Thorne Brothers: With All My Heart Part 27

She found his face and cupped his cheek. Leaning toward him, Berkeley kissed him lightly. "You gave me pleasure. Every other thing is of no account." She raised herself to her knees and lifted the nights.h.i.+rt modestly in front of her. Faint lamplight from the adjoining bedroom limned her shoulder. "Will you excuse me? I'll join you in a moment." Berkeley watched him rise in an athletic, fluid motion. Indeed, it would have been difficult for her to look anywhere else. His body unfolded with grace and power, his muscles sleek and taut. Her eyes followed his progress to the door. "Leave it open just a bit."

His inclination had been to leave it open all the way, but he knew why she wanted it otherwise. Grey was flattered Berkeley thought he could still act on a s.e.xual impulse when it required most of his strength to walk to the bed. Grinning to himself, he tumbled on it and drew the covers over him. A few minutes later she joined him, smelling faintly of soap and lavender. She was not wearing or carrying her s.h.i.+ft. She slipped in beside him wearing nothing but her fragrance.

"Was our wedding quite all right?" she asked. "I mean, did I say everything properly? I didn't embarra.s.s myself, did I?"

He turned his head. His flinty eyes grazed her face. "It was perfect," he said. "You were perfect. Don't you remember any of it?"

"You're not in any position to take me to task for faults in my memory. And no, I don't remember a thing after you took my hand. Not of what was going on. I remember what I was feeling quite clearly, but nothing of what I was doing."

"You said all the proper words. I can find a number of witnesses who will swear to it, and you signed your name to our license."

Berkeley saw he was grinning at her, but his eyes looked vaguely disturbed by the direction of her conversation. "What name did you sign?" she asked.

His grin faded. "Mine. Grey Janeway. That's who I am here. It doesn't matter who I was anywhere else or in any other time."

"Doesn't it?" She raised herself on one elbow and looked down on him. "Haven't you ever wondered about the name you chose? I know you took it from the clipper, but you could have taken it from anywhere, chosen anything."

"What of it?"

"Didn't it strike you as even remotely familiar?" she asked.

Grey's hand went immediately to the back of his neck. He remembered the violent headache that had visited him the first time he announced his name on board the Lady Jane Grey. He had no difficulty bringing it to mind now. It was returning with the same vengeance.

Chapter Twelve.

Berkeley saw that Grey's headache was returning. It was difficult to watch pain dulling the color of his eyes and not do something to help him. She forced herself to hold back when all she wanted to do was go to his rescue. "Please, Grey," she whispered. "You must listen to me. You deserve to know that Graham Denison was a good and decent man."

Grey ma.s.saged the back of his neck. "I suppose the Thornes were your source on that count."

"Decker and Jonna," she said. "Colin Thorne and his wife never met Mr. Denison, but Decker seems to have thought of Graham as someone more than a business acquaintance. I believe there was a friends.h.i.+p there. Certainly mutual respect."

Grey closed his eyes. Lamplight pressed against his lids and slipped under his lashes. He couldn't contain the soft groan that had rested for a while at the back of his throat.

Berkeley reached across him to turn back the lamp on his side of the bed, then she did the same on her own. "Is that better?"

He couldn't nod. His mouth formed around the word "yes." but there was no sound. Grey found Berkeley's hand and squeezed it.

It was more than she could stand. Pus.h.i.+ng herself upright, Berkeley once again drew Grey's head onto her lap. She pressed her fingers to his temples and scalp and began a gentle ma.s.sage. More than a minute pa.s.sed before she felt any softening in the rigid set of his shoulders and the corded muscles of his neck.

"Go on." Grey's voice was deep, guttural. Even to his own ears, the words were almost indistinguishable from a low cry of pain. He forced himself to say more. "Tell me what you know."

Berkeley's fingers stilled. She couldn't absorb any more of his hurt, and she couldn't make herself say anything that would give rise to it.

Grey gripped her wrist. The tension in his arm and fingers made his hold painfully strong. He heard her wince, but she didn't ask to be released. "You started this," he said. "Finish it now."

"Graham Denison was also known as Falconer," she whispered. "He was a conductor on the Underground Railroad that brings fugitive slaves north, sometimes as far north as Canada."

"I've heard of the Railroad," he said. He let his silence speak to the fact that he knew nothing about Falconer.

