Never Less Than a Lady

by Mary Jo Putney

  Exhilaration bubbled through her veins like champagne. Though her heart was hammering, she stayed in the bath long enough to decide what she wanted to say. This would make all the difference in her somewhat uncertain marriage. Especially after today. She wondered how Randall felt about being heir to the earldom again, especially since he was unlikely to be superceded this time.

  Her nerves knotted with hope, she climbed from the tub, dried herself, and donned her soft robe. Then she unpinned her hair and brushed it around her shoulders the way Randall liked. After slipping off her wedding ring in preparation for the scene she had in mind, she stepped out from behind the screen.

  Randall was reading his correspondence in a leather upholstered chair by the bedroom window, but he set aside the letters and stood when she appeared. “You look as delicious as Aphrodite rising from the sea,” he said admiringly.

  She laughed. “The advantages of a classical education, and why Benjamin should learn Latin.”

  “Since he enjoys learning, he’ll be a better classical scholar than I was. I wonder how he’s getting on with Daventry.” Randall’s aquamarine eyes glinted. “Daventry and I will have to be civil to each other again. I’m not sure that’s good. It was easier when he disowned me and I didn’t have to deal with his moods.”

  “Now that Daventry has two descendents to carry on his bloodline, I think he’ll be easier to get along with.” She studied the way light from the window gilded his hair and silhouetted his broad-shouldered form as he leaned back against the sill. “At his age, being angry all the time must be tiring.”

  “I’m the heir presumptive again.” With the light behind him, Randall’s expression was impossible to read. “Is that a high enough rank to make this marriage worth maintaining? An earl is a better match than a mere country gentleman.”

  Julia’s hand clenched around her wedding ring as his words splintered her jubilant mood like ice on a winter morning. Ice transformed to pure fire. Forgetting her carefully planned words, she snapped, “Alexander Randall, you are an idiot. Do you think I really care about whether or not you have a title?”

  He was rocked back by her vehemence. “You should care, Julia. A great heiress can have any man she wants. Marriage to me offered you protection, but with Crockett gone, you don’t need that any more.”

  She moved close enough to see his face clearly. Her anger dissolved. His bleak expression said more clearly than words that he believed no woman would want him for more than practical reasons. To be loved for himself was outside his experience.

  She damned herself as she recognized that the conditions she’d demanded on entering the marriage had reinforced his belief. And she was no better than he was in this area. “We’re both idiots, Alexander. If you’ll excuse me a moment…”

  With quick steps, she opened the connecting door that led to her private sitting room. It took only a moment to find the letter Randall had written that she could use in a Scottish court if she wanted a divorce.

  Returning to the bedroom, she unfolded the letter and showed it to him. “Do you recognize this?”

  “Of course.” He watched her warily, as if she were a rocket on the verge of explosion. “The letter you required me to write.”

  She tore the sheet of paper into long strips with furious fingers. “I wish there was a fire in the fireplace so I could throw this damnable letter into the flames. Burning would be more satisfying than ripping.” She crumpled the ragged pieces into a ball and hurled them into the empty fireplace.

  “Excuse me if I’m not quite sure what your grand gesture means,” he said carefully. “I don’t want to misunderstand.”

  Julia sighed. “We are two very confused people, Alex. Worse than confused. Wounded. You worried that I want wealth and status. I worried that you would lose interest when I no longer needed protection. And once I saw how quickly you came to love Benjamin, I added the worry that you secretly hope I’ll seek a divorce so you can find a woman able to give you children.”

  “I never secretly wanted you to divorce me, Julia!” he said sharply. “If our marriage ends, it will be by your wish, not mine.”

  “You are the one who keeps talking about ending this marriage, not me.” She caught his gaze with hers. “But the fault is mine. Marriage isn’t about money or passion or even children. It’s a promise two people make to each other. A commitment, and it isn’t quite real if one person is keeping her foot outside the door.”

  “Perhaps not,” he said quietly. “But if the door hadn’t been left ajar, you wouldn’t have married me. More than anything on earth, I wanted you to say yes.”

  Julia felt tears stinging in her eyes. “Even after I told you I was barren. That was the greatest miracle of my life.”

  “Benjamin found a place in my heart on his own merits, not because I expected him to hold our marriage together.” Randall’s mouth twisted humorlessly. “But I did hope that would be one of the results. Though we can’t have children of our bodies, there are other children who need a good home and people to care for them.”

