The Elusive Bride

by Stephanie Laurens

  Gareth nodded. Emily stated definitively, “Yes, it is.” The group before them was all male. She glanced at the women. “In fact, it’s usually the case that men and women intermingle and converse from now—the pre-dinner gathering in the drawing room—and through the dinner itself. At the end of the meal, the ladies leave the men at the table to drink port or spirits, and talk among themselves, but only for so long. Then the gentlemen rejoin the ladies in the drawing room, and all remain together until the end of the evening.”

  Still frowning, the bey nodded decisively. “We must practice all this.”

  Thus it was that Emily found herself cast as social directress for the evening. Under her guidance and instruction, backed by the bey’s authority and example, the men—at first rather stiffly—mingled with their wives. Luckily, the women were more amenable to indulging in broader conversation.

  Getting the party to go in to dinner in the correct order of precedence was both an education and a challenge. The begum in particular, a sultry, black-haired, sloe-eyed beauty of lush and bounteous curves, many of which were barely decently screened by the gauzy draperies the bey’s female court favored, proved difficult. She seemed to have taken it into her head that as the senior lady, it was her place to choose who sat beside her, namely Gareth. Emily had to be quite stern—and invoke the bey’s authority—in disabusing her of that notion, stressing that, as hostess, she had least say in the matter. She had to have the most senior visiting male—in this case, the vizier—on her right, and the second most powerful, one of the bey’s ministers, on her left.

  The begum sulked through much of the meal, but as, being visitors of no real power, Emily and Gareth ended facing each other across the middle of the table, Emily found it easy to ignore the woman’s pouts.

  Although at first stilted, around the table conversation gradually bloomed, then blossomed as the men found that the women they normally ignored were, if given the chance, engaging interlocutors.

  The reverse, Emily strongly suspected, was also true. These women had barely exchanged two words with most of the men in their respective husband’s circles.

  She felt reasonably proud of her achievement. And indeed, from his position at the head of the table, the bey was beaming in contented delight.

  Directly opposite her, Gareth caught her eye, and with a slight inclination of his head, raised his glass to her.

  She smiled and inclined her head back, happiness and that sense of achievement welling and melding.

  A little later, when the last dishes were being removed, she caught the begum’s disgruntled eye, and using hand signals, instructed her hostess in how to call the ladies to order and lead them back to the drawing room. The begum bestirred herself enough to be interested, and under her husband’s benevolent gaze, performed the task with aplomb.

  Following her from the room, Emily decided that, strange though it was, with any luck at all, they would weather the evening well.

  At the end of the evening, the bey insisted the captain see them back to the guesthouse. When they reached the gate in the wall, Gareth turned to find the captain bowing respectfully.

  “The bey is pleased.” Straightening, the captain pointed to two figures lounging in the shadows, one at each end of the street. “Throughout the rest of your stay, we will keep watch.”

  Gareth met his eyes, nodded. “Thank you—and our thanks to His Excellency.”

  The captain almost smiled.

  Opening the gate, Gareth followed Emily in, then turned. The captain saluted and walked off. Closing the gate, Gareth heard his footsteps march up the silent street.

  Following Emily across the shadow-strewn courtyard, Gareth searched, and found Mullins keeping watch in one corner. Given the late hour, everyone else would long be asleep. The old soldier snapped off a salute. Raising a hand in reply, Gareth continued on into the house.

  He would see Emily safely upstairs, and then, as he didn’t feel the least sleepy, perhaps spell Mullins. But first…

  Halting in the gloom, he focused on Emily. “You did very well this evening.”

  Of necessity he’d been forced to let her take point. He hadn’t liked it, hadn’t liked sitting back and watching her walk such a potentially dangerous diplomatic line, but she’d kept her balance, her poise, throughout.

  When she turned and, wide-eyed, looked at him through the pervasive dark, he added, “You gave the bey exactly what he wanted without revealing anything he didn’t need to know.”

