The Sometime Bride (45 page)

Would never be broken.

The bawdy ballad he had been singing that day was not the right sentiment for a homecoming. For his Cat. His lover and wife. The words of an old English ballad drifted up from the depths of school days memories. Minor. Modal. And haunting.

Lost in a lover’s secret dreams, Blas almost missed the warning nagging at the back of his mind. His boots hit the carriage floor with a thud. Hell and the devil! What if she weren’t in London? The village of Walmsley Oaks, a scant mile or two from Branwyck Park, was not far off the post road from Portsmouth to London. An icy blast hit him as he pulled open the window and shouted to the coachman. The change of destination accomplished, Blas readjusted his feet and lay back across the seats, thoughts of his fine, red-headed woman once again, more urgently, leaping through his agile mind. His Cat in the warmth of another world. Bare skin white in the moonlight, lying full length, flesh to flesh, a stark contrast against his own deep tan. The swelling perfection of her breasts tightening beneath his tongue. The small dark patch between her legs. The other lips his tongue did not neglect.

Arousing to aching stiffness, Blas groaned, shifting irritably on the unyielding squabs as he tried to find a spot of comfort. He bit his tongue, hoping pain might help, then forced himself back to the music, recalling long-forgotten words.

The haunting old song was still chasing through his head later that night as he rode toward Branwyck Park on a horse he hired at the inn in the village. He had changed his clothes, made a good meal, and seen his coachman and horses settled for the night. For he had not completely forgotten his promise to Thomas Audley. He could not simply drive up to the front door of Branwyck Park and declare that Don Alexis Perez de Leon had been miraculously resurrected.

His most charming smile won the undying devotion of the chambermaid at the inn as he asked if the mistress of Branwyck Park was in residence. So dazzled was the young maid by his rugged good looks and the indefinable aura of danger which clung to him, she scarcely noticed the coin he slipped into her hand. His instincts were as sound as ever, it seemed. His Cat was at Branwyck. Where she belonged. In the haven he had bought for her, the place he had created for her in case Napoleon overran the last outpost of English might on the continent. In case he himself had not come back at all.

And now peace was just around the corner. His wife was waiting. He was nearly home. All was well in Blas’s world. Napoleon could meet his destiny without the Marquess of Harborough.

The night was so cold and clear he could hear branches crackling in the frozen stillness. A half moon glimmered on the thin layer of ice coating the endless blanket of snow. By day the warming sun of late March was beginning to melt the upper layer of snow, which turned to ice at night. The thawing of the long hard winter had begun at last. As well as the thawing of the long winter of his soul.

Blas was wearing the same heavy woolen cloak and scarf he had worn in the mountains. Beneath it was the well-worn sleeveless sheepskin jacket Cat had given him that first Christmas in Lisbon. He was so accustomed to the cold, he scarcely felt it. At that point he could have stripped naked and his thoughts would have been enough to keep him warm. The house loomed out of the darkness, a hulking black shape without so much as a pinprick of light. He smiled to himself. Midnight and all was well. Reached into one of his jacket’s many pockets, he found the key he had carried for three long years. The key to a small door at the back of the house, not the great oaken panels of the front.

Moonlight glinting over snow and ice cast an eerie glow through the house, lighting his way to the impressive suite of rooms he had ordered redecorated for himself and his young bride. The hiss of tinder, a candle flickered, steadied into a solid glow. Blas lit an entire wall sconce of candles and turned to stare in wonder at what a few casual words had wrought. Rich red brocade, miles of black velvet, the gleam of gold embroidery. A lop-sided grin quirked his full lips. Hopefully, he could be forgiven the dramatic follies of his youth. But gold embroidery? Surely he had never said anything about gold embroidery.

Blas’s deep-set amber eyes drifted toward the dressing room door and the entrance to his wife’s bedchamber beyond. Grabbing one of the candles, he strode across the room and slipped through the dressing room with the stealth of vast experience. He had always come home quietly. Even the night he had returned from La Coruña and struggled to climb Cat’s balcony, he could have called out, roused the house. But, heartsick, desperate, he had fought the dagger-like spikes alone. To have her to himself. To drown in her love. And comfort.

To casually, unforgivably, rape his fifteen-year-old wife.

Shoulders bent, Blas leaned his forehead against the door to Cat’s room, recalling his horror when he had waked the next morning to full consciousness of how badly he had used her. Later, with the quiet dignity of her fifteen years, she had assured him that she understood. Which in itself shamed him still further. His little Cat should not have been knowledgeable enough to understand that, in pain and exhaustion, he had mistaken her for his mistress. They never talked about it again, but theirs was a marriage born in violence. In a time of violence. And it was damn well going to survive the coming of peace.

Blas drew a ragged breath. Slowly, his fingers tightened around the doorknob, turned, gently tugged. A gap widened to reveal hot embers glowing in the fireplace of white marble. A rush of warm air hit him in strong contrast to the clammy chill of the disused chamber behind him. He slipped through the door, closing it softly behind him. An expanse of French blue velvet was drawn closely about the bed. He expelled a long-held breath. She was there. He was home. Truly home.

In one swift movement his scarf and the old broad-brimmed hat hit the floor; the cloak, the precious jacket thudded down on top. Boots were the devil’s own brand of torture. If he’d said what he was thinking aloud, the air would have turned blue with his frustrated curses. One boot bounced onto the hearth, narrowly missing the fire; the other plunked hard against the rug near the bed. Socks, his Spanish breeches. His knee-length knit undergarment seemed almost as difficult as the boots. And damned uncomfortable to peel off, considering the rock-hard urgency of his need.

