Читать книгу The Greatest Of Sins - Christine Merrill - Страница 10

He ought to have known better. Before coming, Sam had steeled himself against temptation with prayer. His plan had been to resist all contact with her. Just moments before, he had assured her father that he would be gone. And yet, at the first touch of her hand, he had forgotten it all and followed her through the house like a puppy on a lead.

Now he sat at her side on a little stone bench under the elm as she experimented with her new toy. It was just like hundreds of other happy afternoons spent here and it reminded him of how much he missed home, and how much a part of that home she was.

Evie held the spyglass firmly pointed into the nearest tree. ‘There is a nest. And three young ones all open mouthed and waiting to be fed. Oh, Sam, it is wonderful.’

It was indeed. He could see the flush of pleasure on her cheek and the way it curved down into the familiar dimple of her smile. So excited, and over such a small thing as a nest of birds. But had she not always been just so? Joy personified and a tonic to a weary soul.

‘You can adjust it, just by turning here.’ He reached out and, for a moment, his hand covered hers. The shock of connection was as strong as ever. It made him wonder—did she still feel it as well? If so, she was as good at dissembling as he, for she gave no response.

‘That is ever so much better. I can make out individual feathers.’ She looked away from the birds, smiling at him, full of mischief. ‘I clearly made the best bargain out of your empty pockets today, sir.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘If you had reached in and pulled out a snuff box, I’d have had a hard time developing the habit of taking it. But a telescope is very much to my liking.’

‘Was it so obvious that I did not bring you anything?’ he asked, sighing.

‘The look of alarm on your face was profound,’ she admitted and snapped the little cylinder shut to put it back into its case. ‘But do not think that you can get this away from me by distracting me with a necklace. It is mine now and I shan’t return it.’

‘Nor would I expect you to.’ He smiled back at her and felt the easy familiarity washing over him in a comfortable silence. With six years, thousands of miles travelled and both of them grown, none of the important things had changed between them. She was still his soul’s mate. At least he could claim it was more than lust that he felt for her.

She broke the silence. ‘Tell me about your travels.’

‘There is not enough time to tell you all the things I have seen,’ he said. But now that she had asked, the temptation to try was great and the words rushed out of him. ‘Birds and plants that are nothing like you find in England. And the look of the ocean, wild or becalmed, or the sky before a storm, when there is no land in sight? The best word I can find for it is majesty. Sea and heaven stretching as far as the eye can see in all directions and us just a spot in the middle.’

‘I should very much like to see that,’ she said wistfully.

He imagined her, at his side, lying on the deck to look at the stars. And then he put the dream carefully away. ‘Wonderful though some times were, I would not have wished them on you if it meant you saw the rest. A ship of the line is no place for a woman.’

‘Was naval life really so harsh?’

‘During battle, there was much for me to do,’ he admitted evasively, not wanting to share the worst of it.

‘But you helped the men,’ she said, her face shining when she said it, as though there was something heroic about simply doing his job. ‘And that was what you always wanted to do. I am sure it was most gratifying.’

‘True,’ he agreed. He had felt useful. And it had been a relief to find a place where he seemed to fit, after so much doubt.

‘If it made you happy, then I should like to have seen that as well,’ she said firmly.

‘Most certainly not!’ He did not want to think of her, mixed in with the blood and death. Nor did he want to lose her admiration, when she saw him helpless in the face of things that had no cure.

She gave him a pained look. ‘Have you forgotten so much? Was it not I who encouraged you in your medical studies? I watched you tend every injured animal you found and dissect the failures. I swear, you did not so much eat in those days as study the anatomy of the chops.’

‘I could just as easily have become butcher, for all I learned there,’ he admitted. ‘But working over a person is quite a different thing.’ Sometimes, it was its own form of butchery.

‘You learned human anatomy in Edinburgh,’ she said. ‘Through dissection.’

He suppressed a smile and nodded. Evie was as fearless as she had always been, and no less grisly, despite her refined appearance.

‘You did many other things as well, I’m sure.’

‘I observed,’ he corrected. ‘It was not until I left school that I could put the skills to use. Now I am thinking of returning to Scotland,’ he said, to remind them both that he could not stay. ‘I still have many friends at the university. Perhaps I might lecture.’

She shook her head. ‘That is too far away.’

