“How could you?” she repeated. “How could you have done this to me? Surely you knew, you knew that I was falling in love with you, and you did not care! You knew that nothing could ever exist between us, and still you led me on—”
“Brianna!” He was aching so desperately for what was slipping between his fingers that he could barely think. He came to her again, catching her shoulders, holding her fiercely against all her struggles, even when she pounded his chest with futile vengeance. At last he shook her, firmly, and her head rolled back, her eyes met his—stark with hopelessness and bitter resentment. “Let me go, Sloan. Fool that I am, I really did not know.”
“I cannot let you go—now or ever!” he thundered to her, shaking her once again. “For the love of God, will you listen to me?”
“To what end?” she demanded heatedly.
“It is not what you believe.”
“What I believe? You have just told me that you are married.”
“I am married, Brianna. But—”
“Let me go, Sloan!”
“Nay, because I cannot!” Despite her protests he swept her into his arms and pinned her to the bed. He had to make her understand.
“No, Sloan!” she shrieked, her voice breaking.
“Brianna—there is a future. I love you.”
“What of your wife?” she demanded, ceasing her struggles, to stare at him with blunt accusation.
“If you would but give me leave, I would explain.”
Bitterly, she answered him. “I’ve no choice, it seems.”
His hold on her eased. She plummeted to the depths of despair, and he knew well that her fury came from the misery he hadn’t the power to erase. He could only try desperately to make her see, to hold on to what they had.
“Her name is Alwyn,” Sloan said, and then he swallowed. To say her name, the woman he had only alluded to, was perhaps one of the most difficult things he’d ever done. “Alwyn does not care—”
“Does not care!”
“Cannot care,” Sloan said, ignoring her interruption. He did not know how to plead; he had never pleaded before. But God help him, he had to make her understand. “Brianna, we were wed fifteen years ago. Our estates adjoin. The match was arranged when we were both just infants and we were wed before my twentieth birthday. I was not against the marriage, because I had known Alwyn all my life. As a girl she was very lovely, and very gentle.” I am not saying the right words, Sloan thought in anguish. She was so stiff in his arms. Already, he thought, I have lost her. “Brianna! You have to understand!”
“Understand, My Lord Treveryan?” she asked coldly. “I understand quite well. You are married. You wish me to remain with you—as your mistress—while you leave a gentle wife behind.”
“Nay! Your tongue is ever sharp!”
“Show me where I am in error!”
“She is mad!”
Brianna held very still for a moment, aware that his voice and the tension in his body, in his very hold about her, betrayed a misery deeply akin to her own.
“Mad?” she whispered.
“Quite,” he said bitterly. “Alwyn was always frail. She trembled at the sight of me once we were wed. I was ever gentle with her. I let her be, and I wooed her as graciously as any man ever wooed his wife. There was a time, when we were very young, when I came to have great faith in a fruitful and happy life reaching out before us. But then—we had a child. A son. He did not survive three months in this world. And when he died, all that had been happiness for Alwyn died also. Slowly she began a retreat from this world. And now …”
“Now what?” Brianna asked him, aware that his eyes stared unseeingly across the cabin, that he was watching something a long way off. He shrugged.
“She barely knows me. She lives in my home, but all she knows is the forest and the pond of the estate where she finds peace. She is cared for by her old nurse, and she keeps cages of exotic birds. She loves to hear them sing, and to watch them fly. When I am at home, I allow her the fantasy that we are children again, and she believes that our fathers are visiting, and that we are together to play—as children.”
He stopped speaking, his eyes returned to Brianna’s. He wanted her to speak as she longed to do so. Yet it all swirled within her mind and wrought painful constriction in her heart and throat, and she could find no words.
He released her and stood, pacing the cabin. Finally he paused again, leaning against the doors.
“I have not touched her in a decade, Brianna.”
