Chapter Twenty
Caroline had noticed Colonel Fredericks almost as soon as they’d arrived at the ball, but with the matter of Swayle looming largest in her mind, she didn’t truly consider his possible importance to Javan until she saw him again after the waltz.
Leaving Javan to explain the recent events in the foyer to Lord Tamar, she slipped away to speak to Fredericks, who was then sitting beside Miss Muir and her young sister-in-law. Caroline greeted the ladies, who were friends of Serena’s, and turned to the colonel.
“I don’t suppose you remember me, sir—”
“Of course I do, Mrs. Benedict,” he said at once. “And I’m very glad you’ve led the colonel out of cover.”
“I wonder if I might have a word, sir?”
Fredericks sprang to his feet with unexpected energy. “Of course. Excuse me ladies, must stretch these old legs of mine! Let us take a turn about the room, Mrs. Benedict, while you tell me what I can do for you.”
“I believe,” Caroline began delicately, “that you are most knowledgeable about the war on the Peninsula and privy to information that passes the rest of us by.”
“Certainly I am curious—not to say nosey!—by nature.”
“Do you know of the fort at San Pedro?”
“I know the place you mean.”
“The British took it in the spring of 1812, and then I believe the French took it back in the summer.”
“Fortunes of war,” the colonel said with a shrug.
“How did the French take it?” she asked bluntly.
“Head on, I believe. We evacuated.”
Caroline took a deep breath. “Were the British betrayed? Was that why they were so overwhelmed at San Pedro?”
Fredericks blinked and cast a glance that might have been involuntary, at Javan, who was then walking into the card room with Tamar and a couple of the marquis’s cronies.
“Actually, it was a tactical withdrawal,” he said. “We wanted a large number of French shut up in the fort so that a large contingent of troops could get through to Badajoz. And in fact, San Pedro was back in British hands within a month.”
“Then it was already back in British hands by the time Javan escaped?”
“I believe so,” Fredericks said, looking mystified. “Why do you ask?”
She took a deep breath and lowered her voice. “The French told my husband he’d babbled in his fever—no doubt torture-induced—and betrayed the way in to San Pedro.”
She needed to know, for Javan’s sake. For her own, she did not care what a man said when he had no control of his words. She would love Javan whatever he had said or done and nothing could change that now. But she so wanted to set his mind at rest. To stop the nightmares if she could.
“Spite,” Fredericks said with a shrug. “Probably because he’d told them nothing. The French would always have got into San Pedro, because that was where we wanted them for those few days at least.”
She frowned. “Did Javan not know that?”
“Of course not. His task was not connected to San Pedro when he was taken. His troops achieved their own objective before they were overwhelmed getting back to the main army. Some of them were captured. That I cannot discuss with you at the moment, so I hope it is not relevant to your…inquiry.”
“I don’t believe it is,” she said warmly. “Colonel, might I ask you another favor? Would you speak to my husband? You see, I think he believes his honor is lost. That is why he sold his commission.”
“And spoke to no one but Wellington before he did,” Fredericks said thoughtfully. His gaze refocused on Caroline and he patted her arm, before presenting her with a glass of champagne and sauntering off to the card room.
Five minutes later, Caroline couldn’t help glancing in. Her husband sat some distance from the card tables, his elbows on his knees, his eyes on his crossed hands as Fredericks talked beside him. His scar was livid from the rigid set of his jaw. Then, slowly, Javan raised his gaze to Fredericks’s face. He did not blink.
Fredericks stood and briefly gripped his shoulder before walking away to the tables. Surreptitiously, like a boy ashamed to reveal grief, Javan dashed his sleeve quickly over his face, then sprang to his feet and strode away to the opposite door that led to the foyer rather than the ballroom.
Caroline smiled rather shakily, praying she’d done the right thing. But when she walked into the foyer, it was in time to see Javan’s unmistakable figure leaving the building. Without thought, she hastened to the cloakroom to change into her outdoor shoes and retrieve her new evening cloak. They’d come home via Carlisle, and Javan had insisted on making a few purchases, including the ball gown and pearls and the engraved gold ring that she wore tonight.
Despite her hurry, he’d vanished from the street by the time she got there.
“May I send for your carriage, ma’am?” asked the doorman—the genuine doorman, this time.
“No, I thank you…my husband is waiting for me. Goodnight.”
She thought she knew where he’d gone, and it wasn’t far. She turned right up the road toward the harbor.
He leaned against the harbor wall, gazing out to sea over the bobbing fishing boats and the small pleasure yacht which had tied up since Caroline had been there last. She went and stood beside him.
For a moment he didn’t say anything, but he knew she was there, for his fingers found hers and threaded through them.
“I was coming back,” he assured her.
“I know. But I thought it was time to go home. Rosa may not sleep until you’re back.”
“I think she will. I think what she wrote eased her in some way. And she understands Swayle cannot hurt me or anyone else she loves.”
“He could spill venom at his trial,” Caroline warned.
