An Independent Woman

by Candace Camp

  “You don’t know anything.” Her eyes flashed. “But at least you could refrain from showing your ignorance quite so openly.”

  He laughed and tugged at her waist so that she stumbled forward, barely catching herself before she landed against his chest.

  “Crandall! Stop it before you create another scene,” Juliana hissed.

  At that moment a hand descended on Crandall’s shoulder, and Nicholas’s cool voice said, “Sorry, Crandall. I’m sure you won’t mind if the groom steals his bride from you.”

  “Nicholas!” Juliana turned toward him in relief.

  He looked at her face, taking in the color in her cheeks and the fire blazing in her gray eyes, then turned back to Crandall. “Don’t you think that you have had enough to drink now? It’s time you took yourself off to bed.”

  “I don’t care what you think.” Crandall glared at Nicholas. “We’re dancing. Move. You’re in the way.”

  “I’ll do more than get in your way if you don’t unhand my wife this instant,” Nicholas replied in a level tone that was belied by the set of his jaw and the cold glitter of his dark eyes.

  Crandall sneered. “Your wife…You looking forward to your wedding night? You actually think that you’re going to be the first? I was there long before—”

  Whatever else he planned to say was lost because Nicholas’s fist flashed out, landing squarely on Crandall’s jaw and sending him crashing backward to the floor.

  A woman screamed. Crandall scrambled to his feet and launched himself at Nicholas. Nicholas stepped aside neatly, and Crandall staggered past him. Nicholas turned, grabbing him by the arm and swinging him around. Crandall lashed out wildly, again missing Nicholas, who sent a jab to his stomach and a quick uppercut to his jaw. Crandall went down with a thud.

  “Nicholas!” Juliana grabbed Nicholas’s arm. “Please! No!”

  Nicholas’s face was high with color, and his hands were knotted into fists. He waited, balanced on the balls of his feet, his fists ready, as he glared at Crandall, who lay on the floor.

  Crandall cursed and rolled to his side, struggling to his feet.

  “Nicholas,” Juliana said urgently. “Don’t. Please don’t spoil our wedding day.”

  Nicholas glanced down at her, and she could feel his taut muscles relaxing. “I’m sorry, my dear.”

  He looked back at Crandall. “Go up to bed and sleep it off.”

  Crandall’s lip curled, his defiant look somewhat spoiled by the swelling red spot on his cheekbone and the trickle of blood coming from his lip. “I ought to kill you.”

  “I wouldn’t try it if I were you,” Nicholas replied calmly.

  “Don’t be a fool, Crandall,” Peter Hakebourne told him, slipping between the spectators and taking his friend by the elbow. “Come on.”

  He tugged at Crandall’s arm, and after a moment’s hesitation, Crandall went with him, staggering a little as Hakebourne led him from the room. The other guests parted to let them through, then turned to each other, buzzing with conversation about the scene they had just witnessed. Juliana thought with an inward groan that her wedding would now provide the gossips with food for weeks.

  Nicholas turned to Juliana, saying stiffly, “I am sorry. I fear I have ruined the celebration.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she assured him.

  She looked at him. He seemed remote, suddenly a stranger to her, and she wondered, with a stab of fear, if Nicholas had actually believed what Crandall had said.

  “Nicholas!” She gave him a stricken look. “You can’t believe that Crandall—”

  “What? Of course not.” Nicholas’s face went even stiffer, if that was possible. “The man’s a liar and always has been. But I—I am sorry that you should have had to see this.”

  It had been years, he thought, since he had gotten into a fight. God knows, in his early years, fights had been regular occurrences, springing out of a deep wellspring of anger inside him, brought up by any slight or challenge. It had, indeed, been the only way he knew how to survive. Defiance and aggression had been his watchwords.

  It had taken years to bring that side of himself under control. He had thought he had conquered his baser nature, and it surprised and unsettled him to find that it had swept up out of him so fiercely. He hated for Juliana to see him this way, to know that the animal still lived inside him, snarling and ever ready to flare into life. It was hard for him to even look at her, lest he see fear in her face.

