Perilous Risk (41 page)

“Yes.” Stephen reached into his coat and pulled out a folded vellum.

Rebecca sucked in her breath and held it.

“You could call the local clergyman to come here?” Stephen asked.

“Yes…” Uncle Frederick frowned as though distracted, then his face came alive once more. “Yes, I shall go and do so this very moment.”

“Wait,” Rebecca said.

Uncle Frederick turned to her with a puzzled expression. “What is it, Becca?”

“I haven’t given my consent. And the two of you are behaving as though this were a settled matter.”

“Rebecca, he wants to marry you. He’s titled and wealthy. You seem to have deep affection for him. What’s to debate or discuss here? You’re certainly not getting any younger. I doubt there will be a better offer coming.”

She gaped at him. “I cannot credit that you just spoke to me like that.”

“What will satisfy you?” Uncle Frederick held out his hands, palms up. “He’s a nobleman. You seem to fancy noblemen. Indeed, you have frittered away your youth chasing them about the four corners of the Earth. It is time, far, far past time, that you were settled again.”

“Well, I need to talk to
this
nobleman
before you send for the minister.”

Uncle Frederick cut his gaze to Stephen. “I shall call for the minister right away. If she is foolish enough to resist once he arrives, he may simply turn around and go back.” Then he flashed a glare at Rebecca. “Or perhaps I shall speak the vows for her at the ceremony.”

Uncle Frederick left.

She approached Stephen. “You don’t really want to marry me.”

“Of course I do.”

“But Ste—”

“This grows tiresome. I told you, from the start, that I intended to wed you.”

“Why the haste?”

“I need to return to London for a brief visit and I prefer that you stay here.”

“But you said it was safe for me now. Why must I stay here? My father needs me back at home.”

“I prefer that you not go back to your father.” He gave her a steady stare. “Not ever.”

She gasped. “Why ever not?”

He took her hands. “Because he also hurts you.”

“He is my father. He needs me.”

“I need you.”

“But you have me.”

“I need you, Rebecca. I will not settle for having you on Sundays only. I told you, that if we were to be together, we would be the centre of each other’s lives.”

“But I have a duty to him.”

“No, you do not. He can afford to hire helpers. He doesn’t have to steal away your right to have your own life.”

“I do midwifery in town. The women need a place to come, someone on whom they can depend.”

“You can hire others to take your place. You and I shall be leaving England in any case.”

“Leaving England?”

“Yes, I shall take you travelling. I will show you South America and any other place that strikes our fancy.”

Excitement swirled in her stomach, tingling and warm. She would love not only to travel but to travel with this man. For so long, she had thought her life’s adventures were over. Now it seemed as though they were just beginning.

“But how can I leave so many people who need me—”

He tapped firmly on his chest. “I need you.”

“Yes, but—”

“I need you, Rebecca. No one else needs you. For everyone else, there is a possible replacement. But not for me. I must have
you
.” His voice rang with passion and his eyes were brighter than she’d ever seen them.

They were achieving nothing with this discussion. Indeed, he looked at least three shades paler now. And that brought her awareness back to the matter that was most urgent. His recovery.

She was being a fool. Caught up in the past, caught up in the demands and expectations of people who mattered a lot less to her than this man did. Of course Stephen needed her most. Of course she would throw the entire world away to be at his side, to save his life.

“If I wed you, would you make me two allowances?”

He studied her with caution. “Let’s hear these allowances first.”

“Firstly, allow me to write to the Countess of Ruel and share with her some things that she can do for herself to assure her recovery, since she resists the blood-letting and purges her doctors feel she needs.”

His jaw hardened.

She sucked in her breath and waited for his reply.

“Let’s have your second allowance.”

“I want you to stay at Uncle Frederick’s cottage with me for the winter.”

Oh, aside from that hardened jaw, his face was completely expressionless. What was he thinking?

“A fortnight,” he said.

“A fortnight!” She gaped at him. Then she composed herself and said in a calmer tone, “Two months.”

“One.”

Relief swept through her. “One month, then.”

She would find a way to convince him into staying six weeks or two months. Whatever she could manage. As her uncle suggested, she would work hard at gleaning what was driving him to wish for death. But for now, she would gladly take one month. She smiled. Then she remembered. “But what about—”

“I shall read this letter before you send it.” He frowned slightly. “But I wouldn’t have thought you should want to be friends with her. She took him from you.”

“She’s just a girl.”

“She’s a former widow and a mother three times over now.”

“Yes, but any woman under thirty is just a girl to me, Stephen. And she is so painfully shy and yet beneath that shyness she has a very intelligent mind. She’s stubborn in her own knotty-headed way. I cannot imagine that she always finds it easy to be a countess or wife to Jonathon Lloyd. He can be so maddeningly determined to get his own way.”

“I see.” He was studying her speculatively.

Under his scrutiny, she found the words spilling out. “Gently reared ladies can be quite prideful. And gentlemen seem to have no understanding or compassion for how very public and demanding a lady’s position can be.”

Amusement lit his eyes. “And how did you come to be so understanding of noblewomen and their troubles?”

“So many of them are our customers at the shop.”

His expression turned softer, affection glowing in his eyes. “Ah, and they tell you their troubles, of course, because you have always been so kind, so compassionate.”

Was there admiration in his voice? Heat suffused her face. He was determined to see her as more than she really was. “It is easy to listen to people.”