Brianna inhaled deeply. “Sloan, I—”
“You must understand,” he said, and his features were taut as he searched her countenance. “She is my wife. I never loved her—not as I have learned to love you—and yet she does hold a part of my heart for all that we once were. She is mine to care for, Brianna, and that I do. I beg you not to despise me, for I have come to need you just as I love you.”
She had never heard more earnest speech nor seen a man more fraught with pain. She felt no more anger against him. She longed to reach out to him, but could not.
“Sloan,” she whispered at last, “I am sorry. So very sorry, for I believe with all my heart that you do love her. And I believe that you do love me. I—I don’t know what to say to you, or what to do. Oh, Sloan! I just can’t be your mistress! Taken about from port to port, displayed to the world, with no home, no life, no future …”
“It would not have to be like that!” He came to her then, falling to his knees before her, taking her hands feverishly in his. “Ah, Brianna! Do you think that I would not care for you, that I would not silence the world if—”
“No man can silence the world, Sloan. Not even you,” Brianna told him wearily. “But it is not the slights of any that concern me. Sloan, I just don’t know that I could bear it; that I could ever forget Alwyn, or”—she paused, searching out his intent and blazing eyes—“Sloan! Have you forgotten how you decry the plight of bastards? Jemmie Scott, dying in his quest for a crown denied because of his birth. Sloan, it frightens me.”
“Nay! Brianna, once I swore that I would not inflict such a fate upon a child. But I love you; I long for our child. Brianna, I will leave no legal heirs! Our child—?”
“Will be a bastard,” she interrupted simply. “You cannot change that.”
“I swear that he will never suffer …”
She smiled at him, feeling numb and exhausted. “Sloan—it is not right. I am an adulteress, and perhaps because of it, we are cursed. Oh, Sloan, look at all that has befallen!”
“I do not believe in curses!” he cried to her passionately. “Nor can you! Brianna, I love you. I would gladly lay down my life for you a dozen times, and a dozen times again.”
“I believe that you love me,” she whispered.
“But that is not enough?” he demanded bitterly.
“You don’t understand—” she began, but before she could say more there was a pounding on the door.
“Approaching port, Cap’n!” Paddy’s voice called out.
Sloan lowered his head. “I must be topside,” he murmured, and then he was staring at her again, intently. “Brianna …”
“Nay! What can be said? You must take command as we go in.”
“You will not leave, me!” he commanded her, and Brianna stiffened regally.
“I am not your property, Sloan.”
Angrily he dropped her hands and rose. “Nay, you are not property. Is it property you seek? You have my love, and my life, should you require it. All that I deny you is my name, yet for that you would scorn me. Are you no better than the whore I thought had come to me in Glasgow? Is it the position you crave, the titles and the land? On that account, dear girl, you need not be concerned. I always pay well for services rendered—or have you forgotten?”
She leapt up to face him, slashing out hard with the palm of her hand, driven by the fury and the hurt. He caught her wrist hard, twisting her arm behind her back, and bringing her body to his. The angry tension within him fr
ightened her. “Sloan,” she gasped, for his hold stole her breath, just as his eyes made her tremble with sudden weakness. She fought it, and challenged him. “Sloan! That you can say such words to me belies all the love you claim for me!”
He lowered his dark lashes. His hold eased and then tightened as he cradled her to him. “Forgive me,” he said simply, and she felt the quivering of his hard form.
How dully her heart ached! For all her shattered dreams she could not stop loving him.
“You must go topside,” she whispered miserably, pushing away from him.
He nodded, and for several moments his throat was too thick for speech. “Are you coming ashore with me?”
“I—I do not know, yet.”
His eyes narrowed. “You must not plan an escape. Matthews is dead, but the danger for you is not. There is always another to take Matthews’s place.”
“I’m not planning anything.”
“We have not finished with this discussion. Before God, I tell you it is not safe for you to run. Brianna! Think of the dead!”
Her face paled, and he was sorry; but he could take no risks. She lowered her head. “Go! You know I will not risk more lives!”
