Dark Torment (35 page)

“Oh,” she said in a tiny voice. “I guess I am
used to—uh—sort of directing things.”

“Giving orders,” he corrected, charmed by her
crestfallen air. “Especially to me.”

She looked over at him swiftly. He frowned in mock displeasure.
She looked dismayed—and then her chin came up. “Yes,” she
said steadily.

He couldn’t help it; he had to laugh. “Don’t
worry about it, my own,” he advised, sitting up and reaching for his
breeches and boots. “I find I’m getting used to being bossed
around—by a particular managing female. Just be careful I don’t
beat you one of these days.”

“You couldn’t,” she said, her nose in the air as
she recognized his teasing for what it was. She was buttoning her shirt, then
looking around for the rest of her clothes as he pulled on his breeches, stood
up, and tugged on his boots.

“Why not?” he asked tranquilly, tossing her breeches
and sandals to her as he found and pulled on his shirt. “I’m a deal
bigger than you—and I owe you one.”

He had meant to make light of what she had done, but she
immediately tensed.

“I didn’t tell Pa anything, Dominic. I give you my
word.”

Silently cursing himself for bringing up the subject, he left off
buttoning his shirt to reach out and pull her to her feet.

“It’s all right, Sarah,” he said, his hands
sliding beneath her shirttail to close on her still-bare buttocks and bring her
against him.

“You believe me?” She did not seem to mind his touch,
which just hours ago would have made her blush with shame. Her eyes searched
his earnestly. Dominic wondered for the first time if perhaps she was telling
the truth. Perhaps someone else had seen, and told. . . . It didn’t
matter, anyway. They were going to put that behind them, starting now.

“I believe you,” he said, his hands tightening on her
rounded little behind. Desire stirred uncomfortably in him at the feel of her
silky firmness beneath his hands. He made a mental note to adjust his breeches
the next time she turned her back.

“Oh, Dominic!” She smiled happily at him, her hands
flying up to encircle his neck as she rose on her toes to plant her first
spontaneous kiss on his mouth. Then Dominic returned her kiss with interest,
and it ended up being quite some time later before they got around to making
camp.

“Just for tonight” turned out to be two days, then
three, then a week. Sarah and Dominic laughed and talked and made love, living
off the provisions Dominic had grabbed as they had made their hurried exit from
that other camp and whatever game either of them could shoot. Dominic was a far
better shot than Sarah, which surprised her—she was very good. But she
conceded with good grace his superiority in that area. She was by far the
better organizer—it was she who organized the camp and their respective
chores until she became aware of what she was doing, and guiltily stopped. She
would not be persuaded to resume—which meant that they went disastrously
short of salt when Dominic used it all to season a hare he was roasting instead
of dividing it into careful portions as Sarah would have done—until
Dominic convinced her that her “bossiness” appealed to him
enormously. And by the time he finished convincing her, that particular hare
was burned to a crisp. They dined instead on strips of dried mutton, and
didn’t care two pins. Much of the time they were scarcely aware of what
they ate anyway. What interested them was the time they spent together in their
bedroll, tucked up cozily under the stars, or brazenly uncovered beneath the
blazing sun.

Their lovemaking was like nothing Sarah had ever imagined. It was
wild and wanton, slow and tender, infinitely varied, always wonderful. Sarah
could not get enough of his hands on her skin, or he enough of her body. He
taught her to return kiss for kiss, caress for caress; he explored every curve
and secret recess of her body with his hands and mouth, and encouraged her to
gain similar intimate knowledge of his own. Sarah spent her days in a haze of
bliss, sparkling with happiness, unaware that Dominic’s lovemaking had
brought a glow to her skin and hair and a softening to her features that made
her for the first time in her life as truly beautiful as Dominic insisted she
was. His eyes seldom left her; he made no effort to hide his need and desire
for her. Sarah blossomed as night blended into day and day into night, taking
care not to let thoughts of the future intrude on their idyll. For she knew,
and she knew Dominic knew, that this could not go on forever. Decisions had to
be made sometime, reality faced. But not yet. Not yet.