  It was a relief when Seraphina swept up to them and put one hand on his arm and the other on Juliana’s. She smiled as gaily as if the past few minutes had not taken place. “It’s time, don’t you think? I know the two of you have been impatiently waiting, wishing all of us at the devil.”

  There was a little ribald laughter behind Seraphina. Juliana looked at her gratefully. Seraphina was trying to distract everyone by sending the bride and groom on their way.

  “I wouldn’t be hanging about down here if I were you, young man,” joked an elderly guest, a retired general who lived in the area.

  “Oh, no, you’d be leading the charge, General,” retorted the squire’s wife, a tall, iron-jawed woman who was one of Lilith’s horsey set. It was hard to imagine the blunt woman as a friend of the pristine Lilith, but Juliana had long ago learned that the love of the hunt and horses made for odd attachments.

  Juliana’s cheeks colored at the woman’s statement, and Seraphina said lightly, “There now, Mrs. Cargill, you’ve made Lady Barre blush. Come, you two, it’s time we got you out of here.”

  Juliana was happy to escape the ballroom and the other guests, although her heart beat a little faster as she thought about what lay ahead. She and Nicholas allowed Seraphina to whisk them out of the room, saying their farewells and receiving the cheerful good wishes of their guests.

  They climbed the stairs, leaving everyone else at the foot of the staircase. Juliana’s hand was tucked into the crook of Nicholas’s arm; his muscles felt hard as iron beneath the material of his jacket. She was a jumble of nerves inside—excited, anxious, not at all sure what she wanted to happen. The time was upon them.

  Nicholas opened the door to Juliana’s room, and she stepped inside. He came in after her. She could not look at him for fear everything she felt would show on her face. She wanted him. She wanted him to take her into his arms and smother her face with kisses. She wanted to be his wife in every sense of the word. But she had no idea what he wanted, and because of that, she was afraid.

  She glanced at the bed and quickly looked away again. It seemed as if everywhere she turned there was something to remind her of the possibilities ahead of her.

  Behind her, Nicholas cleared his throat. Juliana turned to face him, lifting her eyes at last to his face.

  She saw little there to encourage her or ease her fears. He looked suddenly like a stranger to her. His face was set; his dark eyes, which could be so full of warmth or laughter or deviltry, were flat and black, showing nothing of how he felt.

  He glanced around the room, linking his hands behind his back. He looked, she thought, like a stern schoolmaster, deciding a student’s punishment. She cast about frantically for something to say to ease the moment, to put them back into their usual position of easy friendship. Her first thought was of Crandall and the scene below, but those topics would do little to put them at ease.

  “It was a lovely ceremony,” she said at last.

  “Yes. And the wedding supper was…um, lovely.”

  Nicholas looked at her, feeling foolish and stiff. She was beautiful, and he wanted her with a force so fierce it was almost painful. He had tried over and over again to think of some way that he could take her into his arms and make love to her without breaking his promise to her, but, of course, there was none. Seduction was gentler than demanding his rights to bed her, but it was nonetheless doing the very thing he had vowed he would not do.

  And tonight he had made everything worse by demonstrating what a brute he was. Though he knew that Julia
na had little liking for Crandall, she could not enjoy seeing her wedding celebration spoiled by fisticuffs—and how much worse it was that her husband was one of the men involved! She must have been repulsed by his behavior. He could not further prove his animalistic nature by taking her to bed, breaking his promise to her. One thing he did not think he could bear was to see Juliana’s eyes show her disillusion and disappointment in him.

  “Well…um…” He gestured toward the connecting door between their room. “I will just go to my room now. I wish you a good night’s sleep.”

  Juliana nodded numbly. There was some relief in not having to make the decision of whether or not to sleep with Nicholas, but she realized that her primary feeling was one of disappointment. Had she been wrong about the signs of desire in him? Did he not even want to bed her? Was she silly to have even been worrying about what she would do when he kissed her?

  “Yes. Of course. Good night,” she replied, her throat tight.

  She watched as he walked across the room and opened the door. With a nod to her, he stepped into his bedroom, closing the door behind him. Juliana sat down on her chair with a thump.

