The Brazen Bride

by Stephanie Laurens

  “Monteith.” Opening his eyes, he met Linnet’s. “My name is Logan Monteith.” The chatter about the table ceased. Into the ensuing silence, he recited the bare facts—that he’d been born and raised in Glenluce, in Galloway, a small country town on the river, The Water of Luce, just above where it ran into Luce Bay.

  He remembered much more—the light slanting off the water, the wind in his hair. His first pony, the first time he’d gone with his uncle sailing and fishing in Luce Bay. The scent of heather on the moors, the smell of fish by the wharves. The cries of the gulls wheeling high above.

  And his father—above all, his father.

  He glossed over the fact that his father hadn’t lived with his mother, had appeared only irregularly in that little cottage above the town. Omitted to mention that his father hadn’t married his mother, and even on her deathbed, his mother hadn’t cared.

  But he, Logan, had.

  Even when he’d been young, too young to truly comprehend the situation, he’d cared enough for them both.

  “Later, I went to Hexham Grammar School.” Those memories were vivid—the chill of the stone buildings, the small fires, the echoes of dozens of feet pounding along corridors. The shouts of boys, the roughhousing, the camaraderie. The masters in their black gowns. “I remember my years there. I was a passable student.” Scholastically, he’d done well enough, a sharp eye, native wit, and a ready tongue enough to get him over all the hurdles. “I remember it all, to the last year. When I returned home, I . . .”

  Abruptly, the memories ended. He frowned. Try as he might, he couldn’t see further, couldn’t push further; it was as if he’d reached a black stone wall. He stared unseeing across the table. “I can’t remember anything more.”

  Linnet exchanged a swift look with Muriel. “Don’t worry—the fog will clear if you give it time.” She glanced at the dirk, still in his large hands. “Who gave you the dagger?”

  He looked down, turned it in his hands. “My father.” After a moment, he went on, “It’s been in his family for centuries.”

  “An heirloom, then,” Muriel said.

  Slowly, his gaze still on the blade, Logan nodded.

  Gently, Linnet asked, “Your mother, your father. Are they alive?”

  Logan lifted his head, met her eyes. “Waiting for me to come home?” When she nodded, he stared at her, then frowned. “I don’t think— feel —that they are, but . . .” After a moment, he shook his head. “I can’t be sure. I can’t remember . They were alive, both of them, when I finished at Hexham.”

  Linnet resisted the impulse to tell him to let the matter rest, let his mind rest after the sudden influx of memories, let it catch its breath, at it were. “Now you’ve started remembering, the rest will surely come.”

  “Indeed.” Muriel briskly nodded. “It often comes back like that—in fits and starts.”

  The children had been commendably silent, listening and watching, but Brandon couldn’t hold back any longer. “What sort of boat did you sail with your uncle?”

  The question pulled Logan from his absorption. Linnet mentally blessed Brandon as Logan, clearly thinking back, answered.

  That was the signal for the others to put their questions, peppering him with queries on pets—numerous, siblings—none, and for details of Glenluce and Scottish ways.

  The distraction gave Linnet a chance to refine her view of Logan in light of what he’d recalled. Even in Guernsey, they knew of Hexham Grammar School. As Winchester Grammar School was to the south of England, Hexham was to the far north. The boys who attended were gentry, overwhelmingly of the higher orders—the aristocracy and even the nobility. Many noble houses of the Border regions sent their sons to Hexham.

  Logan’s ingrained manners, his air of command, and his protectiveness toward those he considered weaker, combined with his having attended such a school, painted a picture of a gentleman very much Linnet’s equal—born to good family, gentry at least, brought up in the country, by the sea.

  The children’s questions faded. Logan fell silent, a frown once again knitting his black brows.

  Finally, he let the dirk he still held between his hands fall the few inches to the table. Folding his hands atop it, he looked at Linnet. Lips thin, he shook his head. “I still can’t remember anything more.” Frustration etched his face, darkened his eyes. “What did I do next? What did I become?”

  She dropped her gaze to his hands, then on impulse reached out and took them in hers.