One night, while they lay in their bedroll, Sarah’s head
nestled in the crook of his arm and his head resting on the saddle that served
as a pillow, she ventured to ask him how he had come to commit the crimes for
which he had been transported. His arm went heavy beneath her head, and for a
long moment she thought he wasn’t going to answer. Then he turned his
head to look at her, his eyes deeply blue even in the darkness under the
cloud-covered night sky. She looked gravely back at him, loving the lean hard
cheekbone that was faintly silvered in profile, the long straight nose, the
firm chin.

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want
to,” she said, lifting her hand to trace the outline of his mouth.
Touching him was something she did often. When she thought about it, she could
hardly believe that it was she, Sarah Markham, plain, skinny, old-maid Sarah,
who had never had a serious suitor, who was on such intimate terms with this
gorgeous man. He caught her hand, pressing a soft kiss to the caressing finger,
and smiled at her. His white teeth gleamed briefly at her through the darkness.

“No, I know I don’t have to.” His voice was
husky. “But I want you to know. So you don’t go thinking that
you’ve got yourself mixed up with an inept thief.” He was silent a
moment longer, while Sarah waited patiently for him to tell her what he would.
She could tell that he was debating with himself, probably wondering how much
of his life story to tell her. In the end, she didn’t think he kept
anything back.

“For you to understand how I ended up here—not that
there is anyplace that I’d rather be just at this moment—”
This was said with another quick smile at her; Sarah smiled back, her body clad
only in his too-big shirt as she nestled closer to his naked body beneath the
blanket. “I have to go back a long way, thirty-some-odd years, to be
exact. I was born on March eighth, 1804, to the only daughter of a wealthy
Irish landowner. Her name was Maura Kathleen Gallagher, and though she was only
eighteen at the time she had been married to the earl of Rule for nearly three
years.” Sarah started to ask him to repeat himself, because if she had
understood him correctly he was the son of an
earl,
which was
mind-boggling, but he held up a hand for silence. Sarah obediently subsided,
her eyes huge as she waited for him to continue. “There was a huge
celebration when I, their first child and heir to the earldom, was born. A week
later, with much pomp and circumstance, I was christened John Dominic Frame.
The earl was John Christopher Frame, you see.” Again Sarah opened her
mouth with a question, and again, with a gesture, he silenced her. “The
earl was Irish only in domicile. His breeding, education, and inclination were
English. I grew up in a castle overlooking the dark waters of Lough
Der—the big black castle with the turrets and the battlements I told you
about once; it is called Fonderleigh, and it has been the home of the earls of
Rule since William the Conqueror. It’s a beautiful place. I loved it as a
boy, and I love it still. I had all the privileges and advantages that you
might expect the only son of an earl to have, including a tutor who strictly
oversaw my education whenever he could persuade, bribe, or force me to sit
still long enough, a dancing master”—this elicited a quick smile
from her, which he returned—“a fencing master, a boxing master, a
shooting master, a music master, and an untold number of other masters until I
was in danger of being mastered to death. I saw as much of my mother as most
boys in such circumstances—which is to say, not a lot; they spent a good
part of each year in London—and considerably less of the earl himself. At
that time he was proud of me, I believe; despite all that mastering I still
managed to be something of a hellion, which appealed to him. But he was not an
affectionate man, even to my mother, who, looking back, I can see he loved as
much as his nature would permit him to love anyone. She was very beautiful, my
mother, with coal-black hair and perfect features and eyes as blue as the Irish
sea.” Like you, Sarah thought, but she didn’t say anything; he was
looking away from her, up at the dark canopy of clouds. Sarah watched that
chiseled profile intently. “I adored my mother with the blind adoration
of a child. I was convinced that she was an angel, and the thought that she
could do wrong never even occurred to me. Which was why what happened came as
such a shock to me.

“Three days before my seventh birthday, my mother’s
father died. My mother had been estranged from him for some time—since
before my birth, in fact—but she cried copiously when told of his death.
Then the letter came—a letter written on his deathbed by my staunchly
Catholic grandfather to the earl of Rule. In brief, it said that the old man
could not go to his reward peacefully if he kept his daughter’s sinful
secret any longer: it seemed that when Maura had come to visit him on his
estate in County Cork in the summer of 1803—the earl had been in
London—she had had an affair with an Irish peasant boy whose family lived
in one of the hovels on the estate. When Maura’s father found out, he
immediately shipped the whole family off to the States, but it was too late:
Maura had committed the unforgivable indiscretion and was with child. Me. I,
John Dominic Frame, was not a Frame at all, but the son of that Irish peasant.
After reading that, the earl sent for my mother, taxed her with it, and she
collapsed in tears, admitting everything, and begging his forgiveness on her
knees.