  “I hoped you would feel that way.” She smiled wryly. “And while I just said that passion alone doesn’t make a marriage, it certainly helps. Or is the lovers’ bond between us something that only I feel?”

  “No.” His knuckles whitened where his fingers curled around the windowsill. “No, that bond is not one-sided.”

  “Very well then.” Julia retrieved her reticule from the table where she’d dropped it and dug out the ring she’d had made for him. Cupping it in her palm with her own ring, she extended her hand, sunlight flashing off the Celtic gold patterns. “Marry me again, Alexander David Randall. This time for always, with no open doors. I am not leaving you. Not now, not ever.

  “And if you ever decide you want to leave me”—her eyes narrowed—“I have neither the intention nor the desire to commit adultery, so you’ll have no legal recourse. You will be stuck with me forever.”

  He looked tense to the point of shattering. “Are you sure, Julia? I’ve tried very hard to fulfill my promise to let you go after a year if that’s what you want. It hasn’t been easy because from the first moment I met you, I’ve wanted to say, ‘Mine, mine, mine!’ If you commit yourself to being my wife, you won’t be able to change your mind because I will never let you go.”

  “I’m sure, Alex,” she said softly. “Now and forever, amen.”

  With delicate precision, he lifted the smaller ring from her palm and slipped it onto her third finger. “I love you, Julia, for better and worse, in sickness and in health, until death do us part.” Taking her hand, he bent and kissed the golden band.

  “And I love you, Alexander.” Silent tears were streaming down Julia’s face as she took the larger ring and slid it onto her husband’s hand. “That’s what we were missing. The ability to admit love, and to accept love in return.” She raised his hand and pressed her cheek into it, shatteringly happy that he would willingly wear her ring.

  His arms came around her with fierce intensity. He was warm and strong and finally, she knew, hers.

  “I didn’t believe in love at first sight,” he said quietly. “So I couldn’t admit it to myself, much less to you. Pure cowardice on my part. Far easier to charge a French artillery battery than to put my heart in your hands.”

  “You have a warrior’s strength, Alex, but I don’t think warriors are known for admitting to emotions,” she said with a little laugh. “As a female, I should have done better, but I didn’t.”

  “You have a woman’s strength, which equals that of any warrior. Perhaps revealing one’s deepest emotion must be learned.” He rested his cheek on her damp hair, releasing a wisp of fragrance. “You radiate womanly warmth, which I’ve been seeking my whole life.”

  “While I sought a man I could trust.” She exhaled softly against his throat, feeling utterly safe. “But brace yourself, Major Randall. I do believe that I’m with child.”

  “Good God!” The dreamily romantic mood vanished as he caug
ht her shoulders and held her away from him so he could look into her face. A hard pulse beat in his throat. “Are you serious?”

  “Serious as only a midwife can be,” she assured him. “Mrs. Bancroft had told me that the beating and miscarriage I’d suffered at Branford’s hands had damaged me too much to ever have a child. She would have been the first to admit that human bodies are mysterious, but I never had reason to doubt her opinion. That’s why I didn’t notice the signs that I was increasing.” She grinned. “Like my short temper.”

  “Since you slept alone for all those years, her belief wasn’t tested.” He spread his hand over her belly in wonder, his broad palm warming her all the way through. “We shall have to take care that Benjamin doesn’t feel that he comes second to any babies we may have. I want him to grow up stronger and more confident than we did.”

  “There is more than enough love for him.” She laid her hand over his. “We must have made this baby the very first time we came together, at the inn in Grantham. I’m downright fertile.”

  “What you are is a miracle, milady.” He scooped her up and carried her to the bed and laid her tenderly across the coverlet. Sitting next to her, he bent into a kiss, his lips clinging to her. “Mine,” he murmured.

  He moved lower and nuzzled open the robe so he could kiss her breasts, his tongue teasing. “Mine.” Then he untied the sash and kissed her belly, which contained that pulse of new life. “Mine!”

  Laughing again, she reached up to pull loose his shirt so she could stroke the smooth, taut skin of his back. “And you are mine, Alexander. Now take off these clothes so I can survey my property properly. Every scarred and beautiful inch of you.”

  His face lit up with matching laughter. “With pleasure, milady. All that I have, all that I am, is yours.”