  He saw her lips curve, caught the flash of white teeth as she smiled. “I enjoyed the challenge.” Slowly, she came toward him. “It helped that they all thought we were man and wife.”

  True, but it hadn’t helped him, not when he’d had to listen to the other men comment appreciatively, and then compliment him on having secured such a prize.

  She was a prize on many levels—just not his.

  The recollection had distracted him. He refocused, to find her much closer—too close. His blood beat just a little harder through his veins; his attention locked on her, captured, captive. Unwilling to break free, even less willing to let go.

  Halting a mere inch away, she raised a hand, closed her fingers in his lapel, then tipped her face up to his.

  Her eyes caught, trapped, his. For an instant silence stretched, then she murmured, voice siren-low, lips gently curved, “Your reading of my attraction to you as being danger-induced desire…” Her gaze lowered to his lips. Her tongue came out, the tip sweeping her lower lip, then she lifted her gaze to his eyes. “Did it occur to you that you might be wrong?”

  Wrong? It took a moment for his mind, distracted by other things, to make sense of what she was suggesting. Trying to see where she was heading, and why, he started to frown.

  Emily mentally threw her hands in the air and gave up trying to find the words—the right words to explain just how inaccurate his reading of her motives had been. Was. She’d always believed actions spoke much louder than words. Sliding her hand from his chest over his shoulder to his nape, she stretched up as she drew his head down, and kissed him.

  Pressed her lips to his, not in persuasion but in confident expectation. They’d just spent the evening playing husband and wife—effortlessly, seamlessly, convincingly. Surely, he must now see there was only one way that could be, only one reason she had performed the charade so consummately.

  She kissed him, moved her lips on his, and let all she knew, all she believed, all she felt well and pour through her. To lead her, free her, and free him.

  Lure him.

  She parted her lips and welcomed him in, thrilled when he came, when his hands tightened about her waist and he took—took over the kiss, sank into her mouth, and gave her all she asked for. All she wanted.

  Him.

  In the unfettered dark, in the silence of the night.

  The kiss spun out, deepening, broadening, their senses reaching, spreading, searching.

  Wanting.

  She tipped her head back on a gasp. Her cloak slid from her shoulders as she wound her arms about his neck. As his hands closed about her breasts. Possessively. Passionately.

  He kneaded and she moaned, then struggled to mute the sounds he drew from her as he bent his head and set his lips to her throat as his hands worked their magic and she melted.

  He shifted, moved, steered her back, guided her until her back met the wall beside the door. He pinned her there and let his hands roam, and she grew hotter, needier, more wanton.

  She reveled in the sensations, then he murmured something dark, tugged her suddenly loosened bodice down, exposing one breast, then he bent his head and set his mouth to her flesh and she cried out.

  Breathlessly.

  Achingly desperately.

  The evocative sound shivered through the night. It sank like so many daggers into his psyche, each tipped with need and longing.

  Gareth longed. Through all the heat, the welling urgency, above all else he longed to have her. But that have was no longer
a simple verb. A possessive one, yes, but it encompassed so much more.

  There was so much more he wanted of her. With her.

  For her, and for him.

  With her supple body in his arms, her soft skin beneath his lips, the taste of her wreathing through his mind, he could think of nothing more, knew nothing beyond that want, that need, that longing.

  The soft mounds of her breasts, firm and swollen under his hands, the aureolas tight and puckered, drew him. He bent his head and feasted. Devoured.

  She clung, the soft sounds that fell from her lips urging him on, stirring him deeply, ever more provocatively, on a primal level only she had ever breached.

  His mouth on her breast, he reached down, caught one of her knees and raised her leg, crooked it around his thigh. Lifting his head, he found her lips, covered them with his as he traced her leg upward, then through the layers of her skirts cupped her bottom.

  She gasped as he gripped, then eased his hold and traced. The kiss turned greedy, hungry, then incendiary as he caressed, then kneaded.

