The Bridegroom

by Joan Johnston

  Her range of vision narrowed, and she felt as though she were moving down a long, dark tunnel. There was a light at the end, but she could not quite reach it. Finally, it seemed too much effort to try.

  Clay caught his wife as she fainted.

  “You were too hard on the lass,” Pegg said, glaring at Clay with his one good eye. “And she did nothin’ to deserve it. Did ye hear her? ‘We can make it what it was, Clay,’ ” Pegg said in a falsetto imitation of Reggie’s voice. “By God, that’s a woman, lad! Why are ye in such a hurry to give her up?”

  “Shut your blabber, Pegg, and help me find a place to lay her down.”

  “Ye’re not goin’ to leave her to face this ruin alone, while ye go traipsin’ around in search of Mr. Ambleside, are ye?” Pegg said, stumping back and forth angrily in front of Clay. “Not after she was so gallant. I’m tellin’ ye here and now, I’ll not force her to stay in this hellhole once you’re gone. How can ye expect one of the Quality to manage amid such filth?”

  Pegg’s agitated stumping frightened an enormous rat out of hiding, and it scurried across the floor. “There, see. The lass was right. ’Tis no fit place for humans.”

  Clay scowled. He had listened to Pegg rant on more than one occasion without giving in to the older man’s persuasion. But it was hard to ignore Pegg’s arguments while he held Reggie in his arms. She felt entirely too soft and warm and desirable.

  And looked entirely too vulnerable.

  Though he had planned to make her live in surroundings unfit for a lady, he had not been to the castle since he had left it twelve years past. He had known it would need repairs. But he was shocked to find it in such a state of ruin. He stared down into Reggie’s face, noting how fragile her lashes were, how delicate the freckles on her nose. She had always seemed so strong to him. But she was only human. She had limits he was only beginning to learn. And there were some burdens too great even for someone with her great heart to bear.

  He fully intended to bed her—if there was still a bed somewhere upstairs. He wanted an heir off of her before he abandoned her once and for all. But he was determined not to care for her. Or to worry about her. Pegg could do the worrying. In any case, he had always intended for Pegg to stand guard on her while he was away searching for Ambleside.

  “I suppose I’ve let ye stand there feelin’ the weight of yer folly long enough,” Pegg said. “Take her upstairs, lad. There’s a bed up there where ye can lay her down.”

  “How can you know that?” Clay asked peevishly.

  “Because I had it put there,” Pegg retorted. “Ye dinna think I’d bring a wee bit of a lass to a place like this without makin’ sure she could manage, do ye? I had that Roger Kenworthy fellow look in here when ye said we’d be comin’ back to Scotland. The man couldna believe what he found. It didna take much convincin’ to have him fix up one decent place to sleep.”

  Clay grinned. “Bless you, Pegg. You’re a good man.” He clutched Reggie more tightly to him as he turned and headed quickly up the familiar winding staircase.

  “I hope this means ye plan to make a go of it with the lass,” Pegg called up after him.

  Clay gently laid Reggie on top of the neatly made four-poster bed in what had been his father’s bedroom. “Long enough to get my heir, Pegg,” he murmured. “That long. But no longer.” He crossed the room and closed the door, then returned to the bed, where Reggie was beginning to rouse. He looked around for a pitcher of water and was surprised to find one on the dressing table. Pegg had apparently had someone come in from the village to prepare the room for their arrival while they were unloading the cargo he had brought with him from London.

  Clay poured some water into a bowl, dampened a cloth, and brought it back to the bed. As he laid the cool cloth on Reggie’s forehead, her eyelids blinked open, closed as though to clear her vision, then opened again. “We’re upstairs,” he said in answer to the confusion he saw in her eyes.

