She swayed and clutched his shoulders. “Now. Now it’s time for the bed!”
Agreeing, he wordlessly lifted her in his arms and laid her on the mattress, then stretched out beside her. Though he intended to take his time, she pulled him to her with harsh urgency. “I want you so much, Daniel,” she whispered as she grasped him with ultimate intimacy and urged him between her legs.
“Soon, my lady. Soon.” He wanted something more than swift, mindless coupling this time, so he took exquisite moments to explore the moist, heated secrets of her hidden places. She moaned softly, her fingers curling into his back, taking him higher and higher.
When he could bear it no longer, he sank into her with a long, ragged exhalation. He’d thought nothing could match the mad rapture on the coach ride earlier, but he’d been wrong. Joining now was all that and more as they lay skin-to-skin, finding a rhythm together with accelerating need.
He wanted to make this mating last forever, or at least longer, but that goal splintered under the hammer of urgency. “Daniel,” she said hoarsely. “Daniel!”
Her nails bit into him as she raged to culmination, taking him with her. He closed his eyes and surrendered to rapture. When he’d first seen Jessie, he’d thought reality could never match his mad yearning.
He’d been wrong.
As they lay exhausted in each other’s arms, Jessie gave a small, silent thanks to the servants who’d built the fires that warmed these rooms. Even so simple an effort as pulling up a blanket seemed too great. The combination of wine, food, warmth, and incredible sensual satisfaction had left her drifting in hazy contentment.
Daniel stirred a little to pull her closer, his hand stroking tenderly down her back. “That was worth waiting for.”
She breathed laughter on his shoulder. “Indeed.” She felt very, very close to her new husband, and that was even more valuable than the incredible pleasure of their coupling. Even more than passion, emotional closeness could bind two very different people together into a real marriage.
“You’re not like any vicar I’ve ever known,” she mused as she admired his strong, regular profile. “I probably should have asked this earlier, but what part does your faith play in your life? Do you have any ambitions to someday work full-time for the Church, perhaps take on a parish? I don’t think I’d make a good vicar’s wife.”
“That’s not for me,” he said. “Faith is a strange thing. I was born with it, like having blue eyes and fair hair. I’ve not always been on good terms with God, but I’ve never stopped believing. What I didn’t inherit was a need to make others believe exactly as I do.”
She smiled crookedly. “Which is why you’re so very different from my father. He required absolute adherence to his beliefs from everyone around him.”
“That’s an excellent way to drive people from the Church,” Daniel said dryly. “My faith would have stayed a quiet, private part of me, but since my parents were horrified with the idea of my becoming a surgeon, studying for the Church was a good compromise. Either way, I’d be helping people.”
“In very different ways,” she observed.
“True, but there are similarities.” His hand came to rest warmly on her breast. “Both medicine and ministering require the ability to listen. To hear both what is said and what isn’t said. When I chose to study medicine full-time, I was near enough being ordained that it seemed worth going all the way. Several times a year, I’ll travel to some remote area that lacks doctors to perform surgery and provide other treatments. Sometimes it proves useful to be able to marry people.”
She hadn’t known of his medical journeys, but they didn’t surprise her. He was, after all, a saint. She suspected that he would marry couples who might be rejected by people like her father, and that was a valuable service since a marriage wasn’t legal unless performed by a cleric of the Church of England. The only exceptions to that were Quakers and Jews, who were allowed to marry with their own rites. “Is the listening different for doctors and pastors?”
“As a doctor, I must listen to discover what the real problem is, which isn’t always obvious. As a minister, often I just let people talk until they work out for themselves what they must do. They usually know, but they have to say the words out loud to accept them.” He shrugged. “If they need specific help, like food or work, I do what I can.”
His ability to listen was one of the most restful things about him, she realized. “You’ve listened to me very well, and for that I’m deeply grateful.”
“Listening to you is a pleasure, not a duty.” Daniel pushed himself up on one hand to study her. She would have felt shy, except for the warm admiration in his eyes.
“What a marvelous creation is a woman,” he mused. He stroked down her body from ear to knee, not with lust but deep appreciation. “I just remembered that your mother said you had a heart-shaped birthmark on a place where it would not be seen, except perhaps by a husband. Probably that would mean on your back.”
Before she could object, he deftly rolled her over so that she was lying on her stomach. “You have a lovely back. Such subtle, elegant curves. Now where’s that birthmark? Ah, this might be it.” He touched a finger to the upper part of her right buttock.
Intrigued, she said, “No wonder I’ve never seen it. Is it really shaped like a heart?”
“More like a set of lungs,” he remarked. “Or possibly a pair of kidneys.”
She laughed. “So unromantic, Doctor!”
“I haven’t a poet’s imagination, but I do feel quite romantic.” He bent and pressed his warm lips to the birthmark.
She smiled, feeling deliciously relaxed, but ready to be reawakened for a sufficiently good reason. Then Daniel inhaled sharply.
Her lazy contentment knotted into fear. She’d been so enchanted by passion that she’d forgotten how much she had to conceal. She was such a fool!
