Page 1 of A Season Beyond A Kiss (Birmingham #2)

Near Charleston, South Carolina July 29, 1803

RELUCTANTLY R AELYNN B IRMINGHAM ROUSED from slumber and lifted an eyelid to peer menacingly toward the open French doors through which drifted a distant, repetitive pounding.

The sun had barely weaned itself from its earthly breast, yet a clammy warmth, augmented by a brief downpour during the night, had already stolen into her second-story bedroom.

In spite of the portent of unbearable heat and humidity, Raelynn considered her chances of getting a few more moments of sleep ...

if she could bestir herself from the chamber’s stately four-poster long enough to close the portals.

Through most of the hours of darkness just past, she had tossed in restless frustration upon her lonely bed, tormented by sensual longings her handsome husband had awakened within her, cravings that were as yet unappeased after almost two weeks of marriage.

If not for the untimely intrusion of a predacious blackguard, who, with his hired rabble, forced his way into the plantation house on her wedding night, and the barrier

she had personally set be tween her bridegroom and herself a day later after hearing a young wench accuse him of siring her unborn child, Raelynn had no doubt that she would have now been sharing not only her husband’s bed but all the pleasures to be found in matrimony.

Truly, in this case, ignorance might have led to bliss if not for a girl named Nell.

The idea of remaining ensconced in bed didn’t seem nearly so appealing when Raelynn realized she had been perspiring enough to have dampened her batiste nightgown.

It clung to her with maddening persistence until she was driven to pluck the garment away from her bosom and fan herself with it, creating a billowing motion that forced a light current of cooling air over her moist skin.

It brought instant relief, but, at best, it would last no longer than her efforts.

Her lengthy yawn bordered on a recalcitrant groan as she crawled from the bed and tottered drowsily to the washstand.

There she poured water into the porcelain washbasin and cupped the liquid to her face, hoping to put her doldrums to flight.

The benefits proved just as fleeting, and no less groggy, she lent her attention to brushing her teeth.

Foreseeing a lingering lethargy unless she regained some small portion of the sleep she had lost, Raelynn pondered her chances of subduing the noise to create a more restful mood.

In such a quest, she wove an unsteady path to the French doors, but upon reaching the glass-paned portals, it dawned on her that if she closed them, the room would then become stifling.

Her bedchamber was one of four opening out onto the veranda that stretched across the back of the house.

Only Jeff’s larger chambers next door and the bedroom at the opposite end of the structure had combinations of windows and French doors.

The middle two only had a double set of the latter.

When presented a choice between suffocating within the confines of a hot, stuffy room and suffering through the noisy hammering, Raelynn decided forthwith that she could tolerate the racket far better than the unbearable alternative.

Far removed from England’s moderate weather, she was now ensconced in Oakley Plantation House, located in the Carolinas where she had been warned prior to her arrival that temperatures could soar to sweltering degrees in the summer, especially in the latter months of the season.

It was not a place to lightly dismiss the discomfort and hazards of rising temperatures.

A disconcerted sigh escaped Raelynn as she leaned a shoulder against the jamb and swept her gaze beyond the white balustrade bordering the outer limits of the gallery.

Some time after the rain, a thick haze had crept over the land.

Even now, it seemed to isolate the manse in a world of its own.

Wreathed by the milky vapors, a row of huge, sprawling live oaks created a vague rampart of blurred darkness across the spacious back yard, obscuring everything beyond them as they separated the main grounds from the servants’ quarters, a collection of cabins, ranging in size from small to large, that resided in the shade of other lofty trees.

Raelynn had no need to probe the mists to locate the area from whence the din arose.

She knew as well as anyone living on the plantation that behind the third tree a new structure was presently being erected for the black housekeeper and her small family.

Less than a fortnight ago, charred ashes and blackened timbers were all that remained of Cora’s home and possessions,

yet, as late as yesterday afternoon, Raelynn had seen pitched rafters rising above the new timbers that now formed the outer shell of the structure.

Making no attempt to stifle another yawn, Raelynn lifted her long, auburn tresses off her neck.

