To Catch a Bride

by Anne Gracie

  “Don’t you have any say in it?”

  “Yes, but I was dragging my feet in finding a wife, and so he stepped in.”

  “Is she nice, this Lavinia?”

  “I only met her once, but yes, she seemed nice enough.”

  The kitten pounced and skittered after the wool. “Pretty?”

  “Very.”

  She nodded. “And rich?”

  “Apparently. And she’d already agreed to let my brother and his wife raise the firstborn son.”

  She looked up, shocked. “What? But why?”

  He shrugged. “He would be heir to the—the family business, eventually. George wanted to train him up to do a proper job of it.”

  Her brow furrowed. “You sound as if you don’t care.”

  He said tightly, “It was nothing to do with me. They’d planned it all out. I was just the . . . instrument.” It sounded better than stallion. And he was still unable to voice the rage he’d felt on learning of the plan. As if he wouldn’t care what would happen to his child.

  George had told him of Lavinia’s agreement, presenting it as if Rafe should be delighted not to have a son cluttering up his life. He’d sounded just like their father.

  Rafe might resent the action, but he couldn’t quarrel with the end result—his wild-goose chase into Egypt. He smiled as Ayisha tussled playfully with the kitten. His little wild goose.

  She said slowly, looking for ways to excuse him, “I suppose you knew you could trust your brother’s choice. He must know you very well.”

  He snorted. “He hardly knows me at all. We were brought up separately.”

  “Why was that?”

  “My mother died when I was small—it’s all right,” he said quickly, seeing her expression of sympathy. “My memories of her are very vague. But after that my father didn’t want me underfoot; George was the heir and Father spent all his time training him for his future position.”

  “But that’s terrible.”

  He shook his head. “If you want to know the truth, George got the worst part of the deal. My father was a frightful bore—always droning on about the family and its importance. So George grew up under the old man’s thumb—and turned out just like him—while I got to live with Granny, my mother’s mother.”

  She picked up the kitten and, stroking it, said softly, “You liked it at Granny’s, didn’t you? I can tell. Was she my grandmother’s friend?”

  “She was. And yes, the happiest times of my life were at Granny’s.” He lay back on the bed, remembering . . . and drifted off to sleep.

  It was good that he slept, Ayisha reflected. Sleep, good food, exercise, and fresh air would soon restore him to normal.

  She thought about the story he’d told. So . . . cold-blooded. People said the English were a cold-blooded race, but she’d never seen any evidence of it before now.

  Growing up hardly knowing his father or brother? What had he said about his father? My father didn’t want me underfoot. What kind of a father would send a fine young son like Rafe off to be raised by his wife’s mother? He didn’t need to; he was clearly rich. He just wasn’t . . . interested.

  She looked at Rafe, sleeping on the bed and impossibly handsome. What kind of man would let his brother choose his bride without bothering to find anything about her? And then fight to marry another woman, merely to stop gossip?

  And what kind of woman would happily hand over her child to be brought up by others? Only the direst necessity would force Ayisha to give up her child.

  What kind of people was she going to?

  He slept on and off for most of the day, recovering his strength. Ayisha passed the time playing with her kitten, practicing the knitting she’d started with Mrs. Grenville—she’d sent it along with Higgins—or reading. Rafe had several books in his trunk and she found it such a joy to be able to read again.

  In the evening they’d walked on deck together, enjoying the evening breeze and the sight of the stars coming out. After dinner Ayisha asked Higgins whether he’d been able to find a spare mattress or hammock.

  “Sorry, miss,” he told her, not meeting her eyes. “I’m unable to find any.”

  “Because you’ve instructed him not to be able to find any, haven’t you?” she accused Rafe after Higgins had left.

  “Would I do that?” A smile lurked in his eyes that showed her she was right, and he didn’t care that she knew it.

  “You should be ashamed of yourself,” she told him.

  “Oh, I am,” he said. The smile moved to his mouth and took on a distinctly wolfishly tone.

  But he hadn’t been able to stop Higgins from finding her some extra blankets, not when she told Higgins how cold she’d been the previous night. He had too soft a heart to obey his master in that instance.

