Redeeming Jack (26 page)

Jack shuddered with the urge to agree with her as she caressed him with her fingertips. “And what of your other lovers? Wouldn’t they object?”

She stopped touching him. He wanted to howl. She grabbed one of the blankets and held it against her breasts like a shield. “I don’t have any lovers.”

To gain time, Jack retied the blanket at his waist. He reached out and took her clenched fist. “You don’t have to lie to me. I wasn’t faithful to you after I left. For the first few weeks I behaved like the rakehell my father accused me of being.” He squeezed her fingers. “I’m not going to criticize you for taking a lover. It would be hypocritical of me.”

Carys’s chin went up and Jack felt a faint stirring of alarm. “
You
are not going to criticize
me
?”

“I only meant—”

“What about the woman you kept in Swansea?”

“What woman?”

“Mrs. Sian Williams. Your mother took great delight in telling me about her. While you were busy enjoying yourself, I was forced to spend countless dreary evenings with her telling me that it was my own fault for not being a good enough wife to you.”

“And you
believed
her?”

“Believed whom?”

“My mother.”

Carys bit her lip. “Are you saying she lied to me?”

“By your own account, my mother would have done anything to destroy our happiness. Why should she balk at a little fib like that?”

Carys looked away, her profile tinted with the radiance of the emerging light like the finest cameo. “I asked Robert, and he said it was true as well.”

“And we now know that Robert isn’t entirely truthful either, don’t we?” He reached for her hand. “I never wanted another woman until you refused to leave my father’s house with me. Then I was so damned angry with you that I drank and whored my way through London.” Jack struggled on, determined to be as honest with her as he could, even if it hurt him now. “After a few weeks, my money ran out. And I realized I had no savings and no family to call for help.”

“Perhaps it is you who should be asking for forgiveness then, Jack,” Carys whispered.

“You’re right.” He exhaled slowly. “Will you forgive me?”

“For wallowing in self-pity or for being an adulterer?

Jack flinched as if she had hit him. “Perhaps I should say goodnight.”

“
Wait
.” Carys caught his arm. “If I can forgive you that, will you accept that I have no lovers?”

“What of Rice?”

“Oliver’s family owns this cottage. He offered it to me after I found life with your parents unendurable. Since I’ve lived here, he’s made himself available to advise me when I needed help. I suppose I’ve come to depend on him.”

Jack tried to ignore the spurt of jealousy that shook through him. “And that’s it?”

“You know the rest.” Carys caught her breath. “You still don’t believe me, do you?”

Jack stared into her eyes. He had to ask about her child. There was no other way to set things straight between them. He tried to remember the name of the other man she’d mentioned. “What of your other lover? Owen, I think you called him. You once told me he was the most lovable man of your acquaintance.”

“You fool!” Carys slapped his cheek, and Jack recoiled.

She scrambled past him and left the bed, trailing the sheets behind her like an enraged queen. Jack sat for a while until the sting of Carys’s words lessened enough to match the throb of his cheek. Was that the answer? Had the mysterious Owen left Carys with child and then abandoned her? And what business of it was his? If he truly forgave her, perhaps he had no right to ask.

Jack drank the tea he’d brought up for Carys and ventured down the stairs. Carys stood at the kitchen range, tending a pot. She’d gathered her red-gold hair into an untidy knot at the nape of her neck.

“What are you doing?”

“Making poison.” Carys hunched her shoulder and continued to stir the contents of the pot with unnecessary force.

Jack came up behind her. He slid his arms around her waist. Resting his chin on her shoulder, he was rewarded with a sharp crack from the wooden spoon on his wrist.

He retreated to the table and perched on the corner, massaging his wrist. “Dammit,
Cariad
…”

“Don’t try and be nice, Jack. You have no idea how much you have offended me.” She poured her steaming concoction into a mug and faced him. The smell of chamomile and honey wafted toward him.

He rose to his feet and took the mug away from her before she decided to upend it on his head. He smoothed back a lock of hair that had fallen across her face. “It doesn’t matter. It’s all in the past now, isn’t it?”

