Beloved Enemy (6 page)

"No!" She turned back to the flour-coated table,
her hands shaking. "You want my body as well as my inheritance and my
freedom, Colonel? It is a curious code of honor that allows for the ravishment
of a helpless widow—
p
risoner though she may be."

Alex went white.
"
That
was no ravishment, mistress. I have never kissed a more willing woman.
Widowhood has clearly left you with some unfulfilled needs."

They were trading cruel insult for cruel insult in a blind
reaction to a torrent of emotions neither of them had expected or could
explain.

"
How
dare you?" Ginny whirled, fury at a taunt that touched the mainspring of
her panic, drowning her fear.

With great deliberation he laid a hand on her breast where
the nipple still rose hard against the lacing of her bodice. A sardonic eyebrow
quirked, a smile played over the full lips as she stood frozen under that
hypnotic touch. Then with a mocking bow, he removed his hand and strode from
the kitchen.

Ginny stood for a long moment, stunned, her pulses racing as
the color came and went in her face. Just whom had she been trying to fool with
that little speech? Just whom had she been trying to fool with her earlier
thoughts of the peace and comfort of a passionless marriage? She was nineteen
years old and, until this moment, had never truly understood the meaning of the
word
"
passion
."
With an incoherent mutter, half
-
sob, half-profanity, Ginny fled the house, crossed the
yard at a run, heedless of the curious glances from the men, and headed for the
cliff top. A narrow, slippery path of colored sand led down to the beach. It
was a path more suited to a goat than a human, but Ginny had been climbing it
since she was a toddler. As children, she and Edmund had slid down it on their
backsides in a hair raising tangle of limbs, muc
h
to the detriment of their clothing; not even the certain knowledge of
the punishment that would follow if they were caught had proved sufficient
deterrent.

But those days were long past, and now Ginny scrambled down
with a modicum of dignity, placing her feet sideways to prevent slipping. The
small beach was deserted under the blackening sky where the evening star threw
its nightly message of reassurance to the dark side of the earth. The sea came
gently into the sheltered cove, lapping the sand with a soft sibilant sigh.

Ginny
thought
of the fourteen-foot sailboat hidden
on its runners in the cave beneath the cliff. It would be an easy matter to
drag it to the shore, hoist the sail, and be off, away from the turbulence of
the last few hours. But the boat was the only form of escape for Edmund and
Peter, as well as for herself. She had no choice but to endure until the time
and tide were right and she had sufficient information to plan their escape
carefully.

Endure what? Ginny sat on a rock and gazed out to sea,
allowing the elemental patience of its rhythmic swells to seep into her and
restore her own calm. She must, for her friends
'
sake, endure an imprisonment, the terms of which were hardly arduous.
No, that was not the problem. She had never been one to flee from reality, and
now she hauled the monster from its depths and faced it with a clear-eyed
glare.

Marriage to Giles Courtney had been a walking nightmare—a
life sentence of captivity made intolerable by the jealous resentment of his mother
and sisters who regarded the young bride of the only male heir as an
interloper. Ginny, the only child of an indulgent father and a frail mother,
had scrambled through her first fifteen years, more at home behind the tiller
of a sailboat than in the distillery or at the spinning wheel, although she had
been scolded and chastised into the proper education of a lord's daughter who
would one day manage her own great house.

Giles Courtney, on the surface, had had
little
to complain of in his fifteen-year-old
bride. She was attractive, wealthy, and well versed in her duties. She was
also, however, indecorously independent, and Giles, accustomed to women who
spoke to their menfolk only when spoken to, had suffered acute embarrassment
when he had brought his bride, supposedly in triumph, to Courtney Manor.

Ginny, in spite of her intense dislike of this man with his
pompous bearing and sense of self-consequence, and of her dismay at finding
herself away from her beloved Isle of Wight, landlocked on a stifling mainland,
had tried to be open and friendly to his family. She had realized soon enough
that open friendliness was considered undisciplined discourtesy. Lady Courtney
had ruled the female members of the household with a matriarch's iron fist, and
her son's bride had been expected to obey orders and
to
keep silent. She
had been accorded less consideration than her husband's unmarried sisters, and
Giles, accustomed to the worshiping care of his womenfolk—
a
care that kept him, all unrecognizing, in total submission—
h
ad offered her no support.

He had been a clumsy inexperienced lover . . . Lover? Ginny
laughed mirthlessly as she sat on her rock. If there had been any of loving in
that hasty satisfaction of his need, she had missed it. It had been a sordid,
sweaty business of grunts and discomfort as her unprepared body received the
invasion. Sometimes she had prayed that she would conceive and for nine months
be free of the nightly rape. Giles would never have endangered his heir, and if
she had carried his child, then her position in the household would surely have
changed. But
m
ostly the thought had filled her with
revulsion, and she had accepted the monthly bleedings with relief, although her
continued barrenness had brought her yet more unkindness from her inlaws. But
how could one possible bear in love the child of a man one despised?

In that entire year, Giles had kissed her perhaps a dozen
times—
a
perfunctory peck before he had
pushed her nightgown to her waist. Soon he had ignored even such minor
acknowledgments of her emotional presence in the body that he had used as if it
were no more than the chamber pot beneath the bed. In childhood she and Edmund
kissed occasionally as the hormones of puberty had burgeoned, but they had been
experimenting as children did, keeping close the guilty secrets of
their
growing bodies and turbulent emotions.