“I recognize this scar,” he said slowly, tracing a finger from her left shoulder blade down to her ribs. A jog to one side, then down to her waist. “From my Bristol infirmary. No wonder I thought you seemed familiar. But I didn’t recognize your face because it was so badly bruised your own mother wouldn’t have recognized you. You said your name was Jane. Why, Jessie?”
With a horror that threatened to stop her heart, she realized that the secret she’d desperately wanted to conceal had been exposed.
It would be better if she were dead.
Chapter 24
Daniel was still frowning with surprise when Jessie made a low, anguished sound and rolled away from him. She was off the bed and bolting toward the door before he collected his wits and went after her. He caught her from behind and pulled her close, wrapping his arms around her and wondering how his happy, self-confident bride could break down so quickly.
“It’s all right, Jessie,” he said in his most soothing voice. “You’re safe now.”
She stilled, but her breathing was harsh and she was shaking in his arms, her body chilled. Shock.
A knee robe was folded on the sofa, so he pulled it over and wrapped it around Jessie. Passive as a doll, she let him lead her to the bed. He laid her on the mattress and pulled the covers over her, then tossed more coal on the fire before he joined her.
Jessie rolled away and knotted herself up in a ball, so he enfolded her in his arms, her back against his front. Even with the robe, the blankets, and his body heat, she was shivering and her skin was clammy. “What happened to you was a crime, but not your fault,” he said firmly. “You were the victim. There is nothing to be ashamed of.”
When she didn’t respond, he thought back to her infirmary visit. It had been seven or so years, and he’d seen many patients before and since. But even after all this time, he remembered the masses of bruises that rendered her unrecognizable, and his appalled shock when he discovered the long, bloody slash down her back. She was lucky to be alive.
What else did he remember? After a moment of thought, he said, “It was your husband who beat you, wasn’t it? Tha
t’s what you said.” A memory of her dragging off her wedding ring and throwing it across the room seared his mind.
“Yes,” she said in a barely audible whisper. “My first husband.”
Glad to get some response, he said conversationally, “I suppose you became Jane because you started to say Jessie, then didn’t want to reveal your real name. Jane is safely anonymous while Jessie is memorable.”
“Jezebel.” Her voice broke. “My name is Jezebel. My father said it suited me.”
“Your friends all know you as Jessie, which suits you much better.” He was fully alert, trying to read her reactions, not easy when she was still turned away and knotted with misery.
“Ivo called me Jezebel,” she said dully. “He said I was a slut and he should never have married a woman named Jezebel.”
“Is that why he was so angry that he beat you? Because he was jealous?”
“I never gave him any reason to doubt my fidelity, but whenever he drank, he started accusing me of being a whore.” Her voice broke. “He was drunk a lot.”
“And his violence got worse over time.” Daniel had seen that with other patients who had been battered by their menfolk.
She swallowed. “Yes, he said I was too beautiful to be faithful. That last night . . . he came at me with a knife, saying that when he got through cutting my face, my beauty would be gone and people would turn away from my ugliness.” She began to cry, great shuddering sobs that threatened to rip her in half.
Daniel held her tighter and cursed the brutality of his sex. “He should have thanked God to have you for a wife.” As Daniel thanked God. When her tears began to diminish, he asked, “How did you meet him? I would have thought your father kept a tight control on you.”
She swallowed hard and managed to reply in a steady voice. “He usually did. I was never allowed out without a servant to watch me even in our small town where everyone knew everyone else. But one day when my father was out, the scullery maid was ill and the cook needed some chops for our dinner. She was busy and there was no one else available, so she sent me. There seemed no harm in it. Market day in Chillingham was very public.”
“I imagine you were pleased to get outside and have a bit of freedom,” Daniel remarked, hoping to encourage the flow of words.
“For me, going to the town square on market day was a grand adventure.” Her voice turned ironic. “It turned out to be much more of an adventure than I could ever have imagined.”
“You met Ivo Trevane there? Trevane was the name for the marriage license, wasn’t it? A good West Country name.”
She nodded, which he could feel even though her face was still turned away. “Ivo was passing through the village and decided to stop at the market so he could be entertained by the rustics.”
“And then he saw you.”
“And I saw him.” She sighed. “I was young in years and younger in experience because I’d been allowed to see little of the world. Ivo was every girl’s dream. Dark and dashing and terribly handsome. He was only a little older than I, and wonderfully romantic. He quoted poetry and claimed to adore me. I was dazzled by him.” Her voice turned bitter. “I was sure it must be love everlasting.”
“So you began a clandestine courtship.”
Jessie nodded again. “I was a foolish girl ripe for the plucking, but since I was a vicar’s daughter, he knew he’d better offer marriage, not just seduction.”
Remembering the madness of young love, Daniel said gently, “He was probably just as smitten as you. You’re enough to knock even a sober doctor off his feet.” He hoped that would make her smile, and perhaps it did, but she was still turned away.
“Shakespeare was right about young love when he wrote Romeo and Juliet,” she said flatly. “Mindless lust led to disaster.”
“I always thought that it was politics and feuding that led them to disaster. More tolerance and forgiveness would have meant no tragic ending. Of course, then there would be no great play either.”
“Tragedy is in greater supply than tolerance and forgiveness.”
