His Betrothed by Gayle Callen (21)

Roselyn wanted to lie still, to enjoy the sensation of him deep inside her, the absence of pain. She wanted to shiver at the deliciousness of his lips just touching hers, the teasing, gentle way he smiled at her. This was how it should be between a man and woman—and she never wanted to go back to spending her nights alone.

This intimacy changed everything—surely he wouldn’t leave her, surely he wouldn’t mind that she’d withheld the pouch. He must have plausible answers for everything.

Spencer lifted himself off her body, and the shock of the cold rain on her heated flesh made her gasp. He pulled her to her feet, then suddenly lifted her up, his arms beneath her knees and back.

She flung her arms around his neck. “What are you doing? You can’t carry me inside!”

“I most certainly—” He broke off, and she giggled at the puzzled look on his face. He was standing on one leg, and he swayed precariously until he leaned back against the wall.

Roselyn clung to him tighter. “Don’t drop me! Maybe I should carry you.”

“We’d better do something, because this rock wall is biting into my ass.”

She buried her face against his neck and laughed until her chest ached with the unfamiliarity of such abandon. He lowered her legs until just her toes touched the earth, and her body was pressed to the length of his. She could feel every inch of his skin, as hot as hers, rough with hair that teased her sensitive nipples.

She looked up into his shadowed face, her smile dying as he held her still with a gaze so hot she felt seared with passion.

“Our clothing—” she began.

“Leave it.”

His husky voice sent a shiver across her skin, and they quickly walked toward the cottage. She barely felt the stones pricking her bare feet, or the watery puddles in the grass.

Inside the tiny cottage, there was only a glow from the embers of the dying fire. As Spencer knelt before the hearth to add wood, she ignored the doubts that tried to assail her. Wild Roselyn still held sway over her body, and she wanted to immerse herself in all the pleasure Spencer could teach her.

When the fire began to crackle with warmth, he turned to look up at her.

“Rose, you’re cold,” he whispered, leaning over his pallet for a blanket.

He pulled her down into his lap and wrapped her securely in the blanket and his arms. She rested her head against his chest and looked into the fire, trying to memorize everything about him and this evening.

She closed her eyes as he began to rub her back gently with the blanket, then squeezed the water from her heavy hair.

“I need to apologize,” he whispered close to her ear. “I finished rather…abruptly out there in the courtyard.”

“Abruptly?”

“I could have made things so much better for you.”

“I don’t see how,” she said, tilting her head to look up at him.

To her surprise, Spencer’s face looked red. “I haven’t lost control like that since my youth.”

“Lost control?”

He groaned and cupped her cheek. “How to explain such things to an innocent?”

“But I’m not—”

“In many ways you are. I rushed too fast, and didn’t give you the same pleasure you gave to me. My only defense is that I have not been with a woman since last year—”

He broke off, and Roselyn saw the sudden shuttering of his face, as if he were a stranger again. The icy fingers of guilt and doubt crept closer.

“Last year?” she whispered, feeling herself stiffen. If the stories were true, he should have been in London with his many mistresses not six months ago.

“I meant to say last month,” he said quickly, and his voice sounded forced.

But he hadn’t meant that at all. Last year?

“I’ve just been so busy with the war and my estates. It befuddles the mind, you know.”

He sounded so perfectly normal that it made her skin crawl.

“You’ve been too busy for your many mistresses?” she asked faintly, wishing she knew the truth from the lies. Her throat seemed too tight to swallow as she scrambled to her feet and wrapped the blanket tightly around her.

“This last month has been—”

She shot him a heated glance and he stopped talking.

Using the stones of the fireplace for leverage, Spencer got to his feet and stood there naked before her. She wished he’d cover himself, so she wouldn’t have to see his magnificent body or remember how he’d made her feel special.

But she wasn’t special—he treated her as he treated every other woman. He lied.

“I cannot discuss this now,” she suddenly said, and to her horror, tears spilled from her eyes. She felt cold and wet and too devastated by what he’d made her feel out there in the rain.

“Rose—”

“No!” She didn’t want to face the reality that she’d given her body to a man she couldn’t trust. At least with Philip, she’d thought she could trust him. “We can talk in the morning. I’m tired.”

She brushed past him and climbed into the loft. He said nothing to stop her, which only made her weep harder as she collapsed onto her pallet.

Stunned, Spencer stood before the fire and listened to Roselyn’s sobs. After a year and a half of watching every word that left his mouth, he couldn’t believe that an hour of intimacy with her had him making the most basic of mistakes.

He’d thought he could keep his secrets from harming her—but instead she’d been attacked by a Spaniard following him, and he himself had seduced her while withholding all the important truths.

He pulled on a dry pair of breeches, then sat before the fire, awash in guilt and despair. How could he have allowed himself to forget—even for these most incredible moments with Roselyn—that he was a hunted man?

