"Andy, do not stare at Anya." Tessa halted behind Andy's chair at the table and whispered low, so the slender young woman heating wash water at the hearth could not hear. "She is uncertain enough about a new situation, so it would be best for her not to have a man drooling from his chin every time she walks by."
"I do not drool!" Andy snapped his jaw shut, teeth clacking.
Jonah could see more denial on his brother's face, but the young man held it back, still afraid enough of Tessa. "Andy, I saw a drop drip off your chin. My advice is to swallow now and then."
"Aye, 'tis advice you should heed." Thomas struggled not to laugh as he stood from the table. "Tessa, is Father awake?"
"I just left him and he's sleeping. Fitfully. Mayhap he would rest easier with one of his sons at his side." Her gaze landed on Jonah.
He felt the uncomfortable accusation. "I will go, Thomas. Stay and keep an eye on Andy." He lowered his voice. "I would hate to have that poor girl slip in a puddle of drool."
"Jonah, 'tis not funny. I have not teased you about drooling after your wife." Andy stood, hands balled tight.
He laughed. "Aye, we can drool together. Sit down and ask her for a cup of tea."
"I had best act as chaperone," Thomas observed quietly. "Tessa, you could have chosen an ugly old woman. There would be less complications."
"She was the one I liked." Tessa smiled at Thomas as she swept on by, a beautiful smile that Jonah suspected until now, only he had seen.
Jonah watched surprise mark Thomas' face. One dark brow quirked. His Tessa was beautiful. Fatigue bruised the delicate skin beneath her eyes, but the years of hardship and strain had vanished, replaced by a beauty that was more than skin deep.
He watched as she poured steaming water into a basin, her movements efficient and swift, but graceful, too. Her dark hair tumbled over her shoulder as she spoke low to the new indentured servant, a young woman, still practically a girl, without family, who had, he suspected by the sorrow in her dark eyes, been sold to the ship's captain somewhere along the way, mayhap illegally. It happened often enough.
He did not question his wife's choice. Mayhap she saw something he did not in the plain, pale-faced girl who would not look up and meet anyone's gaze. Anya worked hard, already he could see proof of that, and the meal she had cooked so that Tessa could remain with Father was some of the best food he'd had in many years.
Tessa led the way up the stairs. He could not lift his gaze from the sway of her rump beneath her dark skirts. His groin still ached with the need they'd built up early this morning. He wanted her more than air to breathe.
"Thank you for insisting I needed help around here. 'Twas thoughtful of you, for I've always been the one doing all the work alone. 'Twill be good to have someone to share it with."
His conscience twinged. He had bought the servant so Tessa could devote more time to Father. But he was glad, she was pleased. When she twisted around to smile at him, her eyes glittered with happiness, unveiled and bright. 'Twas the same way she'd looked when he'd prodded her into choosing several lengths of new fabric.
"I never thanked you for what you did today."
"For what? Pushing you up against the bedchamber wall and working my way beneath your gown?" Teasing was easier than facing the emotions beneath.
"You're an incorrigible man. I was referring to the way you handled Charity. How you stood up to her. No one has ever done that for me. Ever."
"I only spoke the truth, Tessa." He fought the tug of deeper emotions, of ways he had not let himself feel for so long. "I never had my eye set on Violet Bradford. I'd have run screaming all the way to Boston rather than wed a cold-hearted chit like her."
A small, satisfied smile touched her mouth, a smile he wanted to kiss until she melted against him. "Thomas will watch over Father tonight. Mayhap we can head to bed a little early."
"Nay, I need to keep watch on Samuel." She used Father's proper name with quiet affection, as gentle as dawn. "He appears to be doing a bit better, but I'm leery. I know in my heart I need to watch carefully for any sign of the fever returning."
Half aroused already, he gritted his teeth against the building desire for her expanding in his breeches. He'd been thinking of little else all day, of stripping her in his bed and feasting on the sweetness of her breasts, of listening to the growing urgency in her moans, of her restless body rising up to mate with his.
But Father was the reason why he'd married her in the first place. So the old man would have the care he deserved in these last days of his life.
He sighed, resigned to a night without passion. There would be time enough for making love. Tessa strode down the corridor and into Father's room, her skirts swishing, and beneath them, the tantalizing sway of her hips and thighs.
The old man looked up from his pillows, and laughter crinkled in knowledgeable eyes. "You look like a hungry wolf, son. Don't suppose 'tis something you can tell your father about?"
"Nay, and you well know it."