Without further thought, he pressed his lips against hers. She tried to push him away, but he held her close and drowned in the heavenly fragrances of her mouth. When he stopped kissing her, she relaxed in his arms, her eyes dazed.

“You must forgive me,” he whispered. “I can’t imagine any man being content to be your friend. Every time I see you, all I can imagine is making love to you.”

“You are incorrigible,” she hissed. “I don’t know why I am even speaking to you.”

“Because we might have died in each others arms tonight? Because I need you more than I need to breathe?” Jack murmured.

He picked her up in his arms and headed back to the bedroom. The possibility of losing her had shattered his perceptions of right and wrong. He realized that he didn’t care whether she’d lied about her lovers. She was too important for him to lose now. She was the only woman who truly knew him.

* * *

Jack flung back the bed covers and laid Carys on the crisp, sea-scented sheets. He sank down beside her and unwound her cocoon of blankets. Instinctively, she slid her hand over her stomach, where a fine tracery of silver lines remained from her pregnancy. Jack urged her hand away. He bent and kissed her navel, his breath warm on her flesh, his rough stubble a subtle male invitation.

“It’s all right,
cariad
. I know you had a child. Those marks are nothing to be ashamed of.”

Carys pushed hard on Jack’s shoulder until he straightened away from her. He knew that she had a child? Since speaking to his mother, she had persuaded herself that he didn’t. She had even begun to make
excuses
for him.

Old anger and hurt flooded her senses and ignited her temper. “How could I be ashamed of having a son, Jack? Would you be?”

He came back on his heels, his powerful body gilded by the dawn light. “I didn’t mean to make you angry again. I just wanted you to know that I won’t make any difficulties for you. You don’t need to marry Rice to protect your son. As far as the law goes, I will acknowledge him as my heir.”

Carys slid away from him toward the foot of the bed and drew her knees up to her chin. She pointed at the door. “Get out.”

To her relief, he moved off the bed. But instead of leaving, he walked to the window and looked out over the garden. Carys stared at his broad, naked back; the scars of his public flogging stood out like silver bands against the light. She searched under her pillow for her nightgown. When Jack turned back to her, she froze with it in her hands.

“I don’t understand,” he said quietly. “When Robert wrote and told me you had given birth to another man’s child, I wanted to kill you. But over the years, I’ve come to see how it explained why you wouldn’t leave with me.” His face softened. “I know how much you wanted a child.”

Carys’s nightgown slid through her suddenly nerveless fingers. “Did it ever occur to you that the child might be yours? Did it ever
occur
to you that the reason I wouldn’t leave with you was because I was already pregnant with your child?”

His face whitened. He moved his lips, but no sound emerged.

Carys wiped at the tears that flowed down her cheeks. “I failed to give you a child three times. I was beginning to believe your mother was right and that you’d come to despise me, to stay away from me, to not
love
me.” She placed one hand over her stomach, as if the child was still there. “God, it was the hardest choice I have ever made. Go with you, or stay and try to bear your child. I was so afraid of being cast out from everything I knew and yet terrified of being a burden on you. It almost tore me apart.” She forced herself to look up at him. “In my innocence, I foolishly imagined that eventually you would come back to me, so I decided to protect our child.”

“But I didn’t come back, did I? And I burned all your letters. And now we are in a devil of a mess.” He walked back across to the bed and caught her hand. “What did you call him?”

She cradled his trembling fingers. “Owen, for you, although your parents were against it.”

Jack dropped her hand and swung away from her. “
Christ
,” he whispered. “Oh Christ, forgive me.”

Carys winced as the door crashed against the wall and Jack blundered down the stairs, leaving her alone.

With shaking hands, Carys put on clean petticoats and an old dress and tied her hair back with a ribbon. Downstairs, she discovered no trace of Jack. His boots and soaked cloak had disappeared from in front of the fire. She guessed he would make for the shoreline. He always had when troubled. He said the sea soothed him. She found her boots, pulled a shawl over her head against the tug of the wind and followed him out into the dawn.

JACK DIDN’T STOP to wait until his eyes adjusted to the irregular patterns of half-light. White swirls of sea mist crept through the shadowed greenery of Carys’s garden. Spider webs glistened and caught at his clothing, swayed by the gentle after-storm breeze.

