Rapture in His Arms (25 page)

“Oh, thank you! I like it so much!” Benjamin kissed Jillian’s cheek and grabbed Donovan’s strong hand. “Come see my kitty. She had a litter yesterday.”

“Benjamin!” Tyler’s sharp voice cut through the air, and the child whirled around like a tempest at the sound. Tyler wore a smile on his face, but the warmth didn’t light his eyes as he extended a hand and a greeting to Donovan and Jillian. “I forbade you to leave the house without telling me,” Tyler admonished the child in a low, restrained voice. “Anything could happen to you outside, son.”

“Indians?” Benjamin asked with wide, fearful eyes.

“Yes.”

“Come inside with me, Auntie,” the child begged, clinging tightly to her.

“We shall all go inside,” returned Jillian with a soft smile.

“And we’ll see your kittens later,” put in Donovan who good-naturedly ruffled the boy’s pale hair.

The child seemed appeased, and skipped alongside Jillian and Donovan. “I do worry about the boy,” confessed Tyler to Jillian a few minutes later when they sat in the parlor and a servant poured them a cool cup of lemonade. Donovan was sitting beside Benjamin on the floor while the child played with the toy horse. “Benjamin is so very lonely without his mother.”

“I promise to visit more often.” Jillian smiled at the wonderful picture Donovan and Benjamin made together. The boy got along quite well with Donovan who was urged by Benjamin to get on his hands and knees so Benjamin could ride “the horsey.”

Tyler shot a look of disapproval at the pair but hid it before Jillian noticed. Never would he make a spectacle of himself as Donovan Shay was doing, not even for his own son. But he noticed Jillian’s enraptured expression and silently groaned. He could tell that she found the scene endearing. Jealousy rushed through Tyler and thumped at his temples. He could also tell that she was in love with her Irish buffoon of a husband. “Please do visit more often.” Tyler deliberately drew her attention from Donovan and the child to smile ingratiatingly at her. He grasped her hand. “’Tis so nice to have a woman around the house again, especially one as lovely as you.”

Jillian returned Tyler’s smile, not so much because she had really heard what he’d said, but because she was so very touched by Donovan and Benjamin. One day, he might play with their own children in such a fashion, she thought. Her heart beat hard just to imagine the picture in her mind. With a dreamy expression on her face, she wondered what their children would look like. Would their hair be the same strawberry gold as their father’s, or a chestnut color like hers? And what of their eyes, brown or hazel? Just to imagine her future children filled her with excitement. Perhaps she was already carrying Donovan’s child.

“Tell me, Shay, what are your thoughts on the situation in Jamestown?” Tyler pointedly asked.

Donovan looked up from his position on the floor and then gently turned to pull Benjamin from his back. He placed the child beside him, and stood up. Folding his hands behind him, Donovan suspiciously surveyed Tyler. “Why should I have any thoughts?”

Tyler’s mouth dropped open. “Because our government is in the control of a tyrant!”

Donovan shrugged. “Perhaps the true tyrant has already been deposed.” He noted that Jillian winced at his remark.

“You spout treason, sir!”

“Well, I suppose that depends on who’s doin’ the talkin’. If I was with Mr. Bacon, he’d take a different view.”

“Governor Berkeley is attempting to raise an army and retake Jamestown. Will you consider joining him or Mr. Bacon?”

Donovan didn’t miss Tyler’s deceptively composed demeanor. Only seconds ago, the man appeared eager to brand him a traitor, but now, he had somehow pulled back and kept his face a blank mask. No doubt about it, Tyler Addison was a clever fellow, but Donovan couldn’t imagine why his opinions and loyalties should matter to Tyler. “At this time, I have no wish to join either. I’m an Irishman, not an Englishman.”

“We are all Englishmen here, sir,” Tyler noted with calculated coolness. Donovan replied nothing further, but deep within his heart he knew where his loyalties lay.

Before the Shays left that day, they followed Benjamin into the barn and played with the newborn kittens. As Jillian cradled one of the little gray-and-white animals in her arms, she noticed a small trunk in the corner. The lid was open, and inside were a few dresses and a number of books. “Tyler, are these Dorcas’s things?”

