Dangerous to Love (28 page)

He had cast her off not knowing whether or not she was with child. And to think she had wept bitter tears when her woman’s courses had come to her. If Julian was lost to her, she had wanted his child to remember him by. Fool! It was only by the grace of God that she had been spared that final humiliation! She would have borne a bastard child and he would not have cared.

When the sobs died away, it seemed that all her dreams and hopes died with them. Even her rage was spent. When Flynn returned an hour later, looking anxious and
unsure, he was met by a white-faced, somber-eyed stranger. The contrite apology he immediately accepted, but when Flynn tried to introduce the subject of Julian Raynor, the softness went from her and a mask of rigid composure tightened her features. The episode with Julian Raynor, Serena calmly informed him, would be forgotten as though it had never taken place. Even if he were to come for her now, she would not have him. His name was never to be mentioned between them again.

In spite of her best intentions, she broke down a time or two. Each time, she promised herself that it was the last time that she was going to cry for Julian Raynor. By sheer force of will, she drew on resources of strength she had not known she possessed. It was mainly pride that stiffened her backbone, pride that put a smile on her face when there was nothing in her life to smile about. It was entirely possible that one of Julian’s friends might mention Miss Serena Ward in one of those letters that crossed the Atlantic at regular intervals. In that event, she wanted Julian Raynor to know that his effect on Serena Ward had been negligible.

Time passed, and the hurt and anguish became easier to bear. There came a day when she found, to her surprise, that she really was enjoying herself and that her smiles and laughter were no longer forced. She was finally cured of Julian Raynor. It was time to move on, time to do her duty and find some eligible gentleman with whom she could share her life.

Her experience with Julian had reinforced her opinion of men of his stamp. She’d had enough of men who were dangerous to love to last her a lifetime. Nor did she want that leap of the senses that had robbed her of logical thought whenever she was with him. Above all else, she wanted comfort and safety, and she found them in the quiet, unassuming person of Mr. Trevor Hadley.

Flynn, as ever, was the one who wouldn’t allow her to forget about Julian Raynor.
Bigamy
was the alarming word he used to bring her to heel. In spite of her warnings never to speak to her of Julian Raynor again, he’d been trying to persuade her to write to Julian, merely, as Flynn put it, to clear the air between them. They were both too proud for their own good. Flynn could never be made to believe that Julian Raynor had played them both false.

Bigamy.
It was something to think about. Finally relenting, she wrote a short letter couched in cordial terms to indicate that she was on the point of marriage. All she required from Julian was an assurance that he had destroyed all evidence of their Fleet marriage.

She was proud of that letter. Reading it over, she congratulated herself on striking just the right note. There was not a trace of acrimony in it, not a hint of the pain and anguish she had endured. It wasn’t that she had forgiven him. He simply no longer mattered to her.

   Captain Mosley was expounding to the passengers, who had the honor to sit at his table, on the vital importance of Charles Town as a seaport. It was all very interesting, but young Mrs. Jaffe could not prevent her eyes drifting to the gentleman who sat directly across the table. They would dock in a day or two, and it was highly unlikely that she would ever set eyes on Mr. Raynor again. He had business in London, whilst she and her husband had sold up and were returning to their home in Devon. Sighing regretfully, she raised her wine glass to her lips and tried to pay attention to the conversation. She would far rather hear of Mr. Raynor and his purpose in coming to England.

Her husband had told her the little he knew of the gentleman. It was not an unusual story. Mr. Raynor had come to the Carolinas two years before to escape some
scandal in England. What he had seen of the flourishing young colony had intrigued him and he had immediately begun improving his plantation and using the profits from it to invest in other enterprises. He was a man of influence as well as a wealthy landowner. In Charles Town, he was an intimate of Governor Glen and there was speculation that soon he might be persuaded to let his name stand for the Commons House of Assembly.

Even without her husband’s commentary, she would have known that Mr. Raynor was a man to be reckoned with. He had that look. It wasn’t that he was forbidding. Indeed, his manner toward her had always been most gentlemanly, most respectful. Nevertheless, she sensed the steel in him. When this gentleman set his mind on something, nothing would stand in his way. It was, she supposed, the reason he had risen to prominence so quickly. Many gentlemen with his advantages let them slip through their fingers, gaming away their fortunes or wasting them on riotous living.

This thought reminded her of some of the gossip that circulated among the married ladies on board, ladies who moved in Mr. Raynor’s circles in Charles Town. According to Mrs. Simmons, his
affaires
with a certain class of women were notoriously well-known the length and breadth of South Carolina. There were duels, and rumors of drunken orgies in the slave quarters, and debauchery too shocking to detail. When she had asked her husband about it, he had chastised her for being interested in things no gently bred lady should know about. That was the trouble with husbands. Their sense of propriety forced their wives to be devious in ferreting out information.

“I cannot credit,” she had declared, with a fair show of indignation, “that the governor would welcome such a man into the ranks of his supporters.”

Her husband had wavered for a moment, then carefully
explained that gentlemen did not set much store by how many mistresses a man kept, or how many duels he fought, so long as he was a man of honor. To her genuine indignation, he told her that such things rather added to a gentleman’s credit among his peers.

Over the rim of her wine glass, she covertly studied Mr. Raynor, dimly aware that the conversation had moved on to the West Indies. He was in his mid-thirties, as near as she could judge, and had a certain something about him that excited feminine interest. It wasn’t only that he was uncompromisingly male, or that he wore his fine clothes with a careless arrogance that drew all eyes to him. There was something more, something she could not put into words.

