Sweet Savage Eden (45 page)

Then they dried. She would not leave. She would have her husband back. She was a fighter and a survivor.

Hadn’t he always told her so?

She would fight him, and she would win. So help her.

XVII
   

T
hey didn’t speak in the morning. Jamie had to leave.

Lent had brought them to Palm Sunday, and with Easter coming early that year, the settlers began to plan for the holy day, and for the feasts they would all have within their homes.

The Cameron house was no different in that aspect, except that it was even busier than the others. Jamie had matters of government to attend to, and he had to spend two days in the Jamestown settlement. A legislative body was already at work in the colony, and Jamie, though he held his land directly from the king rather than the Company, was still a part of it. The laws in the Virginia colony were very much like those in England, and they were also maintained in much the same manner. Murder was a crime punishable by death, as was the stealing of an animal such as a horse or an ass or a cow, the type of beast that could mean a man’s survival. There was very little crime in the hundred, despite the fact that some settlers had come to the New World to avoid fates in Newgate.

On the nineteenth, three days before Easter, Jamie returned. Jassy was perfectly cordial to him. She was warm to Robert and to their guests.

Jamie did watch her. He watched her, and the glow in
her eyes, and the striking beauty that it gave her. He watched her come alive for the other men, and despite his best intentions, his temper slowly simmered and seethed.

At dinner she laughed and flirted and played the perfect hostess. She was quick to suggest music, and she had certainly planned her entertainment, for she had musicians ready at her behest. He did not dance with her, nor did she carry the child any longer, and so he had no excuse to send her from the floor. He stared at her as she swirled in some man’s arms, and he told himself bitterly that she was a hussy, had always been one, and that he had been a fool to marry her. Then he would remember that he had been the one to teach her what she knew about passion, and his throat would tighten and his stomach knot, and everything within him would burn. He had told her that he would set her free. He would do so.

Furious and anguished, he had but one avenue open to him. He left the house.

On Easter morning he rose early and looked into her room. Daniel slept sweetly in his cradle, but Jassy was nowhere to be seen. Anxious, Jamie ran out of the house and leapt upon his horse without hailing a groom. Bareback, he rode with a vengeance from the compound and out of the open gates of the palisade.

He found Jassy with Sir Cedric, far beyond the walls of the palisade. She was laughing delightedly and pretending a sweet innocence when it came to the use of firearms.

She was dressed in royal-blue velvet over a softer shade of linen. The gown was ruffed with white lace over black, and her breasts seemed to press quite dangerously against the bodice.

She was more beautiful that day than he had ever seen her, her eyes alive with laughter, the sound of that laughter like a melody of spring. Her cheeks were flushed, and she was as lithe and slender as a little wood nymph. She held the musket then, and flashed Sir Cedric her stunning smile as she looked to him for advice on
the right position in which to hold the musket. A group of Indians came from the far western woods. Jamie raised a hand in acknowledgment, but other than that, he barely noticed them, for his eyes were on his wife. The Indians knew that the settlers were preparing for a Christian holy day. The Powhatans were probably bringing food and gifts, and they were certainly interested in the things that would take place. He should probably go greet them, but most of the Indians had good friends among the settlers and would be all right.

He was
not
all right himself.

Some invisible line in his temper stretched taut as wire, and then snapped.

He had done everything he could. He had made her his wife, and he had fallen in love with her. He had offered her freedom.…

And she seemed keen on taking him up on the offer. She was behaving as if she were free right now. No, she was behaving worse than that. She was a flirt, a tease. She was slowly and carefully cultivating and charming and possessing every man she met.

His head reeled with a jagged ache, as if it had exploded with a charge of black powder. Barely in control, he nudged his horse and came nearer the pair, watching as Sir Cedric helped Jassy align the musket upon the rest.

He paused at last behind the two of them. Jassy fired the musket and laughed with pleasure as her ball struck the target.

“Milady, you’re a natural!” Sir Cedric congratulated her.

“Do you think so, really?” she asked, dimpling prettily, and flushing a lovely shade of rose. Her lips seemed like a shade of wine that day. Her hair was pulled back from her forehead with ribbon but spilled down her back and caught the glow of the coming sun. She was radiant and fascinating. Jamie’s loins thundered along with his head, and he thought that it had been an endless time since he had touched her. It had been since he had realized how deeply and irrevocably he had fallen in
love. Since he had worried about endangering their babe.

Daniel was over a month old now. And she was certainly behaving like a woman in the finest health.

“A perfect shot, my love. Alas, poor Cedric! She cons you, I’m afraid. Jassy
is
a natural, and has been for some time. Her accuracy is frightening. She aims her barbs, and they do strike, swift and sure.”

Jassy spun around, looking at him. Cedric, at a loss, and yet aware of the terrible tension suddenly around him, laughed nervously. “Lady Cameron! You
have
had lessons before.”

“Yes,” she murmured sweetly. She kept a hostile and wary eye upon Jamie. “But none so gently given, Sir Cedric. You are a wonderful marksman, and a superb teacher.”

“But the lesson is over,” Jamie said, looking down at her from atop his mount.

“I rather thought that we had just begun,” Jassy told him.

“You have thought wrong,” he said softly. He dismounted from his horse and strode toward her. “I think we should go for a ride, madame.”

