Dark Torment (18 page)

Of course, she was ashamed. Leaving aside the fact that he was a
convict, she had just given up her virginity outside the bonds of matrimony.
Reluctantly he acknowledged that, for a lady such as Sarah, that was bound to
be traumatic. But he knew too that a good part of her distress was due to the
fact that she considered him so far beneath her. That thought still enraged
him. But now, as the first hot blast of his temper cooled, he realized that
that was a fact of his life that he would have to accept—at least for the
present. He didn’t like Sarah’s reaction, but losing his temper and
frightening her had not helped the situation. He should have expected and tried
to reason away her distress, soothing her shame and revulsion with soft words
and softer kisses. He would have done that as a common courtesy with any virgin
he took; in such cases, a certain amount of agitation was expected. But with
Sarah . . . Dammit, why was his reaction to her so different from his reaction
to any other woman? What was it about her?

The cream of the jest was that, by taking her, he had meant to
turn the tables, to own her where she had previously owned him. What he had not
counted on was that, by the very act of possessing her, she had in some
unfathomable way managed equally to possess him.

When he had first been arrested and tossed into jail, he had not
been able to believe that they could make the charge stick. When they had,
first to his fury and then to his fright, he had vowed that he would be a
prisoner only for as long as it would take him to escape. Learning that he had
been sentenced to transportation to Australia, of all ungodly places, to serve
fifteen years—fifteen years!—at hard labor for a crime he had not
committed, he had been stunned. But then it had occurred to him that it would
be even easier to escape from a prison without walls. He would be back, he
vowed, to confront those who had declared themselves his enemy. And soon. But
that was before he had endured those eight hellish months on the prison ship,
before he had been chained and starved and beaten. . . .

When the ship had docked in Melbourne and the convicts had been
herded up on deck to be washed down with buckets of sea water thrown over their
heads so that their filth would not disgust their new owners, he had been able
to stand it no longer. After all those weeks cooped up in a dark hold filled
with men more sick than well and their sweat, their vomit, their excrement; the
brilliant sunlight glinting off the sea; the warm, fresh air, after months of
being damp and cold; even the birds wheeling overhead, beautiful birds,
red-winged parrots, lorikeets in a rainbow of colors, yellow-crested
cockatoos—how he had envied them!—had driven him temporarily out of
his head. He had throttled the guard nearest him, not caring if he killed the
man, and run for the side, meaning to dive over, into the sea. They had caught
him, of course; but, since a landowner had paid good money for him and they
didn’t want to damage the merchandise, he had thought that despite
everything he would be let off with just a few kicks and blows. But then Edward
Markham had refused to take him. . . . Deprived of his double profit, Captain
Farley had turned nasty. There was not the slightest doubt in his mind that the
captain would at that point have honored the terms of his original agreement
with those in England who wished Dominic Gallagher ill. He had not been meant
to survive the voyage, Dominic knew. He shuddered, remembering how they had
stripped off his shirt and bound him to the mast, recalling in excruciating
detail the soul-destroying agony of the blows. . . .

Sarah had saved his life. He had been only half-conscious, but he
had heard that soft voice, unmistakably female, as she came to his rescue,
placing herself between him and the whip with a courage that had fascinated him
at the time—most females would have screamed, or swooned, and turned away
from the horror instead of defying an entire crew of hardened sea-dogs for the
sake of a wretched stranger. When they had, at her insistence, cut him free, he
had wanted to go down on his knees to her to thank her for saving his life,
which he had been surprised to discover that, despite everything, he still
valued. And he had hated her for making him feel that way. Nearly all his
growing-up years he had been beholden to someone who begrudged even the food he
ate. When he had reached sixteen, he had vowed that he would never again allow
anyone to put him in a position where he was in their debt. Sarah had; and it
galled him every time he thought about it.