  He watched as her darting glance took in the cleanliness of the wooden floor and the freshly painted walls. The windowpanes, two of which were cracked, were bare of drapes but were curtained on the outside by ivy. Aside from the neatly made bed, an end table bearing a candlestick, the dressing table with pitcher and bowl, a wardrobe, and an overstuffed wing chair by the fireplace, the room was devoid of decoration.

  “How long have I been—”

  “Not long enough for this room to be cleaned and furnished,” Clay assured her with a wry smile. “Pegg had this done.”

  “Oh, bless him,” Reggie said with a sigh. “At least I will have a vermin-free place to sleep.”

  “We have a place to sleep,” he corrected her. He stared at her until she flushed, and he was certain she had taken his intent. There was no reason to keep his distance. She was his for the moment. And he must make love to her to get his heir.

  Reggie stared at him without speaking, then dragged the cloth from her forehead and struggled to sit up.

  “Lie down,” he said, pressing firmly but gently on her shoulder. “You need—”

  She knocked his arm aside, sat up so that her legs hung over the edge of the bed, then angled her face to look him in the eye. “Are you intending to sleep in this bed with me?”

  “I believe it is the only bed in the house,” Clay said.

  She had changed into one of the low-cut dresses for the journey from the ship to the castle, but had used one of his linen handkerchiefs as a fichu. He reached out and removed the cloth, revealing the swell of her breasts almost to her nipples. He saw her eyes dart anxiously toward the door and back to him.

  “You cannot escape, my dear. And besides, we are husband and wife.”

  She reached for his neck cloth and pulled it free. “I did not wish to escape,” she said, her bosom heaving practically beneath his nose. “I only wondered whether the door was locked. I would not wish to be disturbed.”

  Clay rose, crossed to the door, and turned the lock. Then he turned back to her, his body taut with expectation. “Very well, my dear. Our privacy is assured.”

  He began removing his clothing, quickly stripping off his jacket, waistcoat, and shirt. He sat down on a chair near the dressing table to pull off his boots and stockings. Then he stood barefooted, wearing only his trousers and smalls, and crossed to sit beside her.

  She sat unmoving, her eyes wide, her lips half-parted. He brushed a hand across one of her breasts and watched as the nipple beaded obviously beneath the cloth. He leaned over and kissed the gentle swell of flesh revealed by the low-cut dress.

  “My lord,” she said, tugging on his hair. “Wait. We must talk.”

  He watched her eyes dilate and her breathing grow raspy as his hands played over her body. “Talk.”

  “I will need servants, help to—”

  “You may have as many servants as you need to make such repairs as are necessary to live here without assault from the elements.”

  “Thank you, Clay,” she said.

  He could see her mind working, planning a great deal more renovation than he intended. He did not want the castle repaired. He wanted Blackthorne to imagine his daughter living in the hovel his home had become. But he could not help but wonder what they might make of the place together.

  “I give nothing for nothing,” he said in a hard voice, desperate to cut off such thoughts.

  “What is it you want?” she asked.

  “I want a son.”

  The silence was deafening.

  He met Reggie’s gaze and said, “You must have known I want an heir.”

  It was devilishly unfair to add children to the precarious scale on which their marriage was currently balanced. But life was rarely fair. Clay had learned to use whatever means were at hand—fair or foul—to get what he wanted. And he wanted a son.

  “If only the future were not so uncertain,” she murmured.

  “Are you refusing me?”

  “No. I only hope we do not end up faced with choices neither of us wants to make.”

/>   He wondered if she suspected that he intended eventually to abandon her—and to take the child with him. “Let us take first things first,” he said.

  “Where would you like to begin?” she asked.

  He answered by kissing a spot at the base of her throat. He kissed his way up to the tender pulse beneath her ear, then turned her back to him and began undoing the buttons on her dress.

  “I am itching to pull all those weeds from the front walk,” she said as he pulled the dress away.

  He turned her toward him again and began to work on the ties holding her chemise in place. “I would rather see you rescue my mother’s rose garden,” he replied in a raspy voice, as he saw her bare at last.

