Bad Brides

by Rebecca Chance

  But it’s hard not talking about some of the happiest memories I’ve ever had. Maybe the happiest.

  ‘Ooh-arr,’ came a deep male voice, and Brianna Jade, who hadn’t realized there was anyone else around but the pigs, jumped about a foot and looked around her wildly for the origin of the sound.

  ‘Ooh-arr,’ the voice said again, and this time she located its origin: an enormous, muddy man standing inside the pen, having just emerged from the shed. He was wearing ancient, faded dungarees over a T-shirt, and he was leaning on a big, equally muddy spade; she couldn’t quite understand how he had got so filthy. It was only later that she would realize that there was a wallowing patch out behind the back of the shed that needed to be watered and turned over in the absence of rain.

  He raised a hand and brushed it across his face, probably meaning to push his hair back, but only succeeding in plastering brackish mud across his forehead in a thick diagonal stripe; there were already splashes of mud up his legs and over his arms from vigorous work with the spade. The sun was behind him, and mostly what Brianna Jade could see was a looming, hugely muscled shape, his biceps swelling like melons below the short sleeves of his T-shirt, his wellington-booted legs spread as wide as his massive shoulders. It looked as if it would take the forklift that had transported the Rayburn ranges to move him if he didn’t want to budge.

  ‘Um, hi?’ Brianna Jade said, putting down the stick and resting it against the railings. ‘The pigs are great.’

  He just stood staring at her. It was beginning to feel like a confrontation in a Western movie, as if he were the local lawman, she were new in town, and he wasn’t sure whether to trust her with the pigs or not. Like, uh, a pig sheriff.

  ‘I was just scratching their backs,’ she said a little nervously. ‘I really like pigs – I kinda grew up around them. Anyway, I should get going! Uh, nice to meet you.’

  ‘Ooh-arr,’ the man rumbled again without moving a muscle.

  She turned and started to walk away, then broke into a jog, heading back the way she’d come; after a few minutes, with the ha-ha coming into view in front of her, she turned to look back. The man-mountain was still there, huge hands planted on his spade, staring after her.

  Jeez, she thought. I’ve never seen anyone nearly that big over here. They don’t usually come that size in the UK. Back home in Illinois, they bred on a massive scale: it was all the German and Scandinavian stock, large farmers who had emigrated from Europe in search of land, been nourished on the abundant protein so easily available in the New World, and grown even larger, like a race of giants. When the Future Farmers and Future Homemakers of America conventions rolled into town, hotels trembled for their furniture. The looming silhouette of someone whose hands were almost as big as his spade made Brianna Jade oddly nostalgic: she had always been one of the tallest girls at pageants, the wide square shoulders inherited from her farmer father perfect for carrying off elaborate draped dresses, but she’d often felt big and awkward next to the smaller Asian or Hispanic-origin contestants, with their small bones and delicate frames, the dancers who did ballet or rhythmic gymnastics for the talent section, tiny and flexible in their leotards.

  While back home in Kewanee, I was normal. Hell, next to that guy back there, I’d be positively petite! She couldn’t help grinning as she skirted the ha-ha, heading back to the Hall. I should have told Mom to take me to Germany instead of Britain, snagged a whatever-they-have over there. A Prince, maybe. Hey, maybe even a King – Herzoslovakia has one going free!

  The main entrance of Stanclere Hall, with its double-winged stone staircase and impressive carved oak doors, was only used on formal occasions. It seemed weird to Tamra and Brianna Jade to have such an impressive front door and barely use it, but Edmund had looked so taken aback at the idea that they access the house by anything but one of the side doors that they had given up any attempt to change his mind. If they were going to join British society, Tamra had observed, they had to figure out the non-negotiables. En-suite bathrooms, kitchen overhauls: no problem at all. Using the main door on a regular basis: absolutely out of the question.