  This was it, she realized, tears welling in her. This was what her married life would be like—Nicholas distant and removed from her, their relationship only friendship, never hoping to have the love and closeness of a true marriage. He had offered to give her children if she wanted, but she knew that she could never ask that of him. She did not think she could bear to have him come to her in such a cold and loveless way. Soon he would seek his pleasure elsewhere, and she would be left to grow old and dry alone, never having children, never knowing the passion of the marriage bed.

  It seemed suddenly that, whatever the comfort and security she had gained in her life, she had made a very poor bargain indeed.

  Listlessly, she got up and tugged on the bellpull for her maid. The elegant satin gown she had worn for her wedding was buttoned with a host of tiny buttons down the back, impossible to take off by herself. If she were like other brides, no doubt her husband would have acted as her personal maid, undoing the line of buttons himself.

  Celia came into her room a few minutes later, smiling, and proceeded to lay out her mistress’s nightgown, a delicate lace-and-satin affair appropriate for a wedding night. She chattered excitedly as she helped Juliana out of her clothes, casting meaningful glances at the connecting door to Nicholas’s bedroom.

  “Oh, miss—I should say, my lady—aren’t you excited? Such a handsome man his lordship is. And so tall and strong.”

  Juliana gave her a perfunctory smile. The girl’s chattering was getting on her nerves. She was very aware of the sounds that came now and then from Nicholas’s room. She wondered what he was doing in there, if he was undressing, too. She thought of his long supple fingers working on his buttons, of the way he would shrug off his shirt, perhaps raising his hand to brush back the hair that always fell across his forehead. Juliana’s fingers itched to reach up and brush that stray lock of hair back; she knew how it would slide silkenly through her fingers, how he would cast her an amused glance from the corner of his eye.

  She curled her fingers in tightly. She reminded herself that she must stop thinking this way; she must accept her life as it was. But was this what her entire future held for her? The thought seemed too painful.

  Juliana sat down to let Celia remove the pins from her hair and brush it out. She blocked out the girl’s chatter from her mind and gazed at her own reflection in the mirror. Was it that she was not pretty enough? she wondered. Was her brown hair too straight, too thick, too ordinary? Or was it that her face was unexceptional, the eyebrows too straight, her nose and mouth pretty but not eye-catching? If she had possessed the high, sharp cheekbones and huge eyes, the wide generous mouth and firm jaw, that Eleanor did, would he have been more attracted to her? Would he have stayed in her room then?

  She told herself to stop thinking this way. Nicholas had promised to keep their marriage platonic because he had wanted only to help her. He had been thinking of her and had wanted the marriage to be easy for her. It was wrong of her to turn his generosity, his kindness, into an indication that he did not want her.

  And yet, some little niggling doubt remained in her brain—even if he had offered her this sort of arrangement out of consideration for her, if he truly desired her, surely he would not be able to so easily step away.

  Her maid stepped back and gave her a look up and down, beaming. “It’s lovely you look, my lady. His lordship will be a happy man tonight.”

  She giggled at her own audacity and bobbed a little curtsey to Juliana before hurrying out the door. Juliana turned and looked around the empty room, wondering what she was going to do with herself now. She certainly did not feel like sleeping.

  Belting the sash of her dressing gown a little tighter, she walked over to the chair and small table where the book she had been reading lay. She sat down and picked it up, but it remained neglected in her lap as she leaned her head back against the chair and stared at the wall opposite her.

  She heard steps in Nicholas’s room, and for an instant her heart lifted in hope, thinking that he was walking back to the connecting door. But then the footsteps moved away, and a moment later she heard the click that was the sound of his door into the hall closing. He was leaving his bedroom.

  Juliana listened to his footsteps, muffled by the runner of carpet, as he walked down the hall past her door. Tears pooled in her eyes, and she blinked them away.

  Sitting up straight, she forced herself to turn her attention to her book. She tried to read, but she could not keep her attention on it. She heard people going down the hall now and then, and she found herself listening, straining to hear, waiting for the sound of Nicholas’s door opening and closing again.