Jonah watched Tessa set the basin on the night table, her movements lithe and graceful. The brush of her fingers to the water's steaming surface reminded him of her feather-light touch across his chest. The twist of her mouth into a smile made him taste again the heat of her kisses. The flicker of her gaze to his reminded him of their joining, when she stared up at him from between heavily lidded eyes.
"I left you sleeping." She settled down at the bedside, her face tender.
"Aye, I awakened to find my angel of mercy had left me."
"I needed more water. I could fetch you some broth."
"Nay. I have a craving for real food and you'll not let me have it." Father's hand, strong and straight even with age, caught Tessa's. "It did me good to see you and my boy married. To think he harbored a fondness for you all these years. I well remember him as a little schoolboy racing home many afternoons complaining of his muddy breeches and blaming sweet little you."
"I shoved him, all right." She laughed. "Trust me, he deserved it."
"Little boys always do." He winked, a weak smile coming to light his face. How his eyes twinkled. "Now my son is giving you a different kind of tumble, and he pleases you, judging by the color in your cheeks."
" 'Tis only because of the steam from the boiling water."
"Say what you will, but an old man can recognize these things." Father sighed, his smile weak and pale, but lingering.
"You look better." Jonah circled the bed to draw another chair to the edge of the mattress. "You had us worried for a while there."
"I cannot deny it. I fear my time is near." Father sighed, a sadness plucking at the papery wrinkles at his eyes. "I'm well contented to see you sensibly married. Tessa, I think that foul tea is bewitching me."
" 'Tis possible. I said a spell while steeping it." A soft humor twinkled in her compassionate eyes. "Now go to sleep, and stop fighting it. Trust me, you'll feel better come morning."
"Aye, or I'll be dead. Either way, 'twill be a change." Chuckling, then coughing, Father relaxed into the pillows. "Make yourself useful and read to me, boy."
"I already have the book in hand." Jonah leafed through the pages, remembering where he'd left off.
Tessa's gaze snared his. The warm glow of candlelight caressed her face and illuminated the sweet blue of her eyes. And resonated with the hues of her heart-gentle, kind, and infinitely caring.
Not the heart of a sensible old maid after all. He thought of Charity Bradford's cruel words today at the wharf, and how crushed Tessa had been without the hard armor she'd built over the years, the sharp-tongued spinster who could handle any insult or any situation.
He saw for the first time what a grave mistake he'd made, assuming she had a heart as lost to love as his, lost from too much pain and too many dark nights without comfort or hope or dreams.
He bowed his head and began reading, the meter and imagery of the poem rolling off his tongue, but never touching his heart.
"You mean so much to him." Tessa felt the candlelight glint in her eyes, saw how it softened the hard chiseled angles of Jonah's jaw and the strong blade of his nose.
His well-shaped hands cradled the open book, as if he treasured the words there. "I'm his eldest son. Such high expectations he set for me."
" 'Tis why he's so proud, no doubt."
"Proud?" Jonah shook his head in disbelief and closed the volume. "He sleeps now."
"Aye, he fought the sleeping powder I made him. He has been sleeping, but not well. As I said, 'tis best for him that you're here. He seems brighter, more determined."
"If this is truly his time, there's naught either of us can do to stop it."
"Aye, I've seen it often enough." Tessa stood and reached to the low shelf over the bed. Her fingers grasped three fresh candles. "Some who seem strong enough to fight die, whilst others who are more ill survive. Sometimes I think it has to do with the will to stay with loved ones. I've not given up hope on your father."
"Truly?" How deep his eyes, filled with an abiding affection.
"Truly. He has you." And so do I. She held those words back, although they lived deep inside, in a place that had not known love in too long.
"You place too much importance on me."
"On strong, heroic Major Hunter?" She now believed him to be.
"Trust me, I'm not so heroic." He bowed his head.
Tessa lit a new taper with the stub of a dying one. " 'Tis all your father talked about, how you received this commission or that, another promotion, or won a greater victory. You made him proud, Jonah. Everyone in this village knows it."
He said nothing, but sat in silence as the candlelight brushed at his shoulders and the edges of his face, as the clock ticked and wood smoke puffed into the room with a gust of wind. "I'm but an ordinary man, Tessa. With ordinary flaws and failures."
"I never said you weren't flawed." She set the last lit candle into its holder.
"So I have you to remind me, lest I get too big of a head from listening to such high praise." It hurt to smile, it hurt to feel.
And yet she touched his heart in ways he could not explain. How she moved, the way she smiled, the steady quiet strength of her. She did not seem afraid of death, not afraid to touch it, to breathe it, to feel its cold shadows creeping from the corners of the room toward the light.