In that moment, Mr. Raynor lifted his eyes and caught her unwary stare, and like a creature of the wild that is cornered by a predator, she froze. Then his long lashes flicked down, veiling that look in his eyes, and she carefully expelled a breath before riveting her attention on the gentleman who was speaking, hoping that no one would notice the unbecoming flush on her cheeks.

Behind the polite mask of interest, Julian’s frame of mind was anything but pleasant. In that moment, when he had caught Mrs. Jaffe’s stare, he’d experienced a flash of déjà vu, as though it were Serena’s stare he had captured, as he had once captured it at Catherine Ward’s levee.

Damn Mrs. Jaffe and her resemblance to Serena! The girl’s blond coloring, her lively blue eyes, and that air of breeding—all were so painfully familiar, and jogged memories he only wanted to forget. It made him wonder if, once he finally came face-to-face with his erstwhile wife, he would be able to keep from throttling her on the spot. It seemed that he was not so indifferent to Serena Ward as he had hoped he was.

When dinner was over and the ladies had withdrawn, he did not linger over the port and brandy, but excused himself and made his way on deck to the bow of the ship, where the strong sea breezes deterred all but the most hardy. Once there, he stood at the rail, looking out over the vast ocean toward England, remembering another time, seemingly a lifetime ago, when he had made the outward journey in far different circumstances.

Then, he had been John Adam, an indentured convict in chains, cooped up in a dark hole in solitary confinement. He’d been his own worst enemy then, attacking his captors in a frenzied dementia when they refused to listen to him. They had been well warned that he was a dangerous character and had subdued him, and kept him subdued with ferocious beatings. A prisoner who had broken ribs and was kept on starvation rations was a docile prisoner. In his mind, he’d never given up, but he had learned his lesson. If he were ever to escape, he must act as though the defiance had been beaten out of him.

Life on a tobacco plantation in Maryland had been infinitely preferable to life on the transportation ship, if only because the owner of the plantation saw him in much the same manner as he viewed a prime piece of horseflesh. He’d put down good money for him. It was in his best interest to see that his slave was cared for so that he could recoup every penny he had spent on his purchase and upkeep.

Only his hatred for Serena had given him the determination to survive. He would not be satisfied until he had settled the score with her. He’d made his plans carefully. In South Carolina, on the outskirts of Charles Town, he owned a plantation which was managed by a former comrade-in-arms who had served with him in India. If he could reach Charles Town, Dorsey would shelter him until he could return to England.

And he had escaped, just as he had known he would. It had taken him two months of near starvation and traveling mostly on foot to reach his plantation, and months after that to fully recover his health. In that time, his friend and overseer, Dorsey, had made discreet enquiries. What he learned was that there were no charges of any kind pending against Julian Raynor. He was free to come and go as he pleased.

Julian was skeptical. During his convalescence, he entered into a correspondence with his bankers, his solicitors, and his few friends in London. The information he received from them confirmed what Dorsey had told him. It also shed some light on Serena. Miss Serena Ward had conducted herself as if Julian Raynor had never existed. She had made no public outcry at his disappearance. It seemed to him that if she had been innocent, the first thing she would have done was let the world know that she was his wife. A wife had every right to call the authorities to account for what they had done to her husband. That she had not done so was more evidence that she had been the mastermind behind his abduction. Oh, she had grieved right enough, grieved over the untimely death of her father.

The report of Sir Robert’s death had confirmed what Julian had always suspected. There was no justice in this world. His patience, his scheming, yes, even his soul-searching after he married Serena, had all been for nothing. Had he been possessed of a more fanciful turn of mind, he might have been persuaded that the gods, themselves, had ordained that the Wards were beyond the touch of a mere Renney, beyond retribution.

Sir Robert Ward had been the scourge of the Renneys, but he had not paid for his crimes. What then? Was he, Julian, to perpetuate the vendetta on the next generation of Wards, like some tragic hero from a Greek myth? Was
this to be the pattern of his life? The idea did not appeal to him. With Sir Robert’s death, even his hatred for Serena became muted. She was just another of life’s ironic twists. Though he did not know it at the time, Sir Robert’s death was a turning point for him.

During his convalescence, he had had a great deal of time to think. Returning to England no longer seemed so pressing. He’d always intended to make a life for himself in the New World. There would never be a better opportunity to discover whether life in the Carolinas was all he had hoped.

It was better than he’d hoped. In America, even for a man of his checkered past, the opportunities were limitless. All that mattered was his drive to make something of himself. He was still a gambler, but now he called himself an investor, and gambled on enterprises that profited not only himself but the colonists whose destiny he was proud to share. He felt a sense of belonging here that he had never felt in England.

There had been women, dozens of them, and he did not regret a single one. Over time, the memory of Serena Ward had become less and less distinct, and had finally faded into the blessed mists of forgetfulness.

Until he received her letter. It wasn’t revenge or pique or curiosity on his part that prompted this tedious voyage to England. The past had lost its power to control him. America had done that for him. The future was what concerned him now, not the machinations of some scheming bitch in England. It had always been in his mind to return at some point to dispose of his gaming house and other properties in his possession. He wanted to be shot of everything that tied him to the old life, and that included a wife who was as eager as he to destroy any and all evidence of their misbegotten marriage.

He was the only one who knew where the marriage
certificate was. Of course he would destroy it. Serena Ward was nothing to him now, less than nothing.

He gazed off into the distance, lost in thought. Coming to himself, he scowled. A moment later, turning on his heel, he made his way below deck, to the privacy of his cabin.