The Harem Bride (30 page)

But I have made a sad discovery. I am a
jealous, selfish female. I want all of you. I will not share. I
demand your love, complete and unreserved.

And, Jason, do not, I pray, leap into your
carriage and follow me because of pride, because I am an absconding
wife—your property to do with as you will. I beg of you, take time
to think about what I have said. If you can find it in your heart
to offer me love, you will discover word of me at O’Shea’s, a pub
in the village of Dingle, where Noreen was born. If, at the end of
six months, I have not heard from you, I will consider our marriage
at an end. You may petition Parliament for a divorce and live the
life you were destined to have before you met Penny Blayne and the
White Rose, Gulbeyaz.

Your loving wife, Penny

The Earl of Rocksley sat down hard on a blue
brocade chaise near the fireplace before reading his wife’s letter
a second time. He was conscious of immense relief that Penny had
left word where to find her. And abject horror that his young man’s
single-minded rejection of encumbrances, combined with his own
puerile fantasies of Gulbeyaz, had somehow kept him from seeing the
wonder of the woman right under his nose.

Ireland
. The
thrice-damned
west
coast of
Ireland!

Hell and damnation, the poets had it right.
Not even a belated and abject realization of love could keep him
from thinking that women could be a great deal of trouble.

~ * ~

The Dingle Peninsula, Ireland

The bare-footed girl on the beach at the edge
of Dingle Bay quite shamelessly clutched the folds of her brown
fustian skirt, raising the hemline so high it barely covered her
shapely knees. Not that she was so lost to all propriety that she
failed to examine the deserted shoreline with care before indulging
in such extreme behavior. With something close to a chortle, Penny
waded into the blue-gray water lapping at the fringe of the pale
yellow sand. She gasped, and stepped swiftly back from a foaming
white cap as water that must have come straight from Iceland nipped
her toes.

Once again standing on the warm sand, Penny
gazed thoughtfully toward the west—past the town of Dingle, its
sheltered harbor—filled with colorful fishing boats—and on down
Dingle Bay, past Great Blasket Island, to the open Atlantic, where
there was simply nothing between the western Irish coast and the
Americas. Nothing at all. Perhaps there lay her destiny. It was not
an unknown, for she and Aunt Cass had spent nearly two years in the
former colonies and in the Upper and Lower Canadas. She could
easily afford to emigrate—Jason had seen to that.

A stubborn line formed about her mouth; her
chin firmed, and her eyes sparked. Such a generous, thoughtful
husband. Too little, too late. And once again a laggard. Seven
weeks! He needed seven weeks to think about their marriage! Of
course, the journey itself was arduous, as Penny very well knew.
Boats could not put out to sea in stormy weather, and the overland
trip from Waterford to Tralee had been as rough and difficult a
journey as she had ever undertaken.

Therefore . . . he was not coming. She should
admit as much by now.

I’m a
survivor
, Penny told herself.
I will live through this, as I have through all else. If
Jason does not come, I shall emigrate, become part of the brave new
world. Is that not where the most courageous of the ruined or
destitute pin their hopes?
Boston, Atlanta, perhaps
New Orleans. Or would she be truly daring, making the dangerous
journey around Cape Horn to join that exotic settlement, San
Francisco? Why not? If she did not care for the burgeoning
civilization on the east coast . . . if it were too much like what
she had left behind, she would take ship for California. What was
one more voyage to a girl who had seen Bombay and
Constantinople?

Penny eyed the foaming water as if it were
another enemy to be conquered. Once again raising her skirts, she
plunged in, defying the waves as they splashed up, dampening her
gown all the way to her waist. Defying the bone-chilling cold.
Defying the icy heaviness of her heart. Defying her urge to run
away, as she had so many times before. To take the first ship
headed for the Americas, put Jason behind her, and be done with all
this anguish.

But seven weeks was not the six months she
had so rashly promised. And she would, of course, be true to her
word. But that meant a winter in Dingle, and if she had thought
Pemberton Priory or Rockbourne Crest isolated, it was only because
she had never encountered anything so out of the way as the Dingle
Peninsula. Lady Rocksley sighed and retreated from the Atlantic,
which was icy even in August. She could not begin to imagine how it
would be January. She shivered, even thinking on it.

