Midnight Star (22 page)

“You’re just saying that because you have to,” she said, her voice gruff.

“How true. Your body now—”

She poked him in the stomach. Obligingly he grunted and pulled her tightly into his arms again. “I want to make love to you, sweetheart. Actually, I’ve thought of little else all evening. I was a complete bore. Now, let me tell you what I’m going to do to you.” He whispered his quite explicit plans into her ear.

She felt her heart rate increase, felt the strange, utterly swamping sensations build in her body, felt her mind grow languid.

“I don’t want to feel like this,” she muttered,
her voice sounding so worried that he wanted to laugh.

“I know, but you will. Come, love, I want you naked.”

By the time they reached their bedroom, Chauncey had regained something of a hold on herself. She shivered as she knelt in front of the hearth and built up the fire. Despite her half-dozen petticoats and her heavy burgundy velvet gown, she could feel his hands stroking her, feel his tongue curling . . . Stop it, you witless idiot!

Her breasts were heaving slightly when she finally rose. He was standing in the middle of the room watching her, stripped down to his black trousers. The firelight cast enticing shadows on his chest downward to his flat belly, and her eyes were drawn to him like a moth to a flame.

“I don’t know about all this, Delaney,” she began, feeling like a complete and abject fool. She jerked her eyes away and looked up at the ceiling. “I am mentally negligible,” she said.

He laughed, and she watched unwillingly the play of muscles over his stomach. His eyes never left her face as he pulled off his trousers. He knew she was studying his body, and the intense look on her face pleased him. He felt himself becoming aroused. “Come, love, it’s my turn to drink my fill of you.”

Her gown and piles of petticoats lay on the carpet in but a few minutes. He kissed her lips lightly as he pulled down the straps of her satin chemise. “Ah,” he said, pulling her against him, “there can be nothing this side of heaven like a soft woman.”

“Just any woman?”

She could feel him smiling at her sharp tone as he nibbled on her throat. She felt herself easing, her body responding quickly to his caressing hands, his mouth, the pressure of his member against her belly. She sighed, standing on her tiptoes to fit herself better against him. Suddenly he stilled. “Damn.” He pulled away from her and gave her a rueful look. “I did promise, Chauncey.”

She looked at him, a bit dazed. “What?”

“Children. You don’t wish to become pregnant too quickly.”

“Oh,” she said. “Do you mean that you won’t—”

“Never that,” he said with sincere conviction. “Stay put a moment, love, and I’ll fetch the necessary items.”

When he showed her the sponge and the liquid a few moments later, she said blankly, “I’m supposed to bathe with this? Drink it?”

“Well, not really. Actually, the liquid goes on the sponge and the sponge goes deep inside you.”

She felt embarrassed now standing in the middle of their bedroom without a stitch of clothing on, staring at the stupid sponge. “I am to do what?” she gasped, backing away several steps.

He smiled at her incredulous tone. “First of all, don’t put on a dressing gown, it’s the last thing we need. We need to have . . . easy access, so to speak. Come lie down and I’ll show you what to do.”

She scampered to the bed and immediately pulled the cover over herself. She stared up at him wide-eyed, watching as he poured the clear liquid over the sponge. “It’s primarily vinegar,”
he said when she sniffed. “Love, please don’t look at me as if I’m going to do reprehensible things to you.” He set the sponge on the night table and sat down beside her. “It won’t be bad, you’ll see. You’ll not be able to feel it”—he smiled wickedly—“and neither will I.” Slowly he pulled the cover away. “Onto your back, Chauncey.”

“I don’t want to,” she said in a thin voice, her eyes glued to the sponge.

“All right, we’ll wait awhile.” He eased down beside her and drew her now stiff body against him. “Now, what’s all this? There’s no reason for you to be so embarrassed. I am your husband, you know.”

His thoughts, for the most part, remained with the sponge as he kissed her and stroked her. When his hand drifted to her belly, he felt her stiffen, not with fear, but with anticipation, and he smiled. He teased her until she clutched her hand about his neck and forced his face down to hers. Her hips arched upward and he felt her shudder when his fingers found her and began to move sensuously over her.

Her soft flesh swelled under his fingers, growing warm and moist. “Ah,” he whispered into her mouth. “That is so very nice, Chauncey.”

She whimpered, pressing against his hand, her body squirming to meet his. He nearly consigned the sponge to limbo.

He moved away from her and slowly eased her thighs apart. “You are so lovely,” he said, “so very lovely, and ready for me.” He quickly grabbed the damned sponge. “Don’t move now, love.”

Chauncey shuddered with need when she felt him touching her. But the cold sponge slipping
inside her made her jerk upright. “Shush,” he said, concentrating on the task. “There now”—he smiled at her—“that wasn’t too bad, was it? Now, back to the business at hand.”

