The Reckoning (90 page)

‘
Well, my love, I knew there was no chance in the world of my marrying you. You, an earl's daughter with fifty thousand
pounds –'

‘Sixty.'

‘You see?’

She turned to look at him with veiled eyes. 'You'd have
married me if you could?'

‘
Then, now, or at any time in the future,' he said, his blue
eyes pouring into hers. 'Don't I tell you I love you, my
tigress?’

She held his gaze for a moment, and then flung an arm
over his shoulder and rolled onto her back, pulling him with
her. 'Liar!' she said. 'You want me for this, don't you – only
for this!' She pulled his head down to her breast. He took her
right nipple gently between his teeth and she sighed and
arched her body. 'Make love to me again,' she said. ‘Jesmond,
oh my dear Jes. Make love to me.’

He stretched over her, kissing her fervently, feeling her
body reaching hungrily for his. 'Rosamund, my beautiful
one,' he whispered fiercely. Their bodies met and coupled
smoothly, knowing every movement in the elaborate dance,
loving it, never able to have enough of it. 'I love you,' he said
as passion mounted. His mouth against her ear, he said, 'I
love you. I love you.’

She pressed against him in response. But when the last
moment came, he dragged his head back from her, his teeth
bared, his eyes screwed shut as though with pain, and in that moment Rosamund opened her eyes and looked up at him, as
she always did, with a sad, lost look he never saw.

Afterwards they lay side by side, her hair tumbled over his
shoulder, his fair face flushed, and looked at their reflection
in the cheval glass opposite the end of the bed.

‘
We make such a handsome couple,' Rosamund said,
watching her reflection smile back at her, glitteringly, like a
tiger. 'Naked like this, like two lovely, innocent animals. What
a pity no-one else ever sees us naked together. Can you
imagine if we appeared at a public function, walking up the red-carpeted stairs, with my hand on your arm. How the old
pussies would cry out and faint! It would be almost worth it,
my Jes, just once, just to make them all sit up!'

‘
Shall we?' he said. 'I will if you will.' He watched her eyes
in the glass. There was a seriousness under his lightness that
she heard, and would not hear.

She dug her fingers into his thick, pale hair and tugged a
little, warningly. No, not even once. On second thoughts, I
want to keep you all to myself. I want no-one else to look at
your lovely body.'

‘
I believe that's all you want me for,' he said lightly. 'Just
my lovely body, nothing else.'

‘
Of course,' she said. 'What else?' She tugged the hair
harder, shaking his head gently from side to side. 'What else
are you good for, Jesmond Farraline, tell me that? Good to serve me, like the fine stallion you are. And after all, what
more can you want?’

For once he ignored the warning in her hand and voice.
‘Much more,' he said. 'I want much more. I want everything.'
He reached up and unfurled her fingers, releasing his head;
pulled away from her, jumped up onto his knees to face her,
looking down into her face seriously. 'I want all of you, Ros.
Don't you understand that yet? I love you –'

‘You desire me,' she corrected flatly.

‘
Yes, of course I do! God, you're the most desirable woman
that ever lived! I want you and want you all the time. But if it
was only that – oh, I could resist that.' Seeing her faint,
mocking smile he went on fiercely, 'And I would, too! Do you
think I like deceiving Marcus?’

The smile disappeared. 'Don't talk to me about Marcus.'

‘
I like him. He's a fine man. I wouldn't do this to him if it
was just a matter of – of passion.'

‘Stop it.'

‘
But I love you, Rosamund, every part of you, your body
and mind and soul –'

‘
My dear Jes,' she said in a hard voice that was holding
back tears, 'I don't have a soul. I gave that up long ago.'

‘
Why can't you love me?' he cried wildly. 'I know that we
can't marry. I know there can't be a divorce. But if you just
loved me – if you just said that you loved me –!'

‘Is that all you want? I love you – there, will that do?'

‘
No, not like that.' He ruffled his hair in frustration. 'You
know very well what I mean.' He stared at her for a moment,
and then leaned forward, stroked her cheek with one hand,
kissed her brow and eyes tenderly. 'Dear love –'

‘Don't,' she said in a small voice.

He gazed at her, his mouth quivering. 'You do love me. I
don't believe it could be as good as this if you didn't love me. I
don't believe you would go on seeing me like this. I know you
love me – I feel it when I touch you, when I kiss you. If you
would only let go, tell me how you feel, let me have your love
completely while we're together.
That's
what I want. To have
all of you, just while I can. Is that so much to ask?'

