Snowbound Surrender

by Christine Merrill

  ‘Pink.’ He let out a sigh of relief and put the candle in the holder on the bedside table. Then he sat on the edge of the mattress, turning his face from her so she could not see his expression.

  ‘What colour did you expect them to be?’ Before she put them back under the covers, she looked at them as well. She wiggled them experimentally, but found nothing unusual about them.

  ‘I was worried when you did not come down for supper.’

  ‘Because my brother is an old woman and would not allow me to leave my room,’ she said, then added, ‘And I did not want to see you. I am perfectly fine, but he insists that I rest.’

  ‘After I retired, I had a dream,’ he said, then stopped.

  ‘That is hardly a sufficient explanation.’

  ‘It was not about the sort of thing that one should discuss with a young lady, especially not at bedtime.’

  ‘You are being prim with me again,’ she snapped. ‘Do not bother. When you left me, I was not some naïve schoolgirl.’

  ‘Because of my behaviour,’ he added.

  She sighed. ‘The icy water did not kill me. But I swear you are boring me to death with this continual self-pity. And do not think to take credit for the fact that I chafe against the unfair restraints put upon young women. I refuse to be ashamed of the fact, or of my behaviour before or since you left.’

  He sucked his breath in through clenched teeth, as if trying to decide what to tell her.

  So she added, ‘You must remember how hard it was to shock me when I was little, but you and Fred tried often enough. You once put frog spawn in my wash basin.’

  ‘And a bat in your wardrobe,’ he added.

  ‘The poor thing was terrified,’ she reminded him. ‘But I was not. I have hardly grown to be more easily shocked in your absence. What were you dreaming about?’

  He swallowed nervously. ‘I remember seeing Frenchmen who had survived the invasion of Russia and the damage done to them by the weather. It does not take long for the cold to burn extremities beyond the power of healing. And when that is the case...’

  She laughed. ‘You were dreaming that my toes had fallen off?’ She wiggled them again, amused, and poked at the side of his leg with her bare foot.

  ‘It sounds ridiculous when you say it thus,’ he said gruffly, then caught her feet in one of his large hands and gave them a squeeze.

  ‘I suppose it is nice to know that you care,’ she said, staring down at her feet.

  ‘You know I never stopped doing so.’ There was real tenderness in his voice and her resolve wavered before she remembered the truth.

  ‘If you care so much, you would not be encouraging me to marry another,’ she said, growing angry with him again.

  ‘It is wrong that a woman as special as you are should be alone,’ he said, carefully. ‘But you should be able to choose whomever you want and not the sort of bloodless fool your brother would pick for you.’

  ‘Then I choose you.’ She had been unable to stop the words, even though she knew they would hurt them both.

  He shook his head. ‘I will never marry,’ he said with the firm tone of a man used to giving orders. ‘I am a second son. I need no heir. Therefore, I do not need a wife.’

  ‘You do not need?’ she said with a bitter laugh. ‘That has always been the problem with you, Jack. You think of your needs before others’.’

  ‘How dare you?’ If it had been anyone other than the man she had loved her whole life, she might have been intimidated by the fury she saw in his face. Instead, it encouraged her to see him so moved. ‘After all I have done, all I have sacrificed for your safety and the safety of this country, how dare you call me selfish?’

  ‘Fred told me what you intended,’ she said gently. ‘I know you are in pain, but think of the pain you will cause me should you end your life. If you leave me, I shall always believe that you did it to avoid the marriage you owed me before you left.’

  ‘Then I had no money and a bad reputation. What kind of life could I have offered? And now...’ He paused, on the verge of confession.

  ‘Now, you are here, on my bed. If you were any other man, the scandal of your presence in my room would be enough to wring an offer out of you. What is stopping you?’ she said, unable to contain her feelings any longer. ‘Love me or leave. But either way, you owe me more truth than you are giving me.’

  He sighed. ‘The passage of time will not mitigate the things I have done, nor will it change the way I feel about myself,’ he said. ‘I hate what I was, I hate who I have become. My love now would be like a canker on a rose, a corruption of all we had.’

  She sighed. ‘This is why I miss the old Jack Gascoyne. He was trouble. But he was not such a bad fellow, really. He acted impulsively, then felt bad for it. And by the next day, he had forgotten what he had done and was ready to sin again. But you, Major Gascoyne, are far too hard on yourself. You have done great things. But you set the tolerance for your mistakes so high that no ordinary man could meet it.’

  ‘But I must have failed, somehow,’ he replied and his eyes grew distant. ‘If not, why does God punish me? Or perhaps it is the devil, sent each night to torment me.’

  ‘Punishment?’ she said, surprised. ‘Of what nature?’

  ‘The dream that brought me here and my concern for your safety?’ He took a breath as if afraid to speak. ‘It was not unusual.’

  ‘You often dream of me?’ she said, smiling.

  ‘Too much,’ he admitted. ‘I dream of losing you. When I close my eyes, I have seen you die in a hundred different ways. After today, I will see you dying of the cold, or I will be forced to watch you drown beneath the ice while I am unable to help. Usually, you are among the dead on the battlefield. A victim in a sacked village.’