As Jack climbed the slate steps, the steady crash of the waves on the beach below sounded reassuringly familiar. He could hear his harsh breathing when he reached the top step and unlatched the gate. Ahead of him lay the sea, its vast expanse shrouded in morning fog. Jack strode toward the edge of the cliff and looked down.

The steep, jagged rocks below seemed content to wait for a fresh victim torn from the sea or hurled from the heights above. Jack contemplated the flat iron-grey sea. Had Richard made it safely back to shore with Mrs. Forester? He hoped the tiresome woman was on her way to London by now. He knew he should care, but somehow after Carys’s confession, he could barely raise any interest.

The foam-flecked tide continued to roll in and Jack headed inland to a stone wall that surrounded a field of grazing sheep. Vaulting the wall, he discovered that his body refused to go further. He’d experienced a similar physical reaction during the aftermath of a battle. It was pointless to fight it. He slid down and allowed his back to collide with the cold, unforgiving stones.

With an inarticulate sound, he drew his knees up to his chin and buried his forehead against their familiar warmth. His heartbeat steadied and he remembered how to breathe. How could he have been such a blind, ignorant fool? He should have realized that Carys had refused to leave with him for a very good reason.

Jack shut his eyes tight. In his overwhelming desire to best his father, he’d allowed his pride and arrogance to deprive him of his wife and son.

He had a
son
.

He wasn’t sure when he became aware that Carys sat beside him. He sensed the sun rise over the sea behind them, its tentative warmth a caress on his shoulders and neck. After a while, Carys laid a hand on his arm.

“Jack?”

His muscles stiffened under her fingers. She gripped harder, as if she feared he might push her away.

“Why did you come after me?”

“I wanted to make sure you were all right. “

Jack gave a harsh laugh. “Perhaps I should’ve thrown myself over the cliff and made everything better.” He swallowed, and the muscles in his throat struggled to work.

Carys held his gaze. “You are Owen’s father. Do you think I would relish the task of telling our son that you had
killed
yourself?”

Jack shuddered and turned away, aware that his control hung by a thread. “ I swear I didn’t know. I thought you stayed behind to give birth to your lover’s child.”

She sighed. “But I wrote to you, several times.”

“And I destroyed every letter I received from you.”

“You destroyed them without reading them? Why?”

“Because I was still too angry with you to endure the sight of your handwriting and I thought I knew what you were going to say.”

Pain flickered across her face but she didn’t turn away. “I know your mother didn’t deliver my letters to you. But at least one of them must have gotten through. Robert promised me he’d see my last letter safely into your hands.”

“He wrote and told me you had a child. He didn’t mention that the baby was mine, or include anything from you.” He stared out over the endless fields. “I am beginning to believe Robert does not have my best interests at heart.”

A flock of seagulls swooped low over the wall, tossed up from the cliff face by the gusting sea breeze. Carys shrank back from their avaricious eyes and sharp beaks. Jack paid them no heed.

“When I decided to come back, I thought I had forgiven you,” he said. “I
thought
I would be able to accept that you had a child and be glad about it. In my more foolish moments, I almost expected you to thank me for saving you.” He bit his lip and tasted salt. “You must think me an arrogant fool.”

Silence fell, broken by the rhythmic roar of the changing tide. Carys continued to stroke his arm, her fingers warm on his cold, taut flesh.

“When I realized that you weren’t coming back, I was terrified I’d been left to care for our child alone. Probably thanks to Robert and your mother, your father made it clear he didn’t believe Owen was your son. I had to find the courage to bargain with him for a financial allowance to live by myself. I refused to be a burden on my parents.” She rested her cheek against his damp shirtsleeve. “In a strange way, your desertion taught me how to stand up for myself. After a few years of quiet reflection, I began to hope you’d managed to find your own kind of freedom.”

Jack stirred beside her. “I would have given up everything if I’d known about Owen.”

Carys frowned at him. “But that’s exactly what I’m trying to say. I learned to live without you. I learned that I could be strong. After all the bitterness, why should I not wish the same for you? Perhaps you weren’t ready to be a father.”