For a brief moment he continued to watch her, but she would not look at him. He turned and quit the cabin for the deck.
* * *
An hour later things were going well beyond all expectation in Upsinwich. They’d been welcomed by the workmen at the docks so enthusiastically that he’d felt no apprehension when he was invited to the home of the lord mayor.
The man was a firm member of the Church of England, and Upsinwich proved to be not only a Puritan stronghold, but that strange place, wonder of wonders, where all sects were living in tolerance and peace. By law a Puritan could not hold Lord Patterson’s office, yet Lord Patterson seemed beloved by all, if the cheerful words of the dockhands were any true indication of town affairs.
They were barely docked when Sloan received an invitation from Lord Patterson requesting they meet for lunch in a public tavern near the Sea Hawk. Barely had Sloan sat down before the lord mayor was lowering his voice to say that he was quite certain his people were expecting the Prince of Orange any day—and would welcome his arrival. But Sloan could give scant attention to Lord Patterson, because Brianna had not come with him, and he could think of nothing but her.
Ah! Not long ago, politics had filled his thoughts. He had been eager for Holland to bring William and Mary to the throne and to see James brought low for his crime of murder. Still he would fight; aye, if Princess Mary and William needed battle, he would gladly go into battle for them. But he did not feel the tearing sense of revenge that had once been his. For all of the tempest between them, Brianna had given him a sense of peace. He wanted her to be most important in his life, to rule his every move.
He was so very afraid. He had never meant to hide his marital status from her. He had told her that he could not marry her and he didn’t know that she was dreaming of being his wife. Perhaps it was saddest of all that she seemed to understand about Alwyn. She had not demanded that he seek an annulment or a divorce, and she would never—as his London mistress, Joan, had once done—suggest that Alwyn might be hurried from this life. Nay, Brianna would never do such a thing, because she had learned the wonder of life.
He sighed, though, unable to cease his brooding. She had accepted his situation, and she had promised not to attempt to escape. But he had wrung that promise from her cruelly, he did not know if she had decided to accept him.
“My Lord Treveryan!”
Startled, Sloan gave his full attention to the jovial, red-cheeked man before him. Patterson was short and squat with twinkling blue eyes, but gave the appearance nevertheless that he would be a determined adversary if crossed.
“Your pardon, sir!” Sloan said apologetically.
“Ahh, no pardon needed, sir!” Patterson replied, raising his tankard of ale. “I know you’ve grave matters of state on your mind! I was saying that the men have promised to give your Sea Hawk their most fervent attention. I assure you that no one will come near the town without your knowledge.”
“I thank you, sir. But what if you are challenged for harboring outlaws before William arrives?”
Patterson chuckled. “Challenged? But how, sir? I’m a busy man. How would I know what ships come to port? This is England! We have our freedoms, sir.”
Sloan chuckled and drank his ale, first lifting his tankard high to Lord Patterson. But for his life he could not keep his mind fully upon the conversation—brooding came to him today as naturally as breathing.
Brianna spent the first hours he had gone, sitting upon the bed. She tried to think and reason, but she could not. All she could do was sit, and feel the dull pain in her heart.
Ah! If only she could hate him! But she believed every word, and her heart and soul ached for all of them. Poor Alwyn, stripped of her child and mind. Poor Sloan, caring for her, denied both the heir he surely craved, and perhaps the possibility finally, truly, of finding love. She could picture his Alwyn, pale and frail, seeking only the company and solace of her birds!
Nay, never could she deny she loved him still. Perhaps she loved him more. But could she stay with him? She trembled slightly, sitting there. She knew that, for him, it was all quite simple and easy. To the eyes of Lord Treveryan there was no hardship in being his mistress. But try as she might, Brianna could never forget that he had a wife. And he was, like all men, a fool. He thought that he could protect her from scandal. He did not realize that she would never be accepted in his world. That should she conceive, their child would be an outcast—shunned, just as his dear friend Jemmie had been shunned. Even King Charles had not been able to protect his son, and Sloan was not a king.