  So Brianna Jade looped round the façade of the house again. She was too sweaty by now to be comfortable going in by the terrace which overlooked the lawns and led to the main suite of entertaining rooms. The drawing rooms might be dilapidated, the stucco on their ceilings peeling, their rugs faded, their draperies moth-eaten, but they were still too formal to walk through in damp, tight Lycra exercise wear. She was making for a side door with glass panels that led to a back hallway that would take her up a staircase to the first floor, directly to the bedroom wing. Stanclere Hall, unlike many other stately homes that had been added to with each new generation, had been built in one well-planned swoop, and the interiors were not the confusing maze that others had become with the addition of new wings over the centuries.

  But as she swung around the side of the Hall, having slowed to a walk to cool down, she saw her fiancé’s battered old Land Rover pulling up by the stables, Edmund coming back from his morning’s work to join her for lunch. Before she had more or less moved in, he had stayed out in the fields all day, taking a packed lunch like the farmhands did; but, to keep her company and build up their relationship, he had deliberately changed his routine. She was sure it was an inconvenience for him but was too grateful to tell him not to do it. The lunches were a lifeline to her, broke up the monotony of her days enough that she could get through them successfully.

  Edmund swung down from the Land Rover, not seeing her walking towards him, and stood there for a moment, rolling back his shoulders, as hot and sweaty as Brianna Jade: his T-shirt was sticking to his chest, his ancient, stained jeans clinging to his legs. The Earl of Respers pulled up the hem of his sweat-stained T-shirt to wipe his face and revealed his torso, lean and muscled, but not overtly, the body of a man who did regular physical work, not a gym rat. Her trainers crunched on the gravel and she stopped, wanting suddenly to watch Edmund when he wasn’t aware that she was there.

  They hadn’t had sex yet, a joint decision that they had come to that night of the proposal, over dinner, after Tamra had left; it had been a huge relief to both of them when Brianna Jade had got up the nerve to raise the subject over the lemon syllabub that Mrs Hurley had served for pudding (weirdly, they called dessert ‘pudding’ over here, even if it wasn’t anything like one). Sipping Muscat de Beaumes-de-Venise (‘pudding wine’) by candlelight, the conversation tailing away as the evening grew later and the whole question of how the night would end became even more acute, Brianna Jade had felt that Edmund was waiting for her to set the pace, to indicate how she wanted things to proceed.

  She was hugely grateful for that, would have hated his assuming that once she had agreed to marry him she would just fall into his bed. But of course, the fact that he wasn’t taking her for granted meant that she would actually have to work out what she wanted, and that was easier said than done. Part of her had thought that they should just get it over, do it the first night and settle down to being comfortable without the fact that they hadn’t had sex looming over them. But when she opened her mouth, what came out was a request that they go slowly, get to know each other better, not take each other for granted. Work towards falling in love, as Edmund had said to her earlier.

  And his instant reaction had told her that her instincts had been correct; he hadn’t been able to hide his relief.

  ‘You know I find you very attractive,’ he’d said at once, reaching across the table to take her hand. ‘It isn’t that, not at all. It would just feel, tonight – well, a bit forced, I suppose.’

  As if he were bought and paid for, Brianna Jade had thought then. Because that is sort of what’s happening. Mom’s bought me him, the title, the house, and doing it tonight would be almost like – well, like treating him as a stud boar on a pig farm! It had been really hard not to giggle at the idea, partly because there was a core of truth to it; Edmund wanted children too, of course, but a huge part
of the appeal of a British aristocrat for Tamra had been that her grandchildren would inherit the title, that the money she was pouring into Stanclere Hall would be an investment in her family’s future.

  ‘I really liked what you said earlier, about love coming as we get to know each other,’ Brianna Jade had said gratefully. ‘I mean, I know this is arranged, but we still feel that we could—’

  ‘Definitely,’ Edmund said quickly. ‘You’re beautiful, sweet, charming, intelligent – sorry, that sounds like an awfully staid list, and I didn’t mean it to be. I just meant that you have all the qualities any man would fall in love with . . .’

  ‘You had me at “intelligent”,’ Brianna Jade said, now able to giggle. ‘I mean, if a man calls a blonde “intelligent”, he can always get her into bed.’

  ‘Really?’ Edmund’s grin was adorable; it lit up his usually solemn grey eyes, gave his straight mouth a curve that softened his squarish features. ‘Gosh, I wish I’d known that years ago. I’ve always liked blondes, I must admit.’

