Chapter 23
Daniel woke with a start from a nightmare in which he stood in a crowd watching as his brother was led to the gallows.
He tried to call out but his words were lost in the noise of the crowd.
At the last minute Kit turned and looked out over the baying mass, which grew silent as Kit raised a finger and pointed directly at Daniel.
He sat up, the sweat on his naked chest and forehead turning clammy in the cold pre-dawn. Beside him, someone stirred and a small hand came up to rest on his arm.
‘Daniel?’
He looked down at the woman beside him, seeing only her shadow in the dark.
Agnes.
A wave of remorse flooded him as he remembered how she had given herself to him completely and apparently unconditionally. He had used her to assuage his misery and his guilt with little thought or consideration for this woman.
He lay down on his side, propping himself on one elbow as he ran a finger down the line of her jaw, imagining her small earnest face with its smattering of freckles, aware that her gaze was fixed on his face.
‘Agnes, I’m sorry,’ he said.
‘For what?’
For taking you, for using you, for giving you nothing in return when you have given me so much.
‘I should never … ’ he began, but she laid a finger on his lips.
‘Hush, it was my choice.’
He gripped her hand, holding the fingers against his lips, kissing each tip before releasing her and trailing his fingers along the line of her jaw and the hollow of her throat. She had a woman’s body, curved, soft and warm to the touch.
He stilled. ‘Agnes … ’ He struggled to find the words. ‘Have you ever taken pleasure from laying with a man?’
‘I’ve only lain with one man. My mother and sister told me it was a woman’s lot to bring comfort to a man, not to expect anything in return. I never asked or expected it to be different.’
‘Did James love you?’ he asked.
She didn’t answer at first. Her chest rose and fell in a silent sigh. ‘Love was not a consideration. James was kind to me, that was all I asked.’
‘He wouldn’t marry you?’
She gave a huff of laughter. ‘Marry me? He couldn’t. The Church forbids marriage between a man and his wife’s sister, and James would never have gone against the teachings of the Church.’
Even when that woman was the mother of his son?
The reason for the Great Secret suddenly became so much clearer. With the taint of illegitimacy, Henry could never inherit his father’s estate, but if no one knew or suspected that the child’s mother was not the Earl’s wife …?
He wondered about the circumstances that surrounded Henry’s birth and why Agnes had willingly borne the child. Maybe she would confide in him but not now … not here.
He turned the question. ‘Did you love James?’
This time she answered without hesitation. ‘Yes.’
God rot James Ashby, Daniel thought. Had James realised what a treasure he had in this woman, or had she just been a convenience to be used like any one of his possessions?
But Ashby was dead and he, Daniel Lovell, who should have been dead, was alive and Agnes lay in his arms as if she had always belonged there.
‘What about you, Daniel? Apart from Jennet, have you ever loved?’
He curled a tendril of soft, brown hair around his finger.
Love was not something he had had much time for since his first calf love, the head groom’s daughter.
Jennet had loved him to the point of embarrassment but he had not reciprocated the emotion, only the intention.
A marriage to Jennet had suited him. In his hopeless situation, it had spelled not only freedom but a future.
He had kissed her but there had never been anything more physical than that.
He had certainly never told her that he loved her.
Whatever else he may be, he was not a liar.
When she died his grief had not been at her loss, but at what her loss had meant to him personally.
The thought shamed him now. Jennet had deserved better.
But this conversation was not about him. He wanted to know about the woman in his arms, the woman who stirred something within himself that he did not recognise. He took a deep shuddering breath, knowing that in taking Agnes to bed he had stepped out onto treacherous, unfamiliar ground.
But even as he had that thought, she jerked out of his embrace and lay beside him, staring up at the ceiling of the bed, her hands folded across the covers. The few inches between them now yawned like a gaping chasm.
‘Daniel, you need to understand. Love is a luxury a woman in my position cannot afford. I have to look to a man for my protection and the simple comfort of a roof over my head. All I have to give you in return is my gratitude and my friendship — don’t ask for my love,’ she said.
In a swift movement, Daniel swung himself over her, pinioning her between his knees and holding her forearms down against the mattress. In the greying light of dawn, her eyes widened but she did not struggle.
‘Gratitude is not enough, Agnes. If nothing else, let me show you that a woman has a right to be pleasured.’
The last few years had not been without female companionship, and the willing girls of Fort Royal had taught him something about how to please a woman.
He pulled back the covers exposing her to the grey light of the early dawn.
She shivered in the cold air but did not protest as he let his fingers stray over the soft, silky smoothness of her inner thigh.
She braced beneath his touch, her breath exhaling in a gasp. ‘I … I’ve never been touched like that before.’
He silenced her with his lips and let his fingers coax and gentle the woman in his arms until her breath came in short gasps and she cried out, arching her back before falling back spent and shuddering. He slid his hand across the flat plane of her stomach, the skin beneath his touch contracting.
She lay supine in his arms, her chest rising and falling as if she had run a hard race.
He allowed her only a fleeting moment or two of spent passion before gathering her in his arms and rolling onto his back, bringing her with him.
She took him inside her without resistance, moving in rhythm with him until he too came to climax and they both cried out from the sheer joy of the moment and she collapsed, spent, on his chest, her soft curls spread across his body.
He lay awake, his fingers playing in her hair. While her surrender to him had seemed to be complete and unconditional, there had been something she had held back, and a lump rose in his throat. He recalled the girl in Fort Royal who had recoiled in horror, calling him “un lépreux” — a leper.
Like that girl, Agnes had not touched his back.