He hated to wake her. But staying much longer would guarantee an awkward conversation with both Geoffrey and Sara. He would slip out and explain in the morning.
“Garrick?”
He’d put out the candles and stoked the fire earlier, and though he could sense sunrise was but a few hours away, the only light now came from the corner of the room. But he could still see her face clearly.
Emma’s eyes fluttered open.
“I didn’t want to wake you.” Trying to remind his body that Emma had been a virgin just a few hours earlier, he attempted to distract himself from thoughts of taking her again. Lifting the coverlet over her, he kissed her on the nose.
Her lips were much too dangerous.
“Stay, for just a bit longer.”
He’d stay, but he didn’t dare moving any closer to her. “Not for too long, love. Unless you care to have an awkward breakfast conversation with your brother and sister-in-law about the order in which we’ve done things.”
Fully awake, Emma sat up. When she tossed her legs over the side of the bed and stood, Garrick forced himself to turn away.
Moments later, the bed sank under her weight once again.
“Come under here,” he said. Thankfully, she didn’t question him. Had her beautiful body been fully exposed to him, he wouldn’t have been able to resist.
Sitting up, Emma pulled a sheet over her bare breasts and held a box out to him.
He pointed to the sheet. “There’s no need for shyness between us.”
She shrugged and let it fall back down. Garrick grabbed it before it fell completely.
“But,” he said, “you may cover yourself now.”
“You speak in riddles.”
Garrick nodded down at himself, at the evidence of his need for her. “You lost your maidenhood just hours ago. If we—”
Her eyes widened. “Four times is too many?”
“Nay!” he amended. “Nay, but not this morn. Are you not sore?”
She paused long enough for him to glean her answer.
“’Tis too soon,” he said, his suspicions confirmed.
He took the box. “What is this?”
It would seem he wasn’t the only one in need of a distraction.
“Oh, ’tis a box. Can you not tell?”
He held back a grin at her teasing remark. It was very obviously a box.
“Open it.”
He sat up and did just that. The ring inside appeared to be old but valuable. He lifted it from the box.
“I do believe Sara knows you’re here. She sent this to me just before you came. Look inside.”
When he spied the inscription, Garrick knew immediately to whom it had belonged. “This was Richard’s ring.”
Her smile held a thousand promises. “Aye.”
The full impact of what he held in his hand forced him to drop the ring back inside the box. “I could never—”
“Sara bid me give it to you,” she said, pulling the box from him and taking the ring back out. “And I’ve just done so. You’d not be so churlish to refuse a gift from me, would you?”
Though she teased, her words held more than a question about a ring. She asked if her opinion meant something to him.
He didn’t hesitate when she handed the ring to him once again.
“I’d not refuse anything from you,” he said, turning it around in his fingers. “Why does Geoffrey not wear it?”
Emma frowned. “I wondered the same.”
He handed it back to her, and Emma returned the ring to its box.
“Thank you,” he said. “I shall wear it with great pride.”
Emma put the box on the stand beside the bed and turned back to him. God, she was lovely.
“Did you know him well?” Emma asked.
“Aye, we sometimes wondered if he and my father were actually brothers. They looked similar, in build at least, and both spent their lives devoted to their people, to Northumbria, and to their families. He was a good man. One of the best.”
He spoke of Richard, but of his own father too.
And he could tell Emma knew it. She reached for his hand and squeezed it as she laid her head on his shoulder. What would his father have thought of Emma?
“He’d have liked you,” he said. “Immensely.”
“Richard?”
“Nay. Well, aye, I’m sure he would have. But I meant my father. He deferred to my mother in many things, save one.”
She shifted but did not look up.
“Everything about him was ‘large.’ Not just his stature, but his movements. His speech. When he walked into a room, you knew he was there.”
“Is that a kind way of saying your father was not very dignified?”
“It is.” Garrick couldn’t see her face but forged ahead anyway. “My mother often chided him, but he never changed his ways. She eventually gave up on him and concentrated instead on ‘civilizing’ the sixth Earl of Clave.”
“You?”
