Chapter Thirty-Four
Sabine stood in the open doorway, blinking hard. She couldn’t understand why Lord Crosshaven was in her house. He must know he was not welcome. But then another man came forward, and her heart stopped beating.
“Foye?” she said.
It must be someone else, she thought. Someone else as tall as Foye. The stranger came out of the shadows where he’d been. And her entire body flashed hot and then cold as ice. She trembled from head to toe. It couldn’t be. He was dead.
“Foye?” she whispered.
“Sabine.”
It was his voice. His voice. She’d never in all her life fainted, and she would not now. She put out a hand to catch something. The edge of the door. A table. A chair, anything sturdy enough to help her keep her balance when her head was swimming and their legs threatening to crumble.
There was a table by the door, her searching hand hit the edge and that served. She clutched it, hanging on as hard as she could.
“It’s me,” he said. He came toward her, and all she could think was that she must be imagining this. The sun was coming through the window behind him, this man who looked like Foye, and she wasn’t sure at all of anything. She could not see him well enough. “My love, I wasn’t on the Hecla.”
Sabine held out a hand. “Is it you?” she said. “Is it really you?”
“Yes.” He crossed the room, walking out of the sunlight, and he took her in his arms. And though a part of her still believed Foye was dead, she wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him tight to her, and their bodies fit exactly as she remembered. Perfectly.
She was dimly aware of Lord Crosshaven helping a frail, elderly man to his feet. She recognized Crosshaven’s father-in-law from church. Since coming to St. Ives she had met everyone who attended their church. She had withstood all the introductions, even the exceedingly difficult one to Lord Crosshaven and his wife, whom she disliked a great deal. At first on mere principle and then because she would not have liked the woman in any event.
Sabine stepped forward, still with one hand on Foye’s coat, stopping Crosshaven by placing a hand on the old man’s arm.
Crosshaven took a breath and said, “He wanted to pay his respects, Lady Foye.”
She nodded. “Thank you for coming, Mr. Prescott.”
He bowed, slowly, and, leaning heavily on his son-in-law’s arm, spoke in a voice that trembled with age. “He’s a good man, Foye.” He lifted his head. “A good man, my lord.”
“We’ll call, Mr. Prescott,” Sabine said. “If we may. Lord Foye and I.”
He chuckled and patted her hand. Mr. Prescott smiled at her, and she was reminded very strongly of Godard.
Not because there was any great resemblance between the men but because of his age and the way Lord Crosshaven supported his arm. Mr. Prescott was older than Godard by several years, and she knew precisely what it had cost the older man to travel so far, how deeply he must have felt his obligation to Foye’s memory. “That would be delightful.”
“We look forward to it, sir,” Sabine said. She pressed his hand and leaned in to plant a kiss on his cheek. “You’ve brought me luck, sir,” she said. “You came to call and brought me back my husband. I’ll never forget that.”
“Come along,” Crosshaven said to his father-in-law. “We’ll get you home, and you can tell Rosaline all about how you brought Foye back from the dead.” He looked at Sabine and said, very softly, “Thank you.” Cross glanced at Foye and nodded. “Good day, my lord.”
“I won’t wish you the same.”
“Foye,” Sabine murmured. “Don’t be unkind.”
He looked down at her. “I won’t, my love.”
When Crosshaven and Mr. Prescott were gone, Sabine turned back to Foye and slipped her arms around him, resting her cheek against his chest and stroking his back until she stopped shaking.
“Tell me again it’s you, Foye,” she whispered. “Tell me I’m not dreaming.” He held her close, stroking her head. Tears burned behind her eyes, and there was nothing she could do to stop them.
“You’re not.” He pulled her hard against him. “I drove from London to here as quickly as I could. I couldn’t get here any sooner.”
She went up on tiptoe so she could put her palms on both sides of his face. She traced every line of his face with trembling fingers while Foye produced a handkerchief to dab at her tears. She looked to the door and saw the butler there with the housekeeper and several of the maids and footmen. Through her tears she said, “It’s him. It’s really him. We’ll have a feast tonight, won’t we?”
Foye set her back and said, “Lady Foye and I will dine in our room tonight. If you wish to celebrate tonight, do so, with full permission.” He slipped an arm around her waist and held her tight against him. “But we’ll feast the entire house tomorrow.”
“My lord.” The butler had the sense to retire, shooing away the rest of the staff.
Foye took Sabine to his room, and he looked around slowly. Sabine realized it was patently obvious to anyone that she had moved in here, into his room and not the lady’s chamber, and there they had an awkward moment. “I felt closer to you here, Foye,” she said. The silence between them horrified her. Had he changed? Had he fallen out of love with her?
“It’s quite all right.”
She stayed near him and kept her hand on his arm, and he let her. He faced her and removed her hat. Some plain thing she’d bought at the milliners at St. Ives and had dyed black, not caring at all what she looked like. Her gown was a horrible, hideous black as well, Her shoes, too. He stood there in the center of his room that she had turned into hers, and ran his fingers through her hair.
“It’s grown quite a lot since Aleppo,” he said. “And all of it gold again.”