She sighed and began to pace the cabin, barely aware, as she passed back and forth, that she was lovingly touching things. His desk, the bottle of dark rum upon it, the chair behind it. The bedding, the pillows they had shared.
She did have to leave him. Not as she did in Port Quinby—never would she risk others’ lives again. But there had to be a way, and tomorrow she would find it. She sat down again, shaking and weakening. Leaving him would be like cutting out her heart. It would be so much easier to stay.
But, dear God, what would happen if he ceased to love her? If the strain of all that lay between them ate at their love until there was nothing left but bitterness? That would be far worse than going now, when at least she could cherish the memory forever.
Paddy had come to tell her that the Sea Hawk would remain in Upsinwich for at least two days. Since it was a Puritan community, perhaps she could find word of the Powells—and, with them, a firm bulwark. Not against Sloan’s strength—against his love.
But that would be tomorrow. Tonight, tonight she could not leave him. She wanted to hold him and cherish and give him all her love—one last time.
Sloan didn’t know what to expect when he returned to the ship. And so he paused outside his cabin door with his heart pounding, his head reeling. He was so afraid she would be gone.
When at last he opened the door, the cabin was dark. Then slowly he realized that a single small candle was burning upon his desk. He stood still, blinking to adjust to the muted light. His heart rose to his throat in anguish; she wasn’t there.
But then he heard a slight rustling sound from the bed; his fingers, upon the door, began to tremble. He heard her voice, as soft as the muted candle glow, as sweetly welcoming.
“Close the door, My Lord Treveryan.”
He did so, leaning against it, finding that the trembling had spread from his hands to his limbs. He blinked once more, and then he could see her clearly, slowly unwinding her slender body from her curled position on the bed. Her only garment was the sheer white thin shift which barely hid her slender curves. As she walked toward him, he knew he had never seen such a heavenly vision. Her hair was a regal display of gleaming black, curled and waved over her shoulders, playing provocatively over he
r breasts. Through the gossamer fabric he could see the sway of her hips, the beautiful clean line of her legs, and the fascination of all the secrets in between.
When she came at last to stand before him, he saw her eyes, teal-blue and shimmering in the candle glow. Her knuckles grazed his cheek as their eyes met. He caught her hand, so fine-boned, so delicate. He brought it to his lips and kissed her palm.
She led him to the bed. He followed her, trembling. And he continued to tremble, all through the sweet tempest of their lovemaking.
When at last they both lay still, filled with their love, he kissed her forehead in reverence and knew that should he die upon the morrow, he had already received the greatest glory on earth. He’d known sensual pleasure before, a good deal of it—but never like this. Because the difference lay in the loving, in the aching to touch the heart as well as the body; in the vast depth of longing to be completely united.
She stirred against him, and he touched her chin to raise her eyes to his. The tenderness he felt for her then was overwhelming, and he was stunned by the sadness he found in her eyes.
“What is it?” he asked her, and she shook her head. “By God, you must know how I love you!” he told her vehemently.
“I don’t deny it,” she said softly. “And forever will I be grateful for it.” She paused. “All that touched my mind was that it didn’t seem right that the wonder between us should be wrong.”
“Ah, my love! Before God I feel that our love is sacred. Brianna, believe what I say now: I would give anything to make you happy. My ship, my land, anything that I hold. You already know that I’d give my life, should you require it. Brianna, the only thing that I cannot do is harm in any way—”
“Hush, Sloan, oh, hush!” She turned to him, fighting back the tears she could not shed. “I could not love you so if you would hurt your wife, who is sick and who bears no ill will to others. Sloan, let it lie. I beg you. Hold me, and talk no more of it.”
He did. He held her as he would the most precious thing in his life, for that was what she had become.