  “As I am yours.” She pulled his head down for another kiss.

  Finally, now and forever, she felt married.

  Did you miss the first Lost Lords book?

  Go back and read LOVING A LOST LORD!

  After an eternity of cold water, numbness, and despair, he was dragged ashore. Emerging from the water pulled him from the death-like trance that had allowed him to survive in cold water for so long. Dimly he remembered stumbling along with help, sliding into blackness, and then awaking to—perfection.

  The woman bending over him seemed more dream than reality, yet the warmth radiating from her was palpable. Her eyes were warm brown and a cloud of golden hair floated around her perfect oval face. She shimmered in the lamplight. Wondering if he’d drowned and gone to some other realm, he raised an unsteady hand to stroke those fine spun strands. They were gossamer silk against his fingers.

  “You’re safe now.” She pulled her long hair back and tied the shining mass in a loose knot at her nape. Her every movement was grace. “Do you speak English?”

  He had to think to answer her question. English. Language. Understanding. He licked his dry lips and whispered, “Y…yes.”

  “Good. That will make things easier.” She slid an arm under his shoulders and raised him enough to drink. He swallowed thirstily, thinking it strange how much he craved water when it had almost killed him. And humiliating that he was so weak that he couldn’t even drink without help.

  When he’d had enough, she took the glass away and gently laid him down again. She wore a night robe, and though it covered her thoroughly, her dishabille was deliciously tantalizing. “Such green eyes you have,” she observed. “They are striking with your dark complexion.”

  His eyes were green and the rest of him dark? He shifted his gaze to his right hand and examined it. The skin was medium tan, a half dozen shades darker than her ivory complexion. He realized that he had no idea what he looked like, beyond tan and bruised. Or what he ought to look like.

  She continued, “Can you tell me your name?”

  He searched his mind, and came up with—nothing. No name, no place, no past, just as he had no sense of his own body. That had to be wrong. Panic surged over him, more terrifying than the cold seas that had nearly drowned him. He was nothing, nobody, torn from his past and thrust into an unknown present. The horror of that echoed through every fiber of his being. Struggling to master his fear, he choked out, “I…I don’t know.”

  Seeing his fear, she caught his cold hand between her warm palms. “You’ve endured a considerable ordeal. After you rest and recover, you will surely remember.” She frowned uncertainly. “Can you have forgotten that I’m your wife, Mariah Clarke?”

  “My…my wife?” He stared, incredulous. How could he possibly forget being wed to a woman like this? But even though he didn’t remember their marriage, his fears diminished as he compulsively clenched her hand. “Then…I am a most fortunate man.”

  She smiled warmly. “Rest while I go for tea and broth. I’ve sent for someone who will know how to treat that blow to your head. With luck, she’ll be here soon. By tomorrow, you will likely remember everything about yourself.”

  He raised unsteady fingers to the ragged gash that ran down the left side of his skull. He had so many aches and bruises that he hadn’t noticed any in particular, but now that she mentioned it, his head throbbed like the very devil. “Tea would be…welcome.”

  “I’ll only be gone a few minutes,” she promised as she whisked away.

  He stared at the ceiling after she left. He had a wife. He hated that he remembered nothing about that vision of loveliness who had saved his life, nor about being married. It was easy to imagine kissing her, and a good deal more. But of actual memories he had none. It seemed damned unfair.

  He spent her absence searching his mind and memory and trying not to knot the sheets with nervous fingers. He recognized objects around him. Bed. Blanket, fire. Pinkness in the sky outside. That would be…dawn. Oddly, a second set of words shadowed the first. Palang. Kambal. Aag. He was quite sure the words meant the same as the English ones that came to mind, so he probably knew a different language, though he had no idea what it might be.

  But he had no personal memories. Again he fought the rising fear. The emotion was a screaming, vulnerable awareness that he was alone and so helpless that he didn’t even know what might threaten him.

  Strangely, deep inside he sensed that this was not the first time he had been torn away from himself. Perhaps that was why his fear was so great. But he could remember nothing about that other situation, whatever it might be.

  He had survived that earlier loss. This time he had a wife who told him he was safe. Surely she would look out for him until he was strong enough to look out for her.

  For now, he remembered the most basic fact of all: that he was male and Mariah Clarke was female.

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  Copyright © 2010 by Mary Jo Putney, Inc.

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  ISBN: 978-1-4201-1909-1