Eloisa James (15 page)

He didn’t say anything, just nodded, but his voice lost a bit of its impassiveness. Her letter had been one sheet; his was five sheets.

The next day he worked with Daedalus all morning and then, in the afternoon, he wrote a letter to Mr. Heath’s wife and children. After that, he found Grace’s next letter, and answered it. His was more than eight pages long, and much of it was difficult to hear. Grace cried, because Colin did not (but should, in her opinion).

The next night he did, though. Just a tear, but she thought it was a priceless tear. He told her, in that letter, what it was like to kill someone. The man had jerked upward as the bullet hit him, and then collapsed, falling to the ground, one leg twisted underneath him, staring at the sky. He had written about what it was like to know that someone—some mother’s son, no matter how despicable—was dead by your own hand.

And he wrote about the ordinary moments when he would think he saw the man walking across the deck, shoulders hunched, walking somewhere fast, as if he had a place to be. A person to meet.

That night Colin didn’t dream of blood.

A fortnight or so later, Grace woke in the night and propped herself on an elbow, looking at Colin’s face by moonlight. It was shadowed and hollowed by all that had happened to him.

As she watched, a smile shaped his lips. “Come here,” he murmured, pulling her down onto his chest.

The letters were helping, and so was she; she knew that truth deep in her bones. Death stood on one side, and she on the other. Every time they made love, every morning he spent taming Daedalus, every afternoon he spent writing, every evening when he read aloud another letter, every time he teased her or asked her a question about one of her paintings, she dragged him farther onto her side.

The side with life in it, not death.

She came out of that kiss a little breathless. Sometimes they just looked at each other and that was all it took. He would roll on top of her.

This night they didn’t say a word, and yet he didn’t tuck her underneath him. Instead, he lifted her so that she was poised above him. She fumbled, learning this new way of making love, thinking about the fact that he was not protecting her. Not afraid for her.

Colin thought about the same thing, though neither felt the need to say it aloud. He felt free to allow the person he loved most in the world to sit on him, pale, lovely breasts glazed by moonlight, her head thrown back.

He wasn’t afraid.

Grace was his, and life was good.

And he wasn’t afraid.

The Epilogue Before the Epilogue

“I
’ve had a letter from my mother,” Grace called, walking into the stables. But she found her voice echoing through an empty building that smelled of horses and ripe hay. She stood for a few moments, mentally cataloguing the way peachy rose hawthorn leaves, blown inside by the wind, lay mingled with tobacco-brown hay thrown onto the dirt floor.

Finally she shook herself free of the spell and walked onward through the stables, letter in hand. The big back doors were open, and she found her husband—after ten days, she still loved the word—walking the poor battered horse he’d rescued around the corral.

The horse looked better. And Colin looked much better: clear-eyed, somehow taller, broader, more himself. The very sight of him sent a purr of desire through her. It was the way his worn breeches shaped a muscled behind and the way his body was precise and primitive at the same time, muscles lean, proportioned . . . beautiful. Rather unwillingly she felt the purr flare into something deeper, a kind of ache to be one with him again.

It was absurd. He’d woken her so early that the light had washed over their skin with a sheen of pearl, not yet yellow, not yet pink.

Colin rounded the corner of the corral, turning toward her, and she realized he was talking to the horse in a steady stream of conversation. He caught sight of her and his eyes lit up.

Then Grace had one of those hiccupping moments when the world comes near to stopping on its axis. He loved her. Colin Barry loved
her.
The grin that spread across her face was huge and sloppy and full of joy.

Colin moved closer, with the horse keeping pace, dropped the reins over the fencepost, and said, “Bloody hell, you must have read my mind, darling. I’ve been thinking about nothing but you for the last hour.” He pulled her to him, kissing her impatiently, his tongue demanding entry, his arms hard around her. She dropped her mother’s letter to the ground and wound her arms around his neck. The fence was a barrier between them, but it didn’t matter. He plundered her senses with hardly a touch.

“You smell like horse,” she said a moment later, catching her breath. “And leather.”

He laughed. “No, that’s Daedalus.”

Grace hardly heard him. She was dazed by his kiss, her whole body longing to be with him again. This feeling wasn’t ladylike. Particularly because he wasn’t as possessed by desire as she was, not at this exact moment. In fact, he was laughing because the horse had come up just behind him and was leaning his chin on Colin’s shoulder.

“He’s jealous,” Colin said, the sentence warm with happiness.

Grace didn’t care about Daedalus. She ran her hands into her husband’s curls and met his eyes, making up her mind to be vulnerable before him. Be unladylike.

“Colin,” she said. It wasn’t a question. Her voice was shimmering with lust—that was the word for it—lust for her gorgeous young husband who had survived the wars, who was home with his sight and his limbs and his body intact.