Unfortunately, Jessie was right about that. “Ivo lived in Bristol?”
“Yes, he had an estate in Dorset, but I never saw it because he preferred his Bristol house. To me, the city was magical. Plays and music and lending libraries. I couldn’t believe how lucky I was to have all that plus a passionate, adoring husband.”
Daniel’s mouth tightened and he had to remind himself that he needed to know about her past, no matter how much that knowledge might sting. “How did you go from heaven to hell to the Herbert infirmary?”
“I hadn’t realized how much Ivo drank before we eloped and married. That was worrisome from the beginning, but it became much worse after he started inviting his friends to the house. They were a rackety lot of young men, no real harm in them, but they were madly flirtatious.”
Daniel frowned. “And naturally your husband blamed their behavior on you, which stoked his jealousy.”
“Exactly.” Jessie rolled onto her back, wrapping the blankets tightly around her and staring up at the bed’s canopy. Her words began to tumble over each other, as if she was desperate to release long-buried pain. “His jealousy became worse and worse. His drunken rages started with screaming and soon became violent. I learned to lock myself in a small bedroom when his friends came over. I’d hide there until the next day. He’d always be so apologetic the morning after. He’d swear never to do it again, and I wanted so much to believe him.”
“Did you consider leaving?”
“Sometimes, but I had nowhere to go. I could never return to my father or Chillingham. I had no friends or family who would take me in.” She bit her lip. “Worse, most of the time I didn’t want to leave. When he was sober, life was wonderful. He’d be so charming, an ideal companion. Until he got drunk again.”
“How long until the night you showed up at the infirmary?”
“Not quite a year.” She closed her eyes and her voice fell to a whisper. “He came home from some stupid prize fight where he and his friends all drank till they could barely stand. I was reading in the library when he came in. Seeing how drunk he was, I excused myself. He became furious and started chasing me. When I ran upstairs, he tripped on the steps, which made him even more furious with me.”
Daniel winced at the rising panic in her voice, but he owed it to Jessie to bear witness to the full terror of that night. Softly, he said, “Such men always blame others.”
“I managed to get into my little safe room and lock the door, but he battered it down with a chair.” She took a shuddering breath. “He began beating me much more badly than anything he’d done before. Then he choked me until I was unconscious.”
Daniel took her hand, holding it tight. “What then?”
She drew a rasping breath. “When I regained my wits, he was slumped in a chair finishing off a flask of gin, ignoring the fact that I was in a bleeding heap in the middle of the floor. I managed to struggle to my feet and said I was leaving him. That I’d become a whore on the streets rather than live with him a day longer. I had almost reached the door when he caught me again. He pulled a knife from his boot and that’s when he threatened to slash my face so no man would ever want me.” Her mouth twisted. “I thought it more likely he’d kill me, given how out of control he was.”
“If he’d been a little closer, that slash down your back could have been fatal. But you did get away.” He squeezed her hand again. “Then you used a false name at the infirmary and left Bristol so he couldn’t follow you. Brave girl.”
Her eyes opened, pale and half-mad. “Oh, I knew he wouldn’t follow me.”
Icy dread warned him of what was coming. “Why not?”
“Because I killed him.” Her voice broke. “I murdered my husband with his own knife!”
Chapter 25
Jessie had spent years suppressing memories of that ghastly night, but now they scalded through her like boiling blood. The terror and agony of Ivo’s fists slamming into he
r. The ghastly experience of his large hands choking her until she was almost unconscious. The razor edge of his blade hovering by her face as he threatened to mutilate her. When he’d paused to shove his dark hair from his sweaty, raging face, she’d jerked away and made a panicky dash for the shattered door.
That was when he stabbed her. The knife point hit her shoulder blade, then sliced down her back with a jog to the left when it hit her stays before cutting down to her waist. She screamed and collapsed onto her knees, paralyzed by the pain and convinced she was dying. Ivo yanked her to her feet, screaming filthy threats as he brandished the knife, his handsome face distorted like one of hell’s own demons.
She’d struggled frantically to escape, grabbing his wrist as the bloody blade slashed inexorably down at her. With the strength of desperation, she managed to force the knife away from her—and it plunged lethally into the base of Ivo’s throat.
“Are you sure he was dead?” Daniel’s voice was calm, as if he heard such tales every day. Perhaps he did.
“Oh, yes.” She shuddered. “I managed to check for a pulse, but there was none.” She pressed a hand to her stomach, feeling like she wanted to vomit. “No one could survive losing so much blood.”
“What kind of wound did you inflict?”
For a moment she hated his calm, doctorly questions about the horror she’d experienced, but it was better than if he threw her from their bed and cursed her very existence. Trying to match his calm, she drew a line just above the collarbone. “I cut his throat.”
“A man could bleed to death very quickly from such a wound,” he said dispassionately. “No wonder you were in shock when you arrived at the infirmary. You were very strong and very brave that day.”
Her lip curled at his words. “I was a terrified murderer running for my life! Though my father would probably have been pleased to see me hang. That would have confirmed all his worst beliefs about me.”
“It was self-defense!” Daniel said sharply. “You’d never have been convicted.”