  The potent mix of hunger, desire, and passion, of escalating need, wouldn’t be denied. She clung and pressed it all upon him, until it filled him as it did her.

  Releasing her bottom, he reached around and back, and found her ankle. Slid his hand upward from there, skating beneath her skirts and petticoats, skimming her stockinged calf, slipping higher still to pause and trace the frilly lace garter circling her thigh above her knee, then he reached higher.

  Found and traced the outer planes of her thigh, gripped her bottom again, but this time skin to skin. Felt her tighten her arms about his neck, rise in his hold, then settle more firmly in his hand. Tipping her hips toward him, wordlessly offering.

  He inwardly swore, but it was far too late to rein in his raging need.

  His questing fingers slid over the locked muscle of her thigh, and slid inward. Exploring, seeking. Searching.

  Finding.

  Her slick swollen flesh slid like silk against his fingertips. He stroked, caressed, circled her tight entrance. Pressed lightly in.

  She kissed him ferociously, then arched in his arms, helplessly begging.

  He slid one finger in, slowly, reached deep, then stroked, equally slowly, equally deeply.

  And she burned.

  She turned all but incandescent in his arms, her body surrendered, his to pleasure as he would—

  Metal clanked.

  He jerked back from the kiss. Turned his head and looked.

  Sensed her do the same.

  The noise had come from deeper in the house. The kitchen courtyard perhaps. Stationed as he was, Mullins wouldn’t have heard it.

  Gareth all but swayed as he looked back at Emily. His breathing sounded ragged and rough in his ears. She was openly panting. His heart pounded under the influence of multiple imperatives. As he met her eyes, he saw that other tension that had relinquished its hold on them both over the last minutes return.

  Infusing them both.

  She blinked, then mouthed, “Who?”

  He shook his head. Carefully, he withdrew his hand from between her thighs, from beneath her skirts. Grasping her knee, he eased her leg down, held her until she nodded that she could stand on her own.

  He leaned closer. “Stay here. Don’t move.”

  Drawing back, he reinforced the order with a glare.

  She glared back, her expression grim. But her lips remained set in a thin line, and she stayed where she was as he slowly turned, then, soft footed, crept into the corridor leading further into the house.

  Of course, she was behind him when he paused by the closed kitchen door.

  Rustlings, bumps, the scrape of wood on tile, and the occasional clank came from beyond the ill-fitting door.

  Then he heard the snuffling.

  Tension draining, he reached out and pushed the door inward.

  It swung wide, revealing the intruder.

  The goat looked up, and baaed.

  It took them half an hour to get the goat retethered and put the kichen to rights. And by then their heated moment had definitely cooled.

  Emily was only too ready to light the flame again, but after trailing her back into the front salon, rather than follow her up the stairs—and possibly to her bed—Gareth paused by the front door.

  Realizing he was no longer behind her, she turned. Looked at him across the dark expanse of the unlit room.

  And suddenly wasn’t sure.

  Suddenly realized that although she wanted him, despite all they’d shared, she had no real reason to think he wanted her.

  He desired her. If she kissed him and offered, he would take—as her sisters had described it, he was like any man in that.

  But did he really want her in the same way she wanted him?

  What if he didn’t?

  The thought left her feeling suddenly exposed. Suddenly vulnerable in a way she’d never been before.

  And as the silence lengthened, as he made no move to walk forward and join her, but just looked at her through the dark…she had to wonder if she’d got it all horribly wrong.

  At last he shifted. Nodded. “Good night. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  Her heart was lodged somewhere in her throat. “Aren’t you coming up?” With me?

  Gareth forced himself to shake his head. “I’ll relieve Mullins. We still need to keep watch.”

  She hesitated for an instant longer, then inclined her head, turned, and slowly climbed the stairs.

  He watched until she passed out of sight. Then he relaxed his hands from the fists they’d curled into and stared at the door, but made no move to open it.