An answering smile grew in his eyes and her breath caught in her throat, escaping in a kind of pant, but even then she wasn’t embarrassed. She couldn’t be. Not with Colin.

“Yes,” he whispered, bending his head and suddenly, shockingly, nipping her ear. She shivered all over with excitement. “I shall always tup my wife wherever she wants, Grace.
Whenever
she wants.”

And then he was vaulting over the railing and picking her up, kissing her at the same time. They made it inside the stable, but no farther. Mr. Barry, lately of His Majesty’s Navy, pulled up his wife’s skirts and made love to her against the stable wall, with no more finesse than any of God’s creatures.

It was shocking, forceful, abandoned . . . disgraceful.

Wonderful.

Afterward, they were both sweaty and panting. Grace’s hair was hanging about her shoulders and she could feel that her lips were swollen, just as she could feel that her knees were weak.

“We’re mad,” she said with conviction, the words choppy because her breathing was still uneven.

Colin turned around and put his back against the wall, bringing her with him, his arms tight around her waist. “I’d rather be mad with you than sane in the house of a king.”

For a few moments, Grace just lay against his chest, limp and spent, allowing his strength to hold her up.

“Please come to the stables every day, oh my wife,” he said, dropping a kiss on the top of her head.

“I didn’t come for
that
,” she said, though inside she knew that she had come for precisely that. “My mother” —she pulled her head upright—“my mother’s letter!”

After shaking out her skirts and trying fruitlessly to re-pin her hair, they walked back outside. The letter was still there, but Daedalus was standing on it as he waited patiently for Colin to re-emerge from the stable.

“What does he want?” Grace asked, when a low whicker broke from the horse as he caught sight of them.

“Affection,” Colin said, walking over to give Daedalus a rub on his forehead before wrapping his arm around the horse’s neck in a rough hug. “Love. Nothing more than that which all of us poor creatures long for.”

“He’s stepping on my mother’s letter,” she pointed out.

Colin glanced down. “Ripped in half. What did she say?”

“They’re all coming tomorrow.”

“All
?”

Grace nodded. “All. She said she’s held off your parents—and my father—as long as humanly possible. They are longing to see for themselves that your eyes are mended.”

“They know that.” Colin laughed. “They just want to see the two of us together. Actually, I’m amazed that your father hasn’t broken down the front door and demanded that I explain my presumption in marrying his daughter.”

“Never
underestimate my mother,” Grace said serenely. “And besides, Father loves you. I’m sure he’s delighted.”

“Son-in-law to the Duke of Ashbrook,” Colin said, leading Daedalus back into the stables. “It has a rather grand ring, doesn’t it?”

Grace shrugged and then waved her hand in front of her face. “It’s so hot.”

“It’s not hot by the lake,” Colin said, his voice dropping an octave. “I have a fancy to go swimming. Without clothing.” He swung the gate to Daedalus’s stall shut.

“Colin!” The truth was that they had shed their clothing to go swimming . . . but only after dark.

“It’s our last day alone,” he said, grabbing both her hands. “Tomorrow it will all be different, Grace. Family, and servants, and the rest of it.”

“We mustn’t!”

“We
must
.”

And then she was flying down the hill toward the lake, pulled forward by a long-legged man bellowing with laughter.

In the course of her life Grace painted three images of a man running away from the viewer, his head turned back, his face giddy with desire and love.

One of those paintings was bought within a moment of its viewing by a very rich American who spent a good chunk of his fortune to bring it home in triumph to Astor Place. A second was bought by a scion of the royal family (and later sold at a 200% profit). The third was never offered for sale but hung in Mrs. Colin Barry’s bedroom all the days of her life.

During those many years, she only met one person who didn’t think the painting was a masterpiece. “I don’t care for it,” Miss Portia Barry said dubiously, at the grand age of age eight. “
I’ve
never seen Papa with that expression.”

Her mother just laughed.

T
he family descended the next afternoon in a very grand carriage holding two ex-pirates and their ladies, followed by six more carriages with children and nannies and personal servants and not-so-personal servants. That was the end of the quiet house, and with one rueful look, Colin told Grace that there would be no more making love in the sitting room, or the kitchen, or wherever took their fancy.

Grace didn’t have time to do more than smile back, because she was swept away to the ladies’ sitting room by her mother, the Duchess of Ashbrook, and Colin’s mother, Lady Barry.

“Tell us everything!” the duchess demanded, plumping down on a small sofa and looking at her expectantly. Lady Barry sat down right beside her. Their eyes were shining and they looked like children about to see a pantomime.

Grace opened her mouth, but Lady Barry interrupted. “Before you say a word, I just want to say how grateful I am. Colin—” Grace realized that the lady’s eyes were shining with tears, not anticipation. She swallowed and continued. “—I could see with just a glance that Colin is very nearly himself again, and I know it is all your doing, Grace, darling. You saved him, our brave, wonderful boy.”