Somehow they’d begun to care for each other, something he never could have predicted. And then he’d allowed lust to rule him, the biggest mistake of all. He’d given bedding her more thought than he had to the dead Spaniard washed ashore, or the rumors of strangers asking questions.

He had to leave her—right now—before she was ensnared any further in his deceptions. And how would she feel to see his head mounted on a pike? She’d think him worse than a seducer—a betrayer.

He allowed fragile hope to fill him: Rodney Shaw might not have left the armada alive. But such thoughts were foolish. Strangers were asking questions on the island, a Spaniard had been sent for him—and his own Spanish heritage practically ensured that no one would believe the truth without proof. And perhaps Shaw had already created his own proof.

He had to go back to London and finish what he’d begun, before anyone else was hurt.

For just one moment he considered telling Roselyn the truth, but he knew that would only be selfish. It was better for her to hate him for his sins than to agonize over his fate.

He silently dressed, trying not to feel the overwhelming ache in his chest, which was surely because of her tears. In an old trunk he found Philip’s cloak, and after looking at the meager food stored in her cupboards, knew he could take nothing else from her. He would go to Francis Heywood for supplies and a horse.

For another hour Spencer waited, staring into the fire as if the flames could sear his guilt away. When he was certain Roselyn was asleep, he pulled the cloak about him and strode to the door.

He stopped with his hand on the latch, then grimly limped back to the ladder. Setting his cane aside, he pulled himself up a few rope steps, until he could see her tearstained face pillowed on her bare arm. He stared at her for a moment, feasting one last time on the sweet sight of her.

“Be safe,” he whispered.

He descended the stairs, wrote her a note on a torn scrap of parchment, then left the cottage.

 

Roselyn awoke slowly, with dreams of Spencer’s gentle hands caressing her clinging to her consciousness. She lay between the dream world and reality, puzzled by her reluctance to fully awaken—

And then she remembered. She had allowed him to make love to her—no, she’d begged him. She was repeating her worst mistakes all over again, with the impulsiveness she thought she’d put behind her.

And to make matters worse, she’d caught him in another lie. How could she have been so foolish?

She lay still, fighting tears, trying to find the courage to descend the ladder. What would she say to him? Could he think she would now willingly satisfy his needs whenever the urge overtook him?

And by the saints, how would she stop herself from doing just that? Even now the memories of his hands on her body were full of such exquisite pleasure that they made her shudder. He’d said there was even more—how could she resist that discovery?

But she would have to.

She lay still, biting her lip, dreading their first encounter—until she noticed the stillness that hovered in her cottage. Wouldn’t he be up by now, practicing his walking, readying himself to leave—

A shock of pain made her stiffen. She told herself that he would be at the barn or at the manor, but even as she scrambled down the ladder wearing only a blanket, she knew what she would find.

There was a piece of parchment on the table that had not been there before. With shaking fingers, she lifted it.

Roselyn slumped onto the bench as the parchment fluttered to the floor.

Thank you for everything?

She wanted to laugh, but she felt frozen, distant. She had given Spencer Thornton solace in every way she could—and then given the last precious thing she owned, her body.

He’d waited until he had that conquest before leaving—had it been his final revenge?

Her eyes were painfully dry, and her chest ached too much to sob.

Had he gotten everything from her that marriage would have given him, all so he could claim her an adulterer in the end?

She suddenly felt so cold. She hugged the blanket about her bare arms and realized with dawning horror that she could already be carrying his child.

In anguish, she dropped her head back and squeezed her eyes shut. If she was with child, what could she tell the Heywoods, especially John?

She tried to let the numbness take over, to soothe her wounded spirit and pride. But her hands shook as she poured hot water into a basin, and washed the smell of Spencer from her body. She scrubbed the stickiness between her thighs with particular virulence.

Then she dressed and walked outside, where the late summer sun shone as if belying the rainstorm that had swept her away the previous night. She picked up their wet garments and hung hers over the wall to dry—and hid his on a rack in the bake house.

Returning to the cottage, she told herself she had to eat to keep up her strength, but the stale bread and hard cheese made her nauseated.

A knock rattled her door, and Roselyn squashed the flare of hope that immediately flickered in her chest—Spencer was gone, and he wouldn’t be coming back.

She opened the door to find Francis, his eyes grave. With a polite smile, she invited him inside.

“Would you care to share my meal, Francis?” she asked, sitting at the table.

“Lady Roselyn,” he began in a hesitant voice.

She realized that he already knew Spencer was gone. But did he know everything? Did he know what kind of a woman she was, what she’d done—

“Lord Thornton came to me in the middle of the night,” Francis continued.

She nodded slowly, not looking at him. “I discovered him gone when I awoke.”

“Did he not even say good-bye?”

In too intimate a way. “Oh, his note was very polite. I have it here somewhere—ah, it fell on the floor.” She picked it up and handed it to him.

