The Courtship - Catherine Coulter [104]
“Now there are at least ten people who know about the lamp, at least ten people who know about your blasted husband, who had better be good and dead. There are many more who know about Reverend Mathers’s murder. Word will continue to spread. Things will happen. I have never believed in secrecy. It is having everyone know everything, that’s the key. Then the truth will pop up. You’ll see, dearest. No, please don’t cry anymore.”
She sniffed and raised her head. Again, he was struck by how close they were to having their noses touch. His big girl was right there in his sights. He wanted her very much. “I’ve been wondering if we also shouldn’t just announce to the world that the scroll verified the existence of a powerful lamp. That the lamp had probably been hidden with the scroll. What do you think?”
“You’re naked, Spenser.”
He honestly hadn’t realized it. He did now, and in less time than it would have taken him to remove an eyelash from his eye, he was hard and ready to leap. “Well, damn.” He kissed her. “Go to bed, dearest. We have a lot to do tomorrow.”
She gulped, then blurted out, “I slept with you knowing he was alive. I deceived you. I was dishonorable. I don’t deserve you. I don’t want to tell anyone about the lamp.”
“Ah.” He began rubbing his big hands up and down her back. The silk slithered between his fingers. The feel and sound of that slithering silk would make a man of even greater will tremble. He shook his head. He got a grip on himself and managed to say, “Well, as a matter of fact, you did deceive me. So what? The blasted fellow has been gone for eight years. I would rather say that you couldn’t help yourself, you had to have me, regardless of this hopefully dead bastard who may or may not have written you one single letter six months ago.
“You are not dishonorable. You are one of the most honorable people I have ever known. Now, if everyone knows about the lamp, most will simply discount it as a myth, since who would talk about it if it truly existed? Perhaps a few simpletons will go dig up anywhere they think the lamp could be hidden, not find anything except an occasional worm, and then it will eventually be forgotten. I don’t believe that many people will believe that the ancient scroll had anything to do with the lamp. It is too farfetched.”
She leaned forward, touching her forehead to his. “Still, I took you, and I realize that you really had no choice in the matter.”
Now that was interesting, he thought, remembering how they had been sodden and shivering and miserable until they’d happened to touch each other in that dilapidated cottage with the rain pouring down not two feet away from them.
“Yes,” he said, kissing her ear, “you took me, and I had no say in the matter at all. I remember trying to tell you I didn’t want you, but you just wouldn’t let up on me. Stop it now, Helen—any lapses you are feeling in your moral character are just minor ones. But I wonder. Would I have made love to you if I’d known about Gerard? I can’t answer that. I don’t know.”
“But that’s why you don’t want me now.”
He closed his hands over her beautiful white arms and shook her just a bit. “That’s not the truth at all and you know it. I want you all of the time, Helen. But the thing is, I want to know while I’m caressing you and kissing you and nibbling at your white neck that you are my wife, not my almost-wife or my lover or even just my partner. I want you for all of it, Helen. I want us to be married when we come together again. There’s nothing more to it than that. What you and I are together is very important. It is forever. Do you understand?” He touched his forehead once again