son.” He turned his high-nosed face to the dark window and Nick did not interrupt the older man’s thoughts.
For himself, he had three letters that seemed to burn in his pocket.
His mother had sent young George after him last night with Rietta’s note. He did not know as yet how his sister fell in with Rietta but he thanked Providence for it. If Emma had passed the whole night with young Robbie Staines there would be no salvaging her reputation save by marriage with the young wastrel. As it was, they could put it about that Emma had intended all along to stay with the Ferris family.
The letter from Mr. Ferris, offering him the moon would he but marry Rietta, would have found no place but the fire if it had not been for the third letter.
This bore the name of a famous, and fortunate, gambler. In the politest possible language, the gentleman expressed his condolences on the death of Sir Benjamin Kirwan and informed the heir that he held some half-dozen IOUs and would greatly appreciate immediate payment. The total sum was not large so far as such things went—a matter of four hundred pounds—but it might as well have been four million for all the likelihood of it being found.
Lord Bellamy dropped him and went on his way. Nick stood outside the Ferris home, looking up at the windows. It was awkward to meet the girl who had turned down his honorable proposal, especially on such terms of gratitude as these. What would have become of Emma if Rietta had not found her? Scenes of women and girls fleeing from one occupied city or another filled his memory. The luckiest took up with the first man they found. The less lucky took a series of lovers. The most wretched wound up on the streets, or following the army for pennies and crusts of bread. Such a life was understandable when war smashed all other options, but it was unbearable to think that his sister had almost fallen into such a fate through no greater agency that her own folly.
He saw Rietta come out of the house and stand on the exterior landing. She’d covered her head and shoulders with a cloudy green shawl that brought out the color in her eyes. Under it, she wore a loose white garment with a skirt pulled on over it. In a ballroom, she might not show to the best advantage but in the first pale light of dawn, she was so striking that he wished he knew how to paint so that he might capture her for always.
Nick went up to her, hat in hand. She came down the steps to stand with him beside the railing. “I came out as soon as I knew it was you, Sir Nicholas. Emma isn’t awake just yet.”
“Tell me at once how she is.”
“Tired, heartsore, and most truly sorry.”
“How could she be so foolish?” Nick said bitterly. Finding Rietta sympathetic, he added, “Robbie Staines is the worst kind of man, without compunction, without direction ... even his own father cannot find excuses for him. Yet Emma—on fire with love—believes that for her he will change.”
“She knows she has been a fool. I believe she feels that even more than the bruise he put upon her face.”
“What! He struck her?” Unable to stand still, he took a pace up and down the gleaming pavement. “If I’d known that, I’d not let his father thrash him; I’d horsewhip him myself.”
“Then it is as well you didn’t know. Emma wouldn’t want that kind of scandal.”
“Emma, my dear Rietta, will be lucky if she isn’t packed off to a convent after yesterday’s work. She all but frightened Mother into a heart attack, running off like that. Of all the heartless, ignorant folly ... and so I shall tell her,”
“You’re too angry to see her now. Why not let her stay here, with me, for a few days. No one will know that she did not come to Galway just for that purpose.”
“Who are you to keep me from my sister?”
“I am her hostess,” she said, looking him in the eyes. “Kindly don’t raise your voice to me, Sir Nicholas. I shouldn’t like to lose my temper.”
“I suggest you don’t. I am in no mood to humor your desire to rule.”
“My what?”
“Come, Rietta,” he said, in as reasonable a tone as he could counterfeit. “You have convinced half the town that you are a brawling, scolding female. You rule your father’s household like a queen because no one there challenges you. Believe me, I am not so retiring.”
She shook her head free of the encompassing shawl and her red hair, loose around her shoulders, floated in the cool morning breeze like a battle flag raised in challenge. Even though he was entirely exasperated by her, he couldn’t help acknowledging that she looked magnificent, a Celtic princess of ancient days. Nick felt the thrill of incipient battle in his veins, for she was an adversary worth fighting against.
“I have come to see my sister and see her I shall.”
“No, you shan’t. She has been bullied quite enough.”
“Bullied? Do you dare to class me with Robbie Staines?”
“And why not? Are you any better than he is? A decent man would give any woman time to recover her self-respect before charging in upon her to shout and stamp. But no, your anger will drive you to say and do things that will hurt her the more.”
“I am not so brutal, Miss Ferris.”
“Nor so kind, Sir Nicholas. If your mother were here, she’d say the same as I do.” She looked about her and turned back to him, a sudden light of humorous embarrassment in her face. In a much lower tone, she said, “We are not alone.”