In such climes her hair had proven as heavy and warm as wool, and in view of the heat yet to come, which only promised to worsen as they entered August, she could only foresee added discomfort unless she started braiding the thick mass before retiring at night.

In preceding years, when her father had been respected as a loyal subject and emissary of King George the Third of England, the name of James Barrett, Earl of Balfour, had drawn swarms of guests to her family’s London estate.

For those lavish affairs her personal maid had coifed her hair with an artistic flare, the beauty of which had drawn raves from friends and guests who had lavishly praised not only the styles, but the rich color and lush texture.

In gracious response she had acknowledged their compliments, lending little consideration to her maid’s talents or toils that, even on a diurnal basis, had seen the auburn tresses arranged in more sedate, yet no less charming modes.

That was then .

Now Raelynn had to care for the unruly mane herself, making her fully conscious of the arduous task just keeping her hair clean and reasonably subdued in a chignon was.

Merely combing out the tangles after every washing was an ordeal, one which had recently led her to consider the benefits of reducing its length by at least half, but she had refrained, not at all certain how her husband would react to such a change.

Considering the formidable wall she had erected in her marriage with her refusal to yield herself to the intimacy involved in a marital union, she dared not tweak Jeffrey’s temper any more than she had possibly done already.

Her sire would have had a bloody fit if she had had the audacity to do such a thing while he had still been alive, and she couldn’t say with any assurance that her husband would tolerate such a deed any better.

Though in preceding weeks she had glimpsed Jeffrey’s unyielding tenacity only once, and that during his confrontation with Nell, she had

nevertheless been left with the impression that there were definite limits to what Jeffrey Birmingham would tolerate.

As yet, she had not dared test that extent herself, certainly not after her request for separate beds, for to do so had seemed a definite pathway to folly.

Deliberately Raelynn turned her thoughts away from that sensitive subject, and in an attempt to stretch and tauten her muscles, she twisted this way and that several times before bending forward and pressing her palms flat upon the floor.

Upon rising again, she arched her back as far as she could go, and then repeated the exercises.

On the voyage from England, steerage had been packed nigh to overflowing with passengers, and there had been little space to walk about in the dark, dank hole to which the less fortunate had been consigned.

Any movement beyond the limited area her mother and she had been allotted had usually entailed bothering others, which they had both been reluctant to do.

Her inactivity throughout the whole of those three months had left a lingering stiffness that, even now, was still noticeable immediately following her initial departure from bed.

Still, Raelynn considered herself fortunate to have survived the poor conditions and the scarcity of food; her mother hadn’t.

“You’re up early, my sweet.”

Straightening with a gasp of surprise, Raelynn glanced back along the veranda from whence the deep, male voice had emanated and found her husband strolling leisurely toward her.

Apparently he had ventured past the open French doors of her bedroom while she had still been asleep, no doubt to observe the progress of the carpenters from the far end of the portico, a favorable spot from which to view the building site.

He wore no shirt or shoes, only sleek taupe trousers that accentuated the muscular trimness of his hips and waist.

His short, raven hair was wet and wildly spiked, evidencing a recent washing that was further confirmed by the linen towel hanging about his bronzed neck.

Perhaps it was just another dreamy fantasy she was having about the man who had whisked her out of the path of a swiftly approaching four-in-hand shortly after they had collided quite by accident on a boardwalk in Charleston, but Raelynn thought he looked especially virile this early morning hour.

No doubt his abbreviated garb lay at the root of such a premise, for the man had been gifted with a most excellent physique.

His shoulders were remarkably wide, his arms admirably wrought with lithe muscles, his darkly furred chest broad to just below his male breasts, from there tapering downward nicely along firmly fleshed ribs.

She knew well enough that beneath those crisply tailored trousers, his hips were narrow enough to be envied by a woman.

He was an active horseman and, on a regular basis, sparred with several of his close friends merely for the sport of it.

As a result, his muscles were well honed to a vibrant hardness.

Though his hair was as black as ink, he was not a man who was naturally swarthy or excessively hairy.