  She moaned as he filled his hands with her breasts. “I do not remember seeing anything that looked like a rose garden,” she grated out.

  “It is completely overgrown with weeds,” he said as he pushed her flat, then stripped her dress and pantalets down and off so that she was naked beneath him. He found her mouth and let his tongue intrude, mimicking the sex act. His body pulsed and hardened. “My father loved to look out at it from the library window,” he managed to rasp.

  “We will need a dozen gardeners just to trim all the ivy off these windows,” she said as her mouth pressed kisses to his bare shoulders. “And two dozen carpenters to repair the shutters and the windowsills and the floors.”

  Clay said nothing to dampen her enthusiasm, but he had no intention of making any repairs that were not absolutely necessary. He spread her legs with his knee and settled himself in the cradle of her thighs. “There are some rotten boards on the stairs,” he said. “They should come out first.”

  Her hips arched upward, and her hands clasped him tightly about the shoulders. “You will have to make a tour of the house with me to see if there is any furniture or carpeting or drapery that can be salvaged.”

  It would be easier to shovel everything out and start over, Clay thought, as he sucked on the flesh at her throat. If they were starting over. Which, he reminded himself, they were not. “Save what you wish. There is nothing here I care about.”

  “There might be some article that holds a special memory for you,” she said as she reached for the buttons on his trousers.

  “I doubt it.”

  He helped her shove the trousers and smalls down off his hips far enough to free his shaft. One thrust, and he was inside her.

  Their eyes met.

  “Life here can be good.” She reached out with her forefinger to trace his lips, but he opened his mouth and sucked it inside. Her eyes closed, and her body arched upward as he began to move inside her.

  There was no more time for talking, no more time for thinking, only the immense pleasure to be found inside her before he spilled his seed.

  He must have slept, because he awoke to find her playing with the dark curls on his chest.

  “Hello,” she said, removing her hand. She lowered her gaze as a blush pinkened her cheeks. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

  “I didn’t mean to sleep,” he said brusquely.

  “Wait,” she said as he started to rise. “One more question.”

  “One more,” he conceded.

  “Were there ever happy days here for you?”

  “I had a wonderful childhood here with my brother Charles and my parents. My mother always placed an enormous silver epergne, filled with the most fragrant pink roses, in the center of the table,” he said, seeing it in his mind’s eye. “I think she did it to counteract the smell of tobacco in the room, because my father always insisted on blowing a cloud after supper.”

  Reggie smiled. “They sound well matched.”

  “They were. I might have lived here quite happily, if your father—”

  “And it will be a happy place again,” Reggie interrupted, placing her fingertips against his lips to silence him. “In no time at all Castle Carlisle with be filled with the smell of roses on the dining room table, and … What would you most like to find here in the years to come, my lord?”

  Clay met her gaze, kissed her fingertips, and said, “The laughter of children.”

  Becky had begun her overland journey to Blackthorne Hall from London without informing her father and stepmother that she was on her way. She simply could not find the words to express the disaster that had befallen her … or how much a blessing in disguise it actually was.

  Her marriage was being annulled.

  A mere week ago—could it be so little time had passed?—Penrith had sat across from her at the supper table and announced, “I have had a change of fortune, my dear, which will require me to travel abroad for some time to come. And since I cannot subject a wife and child to the rigors of such a lengthy journey, I am leaving you.”

  “You mean, you wish Lily and me to wait here in England for you?” she had asked.

  “No. I mean I am having our marriage annulled.”

  Becky’s heart skipped a beat. Lily! Who is to get Lily? But she did not dare to ask. Any interruption of her husband before he had finished speaking had always been dealt with severely. Her pulse was so loud in her ears that she had to force herself to concentrate on what Penrith was saying in order to hear him.