  ‘Nightmares?’ she said, surprised.

  ‘And in each of them, I cannot help you. Your blood is on my hands.’ He ran a hand over his face, as if wiping away a caul. ‘Sometimes I am not even asleep and I see things, in my mind’s eye, that I cannot stand to look at. I would rather die now than live to an old age with these visions.’

  ‘Have you had many such dreams since coming here?’ she asked.

  ‘This was the first,’ he admitted, cautiously.

  ‘So they have been better, now that you have come back to me,’ she said, willing to take credit for any improvement.

  ‘For the moment, perhaps,’ he said, not convinced.

  ‘That is proof that you should stay with me,’ she said, patting the bed at her side.

  ‘They will come back,’ he said.

  ‘And what if they do?’ she asked.

  ‘Then you will see what a joke the brave Major Gascoyne really is.’ He laughed bitterly. ‘During the day, I can be foul-tempered and distant. But nights are worse. Sometimes I cry in my sleep. In the morning, the pillow is wet with tears. Sometimes, I simply scream myself awake.’

  ‘Do you always sleep alone?’ she asked.

  ‘That is not a question that a gentleman should answer,’ he said, even more embarrassed by this than his earlier admissions.

  ‘What happened in the past does not matter,’ she said. ‘After tonight, you will never be alone again. I love you, Jack Gascoyne, and I have done so long before I knew what it meant to love a man.’

  ‘But I told you...’

  ‘I do not care,’ she said, reaching for him. ‘If you cry, I will cry with you. If you wake in fear, I will be there to comfort you. It is what I wish from you and what I will give you in return.’

  He made a noise, deep in his throat, that was somewhere between a sigh and a sob and leaned forward to embrace her. But his cheek was dry when it touched hers and his lips were warm and soft.

  As she had in the parlour, she opened her mouth to him, eager for his kiss. But tonight, they were barely dressed and far from discovery, and there would be no mo
re nonsense about single chaste kisses. She knew what she wanted from him and the heartache it would cause should he refuse her.

  Before he could resume arguing, she wrapped her arms around him and pulled him down on top of her.

  ‘You do not have to do this,’ he reminded her. ‘It is not wise.’

  ‘But that does not keep it from being right. If you love me,’ she added, ‘stay with me.’

  ‘I love you,’ he said, taking her hands and pulling them to his lips, kissing each knuckle in turn. ‘I always have. When I was on the Peninsula, the thought of you, and the need to keep you safe, was all that delivered me from despair. I kept on because of you.’

  ‘I was praying for your safe return,’ she whispered back. ‘And my prayers were answered.’

  He kissed her then, his mouth hungry on hers, drinking deep, then felling her again with gentle touches of his tongue on hers. He released her hands, then traced the curves of her body and she felt her nipples grow hard against his chest. But she groaned in frustration at the layers of linen that kept them from touching properly.

  He laughed in response and rolled off her, so they could undress. It took only a moment to wriggle out of their nightclothes. Then she pushed him down again, back to the incredible feel of skin against skin. And for the first time in what felt like years, Lucy knew she was truly smiling. It was not the polite upturn of the lips that served her in social situations, but a grin of childlike joy that she had not felt since they were young and together, as they were meant to be. ‘Happy Christmas, Jack Gascoyne,’ she said, unable to resist rubbing her body against the erection she felt beneath her.

  He groaned and stilled her hips with both hands, then eased his thumbs forward, between her legs until they met at her centre. ‘Happy Christmas, indeed,’ he replied, brushing gently against her until she gasped. One finger pressed firmly on the bud of her pleasure while another traced the opening to her body.

  ‘Stop,’ she said, breathless.

  His eyes went wide with shock and his hand stilled, waiting for her next words.

  ‘Not until you have promised me that we will still be like this next Christmas and all the holidays to come,’ she said. ‘If you love me again, swear that bad dreams and other women and all the meddlesome brothers in England will not part us.’

  ‘I swear,’ he said. ‘For always.’

  In response to his promise, she did something that she’d had no knowledge or nerve to do the last time and reached down to take him in her hand and guide him into her body. Then she clutched his hip as he slid into her, an inch at a time, in a slow claiming that she did not want to resist. The pleasure seemed to grow by the instant and her body tightened in response to the feeling, which was familiar yet wondrously new.

  ‘Do not let me hurt you,’ he said softly against the side of her head. ‘I seem to remember, the last time...’

  She touched a finger to his lips. ‘The last time was the first time...’

  ‘For both of us,’ he said with a soft laugh.

  ‘We were young,’ she said, smiling.

  ‘You were. It is different for men. The other boys used to tease me for my shyness with women. But I was waiting. There was never anyone for me but you.’

  Before she could wonder how long he had waited after, he was moving in her, slowly, then faster, gliding in and out of her body. She relaxed and accepted him, half-surprised that what she had said was not a lie. The second time was very different from the first.

  The pleasure she remembered was there, but the pain and awkwardness were gone. At first, he touched her body with a gentle reverence, as though he could not believe she was real. But with each stroke, he grew more sure and firm.

  Her body responded with a flood of pleasure at this possession, wet and trembling as his hands cupped her bottom, holding her steady against his thrusts.