As Penny drove her gig back toward the
village of Dingle, she breathed deeply of the clean Irish air, so
deeply tinged with salt and seaweed mingled with the earthy odors
of damp greenery and barnyard animals. It was a beautiful place,
the Dingle Peninsula, with its central mountains rising so
precipitously from the narrow strip of land around its edges that
Penny had once declared to Noreen that the sheep, in order to graze
upon the hillsides, must have legs shorter on one side than the
other. And the neatly hedged fields seemed even smaller, rockier,
and more intricately tangled into mazes than those of England.

Surprisingly, the people were kind, if still
a bit doubtful about the Englishwoman who had come among them. But
if Noreen O’Donnell—on whom the Blessed Mother must look with favor
if she had guided the colleen home again—vouched for her lady, then
the foreigner would be welcome. Or so Noreen had repeated to Penny,
even as she was taken with an odd bit of blushing and stammering as
she admitted overhearing this sentiment at O’Shea’s Pub. Which was
another reason Penny knew she must fulfill her promise of six
months in Ireland, for Noreen O’Donnell had acquired an admirer,
the publican Michael O’Shea himself, and Penny would not think of
dragging her companion away from what might be her sole opportunity
for a life of her own.

Penny pulled up in front of O’Shea’s, tied
her horse to the hitching post, and went inside to collect her
long-time companion. O’Shea’s Pub was a long, low, white-washed
building, heavily thatched. Inside, its great stone fireplace,
blackened by a century or more of roaring fires, filled nearly all
of one wall of the low-ceilinged room, and a cluster of men stood
at the bar, while their wives had their heads together, gossiping,
in a cozy snug fitted into a narrow space next to fireplace.
Noreen, not surprisingly, was behind the bar, helping Michael
O’Shea, who, Penny suspected, had been dazzling the ladies with his
dark good looks for twenty years or more. Yet she had to admit he
appeared to be caught at last.

Penny allowed herself to be persuaded
to a glass of O’Shea’s own brew, for which she was beginning to
develop a partiality, and then she and Noreen were off to their
modest cottage, tucked into the side of the narrow valley that led
from the village to the Conor Pass. It was only as the cottage came
into view and she saw the carriage that Penny realized there had
been an underlying excitement at O’Shea’s this day. A glance, a
whisper, a light in the eye. But Irishmen were adept at deception,
she recalled grimly. They had had to be through hundreds of years
of English occupation.
They had
known
, Penny fumed. They had sat her down and fed her
ale and kept her there just to torment her! Or to give her visitor
time to ensconce himself in her parlor.

Dear God, what if the visitor whose grand
carriage was pulled up at the door was not Jason?

Who else would come in such fine equipage,
undoubtedly the best to be hired in Waterford?

Penny laid her hands in her lap and bowed her
head. She could not move. Sean, their young man-of-all-work, had to
take the reins from her hands, then Noreen took her in charge,
nearly dragging the countess off her seat and through the front
door, which opened directly into the parlor. Whereupon, O’Donnell
bobbed a curtsy to his lordship and went straight to the kitchen,
leaving the stunned Countess of Rocksley alone with her
husband.

At the sound of the gig’s wheels, Jason
had bounded to his feet. He stood now, confronting his wife, his
mind nearly blank of all he had intended to say. Only one thought
remained. He
must
tell her,
must explain . . .

“
I recall the terms you dictated quite
well,” he burst out, “but there are some things I must tell you
before we speak of love. Pray be seated,” he begged, waving an arm
toward a somewhat battered sofa set beneath the parlor’s
multi-paned front window. When his wife did not move, Jason took
her by the hand, leading her to the sofa. Then, all his good
intentions suddenly scrambled inside his head, he stood as if
struck dumb, his eyes fixed on the lace curtains and the rugged
Irish countryside beyond.

Where . . .? Where to begin?

