Each Time We Love Page 6

  Adam froze and something dangerous entered his hard blue eyes. In one stride he reached the bed, and grasping her upper arm, shook her. "Just remember," he snarled softly, "that I am the same gypsy bastard who only moments ago you were professing to love and pleading with so sweetly to marry. And I think you should get the tale correct—I was kidnapped by the gypsies, not sired by one, and as for being a bastard..." A thought struck him, such as the knowledge that, through a trick of fate, he was the bastard son of Guy Savage and not the legitimate issue of a man long-dead, as was commonly believed. Realizing that Betsey's remark hadn't been entirely untrue, he dropped her arm and grinned. "You may be right about my being a bastard," he said, "but that fact certainly doesn't speak well for your taste in men, sweetheart."

  "How dare you!" Betsey breathed furiously, her cheeks flushed from the force of her anger.

  Blue eyes gleaming now with mocking laughter, Adam drawled, "My dear, there isn't much that I wouldn't dare. So you shouldn't be surprised at what I may or may not do."

  Working herself into a tantrum of magnificent proportions, Betsey fumbled angrily with her pale green gown of India muslin. "You are rude, arrogant and vile! I never want to lay eyes on you again as long as I live! Get out of my sight!" she spat.

  "Well, I'd like to indulge you," Adam said dryly, "but unless you plan on walking the five miles to your sister's home, I'm afraid you'll have to put up with my vile presence a little while longer."

  There was a silence fraught with tension and rage on Betsey's part during most of the time it took Adam to escort her in his gig to the garden gate through which she had slipped out several hours ago. It was only as they were traveling over the last quarter mile before they would reach her sister's house, Magnolia Hills, that it occurred to Betsey that Adam really was going to take her at her word and never see her again.

  The notion of a man finishing with her was appalling, but worse was the notion that never again would she know the pleasure of his lovemaking, and that simply was not to be contemplated. She wanted Adam St. Clair and she was going to have him and nothing was going to stop her. Peeping over at the remote expression on his face, she nibbled at her lips, her mind racing for a way to retrieve the ground that she had lost.

  Reaching the wrought-iron gate which opened onto the extensive gardens of her sister's home, Adam pulled his horse to a stop. Leaping down from the gig, he walked around it and lifted down Betsey's slight form.

  Shrouded in a black silk cape, with the hood shadowing her small face and concealing the fairness of her hair, Betsey was unrecognizable. Standing at the side of the road, she glanced up at him, and trying her last trick, one that had never failed her before, she let her eyes fill with tears. "Oh, Adam!" she breathed, "I can't believe that we are parting this way."

  Taking her arm politely but guiding her toward the gate, he said, "We agreed in the beginning that it would happen someday. It just happened perhaps sooner than either of us intended." Opening the gate and thrusting her through it before she had time to prevent him, he added dryly, "You made your feelings quite clear and I don't believe that there is anything to be gained by discussing it further. I never argue with a lady."

  "Oh, but, Adam, you don't understand," Betsey murmured, not able to believe that this was happening. "You made me so angry and I just lost my temper. I didn't mean what I said."

  Adam glanced down at her, his face shadowed in the darkness. "It doesn't matter, Betsey," he said wearily. "It's over. You want marriage and I don't; there is no middle ground for us, and since I am unlikely to change my mind about that fact, I think it would be wise if we use this opportunity to part as amicably as possible. Good night."

  Spinning on his heel, he crossed the short distance to his gig and, before Betsey's stunned gaze, leaped into the vehicle and urged the horse in the direction of Belle Vista. He's actually leaving me! she thought incredulously. Stamping her foot with rage, forgetting the need for silence, she called sharply, "Adam St. Clair, don't you dare do this to me! Come back here this instant or I'll make you sorry."

  "I already am, sweetheart." Adam threw over his shoulder with a mocking laugh.

  An instant later the horse picked up speed. Her bosom heaving with baffled fury, she watched in chagrined wrath as the gig slowly became swallowed up in darkness. That Adam St. Clair! He was a devil!