Tyler had been watching her the entire time, and doing a poor job of hiding his lust for Jillian. Never had he seen her look so lovely as she did that day in a green silk gown and holding the kitten next to her flawless cheek. He swallowed tightly and wished to run his sword through Donovan Shay and make her a widow. “Yes,” he admitted but refused to come near the trunk. “I packed a few of her clothes and her books—because I couldn’t bear the sight of them. Just knowing she’ll never use them again is quite painful to me. I planned to take them to Jamestown. Perhaps someone there might have use for them.” He silently congratulated himself on his remark, hoping to gain Jillian’s pity. In reality he’d packed them away because he wanted all evidence of his wife removed from his house.

Tears spiked Jillian’s lashes. Besides Benjamin, this was all that was left of Dorcas, just a few gowns and a number of books. Dorcas had liked to read and been known to spend hours upon hours with a book. Jillian, however, couldn’t bear a stranger claiming Dorcas’s things. “May I have them?” she asked.

Tyler shrugged his shoulders, none too pleased for Jillian to want his dead wife’s possessions, but he couldn’t refuse her. “If you want them, you may take them with you.”

“Thank you so much, Tyler. I shall treasure them.”

Later, as they rode home in the cart, Donovan was scowling. “I don’t like Tyler Addison. If it wasn’t for the little lad, I would insist ye not visit the man again. He’s a clever one, he is, that Addison.”

Jillian wasn’t overly fond of Tyler either, but she couldn’t fathom why Donovan disliked Tyler so much. He was always polite, stiff and perhaps brusque where his son was concerned, but Jillian wouldn’t believe that his feelings for Benjamin were anything but warm. “How is Tyler clever?”

“He’s usin’ his son to gain your sympathy. I don’t like him.”

“You already said that.”

“He’s in love with ye.” His hands clutched the reins until his knuckles whitened, and his jaw clenched tight.

“I know.”

“Are ye in love with him?”

Jillian scooted nearer to her husband and placed her hand on his knee. She gazed up at him. Her eyes shimmered with passion. “Nay, Donovan, I’m not in love with Tyler Addison.”

Donovan placed an arm around her waist, and she laid her head on his shoulder. For the rest of the way home, they traveled in silence. Once home and in their bedroom, Donovan undressed her and loved her with all the fierce yearning in his soul. Only later, as she slept in his arms, did he recall that she hadn’t told him that she loved him either.

But he was contented to wait until she did.

~ ~ ~

When morning came, a thunderstorm broke from the heavens and wakened Jillian with the pounding of rain on the roof. Her hand automatically felt for Donovan’s body, but she found only a cold emptiness. Opening her eyes, she saw him standing at the side of the bed, dressed in his buff-colored jacket and trousers and wearing his sturdy riding boots. A meltingly sad smile turned up the edges of his mouth when he sat down beside her and took her in his arms.

“What are you doing?” Jillian asked and snuggled against him. “You look like you’re dressed to go into town.”

Donovan kissed the top of her head. “I am.”

“In this monstrous weather? Can you wait until the storm passes, so I may go with you after I dress?” She made a move to get up, but Donovan’s embrace kept her firmly pressed against his chest.

“Only I am goin’, not ye. And I don’t know when I’ll be returnin’.”

Despite Donovan’s warm arms around her, a cold chill flowed through her. There was no need for Donovan to go into Jamestown. They had enough supplies to last for another few months. Unless …

Her fingers grasped the material of his coat, and her bottom lip quivered. “You’re leaving me—to go—fight for Nathaniel Bacon.”

“Aye, I must go.”

“But—but why?”

Donovan sighed and held her tightly. “Because Tyler Addison convinced me yesterday of somethin’. I’ve always known I’m not like him and men of his sort. I can never be a good Englishman. I’m not the sort of a man who lets another man dictate to him. Whether Mr. Bacon is right or wrong, I’m not all together certain. But the people have the right to be protected from savages and those men who use power as a way to control others. I’ve made up my mind. I go to join Mr. Bacon and take up arms against Governor Berkeley for I know he will raise an army.”

“But—but you can’t,” Jillian proclaimed through pale lips and tugged at his clothing in an effort to make Donovan see reason. “I am loyal to Governor Berkeley. He has always been a friend to Edwin and myself, as has Lady Berkeley. You know how upset Edwin always became whenever mention was made of Bacon, you know how he felt and still you wish to leave me and join the man—”

“’Tis possible that Edwin was wrong.”