“He’s no boy,” the duchess said, patting Lady Barry’s hand. “He’s a
man
.” She twinkled at Grace. “And I, for one, am positively dying of curiosity. Oh, not for the precise details,” she added, “but the general gist?”

“Well, we were in the carriage,” Grace said, stumbling a bit.

“I think it was lovely the way you offered to escort him to the country when your mother couldn’t,” Lady Barry put in. “We will
never
be able to express our gratitude enough. Never.”

“You did give Grace your son,” the duchess said. “I’m sure she finds that thanks enough. But do tell us! What happened in the carriage? Colin didn’t appear to be even slightly interested in matrimony during the brief time I saw him at our house . . . and next thing I know we had that letter announcing your marriage!”

Grace could feel herself blushing. “He kissed me,” she said awkwardly.

“Of course he did,” Colin’s mother said, nodding. She turned to the duchess. “I know our foolish husbands got into a tangle worrying about Colin’s infatuation with Lily, Theo, but that was never going to happen. Colin loves Grace and he always has.”

“I—that’s what he says,” Grace confirmed.

Her mother was beaming madly. “It was your letters! How could he resist you? Didn’t I say so? I’ve always known that the two of you would be together,” she cried.

Grace smiled at her, and her mother opened her arms. “Come here, you wonderful girl. I’m so happy that—”

The door burst open and two former pirates surged in. “How dare you can keep my daughter away from me,” the duke bellowed.

Grace gave her mother a last squeeze and ran to her father’s arms. “Papa.”

He pulled back and looked her in the eyes. “Everything’s well? That boy is treating you like a princess? Because I’ll have his hide if he isn’t.”

“Of course he is,” Lord Barry interrupted. “My son is well aware that he’s the luckiest man on the seven seas.”

Grace turned to smile at her new father-in-law, and he pulled her into his arms. “You saved our boy, Grace,” he said, his voice fervent. “He’s happy. I haven’t seen him happy in years. Not in years.”

And then Colin walked in the door and Grace flew to him like a bird to her nest. She smiled at their four parents from the circle of his arms.

The duke had plumped down beside his wife and was whispering something in her ear. Lord Barry had seized his wife from behind and was resting his chin on the top of her head. “I hope you never have to experience what we’ve been through, James,” he said, shooting a look at his cousin and closest friend.

“I know it’s been hell,” the duke said.

“Poppy and I owe you a world of thanks, Grace,” Lord Barry said.

“Phoebe,” his wife corrected him, poking him in the ribs with her elbow. But she was nodding, too. “I was just telling Grace that we cannot adequately express our gratitude.”

Grace learned against Colin, who was silently watching the lively chatter. That was characteristic of him, actually. And then she realized that they were a pair, a silent, observant couple.

Still, in the circle of his arm, she wasn’t a lonely observer. She wasn’t a wallflower, anymore. She could be herself rather than wishing she was more vivacious, more full of chatter, more like Lily.

“Where
is
Lily?” she asked. Her sister would never have stayed away while the adults congregated.

“Well, that’s a story in itself!” her mother said, laughing. “She made me swear not to tell you.”

“Mother!”

“Do you remember how you absolutely refused to debut until Lily was old enough to debut with you?”

Grace nodded.

“I do believe that she feels the same way about you . . . except the subject is marriage rather than dance floors.”

Her father broke in, his face alight with mischief. “Here’s a hint. There’s only one man in London who has never shown the faintest interest in your sister . . . so who do you think she set her heart on?”

“James!” the duchess said, as Grace began to laugh.

“What are they talking about?” Colin asked.

“I always said that I would only marry a man who didn’t fall in love with Lily first,” she said, giggling helplessly.

Then she glanced up and saw her husband’s face. He whisked her out of the sitting room door so quickly that she gasped, twirled her around so that her back was against the wall, and looked down at her, anguish in his eyes.

“Colin, I didn’t mean—”

“I love you,” he said fiercely. “And I did fall in love with you first, Grace, because I fell in love with you when you were only twelve years old, and then again when you turned sixteen, by the lake. Do you remember that afternoon? You were painting and I came to find you.”

She nodded. A lock of hair had fallen over his forehead and he looked so beautiful that she ached.

“I almost—I almost did something unconscionable then. I nearly kissed you, even knowing that I was a damaged man who likely wouldn’t return from war. After that I tried to stay away from you.” He looked at her sternly, as if he expected her to burst into tears.

But she didn’t plan to cry about this particular subject again. Colin loved her; she knew it with every bone in her body. He was hers.

Grace rose on her toes and kissed him softly. “I don’t want John; I never truly did. He was there, and I thought you didn’t want me. Lily can have him, with my blessings.”

“I did want you.” But whatever else he might have said was lost because Grace was kissing him.