  “My solicitor has come up with a legal defect that will suffice to allow an annulment—the existence of a prior marriage contract between myself and another lady, I believe. In light of the fact I may be gone for as long as ten years or more—”

  Becky could not restrain a gasp. He was not even pretending his case for annulment was valid. It was made up out of whole cloth! She bit her lip when Penrith’s eyes narrowed and lowered her gaze submissively. “Please continue, William.”

  “It seemed better, in light of such an extended absence, that I should set you free to seek connubial bliss with someone else.”

  Becky’s head jerked up, but she was still enough in control of herself to choke back the startled cry of surprise—and rage at his utter callousness—that sought voice.

  Penrith sipped a spoonful of turtle soup, savored it, and swallowed it. “I assume you will not want to stay here in London. Indeed, I am closing Penrith House for the period I am gone. I have made arrangements to send you and Lily to stay with your father and stepmother in Scotland.”

  “Lily is to stay with me?” she croaked past the painful knot of emotion in her throat.

  He waved his napkin in dismissal. “You may take the brat with my good will.”

  “Will I—”

  “I do not care to discuss the matter further,” he said. “My solicitor will call on you tomorrow to discuss any questions you may have.”

  Becky understood the cruelty—the total lack of any human kindness—in the man she had married when she realized William had not waited until the end of the meal to offer his news. He had done it during the first course. In order to escape, she would have to excuse herself before the meal was finished.

  She would not do it. She would stay and choke down the rest of her meal if it killed her.

  “Is the soup not to your taste, my dear?” he asked.

  Becky swallowed a spoonful past the lump in her throat, so that she could say, “It is too salty.”

  “Then I will have Cheevers take it away and bring the next remove.”

  The only thing Becky wanted to remove from the dinner table was herself, but she merely nodded. When Cheevers returned, she accepted a slice of lamb with boiled cauliflower but refused the stewed eels.

  The next course consisted of fried sole, potted pigeon, and a sweet, milky custard. She gagged on the custard.

  “Are you unwell, my dear?”

  She was in shock, her body so cold she was physically shivering. She could see that William relished her discomfort. It was a cat-and-mouse game they had played all the years of their marriage. This time he had cut her to the bone—in fact, given her a mortal wound—but she refused to give him the satisfaction of acknowledging the hit.

  She managed a smile, a last courageous act in a marri
age filled with far too much cowardice, and said, “I am merely fatigued.”

  He lifted his wine glass to her. “Then I will excuse you, my dear. You have a great deal to accomplish in the next few days. I am closing the house in a week.”

  She had stood and turned her back on him and walked away. But she had only made it to the bottom of the stairs before her knees gave out and she collapsed.

  To her utter horror and humiliation, Hardy had called William to come and carry her upstairs to her bedroom.

  Becky did not remember much about the five days that followed. She had expected to be able to rely on Mick to help her, but she received a letter from him explaining that he had been called away on business that could not wait. He hoped to see her the next time she visited her family in Scotland. She had set out for her father’s estate in Scotland with all possible speed, encouraged by Penrith’s threat to close the town house within the week. And the prospect of seeing Mick again.

  Becky leaned back against the comfortable velvet seat of the carriage, hugged her sleeping child closer to her breast, and listened to the jingle of harness and the clop of the horses’ hooves on the dirt road. They had left the last of the macadam roads just past Edinburgh. It would not be long now before she was home. She had done little on the journey but cry and sleep … and think.

  She would never have betrayed her wedding vows by making love to Mick. But things were different now. She was once again an unattached female. Marriage to Mick was out of the question, considering the differences in their stations. But she was willing to consider a discreet liaison with him. They could be lovers.

  Mick managed several properties for her father in Scotland, and he lived in a house on one of them, not far from Blackthorne Hall. It should be possible to meet there without being discovered, if they were cautious. They would be able to hold each other and to love each other.

  Becky had a startling—and troubling—thought. What if Mick already had a lover? It was possible. There must be widows in the countryside who were willing to share their favors with a man as young and handsome as Mick.