Francis read it silently, then raised his eyes to her. “He said nothing more than this?”

She shook her head. “Are you certain you wouldn’t like some bread? I baked it yesterday—”

“My lady,” he interrupted, “I gave Lord Thornton supplies and a horse for the journey. He asked me to have you live at the manor for protection. Why would he say that?”

Roselyn shrugged, though even now she could remember the Spaniard’s filthy hand covering her mouth. “Thornton is gone, and I can see that I was right not to marry him.”

She couldn’t bear the sympathy in the old man’s eyes.

“My lady,” he said softly, “will you tell me everything?”

She thought of the pouch that incriminated Spencer, of the dead body—of her own glad surrender.

“There’s nothing to tell,” she said, feeling only weariness as she tried to smile. Suddenly the thought of daily facing all the cottage’s memories seemed too much for her.

“Very well, I’ll come back with you to Wakesfield. I know you’ll only worry if I don’t.”

Francis waited as she gathered a few belongings and then shut the door firmly behind her.

 

Later that afternoon, Roselyn worked alone in Wakesfield’s kitchen, preparing mutton for dinner while Margaret and Charlotte worked in the garden. She kept her mind blank but for thoughts of the baking she had yet to do for her customers.

She heard the echo of a loud knock from the front hall, and wiped her hands on a towel as she moved through the dining chamber. When she opened the front door, she almost took a step back in surprise. A man stood there, dressed in a fashionable embroidered doublet, with padded trunk hose bulging at his hips. In one hand he held a riding whip, and nearby was a well-lathered horse, its head hanging.

She had never seen him before, and suddenly remembered the murmurs in the village about a stranger.

“Is your master at home?” he asked shortly.

She gave him a polite smile. “The viscount is not in residence, sir. Would you care to speak with his bailiff, Francis Heywood?”

He didn’t return her smile as he brushed past her and stepped inside. “See to it.”

She found Francis in his office, then bobbed a curtsy to the two men before leaving the front hall. But in the dining chamber, she put her back against the wall and remained to listen.

“How may I help you, my lord?” Francis asked.

“I understand a dead Spaniard was found in the village.”

Roselyn winced and closed her eyes. The man didn’t even introduce himself first, just got right to the point. Something was terribly wrong.

“Surely the soldiers at the garrison would be of better help to you than I, Sir…” Francis trailed off.

“I’m asking everyone, Heywood. How do you know the body was that of a Spaniard?”

“By the weave of his garments, my lord. He wore the clothing of a Spanish seamen. Other than that, there wasn’t much left to identity.”

“There was only one Spaniard?” The man’s voice was impatient now.

“Only one body was found.”

“That you know of.”

His low voice made Roselyn shiver, and she held her breath.

“Is there something you wish to say, my lord?” Francis asked slowly.

“There have been reports that a Spaniard might have lived.”

“Surely that would be difficult to hide.”

“Perhaps. But a good spy could blend in.”

She tilted her head back against the wall and squeezed her eyes closed. Could this be confirmation that Spencer was the traitor? Had he been in hiding because he knew they were after him?

She thought again of the Spaniard who had died before he could talk.

“I will continue the search,” the stranger said. “What is the name of the next village to the south?”

“Bonchurch, my lord.”

Something wasn’t right, Roselyn argued to herself as Francis ushered the gentleman from the manor. Why send a nobleman after a spy?

Listening to Francis’s footsteps disappear down the hall, she remained still, biting her lip, unsure of what to do.

If Spencer was a spy, he had already left to commit whatever treason he’d planned.

But if he was innocent, he was being followed by an enemy.

 

Sir Rodney Shaw mounted his horse and glanced once more at Wakesfield Manor, muttering a curse. What should he do now? Whatever trail there’d once been of Thornton was long gone.

At first he’d thought Thornton might have died after falling overboard, considering his injuries, so he’d ordered Rodriguez to swim to land and make sure he was dead.

Rodriguez was supposed to send word back through fishermen, but there’d been no reply. So when the Spanish fleet was scattered and fleeing up the French coast, Shaw had left the doomed expedition, found passage back across the channel, and come to Wight himself.

The incompetent Spanish would not be invading English soil, and Shaw had to make sure no one knew he’d been negotiating with both sides.

Had Rodriguez died that first night in the ocean? Then why had the body only been so recently found, considering the battle had been well over a fortnight ago? Had Thornton also made it to shore, then killed Rodriguez?

With another curse, Shaw kicked his horse into a gallop. He had to be certain of what had happened to Thornton. He would travel on to Bonchurch and ask his questions there.

Though he would prefer to kill Thornton himself, Shaw could only afford to wait so long. If it came down to a race to London, he wanted to be the first one there, to persuade the queen that Thornton had let his Spanish blood rule him—and that Thornton deserved to die a traitor’s death.