“Few people truly listen to and hear others.” He was smiling broadly now. “Well, write your letter to her and I shall read it. I shall see it posted before we leave for this cottage your uncle has provided for us.”

She couldn’t help but smile. He really did intend to allow her to take him to the cottage…and to nurse him back to health? Yes, hopefully.

Her blood was practically humming and she stood on her toes, intending to place a kiss on his cheek.

He grasped her by both arms but gently. “You’re going to be my wife.”

Shock washed over her. Oh, she had forgotten—no, that part hadn’t quite sunk in yet. Her heart began beating wildly and her breaths came very fast, heightening her earlier sense of excitement. “So I shall.”

“Lady Drake.”

Lady Drake.
Oh dear, she hadn’t fully thought out that part. Dizziness swept over her. She’d be a baroness. How would she ever—

He brought his mouth down on hers, his mouth lush, sensual, the fervour of his kiss as he opened his mouth sucking her breath away.

She would be his wife.

Elation swept through her at the thought and she kissed him back, every bit as fervently.

* * * *

Rebecca stood near the hearth in the parlour.

Oh, how she wished this part was already done with! She was still in her woollen day dress. She hadn’t thought to bring anything grander to wear. But what did it matter? Stephen was wearing his dark blue suit with a plain grey waistcoat, his stock simply knotted. It was the marriage that mattered, not the ceremony, wasn’t that so?

The marriage.

She had failed at her first marriage. She had failed Donald. And failed her father before that. She put her hand to her mouth to silence a miserable moan. Pray God that she wouldn’t fail Stephen.

She mustn’t.

But what if he discovered the real Rebecca, the one who couldn’t possibly measure up to his impressions, his expectations? Would the disappointment crush the life out of his affection for her?

Nausea wove through her stomach. She would never be able to bear it if he were to turn away from her.

A cough from Stephen tore her from her thoughts. She jerked her head up to him.

Why was he coughing? Was he feeling ill?

She couldn’t tell from his expression. His face was still pale and she noted the new delineation of his cheekbones, the growing hollowness in his cheeks. The extraordinary prominence of his Adam’s apple. He’d never been that lean before. Strangely, the thinness accentuated his handsomeness, made all the lines more deeply etched.

Was he exhausting himself? Should they take a break so he could rest?

Stephen showed the minister the special license. The minister took it and as he was retrieving his spectacles from his pocket, the minister’s wife glanced at the paper. Then she cut her gaze to Rebecca. Those pale blue eyes seemed to pierce into her, suspicious and desiring to penetrate all her sordid secrets.

Prickles tickled down her spine, icy tentacles that made Rebecca hug her shoulders to suppress a shiver. She fooled no one, everyone could see the commoner in her plainly.

Could they also see the wanton?

How would she ever play the grand lady? Society would hate her.

She’d never been hated before. Even with Jon, in the Dragoons, there had been an unspoken agreement to pretend that she wasn’t Jon’s mistress. People would come at night to seek her assistance with a birthing or an illness, and they would knock on Jon’s door and ask him if he knew where she was, as though they didn’t know perfectly well that she was in his bed.

Well, no such kindnesses would be done her in Society. There would be plenty of people who remembered her as the long-term mistress of the Earl of Ruel, the woman who had accompanied him on drives in Hyde Park and to the theatre.

And they would despise and disdain her for it.

They would especially make much of the eight year age difference between them. They would mock and snicker behind the polite veils of their silk fans.

She must steel herself for mass disapproval and possible snubbing. She didn’t know if she could bear that kind of thing. It had always been her second worst fear, next to rats. Was there much difference? Gossipmongers’ tongues tore at people’s reputations and feelings with the same viciousness as rats tore at flesh with their teeth.

Stephen turned to her with a smile. His eyes met hers, glowing with admiration. Love.

Warmth permeated her. She wanted only to be near him, with him.

For all of her days, for the remainder of her life?

With brutal clarity, she recalled the anguished, hopeless emptiness she’d felt when she found him at the roadside, ashen-faced and ill. She’d thought he was going to die in the next moment.

Yes, she wanted nothing more than to be at his side forever.

She wanted to be his wife. What price was she willing to pay for the pleasure and privilege?

She could face censure and social shunning for him.

She could even face the full-revealing of herself and the risk that he might find her lacking. There was simply no other choice. She loved him and somewhere deep in herself, she always had. Now she was about to have everything she had denied herself out of fear.

She could face a firing squad for this man. Slowly, she walked to him and let him take her hand.

The bed ropes creaked as Rebecca sat on the bed in the narrow little bedchamber of the cottage and watched Stephen remove his clothes.

Surely, he would not attempt to…no, he wouldn’t. After the brief ceremony that made them man and wife, he had fallen across the bed, fully dressed, and gone immediately to sleep. More aptly said, he had slipped into unconsciousness.

Yesterday had been their first day here. They had eaten simply and retired early, then he had slept late into the afternoon. Her uncle’s housekeeper had sent them a supper of mutton stew and fresh baked bread and a small wedding cake. Stephen could not partake of it and she didn’t have the heart to eat it alone. So they had placed it in the yard for the birds to enjoy.

So far, he had followed his diet and taken his medications without protest. And she began to think her uncle had been mistaken in his belief that Stephen wished for death.

Naked, he approached her. His recent weight loss brought his hard muscled stomach into greater prominence.

She couldn’t resist placing her hand over those pronounced angles. He grasped her hand and placed it on his cock. His erection was quickly swelling under her touch.