  ‘Gentlemen prefer me!’ Brianna Jade had said cheerfully, reaching forward to clink her Muscat glass with Edmund’s, and they’d finished the evening on a truly happy note, walking up the main staircase arm in arm, and Edmund kissing her goodnight, a kiss just as satisfactory as the one that afternoon in the gazebo.

  Since then, that had been the pattern; a passionate kiss goodnight, sending them both to bed very happy with the bargain they had made, and a daily routine that they fell into – though less fulfilling for Brianna Jade than for Edmund, who, as a farmer, was fully occupied all summer with the coming harvest.

  Tamra had asked her daughter recently whether she and Edmund were having sex yet, and when Brianna Jade had told her no, her mother had tilted her head and said that they didn’t want to leave it too long. Think of the pressure on Edmund, she said, if they waited almost half a year until the wedding. And though Edmund seemed really nice and normal, Brianna Jade didn’t want to wait till her wedding night to find out that he was weird in bed in ways she didn’t like. You heard lurid stories about these British aristos and a kink factor from their private schools. Maybe it was all just rumour and gossip, and God knew, Tamra said, she wasn’t judgemental – but you wanted to make sure that whatever they liked, you liked too.

  Or what if he had a tiny dick? Just because she had set her daughter up with a storybook-perfect Earl with a stately home, it didn’t mean that Brianna Jade needed to have bad or weird sex, let alone with a tiny dick, all her life: she should try before buying, make sure she was okay with the deal she was making.

  Plus, it never went well when you put men under pressure sexually, Tamra informed Brianna. The last thing they wanted was a wedding-night disaster with Edmund getting performance anxiety or, as Tamra had tastefully added, blowing his load too soon. Relieved as she had been to hear her mother’s assurances that she didn’t have to marry Edmund if the sex was awful, this was going too far. Brianna Jade had clapped her hands over her ears and screamed at Tamra to stop, that she didn’t want her mom talking about her husband-to-be like that, and Tamra had obeyed. For once.

  But now, staring at Edmund, as he gave a surreptitious sniff to his T-shirt, winced, dragged it off and, bare-chested, walked over to the old iron water pump in the courtyard to sluice himself down, those words of her mother’s came back to Brianna Jade with considerable emphasis. She had known that Edmund had a good body, slim and toned, but his English tendency to wear clothes that weren’t as fitted as some of the European men she’d met at parties meant that she hadn’t realized how well-developed he actually was. His pectorals were firm and tight, his abdominal muscles nicely defined, hollowing down to his narrow waist; as he pumped the water up, his right arm rising and falling, the play of muscle from his lats to his swelling bicep was a steady ripple of strength easily exerted.

  He bent forward, splashing the water in the bowl onto his face and upper body, his bare back lean and muscled enough to have served as a model for an anatomical drawing. As he stood up again, drying himself off with his balled-up T-shirt, water trickled down his body, catching in the fine gold-brown hairs scattered over his chest, a light trace on his upper arms, darkening on the forearms and in the surprisingly thick line of hair that drew straight down to his belt buckle, disappearing behind the fly of his faded jeans . . .

  Brianna Jade swallowed hard, watching his biceps flex. It was what she had been waiting for, this physical click with her fiancé; not a we should probably do it, we’re engaged and I like kissing you, but an I want him, right now: unforced, completely spontaneous.

  Jeez, I should just have asked him to take his shirt off weeks ago!

  Edmund was raising his arms to shake drops of water from his hair, and that very particular bulge that a man’s arm muscles get when they’re lifted with the hands up to the head, the armpits fully exposed, the darker hair a little shock against the whiter skin, made Brianna Jade’s mouth go dry. Edmund had a working man’s body and a working man’s tan, his forearms and neck sun-kissed, his chest and upper arms white as his armpits, and the contrast was just like the boys she’d dated in Kewanee, achingly familiar and attractive. Unexpectedly, she found herself remembering Marty Boetz from the trailer park who’d been her first. They’d done it in a cornfield – that was pretty much where all the kids went to make out, with the crop so high and thick that you only knew what was going on by the unmistakable sounds muffled by the heavy ears of corn, the thick surrounding leaves. You kept walking till the noises the couple were making faded behind you, and you found a place of your own to spread the blanket and lie down under the stars.