"Let me guess. You didn't like the army." She knelt at his side, bringing with her the sweet scent of roses and the herbs she'd last steeped for Father's tea. Her hands, not silken and soft as many of those silly young women's in the village, were slightly rough and reddened, but were beautiful just the same. And the touch of her heated skin to his moved him like nothing else.
"Nay. I was just a small boy fed on my father's tales of his time in the army, and I loved him."
"You wanted to be just like him."
"Aye." He didn't like how Tessa's sharp gaze could look inside and see his thoughts, his truths. "I left home a man determined to do my father proud and protect this land from marauding Indians and the French."
"I can't believe there is much pride in war."
"Why do you say that? Others think-"
"I have seen far too much dying. I can't think 'twould be easy to inflict such suffering, to become a killer."
"You see into my soul, then."
Her eyes shadowed. "Nay, just into your eyes."
Relieved, he was glad she could not see the darkness there, for every life he had taken in battle and for every life he saved. He'd not expected brutality, and the burden of it still weighed on his shoulders. "He was an Indian brave, no older than I."
"Who was?"
"The first man I killed." He did not want to tell her this, did not want her to see the flaws so deep. "My first battle."
"You remember?" How dark her eyes, full of sympathy, of unspoken questions. But not judgment. Nay, that would come in time.
"I've never forgotten." His throat closed tight on the truths he kept silent for ten long years. "He was like me, fighting for what he believed in. I had the luck to dodge his arrow meant for my heart. 'Twas naught but luck. I slashed and killed him in one swift act. I will never forget his face, never forget what I saw there."
"What?"
His chest squeezed when her fingers curled around his. "That he was like me and no different. He probably had a father who loved him, and younger brothers at home who would miss him. His life was gone, spent on the muddy field that day. That is battle. I've not been the same since or held the same beliefs over what is right and what is wrong."
"You're not so bad of a man as you think." Her mouth brushed his, gentle and comforting, like sunlight after winter, bright and earnest and full of hope.
Hope. If Tessa could see the good in him, mayhap there was some after all.
His throat scratchy from reading aloud for hours without stop, Jonah reached for a glass of water. Father slept, breathing unevenly, a rattle clearly audible with each exhaled breath.
The water was cool, for he was on the far side of the bed and the fire didn't warm this side of the room, the north side where a night wind chilled the wall and window.
"Tessa?"
She didn't stir. She sat straight up in the wooden chair, her back resting heavily on the wooden spires. Her chin tilted forward, and her rich mane of dark curls hid her face from his sight.
So, she slept. The clock chimed the hour-three in the morning. He remembered the long nights without relief caring for Father, and then their wedding night when he'd loved her thoroughly and late, and there had been little sleep. How tired she must be, and his heart cinched tight.
Father slept, and he could always awaken her if the old man worsened. Jonah set aside the volume of poetry and circled the bed.
How still she looked in sleep. 'Twas an intimate thing, to watch her like this. Her body relaxed, her hands curled loosely in her lap, her breathing light and steady. How soft her face was in this light, surely not the face of a spinster his age, feared by the entire village.
Indeed, today on the docks, many a man had wished him luck with such a bride, mayhap believing he'd been forced to marry for having a little bit of sport, as men were wont to do.
And he had done his best to straighten out that misconception. He didn't want anyone to think ill of this woman he had taken to wife. She had a courage and a strength he'd never dreamed of having, the patient honor it took to care for the dying and the living. She in her own way had probably saved more lives and made a better mark on the world.
There were many kinds of heroism, many different brands of courage.
He lifted her gently, gathering her slight weight into his arms. Her head nestled beneath his chin, her sweet woman's body settled against his chest. He carried her to bed, slipped off her shoes and dress, and tucked the quilt up to her chin.
She did not move, not even to nestle into the pillows. She slept as still as an angel and to him looked twice as beautiful.
A velvet warmth pressed against her throat. Tessa felt the deliciously soft mattress beneath her, saw the pink luminous glow at the window, inhaled the wood smoke and bayberry clinging to her husband's skin. Her husband who was nibbling hot wet kisses across the back of her neck. She lay on her side, and he was spooned around her, his body hard and cradled against hers.
"Good morning." His words swept across the damp skin he'd been licking.
Tessa sighed. "I'm supposed to be tending Samuel."
"And what about your husband?" His hand circled around her ribs and covered her breast. "I need tending, too."
"You're not ill."
"Nay, 'tis a different malady I suffer from." His fingers kneaded and molded her sensitive flesh. "Mayhap I can ask you to tend me."