“Aye.”
Emma looked up at him then. “And they respected him still?”
He cupped her face in his hands. “They did, my love. Those of us who knew him best respected him more for his willingness to defy convention. He would have been proud to call you his daughter.”
Garrick swept his lips across hers, careful to keep the touch chaste lest he forget his vow to allow her to heal.
“As proud as I will be to call you my wife,” he said when he pulled away. “And now, I fear, I really must leave. Perhaps then you can get some rest.”
She yawned and shifted down, under the coverlet. Garrick kissed her forehead and dressed, glad at least one of them would sleep this night.
“Lady Emma!”
Emma sat up in her bed as the door burst open.
“’Tis so very exciting,” Edith said, nearly running to the hearth. “Everyone is talking about it. I am so very happy for you.”
She placed a log onto the fire and picked up Emma’s discarded chemise, draping it across the trunk at the foot of her bed.
“I told ’em you do like to sleep in the morn, and your man just smiled. Lord, he is a handsome devil. I can see—”
“Edith.” She sat up in the bed. “What precisely are we speaking of?”
“Why, your wedding, of course.”
“My . . .”
“The banns were posted this morn. Lord Clave spent the entirety of the morning meal speaking with my lord and Lady Sara. They must be hungry, having missed—”
“Wedding?”
“Oh, aye. You’ve missed much, slumbering away as you will. Faye is nowhere to be seen.” Edith smirked. “Sir Hugh arrived just as the announcement was read, and well, they’re ‘reuniting,’ it seems. I can hardly stand to think of it. ’Tis like thinking of your grandparents—”
“Edith . . .”
“Oh, aye. Well, it seems Lord Clave has not waited for you to rise to make arrangements. Reginald heard from James, who heard from—”
“Edith!”
“Beggin’ your pardon, my lady, for gossip’n, but I heard your future husband is most anxious to see the deed done.” Edith wrinkled her nose. “Deed isn’t the right word. Well, not for a weddin’ anyway. Though mayhap ’tis for what happened in here last eve.”
Emma peered under the covers, the evidence of their “deed” very much apparent. “Help me dress, if you please.”
When she swung her legs around the side of the bed, Emma groaned. Edith’s cackling did not help, and though she loved the maid dearly, this was one morning she would have preferred to have been left alone.
“And now I see why he’s in such a hurry,” Edith said.
After more comments like that one, and a bit of cleaning up courtesy of the fresh bowl of rosewater Edith had brought with her, Emma was finally ready for the day—and ready to find Garrick.
“Don’t you worry, my lady. I’ll clean this all up—”
“Edith.” She spun around and took the maid’s hands. “It just oc
curred to me. I’ll live at Clave.”
The look on Edith’s face said she’d already thought that.
“You’ll come with me?”
But rather than the excited agreement she’d expected, Edith hesitated.
“Edith?” Emma couldn’t tell if her maid wanted to smile or weep. “What is it?”
She dropped the other girl’s hands and waited. And then she remembered her affinity for Reginald.
“You’ll be staying here at Kenshire.”
When Edith looked down at her feet, Emma lifted her chin up. The maid was waiting on her answer. She’d miss her dearly, but Emma knew all too well the heart’s pull. “You will visit Clave often?”
Edith’s face brightened. “I would like that very much, my lady.” And then she pushed her toward the door. “Go . . . ’Tis late already.”
When she arrived in the hall, the meal had already ended. As Edith had said, Garrick was nowhere to be seen.
The hall was empty.
Not one servant was present. Aye, it was late, but not this late. Where had everyone gone?
Emma went to the kitchens, for that was the one place Cook and her maids could always be found. But that too was empty.
She ran to the lord and lady’s chambers, and the solar, but everywhere she looked there was not a person to be found.
Finally, she made her way back to the hall, where Edith was calling frantically for her.
“Oh, my lady. I couldn’t find you. I forgot to tell you something.”
“Did you forget to tell me where everyone has gone, perhaps?”
Edith wrung her hands. “Of sorts,” she said. “I was supposed to tell you to go to the chapel when you were ready.”