“That will hurt him, not me or Rosa. I’ve protected her from the wrong things.”
“No, you’ve just protected her.”
He looked at her at last. “As you’re now protecting me? You set Fredericks on me, didn’t you?”
“I asked him about San Pedro. He seemed shocked that you believed what you did.”
He shrugged. “I didn’t believe it precisely. I was just afraid it was true and even more afraid to enquire in case I found out it was.” His lip curled. “I never thought of myself as a coward before.”
“It’s not cowardice, it’s confusion. You had too much tragedy in your life at one time to think clearly about everything. Your capture, torture, escape, leaving the army, returning home to…what you did.”
“Perhaps,” he allowed. His thumb stroked her hand. “You light my way, Caroline Grey.”
“As you light mine.”
“Do I?” he whispered, caressing her cheek.
“I, too, have been lost, in my own way.”
He kissed her lips, a soft brief kiss that sparked deep inside her. “Then let us go home and find each other.”
*
As Javan handed her out of the carriage in front of Haven Hall, a hulking figure loomed out the shadows.
“Oy!” Williams called indignantly. “What do you think you’re doing here?”
“Miller?” Javan said incredulously, pausing in his act of thrusting Caroline behind himself for protection. “Aren’t you supposed to be with Bolton?”
“He let me go,” Miller said cheerfully as Javan shone the lantern on him. Then he sighed. “Well, sort of. I nipped off while he was more interested in the gentry cove—Swayle. I don’t think he’ll mind, especially if you was to take me on.”
“Take you on?” Javan repeated incredulously.
“I can look to your horses, drive ‘em, be your bodyguard, whatever you want.”
“You want to work for us?” Caroline said carefully.
“No one ever saved my life before. Never thought enough of me, I suppose. I never gave ‘em cause to. Give you my word, sir, I’d never do no wrong to you or yours again—whether you take me on or not. But I’d like to pay it back. For shooting your missus. Because I’ll be honest, I never wanted to shoot her, but I did it anyway, for money. Never meant to kill her either, but if it had happened—and it easily could have—I wouldn’t have lost any sleep over it.”
“And all this has changed because I stopped Swayle sticking you?” Javan asked dubiously.
“Na, it was changing before. Being with your family and Williams there made me think, made me see things…different. I was going to run off and be a soldier like him, and you, do some good with my shooting. Then I thought I’d rather work for you.”
Javan and Caroline both looked at Williams who stood by the horses’ heads.
Williams shrugged. “I could use help in the stables. And in the house, but that’s a discussion for another day. You and me, sir, we’ve knocked worse men than Miller into shape before now.”
“Trial for a month,” Javan said, walking away to the front steps and drawing Caroline with him. “You obey Williams implicitly and show respect to the other servants or you’re out.”
“Understood, sir,” said Miller blissfully.
*
Rosa slept peacefully in her bed. Caroline and Javan stood for a few moments looking down at her. Javan touched her hair for an instant, and then they tiptoed from Rosa’s chamber to Caroline’s and quietly closed the door.
Javan gazed around it. “I drove myself mad thinking of you in here, wondering what you were doing, if you were sleeping. If you were thinking of me.”
“I usually was,” she confessed. “I listened to your footsteps every night, as you left Rosa, and imagined them coming to my door.”
His lips quirked. “What would you have done? Would you have invited me in? Or cowered in the corner and left first thing in the morning?”
Embarrassed suddenly, she made light of it. “Oh, I wouldn’t have left. I had nowhere to go!”
“That’s why I never came,” he said ruefully. “I never found my position of authority, of power, so damnable. And yet, feeling helpless is worse. I couldn’t have borne to be allowed into your bed from fear of destitution or worse.”
“I don’t think that would ever have been the case,” she admitted. “You always…affected me.”
He lifted one hand and cupped her cheek. “Do I affect you now?”
For answer, she leaned her cheek into his palm, then took his hand and placed it over her galloping heart. His breath hitched. He stood very still, gazing down at her, By the dim glow of the single candle, his face was dark and shadowed and unutterably thrilling. She craved his embrace, his kiss, so intensely it felt like pain.
But when she released his hand to reach up and hold him, he turned away from her. It felt like a blow. Under her bemused, desperate gaze, he picked up her old hairbrush and sponge from the washing stand and dropped them into her carpet bag that lay open on the bed. Then he went to the dresser and wardrobe, pulling out the few meagre garments he found there–a thin under gown, a pair of darned stockings, and Serena’s altered peach evening dress. They too went in the bag before he walked to the desk and swept up her pens and letters and laid them on top. He reached over and lifted the book from her bedside table, adding it before he picked up the bag.
“You have so little,” he said, “and yet, you give so much. What did I pay you?”
“I’m not sure we ever discussed that. A pair of boots, certainly.”
She heard his breath of laughter as he lifted the flickering candle. “Come.”
Her throat constricted as she followed him out into the passage. He turned left, in the direction she’d never been, toward his bedchamber. She swallowed convulsively. He was moving her to his own chamber. Because he was making the point that she was no longer merely the governess? To whom? To her or to the servants?
