AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He did not speak again.
* * *
When they reached the castle it was already night and, though Ewan and Angus came to greet them, Benneit raised Jamie to his shoulder and took him upstairs. She knew she wasn’t needed, that following him was a form of self-flagellation, but she did so anyway. He did not send for Nurse Moody, but brought a nightshirt from the wardrobe and dressed Jamie himself while she placed Jamie’s clothes on a chair. Then she left the room before temptation strangled her. She just reached her door when she felt him behind her, the words a murmur that flowed under her skin.
‘Will you come with me, Jo?’
She tightened her hand on the door knob.
‘No, Benneit.’
‘You are tired.’
‘Yes, that, too, but that is not why. I cannot do this. Perhaps if I had never met her, or knew... I cannot.’
He leaned his hand on the wall. She did not look at him, but she could feel the tension coursing through him, the sheer bulk of his presence overshadowing her, pressing her into no more than a core of need around a howl. Her hand was boiling on the doorknob. It would surely melt or crack under the pressure of his silence. She turned it and pushed open the door but could not move.
‘Jo.’ His voice, full of dark heat, acted like a spur even as his hand rose towards her and then she was inside her room, the door closed behind her, before she could betray herself. She stood there, hardly breathing, her palms pressed against the cool wood door for ages and ages, until the scrape of his boots marked his departure.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The most effective hell is a twisted version of heaven, Jo told herself as she followed Jamie up the cliff path.
The week since their return from the McCrieffs’ was outwardly no different from the week before the ball. She and Jamie explored and read. They went more often to the village and twice with Angus and Benneit to The House where Mr Warren and Mr Carruthers, the engineers, were staying to assess the village port. Jamie was enchanted with the engineers’ tools and tales and they treated him with kind tolerance, giving him little tasks which he carried out with enthusiastic concentration. Jo was happy for him, happy for the pride in Benneit’s eyes as he watched his son, but also utterly miserable.
She could not help turning to Benneit when Jamie sparkled with pleasure at his successes or frowned with interest as he listened to the engineers’ explanations. It was as instinctive as the lurching of her heart whenever Benneit appeared, joining them suddenly on the beach, or in the nursery, or when a summons arrived from The House to join him and the engineers for nuncheon.
She paid for those moments. Benneit never again asked her to come to him, but he was torturing her.
She did not know if it was intentional, but it was unbearably effective. He spoke to her only when necessary, but when he joined them on the beach he would sometimes take her arm to help her over the rock fall, or grasp her waist to pull her away from the rising tide.
He was always polite to her and sometimes she thought he had accepted her rejection in good form, perhaps with a bit of piqued pride. But sometimes, when his fingers took her arm, she felt a ringing tension in the body next to hers, the kind of beating pressure like the waves crashing against the cliffs below the castle.
He never looked at her in these moments as she struggled to keep from turning to him and weeping out her need and pain. His eyes remained blank and his mouth a straight, uncompromising line. But sometimes, after she moved away, she would feel the sharp green jab of his gaze in her back, like a blade piercing her. Sometimes it felt like hate.
On each occasion of these brief touches, she was shocked by the speed with which her body clamoured for more. The heat was like a wild animal inside her—Benneit’s touch unlatched its cage and it leapt through her, hot and desperate, leaving her insides scratched to ribbons as he turned away, his face a mask.
He never returned with her and Jamie through the Sea Gate tunnel but would walk back along the beach and up the other path to the stables. She would turn and watch his solitary figure on the sand, his dark head bowed, his hands deep in the pockets of his coat as if cold despite the unseasonably warm summer weather.
Once, she turned back and he was still watching them and, though she could not see his expression with the sun in her eyes, her breath had stopped. It was all her own invention, no doubt—the confusion, the agony, the bone weariness of holding it inside. To imagine she saw any of her own suffering in the dark figure standing so still on the sand was folly. Yet, she almost moved towards him when Jamie called to her impatiently, reminding her of the world.