His mouth replaced his fingers and within moments Chauncey felt as if she were going to scream with the pleasure of it. He took her to the very edge, then quickly reared over her and buried himself deep in her body.

Her cries he caught in his mouth. As her trembling eased, she stared up at his face and watched as his climax overtook him. She felt an odd surge of joy at the intense pleasure she had brought him. When he collapsed on top of her, she held him close, small quivers of pleasure still washing through her.

“Del,” she cried out suddenly, “I cannot . . . that is, I don’t . . .”

“What, sweetheart?”

“Nothing,” she said, biting down on her tongue. Dear God, she’d almost blurted out everything! She felt utter misery, and burst into tears.

Almost, he thought, almost she told me. Very gently he pressed her, “Come, love, what is it you cannot or don’t want to do?”

Chauncey buried her face into his chest. “Nothing,” she sobbed. “Nothing. I told you nothing, dammit!”

“Very well,” he said, holding his frustration in check. “It’s time to sleep now, Chauncey.” He pulled away from her, balanced himself on his elbow, and gently wiped the tears away with his fingers.

“You know,” he said, staring intently down
into her face, “most things are easier to bear if they’re shared.” She merely stared at him, her anguish clear in her eyes, and he wanted to shake her until she spoke the truth to him. But he didn’t. Time, he thought. Whatever it is will just take more time.

He rose from the bed and doused the lamps.

He stood over her a moment, listening to her sniffing down her tears. “The sponge must stay inside you until tomorrow morning,” he said matter-of-factly.

Agatha Newton smiled toward her hostess. “Please tell Lin that her dinner was excellent. “I doubt I can move!”

“Yes, indeed,” Horace Newton said, wiping his mouth on his napkin and folding it neatly beside his very empty plate. “If the old girl doubts she can move, I dare swear I’ll be sitting here three days from now!”

“It wasn’t exactly what you were expecting, I’ll wager,” Chauncey said, grinning. “Yorkshire pudding, roast beef, and boiled potatoes.”

“With just a touch of ginger and soy sauce,” Delaney said. “Lin assured us that it was necessary to make the foreign fare edible.”

Chauncey glanced toward the tall clock in the corner. “Oh dear, we must be on our way. I’m certain the gentlemen don’t want to miss a moment of Lola Montez’ performance!”

“Not even an instant,” Delaney agreed. “Ah, the Spider Dance! It boggles the imagination.”

“I wonder if she’d let me into her web,” Horace said, wriggling his thick gray brows provocatively at his wife.

“You’re a lecherous old satyr!” Agatha said as she rose from her chair.

They traveled in the Newtons’ closed carriage to the American Theater. It was Chauncey’s first venture from the house since their return to San Francisco two days before. She knew Delaney carried a derringer, for she’d seen it. As for her own, it was safe inside her reticule.

“I heard that folk had to spend up to sixty dollars a ticket,” Horace said as they wended their way through the hectic crowd inside the two-story brick theater. There were few women in the audience, Chauncey saw as Delaney assisted her into their box, and many of them were as garishly gowned as the interior furnishings of the theater. The men were that unusual mixture found, Chauncey guessed, only in San Francisco: elegantly dressed gentlemen just as she’d seen in St. James in London, side by side with flannel-trousered men in rough work shirts who looked as if they’d just come in from the goldfields. There was much good-natured jesting and a certain amount of rowdiness. Their box, procured, Delaney had told her, from Sam Brannan, who’d already been seen escorting Lola Montez, held but four crimson-velvet-colvered chairs. Chauncey’s gown covered Delaney’s legs.

Chauncey found herself again marveling at the audience. “A true democracy,” she said to Delaney.

“You’re right,” he agreed, grasping her gloved
hand in his and drawing it on his lap. “You never know if the rough-looking fellow on your right might be carrying a fortune in gold. Indeed, tomorrow he could buy me out.”

“Del, who is that woman in that box over there? The one in the yellow velvet gown who is smiling toward us? She looks familiar. Oh, she just waved at you.”

Delaney met Marie’s eyes and nodded in greeting. He felt a tinge of color on his cheeks but forced himself to shrug at his wife’s question. “Just a . . . lady, my dear.”

Just a lady my foot! It was his French mistress, Marie, she realized in that moment. Chauncey could see the intimate gleam in Marie’s lovely dark eyes from twenty feet away. She felt a strange churning anger and a feeling of absolute inferiority. Marie was so bloody gorgeous!

