Sweet Bargain (17 page)

A footman came in to ask if she wished the candles lighted, and suddenly she could not bear the pretense another minute. She had not said her vows with the understanding that they were provisional in any way. She had accepted his offer of freedom to choose when she would enter his bed because it had seemed foolish to pretend love when there was so much anger between them. Her mother had pointedly advised her against taking quarrels to the marriage bed. But she had not left her home and family and taken his name to be no wife at all. That she could not accept. She would find her husband and demand to know what sort of marriage they were to have. She dismissed the footman, pushed back her chair, took up her shawl, and headed for the kitchen.

A few questions of the cook elicited the information that although his lordship had not been in since early morning, Mr. Farre had returned from Derbyshire and a tray had been sent out to his room off the stables. Bel could not resist one further question. Just who is Mr. Farre she wanted to know. "His lordship's groom, of course. Been with him ever so long," was the reply.

Nick let himself laugh. He tore another hunk of bread from the loaf on Farre's table and reached for a bit of cheese. It was good to have someone to talk to. After the bitter disappointment of his wedding night, it had been all too easy to slip back into his old ways, coming and going in silence.

Long ago he had learned to be prudent with pleasures and frugal with joys. Since his wedding night he had had to practice all the restraint he knew. He had discovered, that first night, that sleeping in his bed without his bride, while she slept in the next room, could not be considered sleeping in the least. He meant only to stay away long enough to check his desire, but that desire was hard to check. To see her was to want her. To be near her was to burn.

One afternoon as he passed the dining room, he had been caught by the sound of her voice. For the longest while he had stood listening to Bel talk to the girl Susan about paint and molding and chair coverings, listening to the little rustle of her skirts and the rise and fall of the fresh, clear voice. That night he had not slept at all.

He looked up from the piece of bread he had crumbled between his fingers to find Farre watching him. Within a day Farre would know exactly how things stood between the master and mistress of Courtland.

"So, lad, it isn't going as well as you hoped," said his friend.

"My hopes were perhaps too high," Nick admitted.

"I doubt it. Seemed a promising match to me."

"Farre, you tried to warn me. I didn't listen then." Nick paused to consider how to word the truth. "I offered her her freedom if she finds she cannot be my wife after all."

There was a brief silence as Farre, who had been pouring another round of home-brewed into the pewter cups, visibly adjusted himself to Nick's admission. "So have you taken her fishing?" he asked.

Nick shook his head.

"Riding?"

"No."

"Walking?"

"Farre ..." The angry impulse to rebuff his friend's advice died there. "I have not seen her for twelve days."

"That bad, is it? Where have you been sleeping?"

Nick cast an involuntary glance at the bed in the corner of the small room. He planted his elbows on the table and rested his head in his hands. What had seemed a reasonable and decent course of action the morning after their disastrous wedding night now seemed foolish. He would have to face his bride sometime if he wanted her to stay-and he did want her to stay.

"Best go straight to her, lad."

Nick lifted his head. Farre's words echoed his own thoughts. He stood and stared down at his clothes. He had not been to the house all day. His loose white shirt was limp and wrinkled, his corduroy breeches and boots dusty.

"I can't go like this," he complained.

"You thinking I'm your fairy godmother with a wand to wave over you?"

Nick laughed and turned to the door. Just as he reached it, a firm knock sounded against the wood. He pulled it open to discover his bride, her fist raised, her eyes flashing with challenge, her mouth set in a determined line. His laughter died. For a heartbeat or two neither spoke.

Her eyes took in the remains of the simple supper he had shared with Farre, and a look of hurt confusion crossed her face. "You prefer to dine with your groom in the comfort of the stable, rather than eat with your inferior wife at your own table?" she asked.

"You misunderstand," Nick protested, reaching out to hand her over the threshold.

"Oh, I understand all too well," she said, holding her head high and ignoring the offered hand. "You married me to humiliate me, and my family. I congratulate you. You have succeeded very well." As Nick stepped toward her, she spun away, disappearing around the corner of the stable before he could move.