  It was some time later that she finally heard the sound she had been waiting for. She listened, trying to identify the noises as he moved about his room. She told herself she was being foolish in the extreme.

  With a sigh, she stood up and turned to go to bed, untying her dressing gown and sliding it from her shoulders. She tossed the gown across the foot of the bed and started to crawl beneath the covers.

  Suddenly the connecting door opened with a crack that made her jump. She whirled to see Nicholas standing framed in the doorway. Her heart began to race, and her throat was too dry to speak. She simply stared at him.

  There was no mistaking the desire stamped on his face—the sensual set of his mouth, the heavy-lidded look of his eyes. He strode across the room as she watched him, breathless, and when he reached her, he grasped her arms and pulled her closer. She could smell brandy on him, and she thought he must have been downstairs, locked in his study perhaps, drinking. His eyes glittered as they gazed down into hers, and his fingers bit into her arms. Juliana felt faintly frightened, but far more excited.

  “I can’t stop thinking about you,” he muttered thickly. “I kept picturing you here, so close to me, sleeping in your bed. I can’t sleep. I can’t think about anything but you.”

  “Nicholas…” she breathed, melting at his words.

  “I don’t want a bloodless marriage. I want you in my bed.”

  He pulled her against him, his mouth coming down to take hers. His hand sank into her hair, wrapping its silken length around his wrist, his fingertips gripping her skull, holding her head still as his mouth ravished hers.

  Juliana threw her arms around his neck, stretching up on tiptoe, fitting her body against his all the way up and down. Hunger swept through her, carrying her wildly forward, her mouth meeting his, kiss for kiss. Her breasts were full and swollen, aching for his touch, and she pressed herself more tightly against his chest. Only the thin material of her nightgown and his shirt separated their skin, and when she moved, her nipples tightened at the slight abrasion. She remembered his fingers on them, and the ache inside her grew.

  Her hands went to the buttons of his shirt, her fingers trembling so that she could scarcely undo them.
Nicholas released her in order to grasp her gown, and, bunching it up in his hands, he pulled it up and over her head. She stood naked before him, and she found to her surprise that she felt not the embarrassment she would have expected, but a flood of heat. She relished having his eyes on her, delighted at the fire that sprang into them at the sight of her bare flesh.

  Nicholas jerked his shirt back from his shoulders, cursing when it caught at the cuffs on his wrist, still fastened by cuff links. He left it hanging, too eager to touch her to take the time to remove it fully. His hands went to her waist, and he pulled her forward a little, his head going down to the soft white orbs of her breasts. He kissed the quivering tops of them, his mouth working its way over the white flesh. His lips felt like velvet on her skin, sending shivers through Juliana, and when his tongue found her nipple, she let out a small sob of passion.

  Nothing had prepared her for this—the heat, the sizzling excitement, the hunger that clawed at her, demanding release even as her body ached for these sensations to go on and on. His tongue encircled the small bud, making it hard and tight, supremely sensitive, and when his mouth moved on to her other nipple, just the touch of air against the wet button of flesh aroused her still more.

  Moisture flooded between her legs, startling her, and the ache there was hot and heavy, throbbing with the pulse of life. His hands slid down from her waist and curved over the fleshy mounds of her buttocks, his fingertips digging in, lifting her into him. Gently he pulled her nipple into his mouth, sucking and teasing at it with his tongue.

  Juliana moaned, helplessly lost in her desire. Her hands slid into his hair, tightening against his scalp. She breathed his name, feeling herself sliding into a dark tunnel of passion.

  Then, somewhere in the house, a woman screamed.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  NICHOLAS AND Juliana froze. He lifted his head and looked at her dazedly. The scream came again and again.

  He released her abruptly and hurried toward the door, pulling his shirt back up onto his shoulders and starting to rebutton it. Juliana pounced on her nightgown, lying discarded on the floor, and hastily threw it back on over her head, too distracted to notice that it was turned inside out. Nicholas charged out into the corridor, and Juliana, grabbing her dressing gown, ran out the door after him.