“It has.” She touched the curls around her forehead. “These remind me of you. I didn’t know I had them until recently. Before, my hair was too long to curl this much.”
“Brook told me you’re with child, Sabine. Is it so?”
She nodded. “I’ve seen the doctor.”
“You’re wearing mourning,” he said. “Widow’s weeds.”
“For you, Foye.”
“I dislike you in black.” He stroked her hair, her cheek, and she turned her face into the curve of his palm. “I hate particularly to see you in clothes that are out of fashion and too plain.” He was holding onto his emotions as tightly as she was, and she wasn’t sure how to get them past this awkwardness. Turkey was thousands of miles away, and now, after all that had happened, could they really make a life together?
What a pair they were.
“Knowing you,” he said, “you haven’t anything else to wear.”
“I haven’t.”
“I’ll buy you a new wardrobe. In colors. Any color you want, Sabine. A rainbow of them if you like. I’ll take you to London and visit all the shops in the world.”
“I don’t care about that.” She reached up to put her hands on either side of his face. His skin was cool underneath her fingers. She trembled when she touched him, and he covered her hands with his. “Thank God you came back to me, Foye.”
He took a deep breath, and she tried to work out what would happen now. If she didn’t know, or couldn’t guess, did that mean they’d grown too far apart? “I confess,” he said eventually, “to some relief on that score myself.”
His smile took her breath.
“You do make me laugh, Foye,” she said. She slid her hands to his shoulders and then to his chest, where she left them so she could feel the beating of his heart. He let his hands slide off her until they ended up at her hips. She tilted up her chin to look at him. “I am still in love with you,” she said.
“Are you?”
“Yes.” She nodded, a very determined bob of her head. “I’ve been giving the subject a great deal of thought over the weeks since I left Iskenderun.”
“There is not much to do on board a ship but think a great deal,” he said.
“Quite true.”
He reached up to bracelet her wrists with his fingers. She’d taken off her gloves when she came home, and her gown had short sleeves that left her arms bare from just above her elbows to her hands. Foye swept the last two fingers of each hand down her arms from the bottom of her sleeves to her wrists. “I’ve been dreaming of this moment for months,” he said. “Of holding you in my arms again and hearing you tell me that you love me.”
“I love you, Foye. How many times shall I tell you? A dozen, a hundred? A thousand?”
“We’ll be married again in the Church of England, Sabine.” He slowly breathed in. “Wherever you like. Here or in London. Or in Oxford, if that’s what you’d prefer.”
“Here,” she said without hesitation. “The church in St. Ives is pretty, and I like your reverend. Besides, this is home.”
“St. Ives it is.”
She unfastened the first button of his coat. He kept his fingers around her wrists. “I told you I could not leave Godard,” she said. “But I never got the chance to tell you that by the time we reached Kilis I’d changed my mind about not telling him. I was so very unhappy, and all I wanted was to be with you.”
He touched her cheek, cupping the side of her face in his warm hand. “Please don’t regret staying with Godard. You mustn’t do that.”
Her breath caught, and Foye briefly tightened his fingers on her. But only briefly. “I wanted to, Foye.” Her voice dropped so low he had to strain to hear her. “I wanted to leave him.”
“I understood you could not.”
“So much happened when we went to Kilis.” She unfastened another button of his coat. “I thought I’d given you up forever.” She swallowed hard. “I imagined you’d return to England and marry some other woman. And then…”
“Sabine,” he said, “I do understand.”
“All that happened and I didn’t think it was possible to love you more, but I did. By the time we were in Iskenderun, I loved you more. And more. And more, Foye, and there didn’t seem to be the words to tell you in a proper way.” She looked at him with a frown. “When I arrived in Oxford, there was a hole in my heart. From missing you. All I could think every minute was how much I missed you and wanted you to come back to me. And how happy I would be when you were with me at last.”
She unbuttoned the rest of his coat. When she reached up to push it off his shoulders, he released her to let the garment slide down and off his arms. She lay her head against his chest. “I missed you, Foye. And I wanted to tell you that I love you. More than anything, I wanted to tell you that.” He cupped the back of her head, and she turned her face to his. “I did not say things to Godard that I ought to have. Words that ought to nave been said between us. And then one day he was dead, and I shall never be able to tell him that I loved and admired him.”
“He knew, Sabine.”
“Therefore,” she said resolutely, “I decided I must tell you how I felt before it was too late. That you are the finest man I have never known. Lovely and generous, and, oh, Foye, I wanted to tell you how lucky I would be to spend the rest of my life with you, and I should have. I should have. Only—” She swallowed hard again. “You were dead. And when I thought you were dead a part of me died with you.”
Oh hell, she was crying, she realized. Those were tears blurring her vision. She swiped at her face, and her fingers came away wet.
Foye touched a finger to her cheek. “Don’t cry, my love. Please don’t cry.”
“I thought you were dead, and it killed me. It killed me, Foye. And now you are here. Standing before me, alive, and I won’t go another moment without telling you I love you and that I already know I cannot bear the thought of living without you. Because, you see, I thought I would have to. I have been living without you all these weeks.” She clutched the front of his shirt. “And I was destroyed.”
