Chapter Eighteen

“A nother ale?” The barmaid leaned over the small table in the corner toward Chase, just far enough for her breasts to nearly spill over the low scooped neckline of her blouse. “Or do you want somethin’ else?”

She was clearly not offering a drink, but Chase had no intention of partaking. “No, thank you. I’m not thirsty.”

Her eyes gleamed hopefully, and a slow smile curled her lips. “Hungry, then, are you?”

“No.”

The firmness of that cold refusal pulled her up straight and stripped the smile from her face. Her eyes narrowed in quick anger. “Fine,” she snapped. “Serve yourself at the bar, then.”

Chase leaned back in his chair and watched her storm away, back toward the bar and the trio of pewter tankards waiting to be delivered to other men in the crowded barroom. Surely, they would receive the same proposition he had, and while he wouldn’t blame them for buying her services, the last thing he wanted tonight was company.

In fact, just being here tried his nerves. The small posting inn at the edge of Salterton was crowded with travelers, with men enjoying drinks and cards in the bar and women and children lingering in the common room next door. The inn yard outside echoed beneath the setting sun with the noise of horses and rigs, and people came and went like the tide, with coaches casting them upon the shores of the inn and others rolling them away. The Plough was noisy, smoke-filled, and cramped, just like its rooms upstairs, but Chase had spent the past hour here, pushing a piece of leathery roast beef around a plate because he had no appetite. He didn’t want the company of the other travelers or the handful of locals crammed into the old tavern with him and hadn’t spared a single word for any of them. Yet he also couldn’t bear the silence of the private room he’d rented upstairs under the eaves or face the sleepless night he knew awaited him there.

Because he also knew that every time he tried to close his eyes, he’d see Eleanor’s face.

Dear God, to find her remains now, after all these years… He could barely believe it. But Renslow had no reason to lie to him about something this important, knowing Chase would kill the man with his bare hands if he did.

So Chase had risen at dawn and ridden to the little coastal town to the west, arriving just before sunset. It was too late in the evening to call upon the local rector. Besides, he needed a few hours to collect himself before pressing on with potentially finding Eleanor. What he had to do would rip open all the old wounds he’d spent years attempting to heal, once more plunging him back into depthless guilt and grief. But if there were any chance at all that the unknown woman who had washed up on Sandy Beach was his late wife, he owed it to her and her memory to make certain she had a proper grave and marker, to make certain her family was informed.

As for Tessa, she would never forgive him for trading his blessing of her marriage for information about Eleanor. But then, he never had been worthy of being forgiven by the women he’d disappointed in his life. His devil’s bargain with Renslow was simply another in a long line of disappointments.

He stared at his hands, clenching and releasing them as they rested on the tabletop, barely feeling the motion in the numbness that had gripped him since his conversation with Renslow last night. Numb—fitting, because he had no idea how to feel. He had felt nothing but guilt over Eleanor’s death for so long that he didn’t dare let any sense of hope strike him that the unknown woman in the churchyard might be her, didn’t dare let any sense of relief swell through him at the possibility of finally finding resolution.

It was an ending that had been a long time in coming, a finality he desperately wanted, no matter how macabre.

In the morning, as soon as the hour was decent, he would ride to the local parish church and speak to the rector. In the meantime, he would spend a sleepless night ensuring that fresh pain didn’t replace the numbness by drinking himself into oblivion. So he pushed himself away from the table and headed toward the bar to buy a bottle of whiskey.

He halted and blinked, certain he was still seeing ghosts.

A lone woman entered the inn and paused in the doorway between the common room and bar, uncertain where to go but searching the crowded rooms. She grasped a small travel bag in her gloved hand, with a straw bonnet covering her hair and a travel coat buttoned up to her neck. Even so thoroughly covered, he recognized her silhouette with an unbearable clenching of his chest…

Tessa .

She approached the innkeeper behind the counter, set down her bag at her feet, and asked him a question with a tired smile. The man gestured across the room at Chase. She turned her head to follow, and when her eyes locked with his, full of relief and sympathy, a searing longing ripped through him that vanquished the deadness inside him.

He crossed the bar to her, wordlessly took her bag in one hand and her arm in the other, and led her upstairs through the inn to his room.

With a soft click of the lock, the door opened to reveal the small room shoehorned beneath the slanting eaves and awash in dark shadows except for the faint glow of moonlight falling through the sash window.