“I do not care for a ride.”

“And I do not care what
you
care for, milady. Come—now.”

She stood stubbornly, hesitating for just a moment too long. Jamie stepped forward again and furiously swept her off her feet, striding back to his horse and tossing her rudely upon it. Her hair flew and tossed about her in a sudden disarray as she scrambled for her balance. Looking at her, Jamie knew what he wanted from her at that moment. He knew exactly what he wanted.

“Jamie Cameron, you—”

“Excuse us, Cedric, will you please?” Jamie said politely. He leapt up behind Jassy, nudging his heels hard into the horse’s flanks. They took flight, southwestward, toward the deep forest.

Her hair slapped against his face with the force of the wind. He inhaled the clean, perfumed scent of her, the
blond locks, and of her flesh. The wind seemed to rage, and the earth to churn beneath him, and all the while the violence and anger seemed to burn in his loins, to thunder in his head. Her body was rigid before his, and she gripped on to the horse’s mane. His thighs locked against hers as they rode the animal bareback, coming closer and closer to the dense thicket of trees.

He at last slowed the horse, and when he entered into a trail that led to a copse of trees, he reined in. Visible through the pines and hemlocks was a brook, trickling softly and beautifully and white-tipped through the forest. Below them lay a bed of soft fallen pines, and all about them came the chirp and song and melody of birds.

Jamie did not notice much of nature. He dismounted, casting his leg over her, leaping to the ground. He turned around and stared at her while he reached for her. Her eyes were dusky, unreadable, in the green light of the forest, but he sensed that a spark of cold fury burned brightly within her.

“Come on, get down!” he snapped.

“You are the rudest individual I have ever met.”

“Get down here.”

“Make me.”

“I damned well intend to!”

He wrenched her down from the horse and onto her feet before him. The vixen! She cast back her head and glared at him with a raw challenge. He held on to her shoulders, and he was tempted to shake her until she begged for forgiveness, until she fell to her knees before him.

She wasn’t about to beg for anything, or so it seemed. Her hair was wild, and her breasts heaved excitingly with the flame of her exertion. “What do you think you’re doing?” she spat out.

“Me?” He slipped a foot behind her ankle, causing her to cry out and fall to the earth, yet held in his arms, she came down gently upon the bed of pines. He came atop her, and then she swore, suddenly and furiously, struggling against him.

“You,
Lord
Cameron! You—”

“Me, milady, your husband. Alas, I am not the gentle teacher that Sir Cedric is! I haven’t Robert Maxwell’s flattering phrases, and God alone knows what else I lack.
Constraint
. I have offered you freedom aboard the
Lady Destiny
, but you can’t even wait the time to board her to taunt other men before me.”

“I have taunted no one!”

“You have swayed your hips and laughed and spoken and charmed and seduced. And, madame, you have done so well. God damn you, lady, for I meant to give you what you craved; you so despised this place that I meant to let you leave it, and—that scourge of your life—me, madame. But it seems that I have left you lacking, that I have perhaps been overly kind, for you only play the whore.”

She tried to slap him. No, she tried to scratch his face. Then she tried to lift her knee and kick him, but he slammed his weight down hard upon her, and she cried out.

“Poor, innocent, demoiselle!”

“Savage jackal! Let me up. You fool. You—”

He ground his lips down upon hers. They punished and bruised. She fought him, and still the taste of her lips was wet and sweet and more potent than wine. He delved deeper and deeper into the dark recesses of her mouth. It had been too long since he had kissed her so. The memories reborn of the taste and feel and scent of her were so enticing that he shook with it. She twisted from him, trying to shove him aside. Her eyes were wild, and her hair was a halo about her, spilling over the pines. Her lips were damp and parted and bewitching. Her face was beautiful, beguiling, and filled with pride and hatred and the spirit of her fight.

“You fool! You will not do this on the ground in the dirt—”

“Nay, lady, you will not deny me, not today. Not this morning. Tomorrow you may do as you please. For today, madame, you have swished your tail one too many times
in my direction, and I will have what I want. Nay, lady, what I
demand
!”

He forced his lips upon her again and caught her hands against the pines, palm to palm. He laced his fingers with her struggling ones and felt the pressure she wielded against him. He ignored it. He kissed her, drinking her in, tasting and seeking, and … gentle now. There was no more brutality to his kiss. She was open to him.

Her fingers curled against his.

He lifted some of his weight and removed his hand from hers. He pulled at the ribbons of her bodice, and then at her chemise, watching her eyes. She did not fight him but stared directly at him. He had no patience. The thunder rose painfully in his groin, driven by the weeks of waiting, and the nights of longing, and the anguished moments when he thought about her in the arms of another man.

He cast back his head and let out a loud groan. He buried his face against the spill of her breasts and thought of his son. He pressed his mouth to her flesh and felt her shudder. He would have pulled away, but she let out a soft, choking sigh, and when he released her hands, she held him there, against her. He tasted her as Daniel would taste her, and he filled himself with the feel and texture of her breasts, the thunder pounding ever more fiercely. He caught her skirts, pushed them up against her, and released the ties on his breeches. She still looked at him, her sapphire eyes glimmering in the green darkness. He touched her thighs and eased the stroke of his fingers against them. And still she looked at him with her luminous eyes and her beautiful face, defying him.