"I believe Decker and Jonna Thorne were involved with the Underground and that it was through their work that they met Mr. Denison. I have no proof. They denied any involvement before it was raised as a question. Their wanting to find him had nothing to do with the Underground, but it hobbled their ability to search for him. They respected what appeared to be his desire to disappear from public view. He became rather notorious after his ident.i.ty was revealed. You can imagine that as a member of the plantation aristocracy he was something of a peculiarity to everyone. Southern papers reviled him, while the abolitionists made him their hero. He was sought after for lectures and asked to write a book. The Thornes indicated they understood Mr. Denison wanted to put it behind him. They helped him by arranging his pa.s.sage on one of their clippers."

"Then they found the earring he left behind."

"Yes. And he disappeared. They considered that he could have taken up the cause of the abolitionists again. That mandated the Thornes be discreet in their inquiries. They didn't want to be the cause of his capture if he was operating in the South. Their search came to nothing."

"So they sought you out."

"In a manner of speaking. I've told you before that Anderson had a way of finding people who needed us. Jonna Thorne was desperate to help her husband, desperate enough to believe that she initiated the contact, not that it was the other way around. By the time she met us she was no longer thinking about how she had first come to learn about us. She'd made a careful study of our references, but Anderson always antic.i.p.ated that. Jonna and Mercedes Thorne were prepared to be convinced that I could help them."

"Decker and Colin?"

"Skeptical," she said. "More than that. Fearful. Afraid they would be disappointed again. Graham Denison is their only link to the earring and, therefore, to their brother. It's you they need to talk to, Grey. You're Graham Denison."

Grey's fingers eased open around Berkeley's wrist. "It's no good, Berkeley. I don't remember. I can't remember."

"Tell me about those scars on your back," she said. "The three stripes." Berkeley doubted she was the first woman who had asked about them. Anyone who had run their fingers along the length of his back would have felt the distinguis.h.i.+ng marks. "What did you tell the others?"

It was too much effort to make a denial. The truth served him better. "I told them it happened at sea. They were satisfied with that."

"But it didn't, did it?"

"No. I went to sea with them."

"Were they part of the beating you took?"

"No. They're old wounds. I don't know how I came by them."

"They're cane marks. I've seen those same stripes on my mother's back. You didn't get them from a whip. Did you know that?"

"Yes."

"It's a harsh discipline. You angered someone terribly."

Tension knotted Grey's neck again. "I've thought of that."

Berkeley felt the rigidity in his muscles. She repositioned herself to cradle him better. Her palms stroked his shoulders. "What about that pistol wound?'' she asked.

Grey touched the puckered scar at his side. "I don't know how I came by it. I seem to be disposed to making people want to kill me."

Berkeley didn't smile at his black humor. "I think we need to discover who the men were that approached Nat," she said. "We need to know if Decker Thorne is really here with his brother, or if Anderson spoke to someone about the earring before he was killed."

"It's the Ducks," Grey said. "You know it."

"I want to be certain. If that's true, then I need to write Captain Thorne and tell him that I've found you. It doesn't matter that you may never be able to help him. I think he was your friend. He has a right to know that you're alive."

Grey opened his eyes and looked up at her. "What if he wasn't my friend? And you still don't know that I'm Gray Denison."

"What did you say?" She didn't give him time to repeat himself. "You called him Gray, not Graham."

"Wasn't that your point earlier?" he asked. "The names are similar. Gray is an acceptable way to shorten Graham."

"It was the way you said it. It came out so naturally, as if it were familiar to you. I've never thought of him as anyone but Graham. Captain Thorne didn't call him Gray."

"Then he probably wasn't the friend you suspect he was. He has very selfish reasons for wanting to find me."

Berkeley smoothed the small vertical crease between Grey's brows. She wished she had not been so quick to turn back the lamps. She wanted to see his face more clearly. "Have you remembered something?" she asked.

"No," he said firmly. "And I'm not likely to. Ever. You shouldn't expect differently. But I've been thinking for some time that it's likely I'm Gray Denison. You were so certain I'd killed him, and I realized that I probably had, but not in the way you thought. He's dead to me, Berkeley. He can't help the Thornes or anyone else. He can't help himself."