  Memory of a different sort struck.

  She nearly jerked at the jolt of remembered sensation.

  Of excitement—pure, unadulterated, lancing-sharp—that flashed across her senses. Heat, sensual and potent, unfurled in its wake . . . mentally gritting her teeth, locking her gaze on his fingers, his palms, she ignored it. Ignored the unprecedented thump-thump of her heart, and focused.

  Examined.

  Managed to draw enough breath to say, in a level, passably unaffected tone, “You don’t have the right calluses to be a sailor.” She released his hands, resisting the urge to run her fingertips over the calluses that were there.

  To her relief, when she glanced up, he was staring at his hands. “I do have calluses, though.”

  “Yes, but you didn’t get them sailing.”

  He nodded, accepting. “Something else repetitive. Reins?” He looked at her. “Perhaps I was a driver?”

  “Or a rider.” She thought of the saber in the sideboard drawer.

  She was about to rise and fetch it when he dropped his head in his hands, for an instant gripped, held still, then started massaging his temples. Linnet hesitated, then looked down the table at Muriel.

  Concern in her eyes, Muriel shook her head.

  Looking back at Logan just as he scrubbed his hands over his face, then rubbed the back of his neck, Linnet had to agree. He might be physically strong, but he looked mentally exhausted. Pushing too hard all at once might not help.

  Turning to Will, she asked, “Which way did you go on your ride?”

  L ater, after dinner, Logan followed the children into the parlor and, sprawling with them on the floor before the fire, taught them a card game he’d remembered from his childhood.

  The children were quickly enthralled, calling out, laughing, and crowing triumphantly as they swapped cards and won tricks.

  It was a game he could play without thinking—he’d spent many long winters’ evenings playing with his mother and uncle. The activity gave him time and mental space to review all he’d recalled. His own childhood, the memories he hadn’t shared.

  He understood, now, why he felt so much at home here, amid the warmth and joy of a house full of children, a large house of comfort, of quiet, unadorned elegance, and a vital, almost tangible, sense of family. This was the antithesis of his own childhood—one of a lone child, the bastard son of a distant earl living quietly estranged from all family with his unwed mother on the earl’s pension. His uncle had been his only anchor, the only member of his mother’s well-connected English family who had not cut all ties.

  With an easy smile fixed on his lips, he watched the children play, helped little Gilly select her cards, and inwardly acknowledged that the reason he felt so wonderfully at peace here at Mon Coeur was not because it was in any way like his home but because this large house encapsulated and embodied the childhood home of his dreams.

  This was all he’d ever wanted—even better than, as child or man, he’d been able to imagine. Mon Coeur had it all, everything a lonely soul could want: lots of children, adult women of both the necessary generations—mother and grandmother—needed for complete care, for that all-embracing feminine nurturing. It even had older men to provide the essential male influence; Edgar and John had joined the household about the table, then followed them into the parlor. The two sat in what was clearly their usual armchairs, set in one corner back from the hearth, and quietly chatted about this and that. Male talk, discussions Will and Brandon, and even sometimes Chester, paused
to listen to and take in.

  Mentally sitting back, seeing it all, absorbing it, Logan was tempted to tell Will, Brandon, Chester, Jen, and Gilly just how lucky they were. But they wouldn’t understand—wouldn’t be able to see as he could, through eyes that had always, until now, looked on this world from the outside.

  It was human nature not to value what one had until one no longer had it. He hoped for their sakes it would never come to that, not for them.

  He glanced at Linnet, felt oddly reassured. She would never allow any of them to lose this, to lose Mon Coeur.

  Mon Coeur. A name he now understood.

  “Logan!” Gilly tugged his sleeve. “Pay ’tention. Which card should I put down?”

  He focused on the five cards she held tightly in both hands. Pointed. “That one.”

  “All right.”

  He watched as she whipped it out and laid it down.

  The others looked, and groaned.

  “Did I win?”

  Logan laughed, lightly tousled her bright head. “Yes, poppet. You did.”