Or was this, at last, her wedding night?
A lamp and several candles bathed his bedchamber in a warm, friendly glow. The fire in the grate added to the atmosphere of welcome. Old but still heavy velvet curtains hung over the windows in two walls, for his was the corner room. Faded carpets broke up the polished wood floor. There was a grand wardrobe and chest of drawers, an escritoire under one window, and bookcases around most of the available wall space. An open door led to a small dressing room with a truckle bed and wash stand.
Her gaze came back to the main room, finally settling on the large, curtained bed that dominated the chamber.
“Could you be comfortable here?” he asked softly. “We can redecorate it to suit you, of course, change—”
“It’s perfect,” she interrupted. “At this point, there is nothing I would change.”
He dropped her bag on the floor, pushing it aside with his foot as he blew out the candle in his hand, and set it down on top of the nearest bookcase. “I have a question.”
“I hope I have the answer.”
He glanced at her over his shoulder, half of his face in shadow. His lips parted to speak, then closed again. His brow furrowed. And then he said abruptly, “Shall I sleep in there?” His head jerked toward the dressing room and the truckle bed.
Her instant reaction was pain that he did not wish to be with her. Only then she registered his erratic breathing, the difficulty with which he asked. He was considering her injury, her tiredness, her inevitable virginal fears. He was sparing her.
“I do not wish to be spared,” she whispered, all but running to him. “Javan, I love you.”
He caught her in one arm, still being careful of her wound, and cupped the back of her head. “Then, my sweet,” he said hoarsely. “May I take you to bed?”
She raised her face to his, searching for his lips, which came down on hers so suddenly that she gasped. His hands in her hair, drew out the pins until it tumbled loose about her shoulders, and he drew back to look.
He smiled. “That is how I long for you.”
Slowly, deliberately, he unfastened her ball gown and let it slip to the floor around her feet. Under gown and stays quickly followed, until she stood before him in nothing but her chemise. Taking her hand, he led her to the bed, and sat, drawing her down beside him while he kicked off his shoes and unbuttoned the skin-tight legs of his pantaloons.
Daringly, she slid one hand up under his shirt, caressing the warm, velvet skin of his back, finding other ridges, other scars that were part of his past and the man he had become. As he straightened, she drew the shirt up and over his head, and he gently pushed her back until she lay flat on the bed with him looming over her.
He lowered his head, kissing her until she was lost in his mouth and her own fire. Only then did he drag the chemise up her body and over her head. His already erratic breath caught. His Adam’s apple jerked as he swallowed.
In sudden shyness, she moved her arms inward, to cover herself, but he caught them, pressing them into the mattress above her head while his gaze devoured her. And somehow, she was no longer embarrassed but triumphant, powerful, and even more desperate for what was to come. He shifted, lowering his head once more to kiss her breasts, and she thought she would die of this new bliss.
Her eyes closed and she held him to her in wonder. He shifted, letting her feel his full, glorious weight for an instant. His pantaloons and undergarments were gone, for it was hot skin which caressed hers, the hard length of his erection stroking between her thighs.
“This will be a first for both of us,” he said shakily. “For I have never done this before with so much love. With true love.”
She touched his scarred cheek, kissing his lips with longing. His fingers roamed over her body, stroking and caressing in her most intimate places until her shock turned to wonder and pleasure.
“Tell me to slow down, or tell me to stop,” he got out. “I will. It may kill me, but I will…”
The fierce, male passion in his face should have frightened her, and perhaps it did, somewhere, but it seemed she trusted him more, for even the short pain, the strange stretching of her body was part of the wonder and somehow added to her blind desire. For the caresses of his hands and mouth, the movements of his body were all miraculously, deliciously tender. He was so gentle compared with the wild ferocity of his eyes, that she got lost in curious new delight. She held on to him, following him, until her body seemed to act on its own, undulating with him. She kissed him, bit his shoulder in this shock of need until waves of bliss began to grow out of it and consume her, building and flooding within her until there was only joy.
And in the midst of that, the sound of Javan’s ecstatic release powered through her and made her weep with love.
At some point after he collapsed upon her and they lay in a tangle of tingling limbs and soft, linen sheets, his lips found the wetness on her cheeks.
“Oh, my darling,” he whispered, stricken, “what have I done?”
She clung to him. “Made me the happiest woman who ever lived. I never dreamed you would be so gentle… Will it always be like this?”
His relief turned quickly into something much more sensual and predatory. “Never exactly like this. I have much to show you, and much I hope you will show me.”
“Oh my,” she said weakly.
He moved, laying his head on her breasts. She stroked his hair languidly, lost in sheer feeling.
“Javan?”
“Mmm.” He nuzzled her softly.
“Do you know,” she said, a trifle breathless all over again, “I think we have made this a happy house.”
“I hope so.”
“I think we can make it happier yet,” she said confidently.
And they did.
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