"I don't think there's a cure for your suffering." Tessa could not hold back the bubble of happiness in her chest, expanding with every breath, with every press of his lips to the hollow between her shoulder blades.
"You can feel how swollen I've become."
"Aye, something is very hard against the back of my thigh." Tessa rolled over to face him. His smile became their kiss, molten and tingling and demanding. "Mayhap I could soak that part of you in ice. 'Twill probably take down the swelling."
" 'Twould work, I'm sure, but I had something else in mind." His chuckle vibrated through her.
"I know exactly what you want, but 'tis already dawn and what about your father? I don't even remember leaving him last night."
"Because I carried you here."
"You did?" Maybe she had always thought Jonah Hunter handsome. And maybe all this time she'd held a secret liking for him. But now as his wife and knowing him like this, every time he stood up for her, took care of her, told her how special she was, why it made that affection inside her heart grow until it was so bright she couldn't see anything else.
"Father is better. He's already been bellowing for something to eat besides your thin broth and bird-dropping tea."
"That tea is made from a mixture of herbs." She laughed. "If he is complaining, then he's on the mend."
"Aye, and we may have some time alone. After all, I have this swollen part of me and I hear you are an excellent healer."
"Not even I can heal your wickedness, Jonah. In fact, I have reason to believe 'tis terribly catching."
"My wickedness?"
"Aye." She splayed her hands on his chest, so solid, so broad, and delighted in the male-texture of bronzed skin and downy hair. "For I've been feeling very wicked lately."
"Have you been experiencing any swelling?"
Laughter spiraled deep inside, where happiness and a building ache for this man filled her. " 'Tis possible. Mayhap I have need of your ministrations."
"I'm no healer, but I possess a few skills of my own." His lips wrapped around her left nipple.
Sharp pleasure sliced through her. Her head lulled back. Already she felt wet and restless, wanting him. "What skills you have."
"Aye. Seems to have had some effect here, at your nipple."
"I can feel it." She sighed when he suckled this time, drawing her deep into his mouth, and then arched her back. "And even lower."
"Truly? Mayhap I should see for myself."
His hands caressed dazzling trails of heat down her ribs, over her abdomen and ever lower, to that private place that pulsed and ached for more than his touch. His clever fingers found her fiery center and stroked. Bright white pleasure jolted through her.
"I see what you mean. I think I can cure this problem." His fingers grazed the sensitive inner folds and circled once, then again. She moaned low at the hot sensation that built there. Then he reached up and wrapped his arms around her, holding her tight, and they rolled together until she was on top gazing down into the dark sparkles of his eyes.
"Lucky you are that I happened along." His hands settled on her hips.
She felt the hard ridge of his shaft thrumming against her stomach. All thought fled. Only feeling remained. He gazed up at her with tenderness, with such adoration it frightened her, made her wish for endless nights to fill with this wondrous closeness.
"I want you." His hands lifted her, and she rose over him. "So very much."
"As I want you." Her breath caught when his shaft nudged the sensitive curve of her inner thighs. She opened to him, drawing him in with one smooth glide.
"We're good together, eh?" How dark his eyes were. How low his voice. "I can't believe my luck in having you for my wife."
"Jonah." He felt so good inside her, thick and pulsing, stretching her tight. Her entire body responded, drawing taut around him. Emotion as bright as a springtime sun, as full as a blue moon, shone inside her, growing more sure every time they rocked together.
His hands on her hips guided her. She sat up, and the change of position shifted the feel of his shaft within her.
Such a thrilling feeling. She gazed down at him, melting at the way he looked up at her, as if she were beautiful, truly beautiful.
And he made her feel that way. Overcome, she moved in a slow rhythm, just to watch his jaw strum tight as she tortured him. But he stroked more deeply inside her with every slow thrust, and she was the one tortured. Control tumbled away. Heat stretched tight in her abdomen and built hot and fast there, where they joined. Soon he was bucking up to meet her strokes, driving her toward aching, unending sensation.
Surrender came in a series of wrenching ripples of muscle and soul. Tears burned her eyes as sharp pleasure exploded, tearing through her over and over again. Sharp, searing, so thrilling she could not bear it. So brilliant there was only sensation, only the two of them lost and burning.
She felt his climax, the tensed agony as he cried out, the rush of heat as he spilled his seed. His arms banded around her and pulled her tight against his chest. She held him, feeling as if she could never let him go. No one had ever moved her this much, made her feel cherished and wanted and more valued than any riches.
"I love you, Jonah," she breathed, content to hold him for the rest of her life.