“Well, he forgave her, all right, as far as I know—at
least she remained his wife until her death—but I, as the living symbol
of her betrayal, became the focus of his hatred. The first inkling I had that
change was in the wind was when he called me into his study, shut the door,
and, in the iciest voice I have ever heard to this day, informed me that I was
never again to call him Papa because I was not his son, but a nameless bastard
who had been foisted on him by deception. I was stunned of course, and
frightened. Even now I can remember the suffocating fear I felt when he told me
that he and my mother were removing at once to London, never to return. I was
to remain behind at Fonderleigh—I should be grateful for that, he said;
it was only his Christian charity that kept him from throwing me out among the
peasants who were my real kin to make my own way. Neither he nor my mother ever
wanted to set eyes on me again as long as I lived. When he dismissed me, after
many more scathing remarks about my person and ancestry, I was
sobbing—something that I, a very manly seven-year-old, rarely did. I ran
at once to my mother, who held me to her and cried and told me that she was
powerless to aid me. And I suppose she was, unless she had a mind to jeopardize
her own position. In any event, the very next day they left for London.
Bewildered and scared to death, I remained behind at Fonderleigh; but
everything had changed. I was no longer the earl’s son, but a charity
case, though no one other than those immediately concerned knew it. I believe
the earl was too proud to acknowledge that his wife had betrayed him and that
his son and heir was not his own flesh. At any rate, the servants and neighbors
still regarded me as the earl’s son; only I knew differently. I felt like
an interloper. . . .

“My mother and the earl never returned, never wrote or sent
gifts or messages at Christmas or birthdays. I, who had been hopelessly
spoiled, was now abandoned. I will pass over the next few years except to say I
was very lonely and very bitter. It galled me to no end to know that the roof
over my head, the bed I slept in, the clothes I wore, the very food I ate, were
grudgingly provided by a man who hated me. I grew to loathe the very idea of
being beholden to anyone at all, and I still do. . . . Finally, on my sixteenth
birthday, I could stand it no longer. I left Fonderleigh. Like the idealistic
youth I was, I went immediately to see my mother. She and the earl lived in a
fashionable London townhouse, and I arrived on their doorstep at the height of
the season. Fortunately for her, the earl was out when I arrived, shy and
gangling as most boys are at that age; it was fortunate for me too, I suppose,
because I considered myself very much a man and had half-formed the notion of
drawing the earl’s cork for him in defense of my mother’s honor. He
likely would have killed me on the spot. My mother was horrified to see me,
though she hid it rather well, and quickly hustled me out of the house and into
a lodgings in an out-of-the-way part of town. She made protestations of love
but said she couldn’t stay, as she and the earl were giving a dinner that
night, but she would try to come by and see me again before I went home to
Fonderleigh. Then she pressed a pound note in my hand and told me to buy myself
a gift, and left.

“I tore the note up as soon as she had gone, and left
myself, making my way to the waterfront where I signed on as crew for a
merchantman leaving the next morning for Spain and then Africa. Luckily for me,
three of their crew had jumped ship the day before—I was too naïve
to realize what this said about the ship and her captain—or they would
never have taken me on. I was a very bad sailor, who knew nothing about ships
or the sea. I spent the voyage—a hellish trip, though not as bad as some
I’ve had since—green with seasickness and disillusionment. I had
idolized my mother, you see, and convinced myself that she had been forced to
acquiesce to what had been done to me, that once she saw me again she would run
away from my father and take me with her—you know, the sort of thing any
adolescent might dream. She had shattered my illusions in about twenty minutes
flat, and I thought I was nursing a broken heart. It took me a while to learn
that hearts are sturdier than most people give them credit for being. . . .
Anyway, by the time we reached Africa I was convinced that I was not a seaman.
But there was still the return voyage.