The Bridegroom (20 page)

“If only the future were not so uncertain,” she murmured.

“Are you refusing me?”

“No. I only hope we do not end up faced with choices neither of us wants to make.”

He wondered if she suspected that he intended eventually to abandon her—and to take the child with him. “Let us take first things first,” he said.

“Where would you like to begin?” she asked.

He answered by kissing a spot at the base of her throat. He kissed his way up to the tender pulse beneath her ear, then turned her back to him and began undoing the buttons on her dress.

“I am itching to pull all those weeds from the front walk,” she said as he pulled the dress away.

He turned her toward him again and began to work on the ties holding her chemise in place. “I would rather see you rescue my mother’s rose garden,” he replied in a raspy voice, as he saw her bare at last.

She moaned as he filled his hands with her breasts. “I do not remember seeing anything that looked like a rose garden,” she grated out.

“It is completely overgrown with weeds,” he said as he pushed her flat, then stripped her dress and pantalets down and off so that she was naked beneath him. He found her mouth and let his tongue intrude, mimicking the sex act. His body pulsed and hardened. “My father loved to look out at it from the library window,” he managed to rasp.

“We will need a dozen gardeners just to trim all the ivy off these windows,” she said as her mouth pressed kisses to his bare shoulders. “And two dozen carpenters to repair the shutters and the windowsills and the floors.”

Clay said nothing to dampen her enthusiasm, but he had no intention of making any repairs that were not absolutely necessary. He spread her legs with his knee and settled himself in the cradle of her thighs. “There are some rotten boards on the stairs,” he said. “They should come out first.”

Her hips arched upward, and her hands clasped him tightly about the shoulders. “You will have to make a tour of the house with me to see if there is any furniture or carpeting or drapery that can be salvaged.”

It would be easier to shovel everything out and start over, Clay thought, as he sucked on the flesh at her throat. If they were starting over. Which, he reminded himself, they were not. “Save what you wish. There is nothing here I care about.”

“There might be some article that holds a special
memory for you,” she said as she reached for the buttons on his trousers.

“I doubt it.”

He helped her shove the trousers and smalls down off his hips far enough to free his shaft. One thrust, and he was inside her.

Their eyes met.

“Life here can be good.” She reached out with her forefinger to trace his lips, but he opened his mouth and sucked it inside. Her eyes closed, and her body arched upward as he began to move inside her.

There was no more time for talking, no more time for thinking, only the immense pleasure to be found inside her before he spilled his seed.

He must have slept, because he awoke to find her playing with the dark curls on his chest.

“Hello,” she said, removing her hand. She lowered her gaze as a blush pinkened her cheeks. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“I didn’t mean to sleep,” he said brusquely.

“Wait,” she said as he started to rise. “One more question.”

“One more,” he conceded.

“Were there ever happy days here for you?”

“I had a wonderful childhood here with my brother Charles and my parents. My mother always placed an enormous silver epergne, filled with the most fragrant pink roses, in the center of the table,” he said, seeing it in his mind’s eye. “I think she did it to counteract the smell of tobacco in the room, because my father always insisted on blowing a cloud after supper.”

Reggie smiled. “They sound well matched.”

“They were. I might have lived here quite happily, if your father—”

“And it will be a happy place again,” Reggie interrupted, placing her fingertips against his lips to silence him. “In no time at all Castle Carlisle with be filled with the smell of roses on the dining room table, and … What would you most like to find here in the years to come, my lord?”

Clay met her gaze, kissed her fingertips, and said, “The laughter of children.”

B
ecky had begun her overland journey to Blackthorne Hall from London without informing her father and stepmother that she was on her way. She simply could not find the words to express the disaster that had befallen her … or how much a blessing in disguise it actually was.

Her marriage was being annulled.

A mere week ago—could it be so little time had passed?—Penrith had sat across from her at the supper table and announced, “I have had a change of fortune, my dear, which will require me to travel abroad for some time to come. And since I cannot subject a wife and child to the rigors of such a lengthy journey, I am leaving you.”

“You mean, you wish Lily and me to wait here in England for you?” she had asked.

“No. I mean I am having our marriage annulled.”

Becky’s heart skipped a beat.
Lily! Who is to get Lily?
But she did not dare to ask. Any interruption of her husband before he had finished speaking had always been dealt with severely. Her pulse was so loud in her ears that she had to force herself to concentrate on what Penrith was saying in order to hear him.

“My solicitor has come up with a legal defect that will suffice to allow an annulment—the existence of a prior marriage contract between myself and another lady, I believe. In light of the fact I may be gone for as long as ten years or more—”

Becky could not restrain a gasp. He was not even pretending his case for annulment was valid. It was made up out of whole cloth! She bit her lip when Penrith’s eyes narrowed and lowered her gaze submissively. “Please continue, William.”

“It seemed better, in light of such an extended absence, that I should set you free to seek connubial bliss with someone else.”

Becky’s head jerked up, but she was still enough in control of herself to choke back the startled cry of surprise—and rage at his utter callousness—that sought voice.

Penrith sipped a spoonful of turtle soup, savored it, and swallowed it. “I assume you will not want to stay here in London. Indeed, I am closing Penrith House for the period I am gone. I have made arrangements to send you and Lily to stay with your father and stepmother in Scotland.”

“Lily is to stay with me?” she croaked past the painful knot of emotion in her throat.

He waved his napkin in dismissal. “You may take the brat with my good will.”