  After a long moment, he shook his head. He still felt as if someone had hit it. Hard.

  Someone had. She had.

  She’d scrambled his thoughts and connected with his lustful inner self—that self that wanted nothing more desperately than to have her beneath him, naked or not. She’d lured that more passionate primitive self out and set it—him—free.

  But…

  He’d been saved by that damned goat.

  Even now he wasn’t sure if he wanted to bless the animal or wring its neck.

  In the deepening dark, the questions that now haunted him stood stark and clear in his undistracted mind. Did she truly want him, or had she been swept away by passion? By a need he still believed owed more to reaction than any true, unmanipulated emotion.

  He wanted her—desperately, almost beyond thought—but he wanted her to want him for the same reason.

  Simply because.

  Because he was the man she truly wanted. Wanted at some fundamental, visceral level that wouldn’t be denied.

  He wanted her to want him.

  Him. For himself.

  Not him because he was the one there and she needed to lie with a man, needed to come alive in a man’s arms to balance her brushes with death.

  Not him in place of a fallen comrade.

  And definitely not him just to fill the void, to be a husband to whom she could play wife.

  None of those alternatives would do. Not for him.

  Not for her.

  They both deserved better.

  His problem was, if it wasn’t with her, he couldn’t imagine his better would ever come to be.

  Staring at the dark door was getting him nowhere. Heaving a sigh, he straightened his shoulders, opened the door, and went out to relieve Mullins, and to seek what solace he could in the quiet stillness of the night.

  Eleven

  18th November, 1822

  Morning

  Lurking in my room in the guesthouse in Tunis

  Dear Diary,

  I tried. Last night I tried to open his eyes, to make him see what I feel for him, that he is my “one” and how much his I am, and truly I thought—hoped and believed—I was succeeding, but then that damned goat interrupted us and the moment was gone.

  Gone.

  But that was not the worst. At the end, when he elected to go on
watch rather than climb the stairs with me, I was struck by the most deadening thought. What if he doesn’t—in his heart doesn’t—want me?

  I know my sisters would scoff, but they are biased.

  On reflection, my continuing problem is that I cannot tell to what extent his high-minded ideas of what is best for me—as distinct from what I patently want—drive him. That what I discerned as lack of real interest was, once again, him nobly stepping back to protect me from committing what he believes is a folly.

  The sound I just made cannot be translated into words.

  But what now?

  After due consideration, I believe I should continue to view his insistence on distance as nobly driven. He is—and I know this beyond a shadow of doubt—so honest and true that if he were not attracted to me as a woman, and had no inclination to a deeper connection, I do not believe incidents such as last night would occur no matter how much I pressed my case. He is, after all, significantly physically stronger than I, and on no plane could he be described as a weak man. Nevertheless, after having my unvoiced invitation declined last night, it is only natural that I should seek some sign in confirmation of what I believe is the underlying nature of his regard for me. If he truly is my “one,” that shouldn’t be impossible, as by all rights I should then be his. His “one.”

  But once I have seen that sign, that confirmation, and gained the confidence it will bring, I swear that nothing will prevent me from forging the relationship I desire with him.

  I remain unsweringly determined.

  E.

  That afternoon, the entire party sat about the low table in the main salon, slouched among the cushions, confident that the guards stationed outside would alert them to any incursion, and celebrated Gareth’s and Bister’s success in hunting down the captain Laboule had recommended, and securing passage on his xebec to Marseilles.

  They would leave the next day on the mid-morning tide.

  They’d just drunk a toast in orange juice to the next leg of their journey, when a rap sounded on the courtyard gate.

  A distinctly official-sounding rap.

  Gareth rose, Mooktu beside him, as the gate opened to reveal the familiar figure of the captain of the guard. They’d learned he was the captain for this district, one that rarely saw dignitaries or palace-worthy residents. He was, he had assured them, grateful for the imposition of their presence—and its ramifications.