‘
Yes it is! It's entirely too much,' she said in a small, bitter
voice. 'To give you
everything –
to give in to you completely –
and then to pull back, to drag myself away from you, to go
back to that other world and behave as if nothing had
happened? How can you ask that? You're mad, Jesmond
Farraline, mad!'

‘
Rosamund, Ros, tell me you love me,' he whispered,
kissing her. He pushed her back onto the pillows, and felt her
body yielding to his. He caressed her. 'My lovely one, my
queen. Tell me you love me.’

Her mouth snatched at his, her arms came round him to
hold him close, crushing him against her with all her strength.
And then he felt her withdrawing from him again. After a
moment she pulled her mouth away, pushed him back from
her.

‘
No, no,' she said, smiling tigerishly, 'you don't get a halter
on me that easily. Love you, indeed, what nonsense!' She sat up, shaking her hair back, regarding him with cool, laughing
eyes. 'You really are quite mad, you know. Any other man
would be delighted to have a mistress who didn't make
demands on him, but you – you're just perverse, I suppose.’

He struggled with the hurt, and with the desire to strike
back as she had struck him; and when he had won the
struggle, he looked at her seriously for a moment. 'Why,
Rosamund?' he asked. 'No play-acting. Just for once, remem
bering our pact, tell me
why?’

The veil lifted, the eyes widened, she looked at him with
such sadness that he flinched from it, almost wishing he
hadn't asked. He couldn't know that she was thinking of
Sophie and Jasper, of Sophie and her in Brussels, and of how
far their lives had moved apart, down such different roads,
never to meet again.

‘Rosamund?' he said. 'Why?'

‘
You were too late, Jes,' she said sadly. 'You should have
been there before Waterloo. Now it's too late.’

Habit enabled them to resume their easiness with each other.

*

He helped her dress, and then pinned up her hair, and she
watched in the glass, smiling a little. 'You are suspiciously
good at this,' she said.
'It
speaks a very long and disgraceful
experience, I'm afraid.'

‘
Plaiting horses,' he explained.
'I'd
have thought, given
your love of horses, you'd be better at it yourself.'

‘I can do it on other people, not on myself,' she said.

He met her eyes. 'Shall we meet again?' he asked abruptly.

‘
What? Yes, of course. Sophie goes philanthropising every
Tuesday and Thursday. If I don't come to you, I might have
to go with her.'

‘I thought perhaps, after what you said –'

‘
But I still fancy you, you know,' she said, and then,
ruefully, seeing his expression, 'Jes, Jes, don't be sad, my dear.
Let's enjoy what we have while we can.' He didn't answer
her, and she went on, 'You've made such a difference to my
life. When I met you at the York races last year, I was
desperate. I'd been so unhappy – all the strain of Minnie's death, and that dreadful trial, and my marriage to Marcus
and his mother. You've made it possible for me to bear it all.
You've given me so much pleasure.'

‘
But it doesn't make you happy,' he said. 'I want to make
you happy.’

She turned on the seat to look at him instead of his reflec
tion, put her hands up to cup his beautiful face, smiled at
him. 'You do make me happy! God, how can I tell you? You
do! Without you I would shrivel up and die!’

He folded his hands over hers and leaned down and kissed
her, and said no more, allowing her to think she had
convinced him. She couldn't know, of course, of the lost look
in her eyes, even while she was smiling.

*

Two days later Sophie and Jasper gave a very small dinner
party in Rosamund's honour, the guests being Mr and Mrs
Percy Droylsden, Mr Henry Droylsden, Miss Pendlebury, and
Mr Jesmond Farraline.

‘
I couldn't help it, I was invited,' Jesmond whispered to
Rosamund as he took her in to dinner on his arm.

‘
You could have refused,' she replied without moving her
lips.

‘
I didn't want to,' he murmured indignantly. 'Are you
going to be horrid to me? Because if so, I shall dedicate the
evening to embarrassing you.’

She chewed her lip to repress a smirk. He would do it, too.
He knew just how to bring her to the blush. 'I'll be nice,' she
promised. 'But don't make me laugh.'

‘
I won't.’

He didn't – though as he was seated next to her, he spent quite a lot of the time covertly stroking her thigh – much to
the amusement of Henry Droylsden, who was sitting opposite
her and took a couple of kicks on the shins when things went
too far and she tried to shake Jesmond off. Henry enjoyed the
situation hugely, and felt Rosamund ought to have been
grateful to Farraline for diverting her, for otherwise the
dinner was as dull as a wet Monday, the talk never managing
to stray far from the linked subjects of the depression in the
cotton-trade and the revival of the reform movement.