His chest and loins bore the heaviest matting, his forearms and long, lissome legs only a light layer, his back and shoulders none at all.

His features were noble: his jaw crisply chiseled beneath warmly burnished skin, his nose lean with a subtle aquiline curve, his chin slightly cleft.

Whenever he smiled or thoughtfully pursed his lips, twin indentations appeared in his tautly fleshed cheeks as a vague form of dimples that, along with the beauty of his darkly translucent green eyes, never failed to capture the attention of young ladies everywhere.

His lop-sided way of grinning could be termed lethal in regards to stripping away a woman’s resolve.

Raelynn had found herself no less susceptible and, many a time, had been forced to fortify her wits lest she, too, fall prey.

In all aspects, her husband was an exceptional specimen of the male gender.

If she had been a wife in actuality, Raelynn would have yielded to a strengthening desire to sweep a hand over that firm expanse of sinew, muscle and crisply curling hair that constituted his chest, much as she had done on their wedding night when she had first viewed him without hindrance of clothes and had been awestruck by his manly grace and beauty.

But then, it would hardly have surprised her to discover that since that time she had become more than a little besotted with and perhaps even a bit prejudiced about a cer tain Southern gentleman named Jeffrey Lawrence Birmingham.

“Jeffrey, you startled me,”

she scolded with a nervous little laugh.

It didn’t help her composure one whit knowing that behind that charming mask of refined masculinity there could be lurking a disreputable rake bereft of any concern for how carelessly he used smitten young maids for his own ease and pleasure.

Even after witnessing the altercation between Jeff and Nell, Raelynn realized she had cause to fear that she, too, was becoming just as susceptible, for it seemed lately that she could think of nothing else but those brief moments she had spent in his arms.

His white teeth flashed briefly in a wayward grin.

“Did I now?”

The way his eyes flicked over her in a sweeping glance left Raelynn feeling as if she had just been stripped from head to toe.

It was enough to bring a brighter glow to her cheeks and leave her voice less than steady.

What was worse, it aroused within her a yearning for his husbandly attention and fervently wishing she could forever banish the memory of Nell to the four winds.

“You’re usually gone by this hour of the morning, aren’t you, Jeffrey?”

“Aye, but my bookkeeper wanted me to look over the accounts for my shipping company, and I just finished them this morning.

It’s always tedious work, and I decided to spend a few leisured moments relaxing before making the trip into Charleston.”

He canted his dark head at a contemplative angle.

“And what of you, my pet? Are you normally up this early?”

Raelynn blushed, knowing that in contrast to his early morning risings, she probably seemed like a sleepyhead.

The French doors of her bedroom were usually left open all night to allow the cooler air to enter its confines.

Though no sound had disturbed her, she had roused from sleep enough times to have become cognizant of the fact that it wasn’t at all unusual for her husband to roam the gallery just before or shortly after daybreak, leaving her no other choice but to assume that he was well acquainted with her habit of sleeping fairly late.

“The hammering woke me.”

The hand she clutched to her throat trembled slightly, in part from an inexplicable excitement that his presence never failed to evoke within her, and, perhaps in similar degrees, from a troubling suspicion that she was weakening like some mindless twit to a libertine’s subtle wiles.

If she had her wits about her, she wouldn’t wait around for him to rend her heart.

She’d turn tail and run.

It was pure folly to subject oneself to temptations that with each passing day were becoming more difficult to resist.

Indeed, the only thing that had thus far kept her from avidly pursuing a consummated marriage was the niggling fear that Jeffrey Birmingham wasn’t nearly as honorable, noble or gentlemanly as he seemed on the surface.

More often of late, her heart seemed torn asunder by two choices, both of which at different times seemed rational.

One was driven by a growing desire to become his wife in actuality; the other, based on fear and suspicion, to abscond with her virginity intact before she fell victim to his deceit.

Yet when she mused on the latter option, a miserable emptiness settled within her vitals, leaving her feeling drained, and she’d find herself struggling against a volley of tears, both strong indications of his affect on her and her reluctance to leave him.

