Nevertheless, Rosalind was not the wife for him.
He loved her, aye with every breath he took he loved her more but in all the wrong ways. To even think of wedding her—after the pure, pious love he’d shared with Patience—was a sacrilege.
How could he even think of making a former actress his beloved daughter Hannah’s stepmother?
God save him. His past was full of sensual, sinful decadence. He’d filled his time with nothing but transgressions before Patience had saved him with the example of her steadfast faith and love. He had been so inspired by her. By the peace her religion gave her. He’d been blessed with his conversion experience, changed forever.
Until now.
Dear God, he was lost without his Patience.
And never more lost than here in the moonlight, alone with Rosalind. Just a fortnight away from leaving to teach at Harvard College in Cambridge village—he’d almost escaped unscathed.
He took a step towards Rosalind. Then another. Then several more.
She turned. Her eyes, glittering in the moonlight, caught his. She stopped, her hips in mid-sway. She backed away, watching him, her eyes growing wide. Dark brown velvet eyes framed by delicately arched brows. Tonight, those orbs were deep and smoky, almost black. He couldn’t tear his gaze from hers. A dry-mouthed, pulse-pounding apprehensive excitement possessed him. A sense of inevitability.
Dear God, he was falling. Falling into sin with her.
Her thick lashes swept down over her eyes, the dark auburn crescents looking purplish in the moon’s light, and a slight smile curved her lips. His focus dropped where her breasts rose and fell quickly, their tight, pink peaks straining against the gossamer shift.
She didn’t attempt to cover herself but kept her hands to her sides. That surprised him. However, he’d not been out of this sport so long that he misunderstood. It was clearly an invitation.
Temptation pounded through his blood and, with every beat of his heart, increased the pulsation in his cock. She was lust incarnate.
His body trembling with hunger, he fisted his hands.
He would not succumb.
Breathless, Rosalind panted as the tall, broad-shouldered image before her swayed in her dizzy vision. She beheld the glossy, dark chestnut hair, the high forehead, well-shaped yet heavy brows, long straight nose and full yet firm-looking mouth.
He wasn’t wearing his doublet. In the moonlight his white shirt glowed and rippled in the slight breeze against a body that displayed the sort of hard muscled strength and power that came from strenuous daily labour.
Each time she saw him, her whole focus narrowed on him, her body tingling yet weak. Oh, he was very familiar to her. But she had never been alone with him.
However, she wasn’t afraid.
He’d always been kind. He’d assisted her that horrid day over a year ago when she’d needed nothing more than to get out of London. Attained her passage to New England and found her modest clothes in sad colours. Told everyone on the Abigail that she was his cousin and helped her falsify her last name—even though she could tell he hated being dishonest.
But Thomas had saved her from the censure of the other Puritans on the ship knowing she was an actress. She had begun to love him then. Even though he was married.
Even though coveting him was a sin.
Now he was a widower. The town schoolmaster. A stern-faced, hardworking, pious man. He’d never been able to completely hide how he held her in disdain because of what she had been. Despite his kindness he’d retained a certain dispassionate remoteness. Especially after the mid-point of the voyage, when he’d lost his young son and, shortly thereafter, his wife, to a fever that had raged through the passengers.
She sensed that he suspected the truth of her past. For years, she had been a whore but not of her own choice. Her mother had been a member of an acting troupe who had shared herself with many wealthy gentlemen. Rosalind had never known her father. When her mother had grown ill, they’d grown completely dependent on the troupe manager Mr Boger’s goodwill to pay for the doctoring and life-extending medications. He had owned Rosalind’s very soul. He’d forced her, trained her how to please men then sold her by the hour to the highest bidders as if she were a pleasure slave.
Then her mother had died and Rosalind had vowed to escape.
That day in London, near the docks, she’d been running from Mr Boger. He had been escorting her to yet another wealthy gentleman, a merchant prince who had paid for a few hours of gratification in his offices. She had jumped from the carriage when it had stopped.
However, Mr Boger wasn’t opposed to using physical violence. She’d often experienced the back of his hand—or his fist. He had warned her that, if she ever ran from him, she’d better run well and hard for, if he caught up to her, he would kill her.