“I know who she is,” she said in a tight voice. “After all, I did see you with her before.” She wanted to box his ears, yell like a fishwife, but the moment was lost: the crimson curtains parted on the stage and Lola Montez appeared. Anything Chauncey could have said would have been lost in the thundering applause, loud whistles, and calls from the men in the audience.

Lola Montez wasn’t classically beautiful, Chauncey decided, but she exuded a raw kind of sensuality that even Delaney wasn’t immune to, for he sat slightly forward in his seat. She was tall, voluptuously built, and her costume was nothing more than judiciously placed gauzy veils. Her eyes were snapping, vividly alive, appearing nearly black, and her thick black hair was wound in elaborate
coils about her head in a decidedly Spanish fashion.

Oh well, Chauncey told herself, best to simply sit back and enjoy it. When Lola spoke, it was in charmingly lisped English. The men roared after every utterance she made.

Delaney whispered to Chauncey, “Lord, all she has to do it simply stand there! But I do believe, my dear, that her charms are a bit overripe for my taste.”

Chauncey gave him an incredulous look. “I think Horace is beginning to perspire,” she said.

The Spanish dancer more than made up for her lack of acting ability when at last she reappeared onstage to perform her famous Spider Dance. Chauncey heard her own small gasp of shock. She was wearing pratically nothing. During her pantomime, she shook whalebone spiders from her skimpy costume and stamped on them. The crowd went wild.

“You are enjoying yourself a great deal too much,” Chauncey hissed in Delaney’s ear. “That smile of yours is so vacuous, you’d be confined in Bedlam if you were in England.”

He gave her a wolfish grin. “My body isn’t feeling at all vacuous.”

“Cad!” she said, poking him in the ribs. “Such a thing would never be allowed in England!”

“Don’t bet on it, sweetheart.”

When her performance was finished, Lola Montez was deluged with flowers, and to Chauncey’s wide-eyed surprise, gold nuggets were tossed onto the stage at her feet.

“I wonder,” Horace said, “how much gold she’ll be depositing in your bank tomorrow, Del.”

“The vault will be bulging,” Agatha said.

“Actually, love,” Delaney whispered in Chauncey’s ear as Lola Montez took her tenth curtain call, “I was just imagining you wearing that bit of nothing and seducing me with well-placed whalebone.”

“Ah, look,” Horace said, saving Chauncey from making a suitable retort, “there’s Pat Hull. I hear he’s head-over-toes in love with Lola, and she isn’t particularly uninterested in him.”

“Pat who?” Chauncey asked. But she didn’t hear his reply, for her eyes suddenly lit on a man who was looking directly at her from his slouched position in a dim corner of the theater. It was Hoolihan, the sailor aboard the
Scarlet Queen.
The moment she recognized him he quickly turned away, melting into a crowd of still-stomping and applauding men. She felt a
frisson
go through her body, raising gooseflesh on her arms. I’m becoming a dithering hysteric again, she tried to tell herself, but the feeling remained.

She was markedly quietly during the carriage ride home. For the life of her, she couldn’t remember what she’d said to the Newtons.

“All right, Chauncey, what is it?” Delaney asked the moment they walked into the drawing room.

She stripped off her long gloves and tossed them onto a chair back. “I’m probably seeing ghosts and imagining things—”

He interrupted her with a sharp slash of his hand. “Cut the bull, Chauncey. What made you withdraw into yourself?”

“All right,” she said on a sigh. “Do you
remember Captain O’Mally’s new man—Mr. Hoolihan, I believe his name was?”

“Yes.”

“I saw him at the theater. He was staring at me. When he realized that I saw him too, he made off. Shouldn’t he be on board the
Scarlet Queen?”

“Why the hell didn’t you tell me immediately?” He strode to her and grasped her shoulders, shaking her slightly.

“I thought I was just being . . . crazy.” Her voice broke. “I
felt
something, Del. Something frightful. I . . . I can’t explain it.” She raised wide uncertain eyes to his face. “If he didn’t mean anything, why did he act so furtive?”

“All right,” he said, his voice cool, his control back. “You’re completely safe here.” He began rubbing her arms, soothing her, bringing her warmth. “Do you recall Captain O’Mally telling us that Hoolihan was quite a new man?”

“I’m not sure.”

She shivered and he pulled her against him. “No more of that. Tomorrow I’ll find out soon enough just who this Hoolihan is and if he’s still in my employ. If he is the one responsible for all this, I’ll have him taken care of.”

She nodded, mute, against his shoulder.
I am trusting him to protect me. I want him to protect me.

“You know,” Delaney said over her head, “I think I remember that Hoolihan had an odd accent. English perhaps?”