“
I . . . I wish you to understand,”
Jason declared at last, standing as stiffly erect as a young
miscreant before a headmaster, “that Mrs. Coleraine has not been
part of my life—except in her overly active imagination—since the
night of your arrival at Rockbourne Crest. Why she should have
chosen to emulate Caro Lamb I do not know, but she has now seen my
wedding lines—both sets of them—and has spoken at some length with
the vicar, who has assured her that only God can put our marriage
asunder.”

“
And Parliament.”

“
I have assured Mrs. Coleraine,” Jason
said to his stubborn wife in a tone perhaps a tad more grim than a
supplicant should choose, “that divorce is not a possibility. She
has decided to winter in Bath, while choosing her new quarry for
the coming Season.”

Penny’s hand flew to her mouth, stifling a
sound between a gasp and a chuckle. “Surely, she did not tell you
so!”

For the first time since his arrival, Jason
managed a tentative smile. “No, but can you think I am
mistaken?”

Penny shook her head, once again reduced to
silence. The road to this moment had been long and bitter. And now,
to Jason fell the burden of resurrecting their marriage.

He moved closer, coming to a halt only
inches from her knees. “Penny, I beg you to understand that I was a
boy with his head full of idealism, as young men so frequently are.
Rescuing you put me into the realm of legends, of Arthur, Lancelot,
and the search for the Holy Grail. I was every knight who had ever
slain a dragon or rescued a fair maiden. And when I . . .
when
you
. . .” The earl
stumbled to a halt. “On our wedding night,” he continued, choosing
his words with care, “I was totally caught up in noble ideals. You
will recall you appeared even younger than you actually were. To me
you were a child with whom I would enact a play for our watchers.
There was no question of any genuine passion. No question of any
emotion of any kind between us.”

Jason managed a rueful smile. “I was an
idealistic young fool, my dear. You aroused such passion in me,
elicited such responses to your skills that I almost totally forgot
myself. Later, I was so ashamed of my failure to be the noble hero
of my imagination that I could not face you. I saw myself as
completely derelict. And, later, of course, it was all so easy to
blame you. To tell myself I had been made a fool of by a
well-trained odalisque, instead of acknowledging I had spent the
night with a naive and innocent girl who had only wished to please
her husband.”

Through the last part of this speech, Penny
had been staring up at him, eyes shining with tears of pity, tears
of joy. “Oh, my dear,” she said softly, taking both his hands in
hers, “why could you not have told me sooner?”

“
I was
such
a fool,” Jason snorted. “One moment I
blamed you, the next you were once again the fair maiden whose
innocence I had defiled. I lusted after Gulbeyaz, yet could not
forgive myself for touching little Penny Blayne.” The earl ran
agitated fingers through his dark brown hair. “And then, when we
were together at last, I made a mull of that as well.” Jason
sighed, his lower lip quirking into a rueful smile as he gazed down
at her.

“
I wanted so much for you to love me,”
Penny confessed, “yet I could not forgive. Outwardly, I made an
effort to attract you, yet, inside, I held a grievance far beyond
any sin you may have committed. We were star-crossed, I
fear.”

“
Is there hope for us then?”

Penny’s gaze now held a hint of mischief.
“There is but one more hurdle, my lord,” she decreed. “If you will
give me a quarter hour before you follow me up the stairs?”
Gracefully, the countess rose, offering her husband a look full of
promise before she headed up the cottage’s narrow staircase.

The earl, red-faced, was forced to place his
hat over his lap while he waited, most thankful that no one came
into the room during that tense fifteen-minute wait. By the end of
it, he was certain he had put a new polish on his pocket watch from
the amount of times he had taken it out to look at it.

When the moment finally came—when he
mounted the steep stairs and found the invitingly open door—he came
to a halt a step inside the small bedchamber and simply stared. He
should have known, of course. The little witch! She stood before
the dormer window, every inch of her clearly outlined by the rays
of the late afternoon sun, for she was clad in nothing but the
full-sleeved white gauze tunic and azure
shalwar
, with the accompanying jeweled satin cap
and the long white silk veil, fastened beneath heavily kohl-rimmed
blue eyes. Even after ten full years, he would swear he could smell
the perfumes wafting from her clothes.