CHAPTER SIX
October, 1790
Dearest Ann,
What a difference a few short months has made. I hardly know where to begin but shall do so with the date of my return.
This letter departs two weeks before I do. I hope this brings a smile to your face. It does to mine. I cannot wait to see if the memory I have of your smile and your face does justice to the reality. I have missed you more than I can express in mere words. I hope you will allow me to show you.
In case you have forgotten what I look like, I include a miniature that Selina, or should I say Lady Penventen, insisted she paint of me. James and she married in September, although how all that came about is a tale best told face to face. I told you she was sweet on him.
You’ll meet her when the happy couple return from their honeymoon sometime in the New Year. So now that I have allayed your fears about my having a new lady friend, might I also hope your Mr. Neville has done something equally worthy, like drowned himself in the Ohio?
Lastly, on my return I will also be bringing new friends—William Rosewall, his wife Sarah, and their five children. You can let Andrew know he will have two more boys his own age to play with. The Rosewalls will be settling in Pittsburgh with a new coal ship. We’ll be able to supply and transport instead of paying others to do it.
This will be the last letter from abroad. I’ll write you once I’m in the United States again. I can only hope these next few months go by swiftly.
Yours always,
Toby
Cornwall, October 1790
* * *
Twenty Months Earlier
February 14, 1789
The fireplace crackled merrily in the hearth, its crisp sound competing with the relentlessly howling wind outside.
“The storm hasn’t eased any,” Ann observed, closing the curtains. She turned back to the room. Toby sat on the settee, his legs outstretched toward the orange glow of the fire—the main source of light in this cozy parlor.
She was nervous, but knowing why didn’t seem to help matters any. She was alone in a room with a man she was becoming increasingly attracted to. And then there were the dreams about him, where once only Robert filled her thoughts.
The rest of the household had gone to bed long ago. Ann insisted Toby wait until the storm abated before he left.
“May I offer you a drink? Another brandy?” she asked, not because she thought he would like one but because she wasn’t sure what else to say.
Toby shook his head. “Come sit by the fire a bit,” he offered.
He watched as she approached. She must have appeared to approach him like a stranger.
Toby Jackson her friend, she knew. Toby Jackson her business partner was someone she trusted. But this man? Toby Jackson a beau, a potential lover—he was unknown.
She sat, allowing enough space between them for propriety, and waited for him to approach.
He didn’t. Instead those mesmerizing eyes regarded her tenderly. She watched his gaze drop to her lips.
“I’d very much like to kiss you,” he said, his voice husky. “May I?”
Ann’s voice abandoned her, so she simply nodded. Nervous anticipation coursed through her. She desperately missed being kissed and touched and held. As Toby crossed the few inches that separated them, a tingling ran along her arms and legs, across her breasts and stomach.
She breathed in the light scent of brandy mingled with cedar and sandalwood as he approached. Her hands shook; she pressed them to her lap just as the first tender press of Toby’s lips reached hers.
Her eyes closed as the kiss continued, her mouth opening to his, tentatively at first but with greater confidence as new and unfamiliar sensations combined with familiar experience.
Ann’s hands left her lap and reached out to trace the line of his arm where it reached along the back of the sofa. The contours of muscles, hard and masculine under linen, felt wonderful.
His free hand caressed her shoulder, and Ann sighed at the pleasure of it as strong but tender fingers brushed against her skin and rounded to the back of her head, where tendrils of hair from her loose chignon tickled her neck.
They broke apart from the kiss, both breathing heavily. Toby recovered first, planting soft, featherlight kisses on her cheeks, brow, and forehead before touching them to her ear. “Ann.”
The sound of her raised lines of gooseflesh, puckering her nipples and causing arousal to pool warmly. She pulled him closer and he obliged, wrapping her in his arms, the length of his thigh pressed against hers, the solid warmth of his chest waiting for her to explore.
And she did, touching his arms, shoulders, chest, and head as he placed open-mouthed kisses along her neck, encouraged by murmured words that stopped as he claimed her lips once more, boldly, thoroughly, completely, until she ran out of air.
They parted, but Toby’s forehead touched hers as the panting slowed and air fully filled her lungs.
“I should go,” he whispered.
“The storm hasn’t cleared.”
He chuckled and pulled away from her, straightening his clothing as he did so. “There was nearly a storm right here. And I think a bracing walk is about the best medicine a man can take about now.”
Ann closed her eyes as disappointment filled her, darker than the night outside, but he was right. He should leave. Leave here, leave her, leave well enough alone.
“Ann?”
When she finally opened her eyes, she was fully composed, that is until she looked into Toby’s face once again and saw the measure of his desire for her.
“I’m falling in love with you, Ann Sellars. I think it’s only fair I tell you that now.”
Ann swallowed at the words, wondering if she was expected to reply to his declaration. She was about to say something when a finger pressed itself to her lips.
“No. Don’t say anything, not now—especially something we’ll both regret.”
His eyes could hide nothing from her, and they spoke now of deep longing. Ann nodded, and Toby’s hand cupped her chin. A thumb caressed her cheek. She watched him stand and pull his oilskin coat from the cloak cupboard.
She opened the door for him. Thunder grumbled a complaint in the night sky and a bloom of cold air filled the parlor with the scent of rain.
“Good night.”
“Good night,” she whispered in return.
Toby hesitated as though he wanted to say more and then smiled. He tipped his hat to her as he stepped out onto the porch, then turned up his collar against the wind and the rain and walked down the lane, whistling a tune that was familiar to her.
She closed the door behind her, bolted it shut for the night, and thought of the words of the True Lover’s Farewell:
O fare you well, I must be gone
And leave you for a while:
But wherever I go, I will return,
If I go ten thousand miles, my dear,
If I go ten thousand miles.
Ten thousand miles it is so far
To leave me here alone,
Whilst I may lie, lament and cry,
And you will not hear my moan, my dear,
And you will not hear my moan.