“Will I—”

“I do not care to discuss the matter further,” he said. “My solicitor will call on you tomorrow to discuss any questions you may have.”

Becky understood the cruelty—the total lack of any human kindness—in the man she had married when she realized William had not waited until the end of the meal to offer his news. He had done it during the first course. In order to escape, she would have to excuse herself before the meal was finished.

She would not do it. She would stay and choke down the rest of her meal if it killed her.

“Is the soup not to your taste, my dear?” he asked.

Becky swallowed a spoonful past the lump in her throat, so that she could say, “It is too salty.”

“Then I will have Cheevers take it away and bring the next remove.”

The only thing Becky wanted to remove from the dinner table was herself, but she merely nodded. When Cheevers returned, she accepted a slice of lamb with boiled cauliflower but refused the stewed eels.

The next course consisted of fried sole, potted pigeon, and a sweet, milky custard. She gagged on the custard.

“Are you unwell, my dear?”

She was in shock, her body so cold she was physically shivering. She could see that William relished her discomfort. It was a cat-and-mouse game they had played all the years of their marriage. This time he had cut her to the bone—in fact, given her a mortal wound—but she
refused to give him the satisfaction of acknowledging the hit.

She managed a smile, a last courageous act in a marriage filled with far too much cowardice, and said, “I am merely fatigued.”

He lifted his wine glass to her. “Then I will excuse you, my dear. You have a great deal to accomplish in the next few days. I am closing the house in a week.”

She had stood and turned her back on him and walked away. But she had only made it to the bottom of the stairs before her knees gave out and she collapsed.

To her utter horror and humiliation, Hardy had called William to come and carry her upstairs to her bedroom.

Becky did not remember much about the five days that followed. She had expected to be able to rely on Mick to help her, but she received a letter from him explaining that he had been called away on business that could not wait. He hoped to see her the next time she visited her family in Scotland. She had set out for her father’s estate in Scotland with all possible speed, encouraged by Penrith’s threat to close the town house within the week. And the prospect of seeing Mick again.

Becky leaned back against the comfortable velvet seat of the carriage, hugged her sleeping child closer to her breast, and listened to the jingle of harness and the clop of the horses’ hooves on the dirt road. They had left the last of the macadam roads just past Edinburgh. It would not be long now before she was home. She had done little on the journey but cry and sleep … and think.

She would never have betrayed her wedding vows by making love to Mick. But things were different now. She was once again an unattached female. Marriage to Mick was out of the question, considering the differences in their stations. But she was willing to consider a discreet liaison with him. They could be lovers.

Mick managed several properties for her father in Scotland, and he lived in a house on one of them, not far from Blackthorne Hall. It should be possible to meet there without being discovered, if they were cautious. They would be able to hold each other and to love each other.

Becky had a startling—and troubling—thought. What if Mick already had a lover? It was possible. There must be widows in the countryside who were willing to share their favors with a man as young and handsome as Mick.

Becky felt an ache deep inside at the thought of Mick with another woman in his arms and realized she wanted him all to herself.

Why not marry him?

It was impossible. She had been taught from birth the importance of her heritage, the need to marry well, to marry within her class. Mick was a whore’s bastard son. The social stigma of marriage to such as he would be unbearable. She would become an outcast, and her daughter along with her. And, to be honest, Becky was not sure she could live without the comforts she had been raised to expect with an inexhaustible income.

Penrith had taken control of her trust upon her marriage to him and dissipated it entirely, so she had no wealth of her own. She could probably ask Papa for pin
money, but she doubted Mick’s pride would allow it. And she was not entirely sure Papa would not cut her off without a farthing, if she married without his approval. And as much as Papa admired Michael O’Malley, she could not believe he would approve of Mick as the proper husband for a duke’s daughter.

So. It must be a liaison, or nothing. She did not even consider marriage to another man, not after her experience with Penrith. But the thought of spending life as an unattached female did not seem so frightening when she imagined herself being held snug in Mick’s arms.

There was only one problem with her solution. What if Mick did not want to be her lover? What if he was offended by the fact that she did not consider him a man worthy of her hand in marriage? What if their friendship was blighted as a result? Or, worst of all, what if she really was as unsatisfying in bed as William had always said and she could not please Mick?

Becky had already chewed all her fingernails to the quick. She was forced to content herself with staring out the window at the rapidly passing countryside.

At least she would have someone to share all her troubles. Reggie was in Scotland. Surely, between them, they could figure out a way to make life turn out happily ever after.

Reggie swiped at a drop of sweat streaming from her temple, then returned her attention to the fernlike weed she was pulling from the base of a rosebush. Her knees and shoulders ached from the unnatural position in which she sat, and her hands beneath a pair of leather work gloves were swollen with blisters. But she could see the beginnings of a rose garden. Somehow the roses had survived, despite a choking mantle of bracken and thistles.

Lightning streaked across the dark, distant sky and down into the sea. She waited for the clap of thunder that was sure to follow.
One, two, three, four, five …
The rumble in the distance was not so far away now. A zephyr swirled around her, bringing the sting of cool, salty air. The storm would be here soon, and she would have to stop.

She leaned back on her heels and glanced upward, searching for Carlisle’s figure atop the peaked slate roof
of the castle. Pegg had arranged for a bed and fresh bedding, but he had not repaired the hole in the roof above the bedroom. Fixing it had taken precedence over everything, even the journey to visit with her family that Carlisle had conceded she could make. That is, the visit with everyone except her father. He had insisted on accompanying her to make certain the duke kept his distance.