She followed him inside. When he turned away to set her bag at the foot of the narrow bed that filled most of the room, she stopped him with a soft touch to his arm. The nervous sound of her hard swallow cut into him.

“Eleanor?” Her voice was little more than a breath.

“Tomorrow.”

She nodded slowly but didn’t remove her hand from his jacket sleeve. The pain they both shared darkened her eyes. “When I found out why you’d come here, I couldn’t not…” Her words trailed off, as if no further explanation was necessary.

And it wasn’t. “I know.”

Just as it wasn’t necessary to explain why he quietly closed and locked the door, shutting them inside together.

He silently pulled loose the ribbon bow of her bonnet beneath her chin and carefully removed it, setting it aside on the chair. She didn’t move when he reached for her again, this time to remove her gloves and then slowly unbutton her coat, but her breath hitched with each soft inhalation as his fingers slowly made their way down her front until the travel coat hung open. He helped her out of it, one slow arm at a time.

“You traveled alone,” he murmured.

She gave a faint nod. “I sent a note to Lady Bentley, telling her not to worry and explaining that I would return in a few days. Then I left without her. I had no choice.” She added quietly, “I couldn’t remain in Weymouth.”

He took her shoulders and gently turned her backside toward him, to begin to unfasten the tiny pearl buttons of her dress. And because he didn’t want to see the expression on her face, fearing the brutal honesty of her answer, when he asked, “Because you wanted to be here for me?”

“Yes.” She paused. “And no.”

His fingers stilled.

“Because I also needed to be here for me.” Her words were impossibly soft in the shadows as she admitted, “ With you, that is…for me .”

For a long moment, he didn’t move as her confession trickled through him. “And Renslow?”

“Gone.”

He exhaled a silent breath of excruciating relief and slowly slipped the dress off her shoulders, letting it puddle on the floor at her feet. Then he tangled his fingers in her corset lace and slowly pulled free the zigzagging tie until her stays loosened enough that she had to hold them in place with her hands.

“I suppose that makes me horribly selfish, doesn’t it? A terrible person to come to you like this,” she whispered. “After all, the reason we’re here… Yet I don’t want to be away from you. I couldn’t bear it.” She dragged in a rough breath and confessed, “I need you too much, Chase.”

His heart gave a violent lurch, the pain of it equal to the growing desire knotting in his belly. And when she turned to face him, the raw honesty in her eyes stripped his soul bare.

Her fingers released the corset, and it joined her dress on the floor, leaving her in nothing but her thin chemise and stockings.

“Make love to me, Chase, and make the pain go away for both of us,” she whispered, caressing her fingertips through the hair at his nape.

Sweet Lucifer, how much he wanted that! But he couldn’t ignore the truth. “I can’t protect you,” he told her, his voice gravelly.

Her lips parted, puzzled. “But I’ve heard there are ways to keep from getting with child,” she said carefully. “I thought you would know…”

“I don’t mean that.” His eyes squeezed shut. “I can’t protect your heart. I’ll shatter it the same way I shattered Eleanor’s.”

“No, you won’t.”

He barely had the willpower to protest. “Tessa—”

She cupped his face between her hands and lifted up onto tiptoes to silence him. “No, you won’t.”

She repeated her words with such determination that he shivered as the sound soaked through him like the soft rain that had begun to fall across the eaves overhead, its murmur working to cocoon them together even more. At that moment, the rest of the world no longer existed beyond the room’s walls.

He should stop right then, let his hands fall to his sides, and step away. After all, he’d undressed her to the point where she could finish by herself, pull on her night rail, and slide into bed, alone. He could leave now and find somewhere else to spend the night. Should leave…

Instead, he reached down to gather her shift in his hands and dragged it slowly up her body, over her head, and off.

He inhaled a sharp breath at the sight of her, naked except for her shoes and stockings, and couldn’t resist raking a deliberate gaze over her, drinking in the beauty of her. If not for the darkness and shadows, he was certain he would have seen a blush stain her cheeks, but the daring creature before him didn’t attempt to cover herself or shy away. The trust she placed in him made him tremble.

“You have me at a disadvantage,” she teased nervously, plucking at the buttons of his waistcoat. “You’ve stripped me bare, while you’ve yet to remove a single piece of clothing.”

“Oh, Tessa,” he murmured as he took her chin and tilted her face up toward his. “Haven’t you figured it out yet? You have always held the advantage over me, in every way.”

He lowered his head and claimed her mouth beneath his.

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