“He wasn’t wrong. You mustn’t do this, Donovan. ‘Twill be the death of you. The governor will hang you if you are caught!”

“Then kiss me sweetly one last time, Jillian, before I leave. I need your kiss for this might be the last time I shall ever see ye.” With a tormented light shining in his eyes, Donovan’s mouth swept down upon hers and captured her lips in a kiss which was so filled with passion and love that Jillian could do nothing else but respond in kind. But too soon did Donovan end it by pushing her away from him. Rising to his feet, he uncurled her fingers from his jacket. “I’m goin’,” he raggedly muttered and turned for the door.

“Donovan, you’re a traitor for doing this to me, a traitor!” She wasn’t certain how she meant this, she just knew that at the moment, he had betrayed her by leaving her.

Standing in the doorway, he appeared larger than usual, yet forlorn and alone. “’Tis no traitor I be, but I bear no love for the crown. I want to see justice done.”

She lurched forward on the mattress and held onto the bedpost. Her heart was breaking. Her eyes were filled with pain and anger when she said, “Traitor.”

For a few seconds, he looked at her, almost as if he memorized her face and form. Then he wheeled about and she heard his heavy footsteps descending the staircase. And then the slamming of the door behind him.

Had he really left? Jillian waited, listening to the last drops of rain fall from the eaves and aware of a timid ray of sunshine seeping through the curtain. She hadn’t truly believed that Donovan would leave her; he’d promised Edwin that he’d take care of her. But as the voice of Zeke, the stable man, cut through the air and mingled with Donovan’s voice, she knew he was really going, and she needed to tell him something, something so important that sheer panic seized hold of her and propelled her from the bed. “No, no! Donovan, wait!” she cried. Wearing only her white nightgown, Jillian fled down the stairs in her bare feet and rushed toward the dining room. She threw open the window just in time to see Donovan rushing through the yard on a horse other than Goldenrod. She shouted his name until her throat hurt, but he didn’t hear her above the animal’s thundering hooves.

Tears gathered in her eyes when he disappeared from sight. She stood in front of the window, barely aware of anything until she saw their initials etched into the glass where rivulets of rain water trickled downward like the tears on her cheeks. Raw pain sliced through her when she traced the letters with her fingertip. Donovan had scratched them into the glass to prove that the diamond he’d given her was as real as his love for her. And the one thing that he’d wanted from her, she had withheld.

Until this moment.

And now it was too late.

But she would say it anyway, though he couldn’t hear her, and might never hear the words from her lips.

“I love you, Donovan. I love you with all of my heart.”

A summer squall wreaked havoc on the island of Bermuda. No ships could depart the harbor until the weather broke, and this news deeply disturbed Grayson Chandler. His agitation was apparent to John Lattimore in the panther-like way he paced the parlor at Sir Horatio Mortimer’s home, or what had been Mortimer’s home until four days past. Barely off of the ship, Grayson had hastily gone to see Horatio Mortimer and confronted the surprised man with saber drawn. “The hateful lout isn’t going to prevent me from taking my grandson!” he had declared to Lattimore shortly before his meeting with Mortimer. And Horatio, intimidated to such a degree by the furious duke who brandished a weapon and fearing the enraged aristocrat would lop off his head, had fallen to his knees and begged for mercy when learning of the duke’s connection to Donovan Shay.

But Grayson wanted no groveling, only his grandson. It was then Mortimer was forced to admit the truth—Donovan Shay had sailed to the Virginia colony with his new master. A nasty altercation followed as Grayson bodily attacked Sir Horatio and knocked the overly plump man to the floor to gain the name of Edwin Cameron. Even now, John Lattimore pictured the incident and chuckled to himself. Never had he seen a more obsequious man than Horatio Mortimer when Chandler berated him for keeping his grandson in bondage. Mortimer was so frightened, so willing to do anything to atone for his crime against Donovan Shay, that he had pleaded on bended knee to save his wretched life. The duke’s power and influence extended even to this small island, thousands of miles from England. The royal governor was a personal friend of the duke’s and John guessed that the punishment Chandler decided upon would more than fit the crime.