Nick turned his head and saw a group of people, each with the tools of his or her trade in hand. A fishmonger with a basket of cod had the same expression as his fish, whereas the lamplighter, the milkmaid, and the rag-and-bottle man seemed to think they were at a play.
He took Rietta by her bare elbow and turned her toward her house. Silent laughter shook her. She stumbled. He held her up by main force. “Now may I come in?”
“Only until our audience disperses. Well, if I had not a reputation for shrewishness, I have it now.”
Inside, in the dark quiet of the stairwell, Nick stood beside her as she peeped out through the sidelight. “They’re still talking us over.”
She glanced up at him with a smile that invited him to share her laughter, only to show surprise when she found him standing so near. He took his hand out of his pocket to reach up to smooth back her hanging hair, tangling his fingers in the soft, cool strands. She closed her eyes, but not as though afraid of him.
“You’ll be able to leave in a moment,” she said, giving herself a little shake as if forcing herself to stay awake.
“I like it here,” Nick said. Her hair was like raw silk, shining despite being in a state of nature. He supposed it was against every rule to wish to kiss a girl who’d already turned him down, but he wanted to. Would her lips taste as sweet as he remembered?
“Rietta ...,” He put a finger beneath her chin and tilted her face up. He looked into her eyes, waiting for, hoping for a protest. It was all that might save them now.
Then her gaze went past him and she jerked free.
“My father was up there,” she said, puzzled. “Looking over the railing ... I’m sure I saw him,”
“Never mind him,” Nick said and kissed her.
Chapter Ten
She should have
been thrashing about, furiously trying to break loose, shouting for help. But Rietta didn’t even murmur a protest—not because of his overmastering grip, but because she did not want to,
He kissed her the way a man dying of thirst drinks from a well he knows is poisoned, in desperate, violent consummation of need too long denied.
She could only grasp the front of his rough frieze coat and try to hang on as he took what he wanted from her.
Her head fell hack, as he tasted the lobe of her ear and ran his hand along the sensitized length of her throat. “Rietta,” he whispered, raggedly, then came again to take her mouth.
Rietta wasn’t afraid, though she was shaking. She felt his need for her in his trembling hands, in the harsh rhythm of his breath. Yet more was working in her than the old instinct of response to another’s need.
When he licked inside of her mouth, it was as if he’d lit a fuse that raced faster than a man could walk. She lifted into his kiss, answering his wordless demands with a muffled cry. She felt surprise run through him, causing his lips to harden as he drew back, but now it was she who held on to him with an unbreakable grip.
His shock wore off quickly.
Nick backed her into the wall with a thump that made the paintings rattle. He pulled her close, his weight supported on the hand splayed beside her head. His body was hard and urgent against hers, demanding things she could neither understand nor deny him. She felt his thigh press between her legs, dragging up her skirts, becoming the fulcrum of her existence.
“Why me?” she panted. “Why do you want me?”
His voice seemed to come from deep within his chest. “You make me forget the things I’ve seen. The things I’ve done.”
Then he put his hands on her and she lost his words as her skin began to sing. Her shawl had already fallen to the floor, thrown out of the way. Now he ran his hands down her throat as he plundered her mouth, blindly finding the edge of her bodice. She’d only thrown on a simple skirt such as peasant girls wore over her dressing gown so she could run down to him before he awakened the household. The dressing gown tied with a sash at the side, no barrier at all to his questing hand.
Rietta’s knees sagged as he pressed his palm over her bare breast. If he hadn’t groaned with half-pained pleasure at that moment, she would have died of shame. As it was, she felt a strange kind of pride. Then his fingertips were circling and circling her nipple and she knew he could do anything he wanted with her.
Heat blossomed along every vein, all her will burning away in the fire he’d set ablaze in her body. He said her name over and over, his voice no more than a breath, but it was enough to fan the flames higher still. From her deepest instinct came the knowledge that he alone could save her from the burning.
“Oh, Nick!” she cried. “What have you done to me?”
“Ssh... sweetheart.” He pressed his knee closer to her body. Not even the dress that screened her legs was protection. She met his movement halfway without realizing it.
Then, recognizing how completely wanton she’d become, she said desperately, “Please, stop this. I—I can’t bear another moment.”
He froze, his slickened mouth a hair’s breadth from hers. She looked up into his passion-dark eyes and thought that the devil must have looked just like that when he’d been thrown out of Paradise. She wanted to unsay it, but it was too late.
Slowly, he pushed away to the full length of his arms and gazed down at her. Rietta hadn’t been shy when he’d kissed her, but she couldn’t meet his steady appraisal. She looked away, noticing that his arms shook with the strain of keeping off her. Her lips burned. She pressed the back of her hand to them but it didn’t help.