  From the other side of the parlor, Muriel watched Gilly beam and bounce on her knees, watched Logan gather the cards and reshuffle them. Saw the interest in the other children’s eyes, the boys’ eyes especially, as they watched and learned.

  Much of her earlier wariness toward Linnet’s latest stray had dissipated. Yet looking at Linnet as she sat in an armchair and watched the group before the fire, Muriel wondered if her niece had ever before looked at any man as she was looking at Logan Monteith. Certainly not that Muriel knew.

  There was interest, clear as day, in Linnet’s green eyes—not a calculating interest, but a fascinated one. An intrigued attraction.

  Then Linnet stirred. Uncrossing her legs, she rose. “That’ll have to be the last game tonight.”

  The children and Logan looked up; the children all waited—looking hopefully from Logan to Linnet—but Logan merely inclined his head and turned back to deal the cards. “Last hand.”

  The children pulled faces, but no one moaned.

  Turning, Linnet walked to where Muriel sat, Buttons beside her.

  Viewing the subtle smile curving her niece’s lips, Muriel felt compelled to ask, as Linnet reached her, “What about the sleeping arrangements?”

  Logan might be a gentleman born and bred, nevertheless . . .

  Linnet didn’t pretend not to understand. She grimaced lightly. “Logan will have to continue in my bed—his head’s still causing him considerable pain, and there’s nowhere else he’d be comfortable. I doubt the cot in the box room would support his weight, but it’ll do for me, at least for a few nights.”

  Muriel nodded, her gaze going to Logan. “I suspect that’s the best arrangement in the circumstances. The better rested he is, the more likely he is to regain his memory.” Rising, she said, “I’ll have Pennyweather bring in the tea.”

  Linnet remained where she was, her gaze returning to Logan—skating over his shoulders, the long, strong legs stretched out before him, the clean, harsh planes of his face, his firm lips.

  She let her gaze drink him in—and thought of the small cot in the box room.

  A s usual, Linnet was the last to go upstairs. Once everyone else had retired, she did her rounds; in the calming stillness, the soft, enfolding shadows, she walked the ground-floor rooms of her home, checking every window, securing every door. Mon Coeur might stand in a sparsely populated neighborhood, yet by that very fact the house was isolated, far removed from the communal safety of town or village, and was within a few hundred yards of the coast—a coast that in the past had been an occasional haunt of pirates, and was also frequently raked by ferocious and unpredictable storms.

  There was, she considered, sufficient reason for vigilance.

  Once all was secure, she climbed to the attics, looked in on all the children. Tucked Chester’s blankets in again, then did the same for Gilly in the room she shared with Jen.

  Finally assured that all was as it should be, she descended to the first floor. The lighted candle she carried casting a warm glow on the polished wood of floor and paneled walls, she walked to the closed door of her room.

  There, she hesitated, for the first time that evening not quite sure of herself.

  The feeling, the realization, irritated. Squaring her shoulders, she reminded herself of her resolution to be wise, then raised a hand and tapped on the door. She waited, then, hearing nothing, reached for the knob, turned it, opened the door, and looked in.

  Logan wasn’t in the bed. No lamp was burning, but the curtains were open; faint moonlight laid a swath of pale silver across the untrammeled counterpane. The candle flame didn’t illuminate much of the large room; stepping inside, she set the candlestick on the nearby tallboy, turned, and saw him silhouetted against the window. He’d been looking out to sea, but had turned his head to watch her.

  Eyes adjusting, she saw he was still fully dressed. Closing the door, she frowned at him. “I thought you’d be in bed. You should be by now.”

  He regarded her for a silent moment. “Are you going to join me?”

  He couldn’t know. He didn’t know. She told herself that, again reminded herself of her resolution. “I was just going to get my robe and nightgown. I’ll sleep in the box room next door.”

  He stirred, then with long, prowling strides closed the distance between them. “You’d rather sleep with boxes than with me?”

  She fought the urge to step back as the space between them shrank. He halted with less than a foot between them, forcing her to tip up her head to meet his eyes. The candlelight cast them in deep and dangerous shadows. She held his gaze, levelly stated, “Sharing a bed with you would, in the circumstances, be unwise.”