  ‘Touch yourself,’ he urged. ‘Wherever it feels best.’

  ‘I shouldn’t,’ she gasped, then laughed, remembering how many times Jack Gascoyne had convinced her to do something she knew she should not and how often she had enjoyed it.

  ‘Touch yourself,’ he urged again.

  She gave her breasts an experimental squeeze, shocked at how good it felt before settling one hand between her legs, near to the place where they were joined. The rub of her own fingers accentuated the movements of his body, taking her to a pleasure she had never known.

  The last time he had loved her was good, yet strangely unsatisfying. But this? This was amazing.

  Suddenly, her body tightened in spasm around him and she cried out, gasping as he spent into her and collapsed with a sigh of satisfaction, cradling her against his body and letting the last of the tension fade out of their bodies.

  They lay there together for a few moments as one, then he pushed away from her, hovering over her for a moment before rolling away.

  She reached for him, suddenly afraid to lose him again. ‘Where are you going?’

  He picked up his nightshirt and threw it over his head. ‘Back to my room to find my breeches. Then I mean to saddle a horse and take you to Scotland. We must do what we should have done years ago. We must elope.’

  ‘The storm,’ she reminded him.

  ‘If it was fine enough to skate today, we will find a way to manage the roads.’

  ‘My brother...’

  ‘Has his own woman,’ Jack said with a laugh that sounded as it had, before he’d left her. Then he grew serious. ‘I will write him a letter of apology and slip it under his door.’ Then, naked and magnificent, he climbed out of her bed and went to the little writing desk she kept by the window.

  ‘Now?’ she said with a laugh.

  ‘I am decided. I love you and, for the second time, I have behaved like a man with no honour.’ He looked back at her, his expression stern.

  ‘I did not object, either time,’ she reminded him.

  ‘Then do not object when I say that you must come away with me this very night. I will explain to your brother and pack a change of linen. You do the same and we will go.’

  He was serious. For a moment, her heart stopped dead, unable to imagine what lay in store for them. There would be scandal. Her brother would be livid, for though he seemed to be encouraging this union, he would not have it begin this way. She might never be welcome in this house again.

  But even as she listed the reasons why she must object, she could not feel anything but happiness. She went to him, hugging him as he sat at the desk trimming a pen.

  ‘There, now,’ he said, in a poor attempt at a scold. ‘No more of that.’ Then he looked up at her and grinned. ‘Not tonight, at least, or I will forget why we must leave. Perhaps when we get to an inn on the road north.’ He looked away from her again, dipping the pen in ink and scrawling a few hurried lines on her writing paper before blotting and folding the note.

  Then he shook free of her embrace and scooped his dressing gown up from the floor, shrugging into it. This time, when he looked back at her, his face was radiant. ‘Au revoir, my dear. I will wait in the stables for you.’

  * * *

  As he threw a saddle over his horse, Jack tried not to think about the woman he had left in the house, and the chance that she might have changed her mind. A part of him was still afraid to believe that he deserved her love, but he did his best to ignore it. She had not waited five years for him only to reject him when a happy future was within their grasp.

  But with each moment that passed his fears grew. What if someone saw her leaving her room? Suppose she had realised the risk to her reputation or felt her obligation to her guests and decided that she could not leave.

  Suppose her brother realised what was happening and tried to put a stop to it? He seemed more charitably disposed to Jack than he had when they were younger. But that was before he had decided to elope with Fred’s sister. The one thing that the
two men could agree on was that Lucy deserved the best husband she could find. And though Jack was reasonably sure that the man was not Mr Thoroughgood, he still doubted that it could be him.

  A proper gentleman would have waited until after Christmas to have the banns read, before a carefully planned marriage ceremony and a lovely breakfast. At the very least, he would have taken the time to get a special licence. But Jack had seduced her, not once, but twice. He did not dare wait any longer to make her his wife.

  His fears evaporated when he heard soft steps on the gravel of the path and she appeared in the doorway of the stables. At the sight of him, she rushed forward into his arms with a suddenness that spooked the horse.

  He caught her and held her still for a moment before putting a finger to his lips, cautioning her to silence. He needn’t have bothered. Now that she was close to it, she stared up at his mount with a cross between wonder and trepidation.

  To calm her fears, he brought the beast under control again with a single tug of the bridle and brought him down into a bow of welcome for his new mistress. After giving her a quick kiss, he helped her up on to the saddle where she could sit astride, handing her the reins as he tied the bundle of clothes she carried with her to the cantle. Then he mounted behind her, enjoying the feel of her settled between his legs, his arms around her waist.

  He felt her shiver and almost drop the straps as he nudged his horse forward into a walk with his thighs. ‘One cannot always fight and steer the bridle,’ he said. ‘Mercury knows by the feel of my legs what I want him to do.’ To demonstrate, he turned them left and right again before bringing their pace to a trot. Then he opened his greatcoat and wrapped it around her, holding her body to his to drive her fear or chill away.

  She turned her head to murmur up at him. ‘I thought there would be a carriage.’

  He laughed.

  ‘I have never ridden like this before.’