Page 85 of The Rebellious Lady and the Phantom Lord
She touched her lips to his. “I would come for no other reason than that I should perish without you.”
“You realize that the home I could offer you would be nothing like this?” James gestured, indicating the gilded magnificence of the bedchamber. “Canada is an untamed land, and there is the war in the American colonies. Although we have not been much disturbed by it yet, there is always the chance?—”
Phaedra kissed him again to silence him. “I should not mind any of that if I was with you.” She gave a shaky laugh. “Indeed, I might regard it as a challenge to convince your Canadian friends they are supporting the wrong side in the war.”
James clutched her to him as though she were an armful of mist he expected to vanish at any moment. Then he kissed herwith such infinite tenderness, kissed her as though he would never let her go.
When he drew back, it seemed to Phaedra as though their hearts touched in the meeting of their eyes. He swept her off her feet, cradling her high against him, carrying her to the bed to set the seal upon the pact they had just made.
As often as James had made love to her this summer, Phaedra had experienced nothing like the passion that coursed between them now. Before there had been a desperate edge that had sparked almost a ferocity into James’s loving. This time he undressed her so slowly, with such great care, Phaedra cried out with impatience for his caress.
Even after he stretched out naked beside her, the warm, strong contours of his muscular frame straining against her, James yet prolonged the moment of their joining. He kissed and stroked, his hands molding her curves with trembling worship as though she offered him a great gift, one that he scarcely dared to accept.
Phaedra banded her arms about him, her lips brushing the scar upon his throat, the only visible mark of all that he had endured. She sought to draw out that pain from him as much as she did to fan the flames of his desire.
He pressed her back into the downy softness of the pillows, burying his lips against her hair, his breath warm as he murmured, “Tell me again. Say it-that you will be mine.”
“Yours,” she whispered. “Yours forever.”
A soft moan escaped her when he at last eased himself inside her. He moved slowly, bathing them both in tender fire. Phaedra became lost in the rhythm as though she already followed James upon that sea of forbidden dreams-upon wild, dark waves that, when they crested, left them both spent upon some faraway shore.
Long after their passion had faded into warm afterglow, James continued to hold her close, molding her flesh to his. He clung to her, claiming her with a possessiveness that both filled her with joy and frightened her. He could not seem to relax the tension cording his strong fingers, as if he feared that by releasing her, she would draw away from him and change her mind.
“You will never want for anything, never regret your choice. I swear it.” His voice was a fierce whisper in the darkness.
“Hush, love.” Phaedra burrowed deeper against James’s shoulder, wishing he had not spoken of regrets. But it was not hers that she feared so much as his. What if her love was not enough? What if the time came when his desire for her was overcome by the desire to be avenged?
No, she refused to consider that possibility. Her love would be enough. She would make it so.
It took James several days to arrange for their passage from England. By the night they were scheduled to depart, Phaedra felt as though her nerves were as brittle as glass, stretched too thin by the blower’s art, ready to shatter at the slightest touch.
On the day of the elopement, she alternated between the desire to brim over with laughter and to burst into tears. As the sun slowly set, bathing her bedchamber window in hues of rose and amber, Phaedra fidgeted, scarcely able to stand still long enough for Lucy to mend the flounce of her white satin petticoat.
“Only a moment longer, milady,” her harried maid pleaded, taking several more quick stitches. “There. It is done.” Lucy smoothed the petticoats down over the whalebone hoops billowing out around Phaedra. Then she helped her don a gown fashioned of green pomona silk.
“You will look such a picture, milady,” Lucy crooned. “So beautiful. I declare-just like a bride.”
Phaedra started, shooting a wary glance at Lucy. If the girl were not so blithely imperceptive, Phaedra might have feared she had guessed something of the planned elopement.
Glancing at herself in the mirror, she supposed she could see what had occasioned Lucy’s remark. She certainly looked pale enough to be a skittish maiden upon her wedding day. A hectic flush mounted high into her cheeks, the glittering green of her eyes enhanced by the matching shade of the gown.
As Lucy dressed her hair, Phaedra tried to calm the flutters in her stomach by mentally rehearsing James’s plan. They were to attend a performance of Handel’s opera, Rinaldo, at Covent Garden Theatre in the company of her grandfather. Phaedra was to pretend to be overcome by the heat, feeling faint. Knowing full well that her grandfather would never bestir himself, it would be left to James to take her out of the gallery for a breath of air. From there, they would simply vanish into the night, bundling into a closed carriage James had hired and make for Portsmouth. By dawn tomorrow, they would have caught the tide, and England’s shoreline would be fast receding in the mist.
A simple plan. What could possibly go wrong? All the same, Phaedra’s hands trembled as she drew on her gloves. Beset by all manner of qualms, she wondered what her grandfather would do when the performance ended and neither she nor James had returned. Would he have them pursued or simply sit back chuckling, still deluding himself she had run off with the Marquis de Varnais? If he did somehow glean the truth, Phaedra hated to think he would experience his shock in such a public place.
Although she fought against the notion, she could not help wondering if James had deliberately planned it that way. Was he relishing the thought that perhaps he had indeed found the perfect revenge against Sawyer Weylin? The spiriting away of his only granddaughter would smash the old man’s hope of realizinghis most cherished dream-that of acquiring a title for his family. With Phaedra gone, he would have no family, and the broken old man would end his days alone.
Despite all that he had done, Phaedra felt a stab of pity for her grandfather. But she despised herself for even suspecting that James had ever considered such things when he had accepted her offer to go away with him.
The joy that suffused James’s face of late came not from the anticipation of dealing a crushing blow to his old enemy, but from the knowledge that they would spend the rest of their lives together.
Lucy at last finished arranging a tiny spray of silk roses upon the crown of Phaedra’s upswept hair. Only one long red-gold curl was left to trail over the creamy expanse of her shoulder.
“It is not the fashion,” Lucy said, looking pleased with her handiwork all the same. “But ever so much more becoming.”
Phaedra regarded her own reflection for a moment before turning to Lucy. How loyal the girl had always been,obeying her every command without question, even lying at times to cover for her. On a sudden impulse, Phaedra enveloped her maid in a quick hug.
“I don’t know how I would have gotten on without you, Lucy,” she said. “You have served me well.”