That was why he had suggested it. She was clinging to his sleeve again, as though she could not bear to have him taken from her. He considered detaching her fingers, but it was very near to having her touch his hand, so he left them remain as they were. ‘You will be far too busy with your new life to waste time upon me. I doubt you will miss me at all.’

‘You know that is not true. Did I not write you often in the last years? Nearly every week, yet you never answered.’ Her voice grew quiet and, in it, he could hear the hurt he had caused her.

‘Probably because I did not receive your letters,’ he said, as though it had not mattered to him. ‘The mail is a precarious thing, when one is at sea.’ He had received it often enough. And he had cherished it. In the years they’d been apart, her correspondence had grown from a neat ribbon-bound stack to a small chest, packed tightly with well-thumbed missives, so familiar to him that he could recite their contents from memory.

‘You had no such excuse at university,’ she reminded him. ‘I wrote then as well. But you did not answer those letters, either. It rather appeared to me that you had forgotten me.’

‘Never,’ he said fervently. That, at least, was the truth.

‘Well, I will not allow it to happen again. Edinburgh is too far. You must stay close. And if you must teach, then teach me.’

He laughed, to cover the shock. It was not possible, for so many reasons. While he was not totally unwilling to share the information, he did not dare. She was a grown woman and not some curious girl. Discussing the intimate details of the human body would be difficult with any female. But with Evie, it would be impossible.

And if she was to marry, their circles would be so different that even casual conversation would be infrequent. Next to a duke, he would be little better than a tradesman.

‘You know that is not proper,’ he said at last. ‘Your father would not allow it. Nor would your husband.’ They both must remember that there would be another man standing between them.

And more than that.

He was forgetting himself again—and forgetting the reason he had to stay away. They could not be friends any more than they could be lovers. He had spent years away from her, known other women and prayed for a return to common sense. Nothing had dulled his feelings for her. The desire was just as strong and the almost palpable need to rush to her, catch her in his arms and hold her until the world steadied again. If she married, it would be no different. He would still want her. He would simply add the sin of adultery to an already formidable list.

He patted her hand in a way that showed a proper, brotherly affection. ‘No, Evie. I cannot allow you to spin wild plans, as you did when we were children. I must go back to my life and you to yours.’

‘But you are staying in London for a time, aren’t you?’ she said, looking up at him with the bluest of eyes, full of a melting hope.

‘I had not planned to.’ Why could he not manage a firmer tone? He’d made it seem like he might be open to persuasion.

‘You must stay for the engagement ball. And the ceremony.’

As if that would not be the most exquisite torture. ‘I do not know if that is possible.’

Her hand twisted, so that her fingers tightened on his. ‘I will not allow you to go. Even if I must restrain you by force.’ She should know that she had not the strength to do so. But she had tried it often enough, when they were young, tackling him and trying to wrestle him to the ground in a most unladylike fashion.

The idea that she might attempt it again sounded in his mind like an alarm bell.

‘Very well,’ he said with a sigh, if only to make her release his hand. ‘But I expect I will leave soon after. Perhaps, instead of Scotland, I shall return to sea.’

‘You mustn’t,’ she said, gripping him even more tightly before remembering herself and relaxing her hold. ‘It takes you too far away from me for too long. And although you did not speak of it, I am sure it must have been very dangerous. I would not have you put yourself at risk, again.’

It had been quite dangerous. He was sure that he could tell her stories for hours that would have her in awe. Instead, he said, ‘Not really. It was a job. Nothing more than that. Unlike St Aldric, I must have employment if I am to live.’ The words made him sound petulant. He should not be envious of a man that had been born to a rank he could never achieve.

She ignored the censure of the duke, which had been childish of him. ‘You must have a practice on land. I will speak to father about it. Or St Aldric.’

‘Certainly not! I am quite capable of finding my own position, thank you.’ In any other life, an offer of patronage from a future duchess would have been just the thing he needed. But not this woman. Never her.

‘You value your independence more than our friendship,’ she said, and released his hand. ‘Very well, then. If there is nothing I can say that will change your mind, I will bother you no further on the subject of your career.’

There was one thing, of course. Three words from her would have him on his knees, ready to do anything she might ask.

And since they were the three words neither of them must ever speak, he would go to Edinburgh or the ends of the earth, so that he might never hear them.