Despite the fact that he owed Sarah his life, even as he was being
half-carried, half-dragged from the
Septimus
he was already promising
himself that he would escape as soon as he could. He would not spend the next
fifteen years of his life as a slave! The idea unnerved him far more than the
little speech that Sarah’s damned overseer had made to him and the other
newly arrived convicts about the consequences of trying to run. Regardless of
how many men or dogs they put on his trail, run he would—but first he had
to wait until his back healed and he had regained his strength enough that he
could survive off the land in a country he did not know. And if he gave the
appearance of docility for the first month or two, he calculated, they would be
less likely to suspect when he did run, and that lack of suspicion might buy
him time.

But then there was Sarah. She had attracted him from the
beginning, first by the spirit he could only admire, by the very
self-possession that had maddened him at the same time as it attracted him.
Then, when he had seen past the dowdy clothes and hairstyle and old-maid
manner, by the elusive beauty that was absent far more often than it was
present. From the beginning, he had been conscious of a desire to strip away
the layers of propriety in which she buried herself to see if the woman beneath
could possibly be as fascinating as he half-hoped, half-feared she would be.

He might as well face facts, Dominic told himself grimly. For some
days now he had felt well enough to run. They were no longer watching him so
closely, and living off the land was not going to get any easier for being put
off. But, despite his growing hunger for freedom, he had stayed at Lowella,
doing Sarah’s bidding although her bossy ways annoyed him, simply because
he was not yet ready to see the last of her. Tonight, even, he had been
thinking about leaving, just walking away. There was nothing to stop him, and
with so many guests he doubted that he would even be missed before late
tomorrow. But then he had seen Sarah standing under the trees. . . .

He could go now, he thought, reluctant to recognize the
opportunity. Then he thought of Sarah, naked, passionate, clinging, of the
priceless gift she had offered him and that he had taken, and of her
anger—and her shame. And he knew that he would not go yet.

* * *

Sarah awoke slowly the next morning in her attic bedroom.
Something lingered at the edge of her mind, something that she knew she would
have to face with the coming of the day. Something so unpleasant that she was
doing her very best to block it from her consciousness. Then, there it was.
Last night she had allowed Gallagher to make love to her. Remembering, Sarah
felt her stomach heave. For a moment she was afraid that she might actually
vomit. Then, slowly, her stomach settled—but her mind did not. It
tormented her with graphic images of her degradation.

He was a convict. That fact stood out above all the others. Far,
far better that she had given herself to Percival, or to young Michael Argers
all those years ago, or to anyone—but a convict. She shuddered at the
thought. She had shamed herself beyond redemption. How could she have done such
a thing? To have let him take her virginity—she must have been mad. She
thought of herself naked in his arms, allowing him—no, begging
him—to do things to her body that made her go crimson with mortification
even now, remembering. Just for tonight, she had thought. Well, morning had
dawned with a vengeance. And brought with it a terrible price.

Would he tell anyone? Sarah was ashamed that this was one of her
main concerns, but she couldn’t help it. She would want to die if anyone
knew. She thought of Lydia’s malicious enjoyment, Liza’s shock, her
father’s horror, Percival’s rage—at least, she thought with a
hysterical laugh, it was unlikely that he would still want to marry her, if he
knew—the disgust of her friends and neighbors; she knew she
wouldn’t be able to bear it. Her father would be within his rights to
cast her out, though she didn’t think he would. But she would go,
nonetheless. She wouldn’t be able to endure the humiliation.

But then Sarah realized that it would be as much as his life was
worth to betray her. She would face public scorn if what had happened between
them should ever become common knowledge; he would face far worse. She had not
a doubt that her father would have him killed if he knew the truth. And
Gallagher—she seemed to hear her own voice calling him Dominic and felt
the bile rise again in her throat—must know it, too.

That worry reduced to nothing more than a niggle, she was left
with another, major one: How could she ever face Gallagher again? Sarah thought
of what he had done to her, what she had allowed him to do, wanted him to do,
and reveled in the doing—and had her answer: she couldn’t.