Bel gripped the limbs of her leafy perch and stared down at the top of her husband's dark head. She held herself very still. She had thought only to distance herself from the scene of her humiliation. She had not anticipated pursuit, and when he had called her name from the fork in the river path, she had taken a child's way out and climbed an old oak that bent toward the Ashe. Below her the river murmured softly. She offered a hasty prayer that her husband would turn away and leave her to nurse her anger alone, but he tilted his head up, and she found herself staring into his very black, suddenly amused eyes.

"Go away," she said. The amusement faded from his eyes, and for a minute she thought he might obey her.

Then he answered. "I have been away." His gaze was solemn but steady. "You wanted to find me."

She didn't deny it and saw a gleam of purpose light his eyes. He scanned her tree, put his foot in the notch that had enabled her to climb it, and began to pull himself up into the branches.

"Surely it's beneath your dignity to climb trees," she suggested.

"I have no dignity where you are concerned," he said. He was quick and strong, and he seemed to have an advanced understanding of the art of tree climbing. A few swift, easy motions brought him to the long, thick horizontal limb that curved up to her notched perch. He stood there a moment, balanced and grinning in such a way that she feared he meant to walk straight out to her. Then he lowered himself, straddling the branch and leaning back against the great trunk.

"You wanted to say something to me," he said.

She tried for her mother's tone of calm authority, but the sound of his laughter was fresh in her mind, and she thought only of the humiliation her marriage had brought her. "You won't care for what I have to say, my—"

"Nick," he reminded her coolly. "I want to hear every charge you have to bring against me."

"Very well, Nick," she said grimly "Your whole design has been to humiliate me."

Something like amusement lighted his eyes again. "If I were capable of acting by design in regard to you, believe me, humiliating you would not be my object."

"Then why did you bring your groom and not your family to our wedding?"

It was a direct attack, and she had all the satisfaction of seeing in her husband's eyes that bleak, withdrawn expression that had so startled her as she danced past him at their wedding.

"My family is dead."

"Forgive me—I never thought, I ..."

"How could you? You have an inexhaustible supply of family."

Bel felt herself stiffen at that, but his next words melted her anger.

"I have Farre."

"An earl—the Earl of Haverly—has no one but his groom?" It was incomprehensible that he had no siblings, no cousins, no aunts or uncles.

"Nick," he corrected automatically. "I meant no insult by bringing Farre."

"But why did you say he was your uncle?" The impertinent question was out before she could stop herself.

He looked away at that and tore a short leafy branch from the limb above him. The river below rushed along with its swift, muted music. He began to strip the leaves from the branch in his hands. She sensed he was remembering things he wished forgotten.

"You are fortunate in your family," he said at length. "You take pride in them and they in you. I wanted somebody—" He paused. "—like that."

And he was telling her, she realized, that he had no one else
like that
. "Have you always known Mr. Farre?" she asked.

He shook his head, but did not raise his eyes to hers. The destruction of the branch in his hands was nearly complete before he spoke again. "I was about your cousin Phillip's age when I was summoned to Haverly. My parents had drowned in an accident the summer before, and my uncle, the earl, decided I would do as an heir. He had a great deal to teach me about the responsibilities I would inherit, and I did not always enjoy the lessons.

"But Uncle Miles was an invalid. He never rode, and I found the stable a safe place to hide. Farre was my uncle's groom. Farre found me in his stable so often he began to teach me things. He taught me to fish, to—"

"You had not fished before?" she asked. She tried to recall the details of the pampered childhood her cousins had invented for him at the wedding. How far from the truth they had been.

He look up and smiled at her. "No. I had learned to climb trees, to read, to swim."

And, she thought, to kiss, a lesson not learned from Farre. And a lesson her husband had learned well. He did not kiss with the awkwardness she remembered in John Lyde or the self-absorbed force of Darlington.