  Chapter 4

  Adam might have laughed, as he drove away from Betsey Asher, but his laughter faded when he considered all the snares that a woman with marriage on her mind could devise to trap the unwary male. He'd been eluding them for years, but it didn't mean that he underestimated the danger. Softly he swore under his breath. Women were necessary, but Jesus! They could be the very devil, too.

  Returning to his home, he retreated to the quiet elegance of the masculine study at Belle Vista, but the restlessness that dogged his every step these days returned with a vengeance. By rights he should have been exhausted—he had been up since dawn the previous day and it was now going on four o'clock in the morning. He grinned. And he had just spent several, ah, strenuous hours in Betsey's arms. But seeking his bed did not appeal to him, and pouring himself a liberal amount of brandy into a snifter, he wandered about the mahogany paneled room with its blue-and-scarlet-hued Turkey rug, sipping his brandy.

  He supposed it was Betsey's angry remark about his being a gypsy bastard that was at the root of his sleeplessness. Not that the remark itself bothered him, but it brought to mind those ten years that he and his half sister, Catherine Tremayne, had lived with the gypsies. He had been five years old when they had been kidnapped from Mountacre, his stepfather's estate in England, and once he had stopped missing their mother, Rachael, he had adapted well to the nomadic, adventuresome life of the gypsies. He had grown up unfettered by conventional demands—while other boys had been learning their letters, Adam had been increasing his skill with the knife and discovering the bounty that deft fingers could snatch from the unwary. His life had been one of untrammeled freedom as they had constantly traveled throughout the land. The stunning return to Mountacre when he had been fifteen had been traumatic and had left Adam feeling lost in a world that should have been his natural milieu.

  Under any circumstances a young man raised like a wild wolf cub as he had been would have had trouble adjusting to finding himself suddenly plunged into the punctilious world of a wealthy lord of the realm, but there had been an obvious dislike between Lord Tremayne, the Earl of Mount, and his stepson and it had caused endless friction and dissension. Upon his eighteenth birthday, Adam had been thrilled when it was revealed that his real father, an American, had willed him a rich inheritance near the city of Natchez in the Mississippi area. The parting from his sister had been difficult—they had shared so much together during those gypsy years—and while Adam would miss his mother, she was in many ways a stranger to him and so he had been able to leave England with only a little heartache.

  Finding himself at eighteen, a rich young man, in a land as wild and lawless as the New World had been a heady experience. With no mentor to guide or restrain him, he'd found no dare too reckless, no wager too high, no duel too dangerous, and in a short time he had gained the reputation of being a mercurial daredevil. And yet those very attributes that might have been frowned upon elsewhere were the very things that the wealthy planter society of Natchez admired—hard drinking, hard riding, a quick temper, and a cool head and a steady arm on the dueling field. Adam excelled at all of those activities and he was rapturously absorbed into the aristocratic society of Natchez.

  The years had matured him somewhat, however, and he supposed that Catherine's fleeing from her very new husband, Jason Savage, and arriving pregnant on his doorstep nearly twelve years ago had been the beginning of his attempts to live a more conventional life. Catherine and Jason had settled their differences and were now happily married, but Adam was still plagued with restlessness and the recklessness that burned within him sometimes lured him willy-nilly into situations that we
re filled with peril and danger.

  Like spying on the British during the past war for Jason, he thought with a wry twist to his mouth. Looking back, Adam firmly believed that Jason had made a point to come up with hazardous antics to keep him diverted.

  Taking an appreciative sip of the brandy, Adam continued to wander about the study, recalling the first time he had met Jason Savage. It had been at Jason's plantation, Terre du Coeur, when having escorted Rachael upon her sudden arrival from England to Terre du Coeur, Adam had discovered that not only was his beloved sister in the hands of Jason's greatest enemy, Bias Davalos, but that Jason's father, Guy Savage, was also his father! It had been a stunning shock. Even when Guy and Rachael had painfully explained to him and Jason the bare facts, Adam could hardly take in the enormity of it all—how years before, Guy had gone to England to obtain a divorce from Jason's mother, Antonia, and sincerely believing that he was a free man while visiting in the country, he had met, fallen deeply in love with and married Rachael. Rachael was already pregnant with Adam when the horrifying truth was discovered—Antonia had changed her mind, refusing to countenance the divorce. Legally, Guy was still married to Antonia, his runaway marriage to Rachael invalid. Fearing the gossip and scandal that would accompany the truth, Guy, after bestowing his own mother's maiden name, St. Clair, on the unborn child and having made the proper arrangements for the child's future, had been hurriedly shipped back to America and a conveniently deceased husband had been erected to be the father of Rachael's child.