The tumult raging within her seriously jangled her nerves, and as much as she would have preferred otherwise, Raelynn feared that she was behaving like some bedazzled young miss infatuated with an older man.

Jeffrey was indeed that, being a score, ten and three, and her senior by four and ten years, which made her even more wary of his appeal.

What could a mere girl do to fortify herself against the persuasive charm of a man of experience?

Certainly a few moments in his presence could leave her hopelessly flustered in spite of the small collection of hand some, young aristocrats who had once vied for her attention in England, but in retrospect those eager gallants seemed hopelessly immature and foppish now that she had a more worthy subject with whom to compare them.

It was indeed a rare man who could claim the equal to Jeffrey’s gentlemanly allure, notable physique, and stunning good looks.

And she wondered why she was becoming so vulnerable? Surely by now, a simpleton could have figured out the reasons!

In spite of the precautions with which she had sought to fortify herself, it was a hard fact for her to face knowing that her fascination with the man had deepened in the short span of time that they had been married.

Her attraction had obviously been bolstered by his manly charisma and striking physical appearance.

Nevertheless she was wont to wonder at times if the situation she had created for herself had somehow strengthened his appeal.

Basically, by the same restrictions she had decreed for him, she was allowed to look but forbidden to touch and handle.

Such limitations were comparable to a delectable sweetmeat being teasingly dangled just beyond the reach of a young child.

The more it remained out of range, the more fervently it was coveted.

Raelynn’s cheeks warmed once more beneath the heady intoxication of those smoldering emerald orbs as they glided leisurely over her meagerly clad form.

It was a well-worn path upon which her own memories trod, back to that moment wherein Jeffrey Birmingham had braced himself above her to complete their marital union.

Before that single night of frustrated pleasure, she had never even glimpsed a naked man, much less lain equally devoid of clothing within his arms.

Yet if she had been called upon to describe that stirring vision of a princely groom clothed in nothing more than the natural raiment of a man, she would have painted a most winning, detailed likeness of a tall, young god in the prime of life and in the heat of passion.

Her eyes had feasted upon his manly beauty, and even after Nell’s accusations, she had only to close her eyes to form a mental image of his face and form.

Jeff’s lips curved roguishly aslant, displaying the tantalizing depression in one of his cheeks as he paced forward with measured tread.

Had he been stalking a wary doe, he could not have been more careful or deliberate.

“Should I be whipped for a scoundrel for startling you, madam?”

“No, of course not, Jeffrey.

How absurd.”

Raelynn stared up into those luminous orbs, saying nothing more until she realized she was grinning back at him with a total lack of aplomb.

The fact that she now felt completely alive and alert made her mindful of the potency of the strange elixir exuded by the man.

“I mean, you make me feel ...”

She searched for a word or phrase that would adequately describe her disarray and yet leave no derogatory image of a love-struck chit.

How could she, with trite comparisons, explain the blissful aura that at the moment seemed to encompass her?

She certainly had no wish to reveal the mental upheaval she was suffering because of their marital dilemma.

By dint of will she had managed to withhold herself from his amorous attentions, yet it hadn’t been easy by any means.

Having been taken to the very brink of consummation, she had then been unable to relegate those sensually stirring memories to the realm of oblivion.

She had seen him as a bridegroom fully aroused, and thereafter, a battle had raged within her for possession of her mind.

In spite of the difficulty she had in controlling her own growing curiosity and desires, the chasm between them had continued to widen, especially after he had begun distancing himself from her.

Many times during his absence, feeling lonely even in the midst of so many servants, she had caught herself savoring recollections of those titillating adventures in his arms.

Now she had no need to conjure images from the past. He was standing before her, barely a step or two away, close enough for her to feel the aura of his

manly magnetism as keenly as if it were of tangible substance.

“Make you feel like what?”

Jeff queried, his lips once again sliding upward at a corner.

Unable to contain her own grin, Raelynn cast a coy glance upward.

For the life of her she couldn’t deny the way her senses seemed to soar to bracing heights in his presence.

“Wonderful.”

“Wonderful?”

