The Perfect Wife (29 page)

Sabrina stood on the cliff and stared unseeing at the angry sea battling the rocky coast far below. The brisk wind blew her fair hair away from her face, occasionally whipping an errant strand across her eyes. Absently, she brushed it aside. She drew a deep breath and reveled in the fresh, sharp salt air. Crisp and clear and invigorating, it replenished her spirit. A spirit deeply in need of nourishment.

It had been four months since her escape from Egypt. Even now the panic that had spurred her flight still rose like bile just below the surface of her every thought, her every move. A panic that had haunted her days and threatened her nights.

And when, too exhausted to fight on, she slept, dreaming of loss, of pain, of him. Dreamt of the pleasure of Nicholas’s touch, the caress of his gaze and the laughing timbre of his voice. A voice she vowed, and feared, she would not hear again.

It had been remarkably easy to flee. Within a few hours after she left camp, she had crossed paths with a party of English tourists. They had accepted her somewhat garbled fabrication of how she happened to be wandering around Egypt alone in men’s garments with few questions and quite a lot of sympathy. Together, they traveled to Cairo and on to Alexandria.

Her luck held. She managed to avoid Matt’s ship and crew and find a seaworthy craft preparing to sail for England that very day. A portion of the money from her jewels bought her passage and paid her expenses until she could reach her haven, the tiny coastal village she’d always considered home.

Once the people here had been her playmates. Later they worked side by side with her in the smuggling operation that had put food on their tables and money in their pockets and hers. And now they offered her a sanctuary, a refuge, a safe harbor from the tortured seas her life had become.

She’d been too afraid to travel to London, too afraid to stop at her own home and speak to her butler and longtime friend. But she did send word to Wills, to assure him of her safe return and to warn him about Nicholas.

Sabrina tried not to dwell on her husband. Tried not to wonder what he’d done when he found her gone. Tried not to speculate on what he’d decided to do now that he’d found his nemesis and the answers to decade-old questions. Tried not to hope.

It wasn’t so much the fear of what he would do with knowledge of her past that worried her now in the sane moments of hindsight. No doubt even the most zealous government would have little interest in a long-forgotten smuggling case. Still, the threat remained. But the possibility of his distaste for her actions, his disgust, chilled her bones. She was neither proud nor ashamed of those long-ago days and could not live with a man she had somehow, even inadvertently, disappointed. No matter how much she loved him.

But as much as she tried to cast him from her mind, his presence lingered with her always. She closed her eyes against thoughts of him. Sometimes she could almost sense him beside her. She could almost breathe the spice of his scent. She could almost hear his voice....

“Sabrina.”

Her name drifted on the wind. Her heart stilled.

“Bree?”

She was not mistaken. She could never be mistaken. It was his voice. She did not turn to face him and was not sure if she could.

“How did you find me?” she asked quietly, struggling to control the urge to throw herself in his arms, the irrational desire to beg his forgiveness.

“I managed to get it out of Wills.” Nicholas chuckled. “It was not easy. The man is devoted to you.”

“You did not hurt him, I hope.”

“No. However, there was some question as to who might hurt whom.” His voice drew nearer.

Sabrina clenched her hands by her side. She feared to ask the questions uppermost in her mind. She groped for words to keep him at bay, to divert him from his purpose. A purpose that would surely spell her doom or break her heart.

“How is Belinda?” she asked abruptly.

“Belinda and Erick married in Italy and left the ship to travel slowly on a wedding journey back to England. My poor son could take no more of ocean voyages.”

“That’s lovely,” she said softly, choking back tears. She had missed her daughter’s wedding, but at least her child was safe and happy. “And what of Wynne and Matt?”

“When last I saw them they were sailing to America. Matt insisting on a wedding,” she could hear the grin in his voice, “Wynne refusing on the grounds that her days of adventure were not yet over.”

“I see.” Silence stretched between them. A knot formed in her throat. “Why are you here?”

“I have come for my wife.” His voice sounded beside her ear, and she jumped with the closeness of it. Still, she feared to face him.

“Why?” she asked, the question little more than a heartfelt sigh.

“Why?” Anger underscored his words. He grabbed her shoulders and spun her around to face him. His black eyes flashed, his dark brows drew together and his lips compressed in an unyielding line. “How can you ask me that? I have been beside myself with fear for your safety. Every day a torture of searching to no avail. I did not know whether you were alive or dead. If you’d been lost or slaughtered in the desert.”

He tightened his hands on her shoulders. “Imagine my relief when I learned you had sailed safely from Egypt. I tried to come after you. But that bloody American, Madison, came up with one delay after another to slow me down. We must have stopped in every blasted port between Alexandria and London on one pretext or another. Even when I finally arrived back in England I could get no cooperation. At first your steadfast Wills refused to even admit he had heard from you.”

“You have not yet answered my question.” She stared into his stormy eyes. “Why?”

“Bloody hell, Sabrina.” Nicholas groaned. “This is why.” He pulled her to him roughly. His lips crushed hers with a desperation she recognized and shared.