  No one had ever considered that, years later, Guy's legitimate son, Jason, might come to England and fall in love with Catherine, Rachael's daughter by the earl, thereby inadvertently setting into motion the events that would force revelation of the truth. Even though those shattering events had taken place over twelve years ago, sometimes it all still amazed Adam. Guy and Rachael had been married nearly ten years now and to no one's surprise, nine months from the day of their wedding vows, Rachael had presented Guy with another child, a daughter, Heather and barely a year after that had given birth to a son, Benedict. The secret of Adam's birth, however, remained just that—as far as the world knew, Adam was merely Guy's stepson.

  Sighing, Adam stared moodily out of the long windows that graced one of the outside walls of the room. Daylight was still a way off, but already the darkness seemed less dense. Another day was upon him and he wondered how he was going to spend it. A competent overseer and staff freed him from the day-to-day mechanics of running a plantation the size of Belle Vista, and his well-trained house servants and stablemen stood ready to receive his every command. It was a lowering thought, but Adam was aware that he had precious little to do with the excellent management and wise business decisions that characterized the running of Belle Vista and the continued growth of his personal fortune. He had reached that point in life where, unless he wanted to discharge his excellent overseer, lawyer and business agent and take over the running of his vast holdings himself, his presence was almost superfluous. Which left him with a hell of a lot of time on his hands....

  Christ! He was so bloody bored with the amusements to be found in Natchez. Not for the first time Adam considered leaving the area for several months in search of some way to banish his increasing restlessness.

  He needed to clear his head of too many nights of heavy drinking in smoke-filled gaming rooms; he needed new sights, needed the satisfaction of a body exhausted from physical exertion and needed to infuse his life with an eagerness to greet each day. There was only one thing for it—he would go to Terre du Coeur. A thoughtful expression on his handsome face, he considered the idea. There was much, he conceded ruefully, to say for the plan. Jason's plantation was in one of the wilder, less settled, little-explored sections of northern Louisiana. There were few neighbors and social affairs were certainly at a minimum, nor were there any haunts of vice nearby to distract one in a weak moment from the primeval lure of the land.

  Adam grinned, tossing down the remainder of his brandy. He found the remoteness of Terre du Coeur appealing. Something about the sheer immensity of the ever-changing panorama, of the raw, wildly flourishing landscape, called strongly to him.

  Setting down his brandy snifter, he decided that a trip to see Catherine and Jason was precisely what he needed. He would leave today. This very morning. A hasty word with his overseer, a man who knew how to keep his mouth shut should anyone, particularly Betsey Asher, come asking about Adam's whereabouts, and a brief meeting with his equally closemouthed butler would settle the matter.

  If there was a flutter in the household at Belle Vista when his staff was informed of his precipitous plans, not by so much as a lifted brow did they reveal it. Despite his sleepless night, by ten o'clock in the morning Adam was on his way to Terre du Coeur. Since he kept several changes of clothing and other personal effects he might need at his sister's home, his requirements for the journey were few, and with little more than a bedroll, weapons and some basic cooking equipment, he rode off astride his favorite black stallion—an impressive son out of the stallion which Jason had bought on that fateful trip to England when a violet-eyed wench, Tamara—the name the gypsies had given Adam's sister, Catherine—had caught his fancy.