The emerald eyes probed hers, searching for the precise import of her flirtation.

Jeff was wary.

He had lost himself in the fervent heat of those darkly lashed, blue-green orbs once before, and he had taken great delight in sweeping his young bride to their marriage bed, only to have been halted on the very threshold of fulfillment by the entrance of a rowdy band of brigands, who had whisked his bride away to the warehouse lair of Gustav Fridrich.

In giving chase after a leaden ball had creased his scalp, which had led the miscreants to think that they had killed him, he had rallied his brother and a collection of friends, including Sheriff Rhys Townsend, who, along with his deputies, had met him in Charleston.

The lot of them had stormed the building in which the German and his army of callow toughs were holding Raelynn captive, and though they had proven victorious over the ruffians who had outnumbered them, Jeff had later been frustrated by Rhys’s announcement that Fridrich couldn’t

be arrested for the simple reason that Raelynn’s uncle, Cooper Frye, had tricked the man into believing he had bought her.

Only a few hours after his wife’s safe return to Oakley, Jeff had found himself encountering a different sort of aggression.

Accusations from a former hireling had left his bride less than confident of his integrity and fearful of becoming intimate with him.

Thus, what he had fervently hoped would be the beginning of a loving, passionate marriage with a woman who had seemingly made his dreams a reality, had become instead a titular relationship.

Through the next pair of weeks, the two of them had lived in polite but stilted congeniality, eating and conversing together but sleeping apart, she in her room and he next door in his.

It was an arrangement that Jeff had tolerated, but only by the grit of his teeth.

Indeed, there had been moments wherein he had found his gentlemanly forbearance sorely strained.

His wife was far too beautiful and alluring for him to nonchalantly endure her nearness.

In a quest to put some distance between them, he had spent long hours away from the house, directing his attention to his many business affairs: his shipping company, his lumber mill, his horse-breeding operations, or overseeing the earlier harvests with his foreman.

To some degree, his attempts had helped to abate his concupiscence, but coming home to her had been tantamount to being hit with a sledgehammer in a most vulnerable area.

“Wonderful in what way, my sweet?”

Raelynn lifted her slender shoulders, not willing to divulge the full extent of the feelings he awoke within her.

One moment she was fraught with anxiety over what she might suffer yielding to him; in the next she could not fathom continuing on in their marriage another moment longer without becoming his wife in truth.

“Just wonderful.”

“Madam, in that regard, may I say how wonderful you look this early morning hour,”

he murmured, his eyes carefully probing the delicate fabric that all but flaunted her womanly form.

Mindful of her husband’s proximity in a variety of different ways, not the least of which was his close attention and the scent of his cologne mingled with an underlying essence of soap, Raelynn suffered another attack of nervous jitters, which, beneath the flame burning in those dark, crystalline depths of emerald green, might have equaled those of a fox-cornered hen.

As observant as Jeffrey was, she was sure that any smile from her lips would have been construed as an invitation, encouraging him to test her restraint, leaving her to face the quandary of whether to ignore Nell’s accusations or to accept his advances with open arms.

Torn between that which she had hotly craved in the dead of night and the more arduous travail of keeping up a cool facade of offended wife, Raelynn could not at this point predict what her answer would be.

A small, inner voice counseled aloofness and separation; certainly wisdom cautioned that she hold this man at bay until confident of his merit as a gentleman.

Nevertheless

her young body yearned for the thrilling excitement that she had experienced far too briefly.

Brought up sharply by the conflict raging within her, leaving her mind roiling in indecision, Raelynn cried out in silent anguish, What to do? What to do?

In spite of the tormenting vacillation she was encountering, Raelynn sought with casual comments to safely anchor a ladylike amenability, in that way hoping without undue hardship to escape the moment of temptation.

“Your men are moving right along with Cora’s new cabin, Jeffrey.

Why, at the rate they’re progressing, the structure will be finished by the end of next week.

I’m sure you must be aware of how anxious Cora and her family are to get into a home of their own again.”

She broke off suddenly, realizing to her abashment that a dignified serenity was not what she was imparting.