  “Unwise?” One devilish winged brow arched. He held her gaze for an instant, then stepped closer.

  Her nerves leapt; instinctively she stepped back—and came up against the panels of the door.

  Temper sparking, she opened her mouth to berate him.

  His head swooped and he covered her lips with his.

  Kissed her. A full, open-mouthed, lips-to-lips kiss that stole her breath and left her giddy.

  He drew back a fraction—enough for her to feel her lips clinging to his, to the taste of him, to the promise in the kiss—then he growled deep in his throat and returned, this time voraciously. His tongue plunged in with no by-your-leave, stroking, claiming, then settling to plunder. He leaned in, commanded, demanded—and she discovered it was impossible not to kiss him back, impossible to let such flagrant, blatant demands go unmet, unchallenged.

  And suddenly they were there again, where they’d been last night, feeding and taking, giving and seizing.

  Wanting.

  It was he who, eventually, pulled back.

  Just an inch, enough to meet her eyes through the candleglow. His were narrowed; she would swear they burned blue.

  “Last night you didn’t think sleeping with me unwise.”

  She struggled to catch her breath, to find a way to distract, to deflect. To redirect.

  His gaze dropped to her breasts as they swelled, flicked up in time to fix on her mouth as she moistened her suddenly dry lips. “That—”

  “Was you last night—the houri beneath me. The one I rode to oblivion, the houri who took me in and rode with me. I remember your taste.”

  Her brazen self was fascinated that he could, that he would; against her will, her gaze lowered to his lips. Focused on them as they curved in a blatantly masculine way.

  “It was an excellent way to warm me up. Exceedingly noble. I feel I should be . . . unreservedly grateful.” He’d braced his big hands, splayed, on the door to either side of her shoulders, caging her within arms she knew were corded steel. He shifted one hand, fingers catching a strand of hair that had come loose from the careless knot atop her head. He sifted the tress between his fingertips. “I remember this, too—soft as silk, warm as flames.”

  She dragged her eyes from the mesmerizing sigh
t of him caressing her hair, fell into his eyes as he smiled, then he looked at her lips again.

  They throbbed. She fought the urge to run her tongue along the lower. Managed to haul enough breath into her lungs to say, “That—last night—was an impulsive act.”

  “So be impulsive again.” His hand shifted, drifted; he slid his long fingers between her arm and her side, hooked them in the side-laces of her gown.

  Let his thumb cruise, brushing, impossibly lightly, over her breast.

  She sucked in a tight breath as her flesh reacted, as her nipple pebbled and a wash of seductive heat swept through her.

  “I was thinking,” he said, his voice a deep, gravelly murmur, the faintest of burrs underscoring the purring quality, “that tonight I should go out of my way to thank you.”

  Out of his way?

  She stared into his eyes from a distance of mere inches, breathed in the warmth of him, sensed the latent heat of him, the muscled power, reaching for her. . . .

  No, no, no, no.

  But . . .

  Locked in his eyes, she gave in and licked her lip. “I shouldn’t.”

  He held her gaze, his eyes searching hers, then his lips slowly curved. “But you will.”

  He took one long step back. With the fingers crooked in her laces, he drew her with him, then to him. Against him and into his arms, then he bent his head and kissed her again.

  Kissed her until she forgot every jot of wisdom she’d ever known.

  Until she melted.

  Until she wrapped her arms about his neck and surrendered.

  Four

  S he wasn’t surrendering to him but to herself—to that brazen self who wanted to know what more of the magic he could show her. Last night had been a revelation, but if there was more to know, more to experience, she needed to know, to learn of it.

  Knowledge, experience, understanding—she’d realized from her earliest years how important those were, how crucial to leadership. Taking risks to achieve them was, to her, second nature, simply a part of who she was.

  Once she sank against Logan, wound her arms about his neck and kissed him back—as fearless as he was ravenous—her decision was made. Made and communicated; there was no going back. She never even considered it. Stepping back from a challenge wasn’t her style.