“English,” she repeated, leaning back against his arms and raising her eyes to his. “Oh no! It makes no sense, Del. There is no one in England who would despise me enough to—”

“It does make all sorts of sense, unfortunately, and you know it. Don’t forget what happened in Plymouth. Incidentally, I saw the letter you had Lucas post yesterday to your aunt and uncle in England.”

“Yes, I wrote to tell them that I was once again dreadfully poor and begged them to take me in.” She smiled crookedly at his admiring grin. “It was either that or tell them that I was married. I thought they’d be more pleased to hear the former.”

“Well done, my girl. Well done indeed. If money is at the root of all this, you can believe that your fall from fortune will quickly get around.”

Her eyes fell. But it wasn’t money, she was certain of it. It was another
feeling.
Just who wanted her removed and why was still a damnably elusive mystery.

“No,” Delaney said, easily reading her thoughts from her shifting expressions, “I don’t believe it has anything to do with money either.” He added in some surprise, “You really don’t have any idea, do you?”

“No, I don’t. I told you I didn’t.”

He saw fear and something else he couldn’t fathom in her eyes. Guilt? He shook his head. It made no sense. But then again, he thought, her lack of trust in him made no sense either. “It’s all right, love,” he said gently. “Why don’t we go upstairs now and you can seduce me with whalebone.”

Her fear made her as wildly abandoned as she’d been aboard the
Scarlet Queen.
I’ve been used, he thought when at last he held her in his arms and she slept. Used to still her fear and make her
forget for at least a little while. She awoke in the middle of the night, fighting free of Delaney’s arms and the heavy covers. She cried out once, feeling the cold fathomless waters closing over her head, drawing her down.

“Oh, God,” she whispered as he held her, rocking her against his warm body. “Please, Del, make it stop!”

He did. She responded feverishly and he took her quickly, almost roughly. He felt a stab of guilt until he felt her body tense beneath him and felt consuming cries of pleasure against his shoulder.

This has got to stop, he told himself, angry at her even as he took his own release.

“Hoolihan jumped ship the day after we left the
Scarlet Queen,”
Delaney said matter-of-factly the following evening over dinner. “I hired six men today to find him.”

The tasty shredded pork turned to ashes in Chauncey’s mouth. She slowly, very precisely laid down her fork.

“Luckily,” he continued, “I found one of his boat mates and got an excellent description. I even had a sketch made of him. If he is still hanging about San Francisco, I’ll have him, and quite soon.”

Still, she simply looked at him.

“Also, if you happen to see a giant of a man with blond hair outside the house, he’s a Swede by the name of Olaf. I’ve hired him to share duties with Lucas.”

“You are going to a lot of trouble for me,” she said finally. “Thank you, Del.”

His fork fell with a clatter onto his plate. “You’re my wife, damn you, Chauncey! Just what the hell did you think I’d do? Ignore the situation? Issue an invitation to this scum asking him to come and take you off my hands?”

She stared at him helplessly, her face devoid of color. His anger startled her, for it was so unlike him. But she understood it. She could think of nothing to say.

He willed her to speak to him, to trust him, but she lowered her eyes and stared at her plate.

He tossed his napkin on the table and scraped back his chair. “You’re driving me crazy. I’ll see you later.”

He strode from the dining room without a backward glance.

A picture of Marie’s intimate smile at Delaney flashed suddenly through her mind, and she called out, her voice shrill, “Where are you going?”

He said curtly over his shoulder, “Out.”

“Don’t you dare go to that woman!” she yelled at him, jumping up from her chair.

He stopped cold at the jealous fury in her voice. “Why the hell not?” he asked softly, turning to face her. “After all, my dear, I let you use me last night—twice, as a matter of fact. Why shouldn’t I go use her?”

She cringed at the memory of her wild response to him. Had she really used him? Chauncey was stunned by her own reaction. “You . . . you wouldn’t, you can’t—”

“My dear wife,” he said very slowly and very calmly, “I wouldn’t have married you, despite your relentless and elaborate pursuit, if I’d only wanted sex from you. God knows, it requires
quite a bit of ingenuity and persistence just to make you willing. Except, of course, when you want a man’s body to keep your nightmares at bay. You’re entirely selfish, Chauncey, in bed and out of it. If you decide you want to give me more, let me know. Good night, madam.”

And he was gone.

“I hate you!” she shouted after him, but the words came out as a broken whisper. “At least I’m not a swindler and a thief!”

Chauncey had no idea that she even possessed such wild, uncontrollable emotions, the gamut of which she had totally exhausted throughout the long night. She was drained, utterly limp and listless the following day. She wandered about the house like a ghost, not really caring, not really thinking about anything at all. She ignored Mary’s questioning looks and sent Lin’s breakfast back to the kitchen untouched.