But she would have to. There was no way around that. At least not
for a while. Later, if the situation became as intolerable as she feared it
might, she likely could talk her father into trading Gallagher to some other
grazier. Unless Gallagher objected—all he would have to do was to
threaten to talk, and her hand would be stayed. Which he would be a fool to
do—but once he was out from under her father’s authority, what
would prevent him from saying anything he pleased? He could blacken her name
for the sheer vindictiveness of it, and get off scot-free.

Sarah reluctantly concluded that Gallagher would have to remain on
Lowella. Only then could she be certain that he would keep their guilty secret
to himself. Which left her with the prospect of living in close proximity to
him for the next fifteen years, seeing his intimate knowledge of her in his
eyes every time he looked at her, having to stomach his insolence, or whatever
else he might care to inflict on her, for fear that he would talk.

It did not bear thinking about. Agitated, Sarah swung her legs
over the side of the narrow bed and stood up. If she did not put it out of her
mind, for just a little while at least, she really would go mad. What had
happened was like a nightmare come true.

Sarah walked toward the bowl and pitcher that stood in one corner
of the room, meaning to splash her face with cold water in hopes that it would
rid her stomach of the horrible queasiness that still threatened. She had
reached the basin when her eye fell on a crumpled heap of white silk peeking
out from beneath the bed. Her dress—last night she had stripped it off
with shaking hands and kicked it and her underclothes away, wanting never to
see them again, even as scraps for the rag bag; she would throw them away. And
with the dress, nearly hidden by the folds of white silk that still glistened
virginally, was the towel she had used to clean her virgin’s blood from
her thighs. She could see the brown stains clearly. . . . Sarah barely managed
to snatch up the basin before she vomited.

A long time later, she dragged herself up from the floor and made
herself wash and dress. It would do no good to dwell on her shame. It had
happened, and it was over. She would do her best to put it out of her mind. If
Gallagher had to be faced down, then she would face him. And she would act as
though nothing had happened. Her humiliation would be increased tenfold if he
were to realize how very sickened she was by her own behavior. And it was her
own behavior that made her feel so ill. He had done nothing more or less than
she should have expected. He was a man, after all, and a convict; what moral
standards could he have? But she—before last night, she would have called
herself a lady.

Sarah felt her stomach heave again, and resolutely forced herself
to concentrate on getting dressed. If she chose her most unattractive
dress—a pale gray poplin that was almost four years old and had faded to
a noncolor from repeated washings—it was simply because it was the
nearest to hand in the tall wardrobe. If she scraped her hair back from her
face so severely that it tugged at the edges of her scalp, and wound it into a
bun so tight that it would take a whirlwind to blast it free, it was simply
because the heat made meandering strands uncomfortable. And if there were dark
circles under her eyes, making them look huge and almost bruised, and if her
skin was pale and drawn so that her cheekbones were emphasized by the hollows
beneath them, well, she was not getting any younger. It was no more than that.

Sarah winced a little as she descended the stairs, not expecting
the soreness between her thighs. She felt as she had once, long ago, when she
had been learning to ride and had unwisely ridden for miles. It was that same
kind of tenderness. And from a similar cause, she thought bitterly. Only this
time, instead of being the rider, she had been the mount. . . . She banished
that thought from her mind almost as soon as it appeared. Forcing herself to
walk normally despite the discomfort, she entered the kitchen.

Tess and Mary were washing and drying the many dirty dishes
stacked on the kitchen table. Mrs. Abbott was nowhere in sight, but Sarah knew,
from the savory smells emanating from the bubbling kettles atop the iron stove,
that she was not far away. The two girls smiled at Sarah and bobbed a greeting,
too shy despite their several years’ service on Lowella to speak without
cause. Sarah smiled back, though it cost her an effort; she was determined to
behave as naturally as if last night had never happened. She was helping
herself to a piece of what was left of Liza’s birthday cake when Mrs.
Abbott bustled in from the door leading into the garden, her apron filled with
vegetables.