He must have read something of her thoughts in her face, for his hands stopped the restless shredding of the branch and his eyes darkened with that particular intensity that sent a flutter along her nerves. Suddenly the perch she had chosen seemed dizzyingly high. She closed her eyes to steady herself.

When she opened them, he was standing. He extended his right hand and took two sideways steps toward her. "Come," he said, "join me at this end of our bough."

The words were a command, but his voice was coaxing, and she saw in the strong, lean hand reaching out for her an offer of peace. She stretched out her own hand, allowing him to pull her to her feet and lead her to his end of the stout limb. He settled himself against the trunk again, and helped her down to sit before him.

"Lean against me," he urged. This was a different request, and for a moment, she held herself apart from him, but this, too, was a step she must take if she meant to be his wife. Slowly she leaned back, gradually resting her shoulders against his chest, her head against his shoulder. His arms closed around her waist. Through the fine layers of cambric and muslin that separated them, she felt the heat of him and the swift beating of his heart.

"You were right not to insist on our intimacy that first night," she said. She felt him tense at her words, felt his hands tighten briefly at her waist, and hurried to speak her next thought. "But shouldn't we begin to act as husband and wife somewhere?"

She heard his quick indrawn breath.

"Will this tree do?" he asked in a choked voice.

She felt the taut muscle in his arms and the abrupt suspension of his breathing, as if his whole body waited for her answer.

"I confess," she said unsteadily, "I am more conventional in my notions, and thought that we might begin by dining together."

He was silent for some time, and when he spoke again, his voice was even. "Is that what you wanted to complain to me about this evening when you found me with Farre?"

"Among other things. Do you object to husbands and wives dining together?"

"I have not often seen it done, but for your sake I am willing to try it."

His admission startled her and set her wondering again what sort of family his had been. The activities he had described were those of a solitary child. She could not imagine a brother of hers having to escape to the stables to find a friend or a teacher. It was some minutes before she realized that she still leaned against him and the sky had grown dark. She stirred a little, trying to bring herself to a more upright posture.

"Are you afraid to sit so close to me?" he asked.

"Not afraid." She sought the words. "Too conscious of the ... intimacy, perhaps."

Silence fell between them, filled by the river's constant murmurous tumble down the hillside.

"The day we made our bargain," he said, "I came down to the Ashe after dark and lay on the bank, wishing you beside me like this."

"And since our wedding?" she asked, suspecting from the tone of his revelation that he had made such a wish more than once, unwilling to confess her own reverie of that same evening.

"More than once," he whispered.

She waited then for him to turn her in his arms to ask for one of the bargain kisses, but he remained still and silent and the river rushed by cool and indifferent.

After a time, he suggested, "Let me take you back to the house." He climbed down and helped her after. As soon as they separated she felt all the chill of the damp night air and began to shiver in her thin gown and slippers. He hurried her up the path, surprisingly sure of his way in the darkness.

When they reached the door, he opened it, then caught her in his arms. "Good night," he said. "I will join you for dinner tomorrow."

"You're not coming in?" she asked.

He shook his head. "But I will take a kiss."

"One?" She knew his answer.

"One." He drew her against him with a gentle pull that measured her acquiescence inch by inch until their lips met. At once the kiss deepened, his hunger evoking in her an answering need to give, so that she pressed against him until he wrenched himself from her arms and strode off in the darkness.

"Good night," she whispered.

Chapter 16

THE ROOM is charming," Nick offered between the first remove and a course of chicken
fricasse
and vegetable pudding. They had passed beyond the weather and the food, and he had been pleased to discover that while he could think only of kisses and kissing, he could still speak on the unobjectionable subject of room decoration.

"Thank you," Bel answered. "You must tell me if there is anything you dislike in the scheme."

Nick looked around, surprised that she could think he wouldn't like her renovation. Pale creamy walls and a handsome red-and-cream stripe on the chairs and hangings had lightened and warmed the room. There was nothing of his uncle's emphasis on display. The watercolors above the mantel and the flowers on the table seemed to soften the room and connect it to the world outside. He met her questioning look.