But when Alex Marshall had kissed her, something had happened
that bore no relation to her previous experiences. Her body had responded of
its own accord, every nerve seeming to flicker in expectation of stimulation—
w
hether of pain or joy, it mattered not. And it had
been joy. Yet she knew almost nothing of the man himself, only what she had
gleaned from Peter and deduced for herself. A man of unremitting purpose,
steadfast and determined. What then had happened to him, to cause him to break
every rule in his book, to consort with a prisoner and an enemy who held
principles and beliefs abhorrent to him?  

Ginny sat on her rock, dunking her
thought
s as dusk became full night, and she
could now
only
hear the sea curling onto the sand
and retreating with a wet slurp. Clouds obscured the wedge of the three-quarter
moon and the stars. She could smell the threat of the impending summer storm in
the strengthening wind, hear it in the crash of a breaker on the Needle Rocks.
The colonel's men would have a miserable time of it in their tents in the
orchard.

Lightning forked in the sky, and automatically Ginny counted
the seconds until the thunderclap. The storm was about five miles away. It was
time she returned to the house. The colonel and his officers had presumably
provided themselves with dinner in the absence of their cook, and an apple and
a piece of cheese would satisfy her own meager appetite.

As she made her way across the soft sand to the steep path,
Ginny glanced upward. The entire cliff top was ablaze with the light of
flickering torches. She had been so lost in her melancholy, her back to the
house, she had not thought to look in that direction. Had they discovered
Edmund and Peter? Her heart pounded sickeningly, sweat misting her brow as she
stumbled up the path, slipping and sliding as her usual expertise vanished
under the sway of panic.

It was a ten-minute climb, and caution reasserted itself as
she reached the top. She had no desire to draw attention to the path, which was
well hidden except from the eyes of
th
ose
who knew where to look. Ginny clung to a scrubby bush benea
th
the overhang until certain
that
the lights were not trained in the immediate
vicinity. Then she hauled herself onto the springy turf and lay still, flat on
her stomach, for a breathless moment. Voices reached her from the surrounding
gardens, but there were no sounds close to. She got to her feet and, crouching
low, ran across the wind swept headland as the first drops of rain heralded the
storm. A quick glance reassured her that the door to the priest's hole remained
invisible and unviolated.

Nearing the stableyard, Ginny slowed, brushed down her
skirts, and sauntered across, headed for the open kitchen door outl
i
ned by the golden light of oil lamps. The yard, for
some reason, was deserted, the men presumably engaged in whatever curious
nighttime exercise
th
eir colonel had commanded. Perhaps
this happened every night —
s
ome ritual
maneuver designated to keep an army not facing immediate battle on its toes.
Peter had said that Alex Marshall was a brilliant commander, one who knew how
to stimulate morale and maintain his troops in perfect condition.

The kitchen was as empty as the yard, although the trestle
table held the remnants of a cold meal of bread, meat, and cheese. Ginny
grabbed an apple and a pear from the basket, cut a wedge of cheese, and slipped
silently up the backstairs to her own chamber. The door stood open onto the
corridor. Surely she had closed it when she had left earlier? She remembered
doing so as an automatic declaration of her ownership of one portion of
this
occupied house.

Locking the door behind her, Ginny heaved a sigh of relief.
This room at least was her own, held the familiar possessions of her childhood
and youth, offered her peace and privacy from whatever went on elsewhere. It
had always been thus—
a
haven where she could kick and stamp
at unjust restrictions; could weep away the sorrow and hurt of childish
punishments; could create a magical universe whose contours and rules might be
changed at will, in whatever direction the creator
'
s fantasy took them; could brood withdelicious mystery
on the workings of her body.

Lightning forking into the sea lit the room for a moment, and
the crash of thunder followed instantly. The storm was directly overhead, and
Ginny ran to close the casements as the rain tipped from the sky.
Instinctively, she offered the prayer for those facing the storm on the seas. A
child of the sea, she treated the water with all the healthy respect of one
well versed in its sudden treachery.

The sound of raised male voices downstairs exploded through
the house, and wi
th
out knowing quite why she did so,
Ginny tore off her clothes, dropping them in a careless heap beside the window
as she dragged her nightgown over her head, and leaped into bed, ignoring the
fact that she had nei
th
er brushed her hair nor washed her
hands where the sandy grime of the cliff path clung beneath her fingernails.
Her impromptu supper lay neglected on the broad window sill.

Booted feet clattered on the stairs, along the corridor, and
stopped outside her door. The handle turned and met the resistance of the iron
key. There was a tentative knock, an unfamiliar voice.
"
Mistress Courtney?"

Ginny stared into the darkness mitigated by her accustomed
eyes. Should she acknowledge the call or pretend to be asleep? The latter, she
decided. It would involve her in fewer explanations, and she need both peace
and privacy at this moment. The peace and privacy that might restore her
accustomed sense of control over her destiny, her accustomed composure, and put
thoughts of Alex Marshall into perspective so that she could concentrate on her
plans for escape, could stop thinking wild, unbidden thoughts of passion, and
could think instead of a calm, orderly future — once this messy present was
behind her.

She remained silent and heard the sound of booted feet
retreating along the corridor. A bugle call sounded from somewhere in the
grounds—
p
robably signaling the end of the
exercise. There was a strange quiet in the house now. Not the silence of
isolation to which she had become accustomed, but the brooding quiet that came
when a large group of people ceased all activity, waiting. Waiting for what?
Ginny
'
s heart began to pound, and only the
thought of her locked door provided comfort as she lay, aching with
the fatigue that went beyond tiredness and denied the
respite of sleep.