  Sounds romantic, but Marty wasn’t. It was his first time too, and he made a real mess of it. Literally. It got a bit better, I guess, but it was never anything to make a fuss about. Still, I loved how big and strapping he was – almost as big as the pig sheriff guy back by the pens. Huh, I suppose it’s that guy who made me think of Marty. Boy, I wanted him real bad. Even though the sex itself was never great, every time I saw him I’d get the shivers all up and down my back. When he took his shirt off I’d just melt like cheese all over a burger, all sticky and wet . . .

  She must have shifted: Edmund heard her feet on the gravel, swivelled to see who it was, and stopped dead, meeting her eyes. He was experienced enough to see exactly what was in them. The accidental pose, twisted around with the T-shirt in one hand, made him look like one of the Greek statues in the gazebo, a discus thrower; even his hair, sticking to his forehead in curls, was reminiscent of those athletes, with their lovingly detailed musculature, their sinewy bodies, bodies sculpted for sport by rigorous exercise. Brianna Jade thought of the discus thrower’s torqued waist, the quadricep of his front leg stretched and tense, and swallowed again.

  He wouldn’t move, she knew that. She would have to be the one to signal that this was the time, that she was ready. And though it wasn’t now or never – there would be plenty of other opportunities for her and Edmund to finally consummate their engagement, as it were – the moment that she actually felt dry-mouthed, wet-pantied excitement for him was surely the best of all possible moments . . .

  Walking towards your sweaty, hot fiancé, who was looking at you as if he couldn’t believe his luck, was hugely exciting, but it also made her feel incredibly self-conscious. If anyone had come out into the courtyard, if the Rayburn lorry had driven through, the spell would have been broken instantly; but she reached Edmund without any interruptions, though she was seriously afraid that the flanges of her running shoes would trip on the gravel, was torn between holding Edmund’s steady grey gaze and looking down to ensure she didn’t fall over.

  She stopped just a couple of inches away from him, her face almost on a level with his. His lips were parted and he was breathing fast, his chest rising and falling, the damp hairs so close she could have touched them just by lifting her hand. And she wanted to so much. She was hoping that Edmund would make the first move, but he just stood there, staring at her, and
it was Brianna Jade who eventually lifted her hand and pressed the fingers against his smooth damp pectoral, lightly dappled with moles, the hairs a deliciously coarse contrast with the pale skin below, her palm settling against his nipple, which hardened instantly at her touch . . .

  It wasn’t the only part of his body that was hard. She stepped in fractionally and felt his cock against her, the buttons of his fly each standing out in relief, pressing into her crotch, the thin Lycra of her jogging shorts a very flimsy layer between her and his jeans. She gasped, and Edmund’s hand came up, took hers in a firm clasp, pulled her towards the house with him; they went in a stumbling rush through the side door, down the corridor, up the back stairs, too narrow for them to walk together; ever a gentleman, Edmund gestured for Brianna Jade to go first, and she felt stupidly embarrassed knowing that he was watching her barely covered bottom, maybe seeing the line of her thong. She would so much rather have followed him, let him set the pace.

  At the top of the staircase she took a step, stopped, didn’t know where to go for a moment. Then she thought: Edmund’s room. I’m going to be his wife, and then I’ll be moving in there. It’s the main set of rooms, where his mother and father lived, where the Earls of Respers have always lived – we should go there. She turned and led the way, Edmund right behind her, putting his arm around her waist, courteous as always, even when they were about to take their clothes off and finally do it.

  Through the private sitting room, into the huge bedroom, right up to the four-poster bed with its massive black oak frame, its heavy dark red brocade draperies suspended from the huge carved finials above; turning to face him, standing frozen for a moment, looking right into his eyes, feeling the shock: It’s here, it’s happening at last, after all the waiting. Edmund and I are actually going to have sex . . .