When Blas finished, he was wearing only the full white shirt, the wondrously ruffled shirt he wore just for her. For its marvelous wealth of exciting memories. The sharp, poignant recollections of temptation. And denial. The game they had continued to play even when there was no need. When they were no longer forced to turn away. When, at the end of the game, there was only the all-consuming culmination of their love.

In his eagerness Blas had lost his customary caution. Since the thud of his boot hitting the hearth, large green eyes had been peeping through a crack in the bedhangings. Heart thudding as loudly as the falling boots, Cat watched a shadowy figure scatter clothing across the wide expanse of carpet. There had been only the tiniest moment of doubt, a hiccup of time when she had nearly called out a stern challenge to Anthony. But the thought was fleeting. And unworthy. Everything about this shadow man was Blas. When he did not remove the shirt, there was no doubt at all. Perhaps the war was over and she had not yet heard the news. For whatever reason, Blas had come home. At long last.

Cat twitched the curtain back into place, snuggled into her pillow, closed her eyes. She was a pragmatist. Talk could come later. Much, much later.

Blas moved toward the canopied and curtained bed, his need urgent, tearing at him like some ruthless phantasm, spinning him out of control. He was on the verge of disgracing himself, he realized, like some virgin school boy, spilling his seed with the very first touch of flesh to flesh.

But no bloody school boy knew what he knew, had memories such as his. He thought he’d die of it. And he hadn’t yet touched the blue velvet cage which cloaked his wife from his eyes, tantalizing his always vivid imagination like some carefully orchestrated prurient fantasy.
Bloody hell!
If he got any harder, he was going to succumb to pain before he so much as caught sight of the remedy.

And then his mind played a very nasty trick. What if, when he pulled back that curtain of blue, his wife was not alone? What if . . . what if the face he saw was his own?

For minutes on end he stood frozen, inches from the soft covering of velvet, unable to move, to reason, his manhood collapsing into limp ineffectuality.

Inches from him, Cat waited. And wondered.

Blas knew with all the certainty of twenty-eight years of brotherhood that Tony would never do such a thing. He might want Cat, be willing to challenge his brother for her, but he would do it openly, not sneak into Cat’s bed like some thief in the night.

Intellectually, he knew it. As he knew Cat had had but one love in her whole life. And that love was himself. Her honor was, as always, strong, firm, and faithful. But while his love had remained faithful to her, his body had not
. Sauce for the gander.

His stomach knotted tight. Heart in his mouth, Blas slowly drew back the bed hanging. For the rest of his life he would recall his shame in this moment of weakness. For she was there. Alone. As he should have known she would be.

He was so grateful, so shaken, he simply slipped into bed beside her and closed his eyes. Tremors ran through him, shaking him from head to toe.

“
Blas? Blas, are you ill?” Cat hovered above him, her hair drifting down over his face. Her fingers caressed his forehead, his cheeks, rested against the quivering fullness of his lips.

Blas groaned. He had survived the war. And was about to die at home in his wife’s bed.

Her hair tickled his senses as well as his skin. He was drowning in the scent of English lavender instead of Iberian musk and lemon, but she was his still his Cat. He was a man out of time, seeing, feeling—
ah, God, how he was feeling!
—but he could not move, could not react, could not speak.

“
Blas! Are you hurt? Ah,
deus
, say something!” In her anxiety Cat threw back the covers. Frantically, she tugged at his shirt, their game forgotten in blind terror as she searched for wounds, the telltale heat of fever.

He choked on sensation. The soft swish of fragrant hair, the questing, anxious movement of her hands, tracing his shoulders, his chest, his belly, his hips, his . . .

He had made a rapid, and rigid, recovery from the shock of his imagined cuckolding. No ramrod for Wellington’s cannon was more stiff.

With a gasp of outrage Cat rocked back on her heels, bracing both hands behind her on the soft down quilt. “There is nothing wrong with you at all, I see,” she hissed. “Except that you were a long time at sea.”

Blas licked his lips. No words came. No denial. No apology. His mind-numbing desire, his guilt, had accomplished what war never could. Rendered him powerless. Slave to only one thought. To become one with his wife. To touch and see and feel every inch of her. To measure her length with his. To melt body to body, flesh to flesh, until neither knew where one left off and the other began.

He could not remember skinning off his shirt, nor any movement at all, but suddenly Cat was flat on her back, pinned to the bed by the weight of his body. He needed eight arms, four mouths to do the things he wanted to do. To kiss her everywhere at once. To kiss the shining crown of lavender-scented hair, her ears, her eyelids, her lips. Neck. Breasts. Belly button. Thighs.

Oh, God, he mustn’t hurt her. Not this time. He groaned. It had been so damnably long.

Blas nearly shot off the bed as her hand fastened around his manhood. A chuckle welled up from her throat. “There’s no need to wait,” she murmured. And guided him home. Opening herself to him as easily as if they had been apart only hours instead of eight months.

As he feared, in a matter of moments he had spilled his seed inside her. By the time he came back to the world of the living and could breathe again, his power of speech had returned. “That doesn’t count,” he growled against her shoulder. “Give me a minute and we’ll try again.”