Berkeley ruffled his hair gently, then smoothed it again. "He has a family," she said. "The Denisons are well-known and highly regarded. Anderson learned all about them before we ever met the Thornes. Joel Denison is the family's patriarch. By all accounts a hard taskmaster and set in his ways. Anne-Marie was his wife. She died three years ago. I was led to believe that Graham was her particular favorite."

Grey closed his eyes. There was no relief for the dull, incessant roar in his ears. "Then I have brothers and sisters," he said with no inflection.

"A brother. Garret, I think. Your father is James and your mother is Evaline."

The names meant nothing to him, but he was aware of a deepening ache behind his eyes. "Falconer's activities must have been an embarra.s.sment to them."

"Yes. That seems likely. They're slave owners. Beau Rivage has always had slaves. It couldn't have been easy for them to learn that Graham was working with the Underground."

"You said Graham disappeared in Philadelphia."

"That's right. From the Siren."

"But Jane Grey's last port of call was Charleston. What would I have been doing there?"

"Perhaps you didn't go there willingly," she said, "Or perhaps you did and encountered problems when you arrived. We can't know that without knowing who attacked you."

Grey's short laugh held no humor. "It seems that anyone who found fault with Falconer's work would have had reason. Was there a reward for him?"

Berkeley found it odd how Grey distanced himself from Falconer. He could accept that he was probably Graham Denison, but not that it made him Falconer. "There was money offered by different slaveholders, but it wasn't generally made public. What you did was against the law. You didn't have Northern sympathizers to protect you after you left Boston. Going South at all was a risk. Returning to Charleston was dangerous." Her fingers threaded through his dark hair. "But then you know that firsthand."

"Apparently so." Grey eased himself off Berkeley's lap. He turned on his side and accepted the pillow she slipped under his head. "It's easier to understand why no one in my family mounted a search. They didn't want me found."

"Grey," Berkeley said quietly, "you don't know that."

"No, you listen to me now. Perhaps not looking for me was for my own protection, but there's no escaping the fact that dead or alive I could only bring more shame to them. It was better for my family that I was simply forgotten. The real question for me is one of motive. If I really did act to help slaves move along the Underground, was I acting on my convictions or out of revenge?"

Berkeley frowned. "Why would you think it was revenge? Why must you judge your character in the poorest light?''

"Because evil is often done by men with good intentions and apparently selfless acts can be rooted in profoundly selfish motives. I believe something provoked me to disregard my family's interests and take up an abolitionist's cause."

"Graham Denison had a great respect for freedom."

"So does Grey Janeway. Especially his own. I'm not eager to lose it. I want to give this matter of Decker and Colin Thorne some thought." He waited until Berkeley stretched out beside him before he continued. "I'll speak to Nat myself, and I'll decide what's to be done from there. Can you accept that?"

Berkeley fingered the earring pendant around her throat. "Your headache's better, isn't it?"

He realized suddenly that it had almost completely vanished. "Yes." He waited, thinking she intended to move him from his purpose. He was mildly surprised when she answered his earlier question.

"I can accept that you want time to think about these things." she said. "But I know something about Grey Janeway myself. I suspect he acts with a bit more n.o.bility of purpose than he would like anyone to believe."

"Then you continue to deceive yourself."

"You saved me at the wharf," she pointed out.

"I thought you were a child."

"You took me in."

"I realized you were a woman."

"Pandora?"

He shrugged. "You seemed to have some affection for her. I was still trying to get in your good graces."

"You put Mike on my trail to watch over me."

"By that time I was trying to get into your bed."

"You arranged for his care and pa.s.sage home."

"I sent him away because I thought he entertained a certain affection for you. I was jealous."

Berkeley's eyes widened a little. She wondered if she could believe him when he was bent on making her see him in a different light. "What about Nat?"

"Would you be with me now if I had turned Nathaniel Corbett away?" He found her hand and drew it toward him. "I only want you to understand that I don't act out of selflessness.''

Berkeley fell silent, considering that. "What about Ivory DuPree?" she asked, suddenly inspired.

"What about her?"

"Hank Brock was injured not long after you found out he'd raped her."

"Do you believe taking the matter into my own hands was somehow high-minded or moral? It was neither. There are courts to pa.s.s judgment, Berkeley. I acted with the same disregard for their justice as Sam Brannan''s vigilantes. And I despise their methods. It was chivalrous perhaps, dangerous certainly, and it was wrong. Given the same circ.u.mstances, I would do it again."