His tongue invaded her mouth, his breath fused with hers, his desire conquering her resistance. Sheer joy trembled through her and she melted against him. Her heart thundered in her chest and life soared within her.

For a moment she could believe the false promise of his touch. But only for a moment.

“No!” Her cry rent the air. She pushed hard against him and stumbled away from the cliffs edge. Once again flight from him beckoned and, for a moment, tempted. But she would not run this time. She stopped short and whirled to face him.

“I will not go to some damnable prison, Nicholas, just to satisfy your sense of honor. And I will not allow anyone to ship me off to some God-forsaken wilderness for an indiscretion committed a lifetime ago.”

“Indiscretion?” He stared incredulously. “You smuggled goods. You consorted with men the Crown considered traitors. Consorted—hell, you led them. It was hardly an indiscretion.”

“Nonetheless,” her voice rose in fear and anger, “I will not let you turn me in.”

“Then we are in agreement.” The rising timbre of his voice matched hers. “I do not plan to turn you in.”

“Oh?” Sarcasm rang in her words. “How do you expect me to believe that? You have done nothing but dwell on how I beat you for ten long, bloody years. Why on earth would you swerve from your dedicated mission of vengeance now?”

“Because,” his voice roared across the cliffs, “you’re dead. I killed you off.”

“What?” Confusion and annoyance swept through her. “I am bloody well not dead.”

“No, you’re too damned stubborn and clever and infuriating to be dead.” His eyes smoldered, dark and stormy. “But she’s dead.”

The man made absolutely no sense. “Who’s she?”

“Lady B!”

She gasped. “But that is me.”

“Not anymore.” Nicholas grabbed her and pulled her into his arms. “I made a full report.” He smiled wickedly. “With a few minor changes.”

“What do you mean?” A small flicker of hope flamed in her heart.

“I mean,” he leaned forward and kissed the tip of her nose, “I informed my former superiors that, while in Egypt with my wife, I learned that the infamous Lady B had immigrated to that parched land and succumbed to desert fever.”

“Desert fever? Very clever.” Thoughts and questions and implications crowded her mind. “I do hope it wasn’t too painful?”

“She scarcely felt a thing, my love.” He winked. “While it is a fatal disease, it is also a mere figment of my imagination. I made it up.”

“Nicholas.” She laughed in spite of herself, then sobered and pulled away. “I appreciate what you’ve done. Still, you do not want me. You want that calm, serene Lady Sabrina you selected for a wife. You want a proper, perfect wife.”

She shrugged. “I fear I can never be what you want.”

“I do not want a perfect wife. I want you.”

Surely he didn’t mean that the way it sounded? “Thank you, I think.”

He rolled his eyes heavenward and sighed. “Sabrina, for a woman who is obviously far too intelligent for her own good you cannot seem to see what is directly in front of your charming little nose. I love you.”

“Hah.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “And how many times have you said that to unsuspecting women? Dozens? Hundreds?”

“Perhaps thousands.” A seductive glint sparked in his eyes. “But I never meant it before you.”

“No doubt,” she said, her tone skeptical.

“Bree.” He sighed and pulled her back into his arms. “Listen to me. I followed you from the ends of the earth because I love you. I lied to my government because I love you. I do not care if you are the most improper, imperfect wife in the civilized world, I love you.”

She gazed at him for a long, considering moment. How could she believe him? How could she not? She stared into his deep, ebony eyes and at once knew that, for good or ill, she was his.

Elation surged through her. “Well,” she said breathlessly, throwing her arms around him, “I love you too.”

He bent to kiss her but stopped short. “Just a moment,” he said abruptly and released her. “I nearly forgot something.” He drew a note from his waistcoat and handed it to her. “Wills asked me to deliver this. He said it was important.”

Sabrina unfolded the message, skimmed the contents and smiled slowly. Before she’d left for Egypt she’d sent some of the funds from her jewels to her idiot solicitor, with instructions to invest in a highly speculative scheme to recover treasure from a sunken Spanish galleon in the West Indies. Wills wrote that the impulsive gamble had paid off quite nicely, and she was financially solvent once again.

“Is it important?” Nicholas quirked a questioning brow.

She stared at him for a moment, then glanced at the letter in her hand. Her need for money had started all this in the first place. Now she had all she could ever want. Her gaze traveled back to Nicholas. And so much more.

“No.” She crushed the letter in her hand and allowed the wind to whisk it away. “It was not important at all.”

“In that case,” he wrapped her in his embrace once again, his words rough with desire, “I suggest we find somewhere a bit more private and oh, say,” he grinned in an altogether wicked way that sent delicious shivers of anticipation coursing through her veins, “tell a few jokes.”

“Jokes?” At once she grasped his meaning, and her breath caught in her throat. “I could certainly use a good laugh right now.”

His lips descended on hers and swept away any vestige of doubt and uncertainty. And in the last instant before she lost herself in the magic of his touch she marveled at the irony and the miracle that in the eyes of this one proper lord, this arrogant rake, she was indeed the perfect wife.