The banns. Edith’s extra care with her dress.
She smiled, remembering something that Garrick had said the evening before.
I’ll not leave Kenshire again without you as my wife.
She had not thought him to be serious, but it seemed he was quite so. Emma hurried to the main door of the keep, threw it open, and ran to the chapel. And for the first time in as long as she could remember, no silent voice told her to walk instead.
Epilogue
A missive for you, my lady.”
Emma took the message from Mable.
“Thank you.”
The steward left her alone in the solar. She opened it, read the contents, and placed it atop the table. She heard Garrick enter but didn’t look up until he was standing over her.
“What is it?” he asked.
She lifted her head, and Garrick moved to stand directly next to her. She handed the piece of parchment to him, its seal broken and unrecognizable. Not that she’d have known the Clan Scott crest by sight. Due to the warden’s decision to imprison his uncle and subsequent tension between Linkirk and Inverglen, Garrick thought it best they wait to visit Scotland until things settled.
As his expression changed from concern to anger, Emma said, “’Tis a kind gesture, is it not?”
He tossed the missive on the table, crossed his arms, and looked at her as if she’d asked for Graeme de Sowlis to write her.
“If you scowl at me so every time Graeme—”
“There will not be an ‘every time.’”
Emma rolled her eyes, pushed back the wooden chair, which scraped against the stone floor, and imitated her husband by crossing her arms as well.
She didn’t have to wait long.
He reached for her, pulling her arms apart, and hauled her up against his chest. “I do not like it.”
Unlike his harsh tone, the kiss he placed on her lips was soft and most welcome.
“You said yourself the man is honorable. He wishes only to congratulate us and offer continued assistance with the matter of Linkirk.”
This time, he kissed her neck, and Emma turned her head to allow for better access.
“He could have written me,” he murmured, his tongue flicking across her flesh as he moved his mouth closer and closer toward her chest.
“I had to apologize for all that happened. Besides, I do believe there’s a message for you as well.” Though she nodded to the still-scrolled missive addressed to Garrick, her husband didn’t look at it. Instead, he gave his full attention to his ministrations.
Knowing what was coming next, Emma reached behind Garrick and held on. Soon, she’d be unable to stand of her own volition. “You will need every ally you can get.”
His hand whipped around and began to untie the laces at the front of her gown. “Hmm.”
Her gown now completely untied, only her shift lay between Garrick and his destination. “Geoffrey says—”
“I don’t want to talk about your brother right now.” He moved lower still, pulling the fabric down to reveal the top of her breast.
“Then who,” she teased, “shall we speak of? I know, just this morn Conrad—”
She gasped as he continued lower still.
“I don’t wish to speak of anyone.” He looked up. “Or anything.”
She pretended to misunderstand. “Then what exactly do you wish to do?”
He groaned, lifted her up onto the table, and stood between her legs. “I wish, my lovely wife, to make love to you. And then, when the tide lowers, to take you on a ride and perhaps find another place to make love to you. Then tonight—”
“Let me guess. You wish to love me yet again?”
The corner of Garrick’s mouth lifted, just slightly, but she knew that look. In this, she found his “earlishness” to be most welcome.
“I do,” he said. “I will love every part of you, my sweet Emma.”
“And I you,” she said.
He was her earl.
Today and always.
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Also by Cecelia Mecca
The Border Series
The Ward’s Bride: Prequel Novella
The Thief’s Countess: Book 1
The Lord’s Captive: Book 2
The Chief’s Maiden: Book 3
The Scot’s Secret: Book 4
The Earl’s Entanglement: Book 5
About the Author
Cecelia Mecca is the author of medieval romance, including the Border Series, and sometimes wishes she could be transported back in time to the days of knights and castles. Although the former English teacher’s actual home is in Northeast Pennsylvania where she lives with her husband and two children, her online home can be found at CeceliaMecca.com. She would love to hear from you.
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Copyright © 2018 by Cecelia Mecca
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The Earl's Entanglement (Border Series Book 5) Page 25