Indeed, she seemed to be chattering on like a mindless ninny, hardly conscious of what she was saying.

How in the world could she even come close to a cool-headed logic when those probing green orbs all but devoured her? Every time his gaze flicked over the cloyingly damp cloth veiling her bosom, she was brought up short by a memory of those brief moments of passion wherein his tongue had moved with tantalizing slowness over her soft nipples.

It was quite exhilarating to realize that even now that particular recollection had the strength to arouse a hungry yearning in the core of her womanly being.

Jeff stepped even closer yet, his gaze dwelling upon the delicate pink crests teasingly displayed by the diaphanous fabric.

Having anticipated the pain that had promised to lay him low each and every time he yielded to a manly propensity to indulge in a visual appreciation of his wife’s beauty and winsome form, he had abstained from that kind of self-abuse by limiting the time he spent with her.

Even when he had been forced by the demands of protocol to conduct himself in social good manner and escort his young wife to functions which had required their attendance as a couple at weddings, christenings and similar affairs, he had sought to remain distantly detached and had only glanced at her when he had been compelled to and then, only briefly, a contrivance which had allowed him by dint of will to maintain his gentlemanly forbearance.

Although she had looked no less than enchanting every time they had gone out, she had hardly been clothed then in a filmy thing that left nothing to his imagination. Whether

due to her softly swelling bosom or the intriguing shadow vaguely hidden beneath her nightgown, his attention was firmly ensnared.

Such enticements were too much for any man to ignore, much less one who had found himself hard-pressed by a lengthy abstinence and ever-goading passions.

He could only hope that this time her generous display amounted to an invitation and that she was actually coaxing him to do more than just look.

“Aye,”

Jeff finally agreed, “it won’t take any time at all for my men to finish the cabin.”

Raelynn was herself besieged by a growing tension, the like and depth of which in her maidenly innocence she had never experienced before.

After the miserable night she had just spent, the merest thought of withholding herself left her devoid of any hope of finding a sensible remedy for her situation.

She had definitely grown tired of that transparent guise of an offended wife denying her husband for no other purpose than to obtain irrefutable proof that he was nobly pure.

When she was harried by fierce longings of her own, she certainly didn’t feel all that saintly herself.

Jeffrey was her husband, she mentally argued against a chiding conscience.

He had not only viewed everything her nightgown now displayed, but he had also handled her with all the familiarity a newly espoused husband is wont to lend his bride.

The fact that she was standing there, submitting herself to his probing gaze, all but screamed for him to take her.

Still, he was very much a stranger to her, her pragmatic self argued.

Nigh to two weeks ago they had met for the very first time after she had broken away from her uncle.

Yet when Jeffrey had proposed that very selfsame hour to save her from Cooper Frye’s devious plans, she had felt no qualms about accepting.

It had only been afterwards that she had questioned her wisdom in speaking the vows with him so quickly.

As much as she had struggled to thrust them from her mind, Nell’s accusations had continued to rake their cloven claws across her memory, undermining her aspirations to be joined to this man in body as well as in name.

It was the idyllic standard to which most married couples conformed, and it was only natural for her as a young wife to yearn for marital union.

Indeed, there were times when those unsatisfied longings left her feeling much like a broken ship washed up on a beach.

Cognizant of her own weakening resolve even in the face of harrowing images of Jeff seducing Nell, Raelynn felt as if she teetered precariously on the sharp precipice between commitment and rejection.

More than anyone she recognized the fact that she had to find a way to end her shilly-shallying and settle her mind on a prudent decision, for she was beginning to suspect that her awakened passions were now pulling sway over all the rational arguments she could put forth.

Idle chitchat seemed essential to ease the struggle roiling within her and, at the very least, to end the lengthy silence between them.

Yet she blushed in discomfiture, knowing that it was merely a sham to hide what was really going on in her woman’s brain and body.

Truly, her husband might have been shocked if he’d have been able to discern the scope of her imagination, for at times it seemed most vivid.

“Cora’s new cabin appears twice as large as the old one, Jeffrey.

She’ll enjoy having so much room.”