  Adam was an expert woodsman—he had been tutored by Jason's blood brother, the Cherokee brave, Blood Drinker—and there was little about taking care of himself in the wild that he hadn't learned. It was with Blood Drinker at his side that Adam had learned to "read" the signs made by man and animal alike and to set effective snares comprised of a bit of vine. With nothing more than the clothes on their backs and knives at their sides, he and Blood Drinker would mysteriously disappear into the vast trackless wilderness for months at a time, living each day as it came, hunting, fishing and exploring land that had never known the footsteps of the white man. Blood Drinker had taught him well, and consequently, when Adam finally arrived at Terre du Coeur nearly three weeks later, he looked fit and vital, his worn buckskins superbly fitting his muscled frame, his eyes bright and clear and his face bronzed by the hot sun. He looked not at all like a man who had spent the past weeks riding through a feral wilderness, sleeping on the ground and hunting for every morsel he ate.

  He arrived around three o'clock in the afternoon in front of the Spanish-style wood-and-brick house that Jason Savage called home. A wide, bow-shaped staircase on the outside of the house formed a graceful arch which led to the vine-draped upper story, and Adam had barely dismounted before Jason strolled into view at the top of the staircase.

  "Mon Dieu!" his half brother exclaimed in mock disgust, his emerald eyes glinting with amusement. "Not you! Surely the fast ladies and gaming halls of Natchez are enough to distract you so that I do not have to put up with your less-than-restful presence."

  Adam grinned at him, his teeth gleaming whitely amidst the heavy black stubble that covered his face, a lock of dark hair waving across his brow. "You did tell me that I could come to visit whenever the mood struck me, didn't you?"

  "Oui! But I didn't think you would actually do it," Jason replied, his words at variance with the warm smile curving his lips. Coming down the staircase, he approached Adam and pulled the younger man into a crushing embrace. "It is good to see you, little brother."

  There were some similarities between the two men, but their resemblance to each other was not marked. Both had thick black hair and both were tall, and while in his youth Adam had been an inch shorter than Jason, now, at thirty-four to Jason's forty-two, he stood as tall as his older brother. Their builds were dissimilar—Adam was a supple rapier to Jason's broadsword. His body, though wide-shouldered, was leaner than Jason's more formidable physique, yet like the lethal rapier, Adam moved with the same deadly speed and purpose, as more than one fool had learned. Jason had inherited his emerald eyes from his Creole mother, whereas Adam's sapphire-blue eyes had come from Rachael, but there was something about the chiseled perfection of their jaws and chins and the faint arrogant flare to their noses that had come to both of t
hem from their father, Guy.

  Smiling, Adam murmured, "Not quite so little, I think."

  Jason laughed. "Don't take umbrage so quickly, my young firebrand. But enough of this—come, come inside and refresh yourself."

  It dawned on Adam that something was missing—there were not three or four children shouting and racing to meet him, nor was there any sign of Catherine. Normally she would have appeared by now and hurled herself into his arms, an endless stream of excited greetings pouring from her lips.

  A question in his eyes, Adam glanced at Jason. Correctly reading his half-brother's expression, Jason replied, "Don't worry. There is nothing wrong. Catherine and the children are in New Orleans at the moment—they have been visiting there for some months. As a matter of fact, if you had arrived a day later, you wouldn't have found me at home either. I leave tomorrow to escort them home."

  "Oh," Adam said, feeling rather let-down. He hadn't realized until this moment how much he had looked forward to seeing his sister and her pack of rascally brats.

  "You could come to New Orleans with me," Jason proposed as they walked up the stairs and entered the coolness of the wide gallery.

  Adam grimaced. "It was to escape the, er, amusements of the city that I came here. New Orleans has much the same to offer as Natchez—just more exotic versions of it."

  Jason smiled, but the expression in his emerald eyes was thoughtful. He made no comment, though, and entering the wide hallway, he led the way into his study.

  It was only after Adam was comfortably sprawled across from him in a large russet leather chair, a tall, cool glass of whiskey and mint in his hand, that Jason spoke. Looking affectionately at the younger brother he had come to love deeply, Jason said, "I do have to leave tomorrow, as your sister will be expecting me in New Orleans. You know that you can stay here as long as you like—in fact, I insist that you remain here while I go to fetch the family home. Catherine would never forgive me if she learned that you had come to visit and I had not done everything within my power to keep you here."