Foye brushed his thumbs along her lower lip. “If you love me, Sabine, I can honestly tell you that I am the happiest man in the world.”
“Make love to me, Foye.” She curled her fingers against his chest and looked into his eyes. She blinked once and his face came into focus. “Please, make love to me.”
He smiled down at her. “I would be delighted.”
It wasn’t long before Sabine was naked and Foye was in a similar state of undress. He ran a hand down her side, looking her up and down as he touched her. “I’ve never seen you all the same color, Sabine,” he said.
She shifted, arching her body and stretching herself. “What do you think of me, Foye, when I am only Sabine?” She smiled as wickedly as she knew how. “Instead of Pathros?”
“Delicious, madam.” He touched her hair, too, which was still short, but longer than when she’d left Iskenderun, and even curlier now. He gathered a handful and kissed the locks. “You smell of violets instead of roses.”
“Foye,” she whispered, putting her arms around him and pulling his head down to hers. “Now. I want you now.”
“Your every wish is my command,” he whispered. He rolled onto his back and brought her with him, and his hands slid down to the curve of her belly and he rolled them again, on his big, wide bed and kissed her there, where their child lay.
The sight of him made her body melt for him; it brought out every female instinct that said he needed to be inside of her, claiming her this very minute. And she claiming him. She took a deep breath and tried to ramp down the lust roaring through her body.
“Why are you not inside me, Foye, where I long to have you?” She tangled her fingers in his hair and brought his head up to hers. “You are mine, my lord. Mine and mine and mine forever.”
He entered her, and she pressed her head into the mattress, sucking in a deep breath. Her thighs came up around his hips. Her body surrounded him, his warm, hard flesh, and she was wet for him, ready for him.
“Foye,” she whispered, “tell me you love me. Tell me again.”
“I love you, Sabine.” He put his mouth by her ear and stroked forward until he was deep in her. “I love you,” he said slowly.
She could feel herself losing the battle for her control, but she wanted this to last. She wanted to see his face, but everything felt too big and vast and she could barely keep back a shout of frustration. He filled her. She dragged her eyes open and saw that he looked quite fierce. Determined about whatever was going on inside his head. She drew her hands down his back, along either side of his spine. “No, Foye. Not tender. Fierce like you are right now. Fierce, the way I love you. Fiercely, love me fiercely. Like this.” And she brought him forward into her.
She looked directly into his eyes as she rocked her hips toward his, her legs pulled up. He squeezed his eyes closed, and for a while, so did Sabine. She concentrated on anything but the man who was driving her mad with lust, with love. He drew nearly out of her and then pushed back inside. God. She closed her eyes and mastered herself again.
“Foye,” she said, and her voice broke on a sob.
She forced her eyes open, and to her, he was the most beautiful man in the world, naked atop her, in her, touching her, and God help her, she knew a man in passion when she saw one. Without reservation. She pulled his head down to hers and her mouth opened underneath his. They kissed, she kissed him, and he gave back every ounce of the passion there.
He let himself go then, stretching himself over her, driving hard and harder until she couldn’t think. She matched him every bit of the way, and when she heard the hitch in his breath that told her he was about to come, she held nothing back, and it was the most magnificent experience of her life to have Foye there with her, whispering that he loved her.
Her entire body clenched as her orgasm shook her, made her tremble with pleasure that was almost pain until she fell and fell and fell, hard and fast and with her husband. And for this moment, her life was perfect. Exactly as she had dreamed.
Some time afterward, he drew a hand down her bare shoulder as she lay beneath him, wondering where her wits had gone and if she would ever get them back. “Foye.”
“Yes, love?”
“You are heavy,” she said. “A beast of a man, if you must know.”
He pushed up, and he leaned in and kissed her nose before he pulled out of her and rolled onto his back. “I love you, Sabine,” he said.
“And I you, Foye.” She turned onto her side, one hand holding up her head while the other brushed down the mid-line of his torso. “I’ll need to draw you again. All my pictures of you are gone.”
“You may,” he said. “Whenever you like.” He tightened his arm around her. “You were right the day we met, you know.”
“I often am,” she said. “What was I right about?”
“The tea leaves.”
“I said they were nonsense as I recall.”
“But they weren’t.”
She looked at him from beneath her lashes. “Have you gone mad, my lord?”
He was smiling at her, softly, with a gentleness that brought a lump to her throat. “You foretold that I would be lucky in love.”
“You cannot know your future from looking at the dregs in your teacup. I should think you’re sensible enough to know that.”
“My love,” Foye said, “I beg to differ. My fortune was uncannily correct. And you were uncannily accurate in your reading.” He kissed her. “I have been lucky in love. Luckier than I deserve to be.”
“It’s I who am fortunate.” She touched him again, dragging the tip of her finger across his chest. “Are you happy, Foye?”
“I am, Sabine.” His hand drifted to her waist. “Never happier in all my life.” His voice fell. “You? Are you happy?”
“I think it was my fortune I read in your tea leaves, Foye.”
“Is that so?”
“Oh yes. As you know, my readings are never wrong: I am very happy in love.”