  So when it came to bedtime, Ayisha put Cleo in her basket—they’d agreed it was a good idea to get the kitten used to sleeping in there; it would make traveling easier—and then made up a bed for herself on the floor beside the cat basket.

  “What are you doing?” Rafe demanded as she rolled herself in the blanket.

  “Isn’t it obvious?” She lay down.

  “No, it’s extremely tedious.” He got off the bed with a long-suffering expression.

  “I don’t care if you lie beside me on the floor,” she told him. “I won’t be tricked a second time, and you won’t be able to stand it on the floor for long.” She closed her eyes.

  “I have no intention of lying on the floor beside you. It’s much nicer on the bed,” he said. “See?” And taking the corners of her blanket he lifted her straight onto the bed. One flip and she rolled right out of her blanket.

  He slid into bed beside her. “That’s better,” he said, and when she opened her mouth to complain he simply leaned forward and kissed her.

  She recoiled instinctively, but he cupped the back of her head with his hand and tenderly, implacably, took possession of her lips, her mouth. She lifted a hand to push him away, but somehow, somewhere between one heartbeat and the next, the impulse just . . . dissolved.

  His mouth invaded hers, seeking, demanding, swamping her senses.

  The sound of the waves, the creaking of the ship, the sound the wind made in the sails—it all faded away to nothing. There was only him, only her, only the moment. Awash on a sea of sensation.

  The sharp masculine taste of him, intimate, deeply familiar. The scent of his skin, all man—Rafe and clean linen and hunger.

  A slow rush of heat spread across her skin.

  Hunger.

  He moved slowly, sensuously against her and she shuddered at the press of his flesh against hers, the abrasion of his stubbled jaw, the insistence of the hot, demanding mouth.

  And then, as suddenly as it had started, he released her and moved back.

  She blinked, staring at him, dazed, oddly bereft. What had just happened there?

  “If you keep looking at me like that, I won’t be able to stop,” he said, his voice rough as the bristles on his chin and just as appealing.

  She shivered.

  And then he smiled, ruefully. “Actually, I’m not sure it would make much difference. I’m still damnably weak from that blasted fever.” And with a sigh, he lay back on his pillow and closed his eyes.

  The world slowly crept back around her, revolving around one thought that battered at her dazed stupidity like waves against the ship’s hull.

  She’d almost let him seduce her. If he wasn’t still weak from the fever, she wouldn’t have lifted a finger to stop him.

  That’s what seduced meant, she told herself furiously. Making you do something you didn’t want to do.

  Only she had.

  She’d wanted it, wanted him. She stared at his mouth, his perfectly ordinary, perfectly beautiful, devilishly seductive mouth and shivered again.

  At her narrow escape, she told herself. While she’d been under the spell of his kiss, she would have allowed him anything.

  Allowed? And who was it who’d run her
fingers through that thick, dark hair and pulled him closer? Who’d reacted to the first touch of his tongue inside her mouth with a thrill of excitement and touched her own tongue to his?

  And wanted more.

  She pressed her palms against her still-hot cheeks and breathed deeply. Even recumbent on a pillow with his eyes closed, he drew her to him.

  She’d known from the first day she’d seen him that he was dangerous. What she hadn’t realized was how addictive danger could be. She was playing with fire, and it could only end in tears. Her tears.

  She started to climb over him.

  A brawny arm rose up to bar her. “Where do you think you’re going?” His eyes were still closed.

  She pushed against him. She felt no sign of the weakness he’d mentioned. “I can’t sleep here, knowing that any minute you might pounce on me.”

  He opened one eye and raised a brow. “Pounce?” he said in a pained voice, implying he’d never be so vulgar.

  “Yes, pounce! Like you pounced just now.”

  He opened both eyes. They gleamed. “Is that what you call it in Egypt? In England we call it a kiss, in this case a good-night kiss. A delightful custom, don’t you think?”

  “I won’t have it. Now let me out.” She wasn’t going to stay here and . . . banter with him. From the look of him his strength was increasing by the minute.

  He didn’t move a muscle. “I thought you enjoyed it nearly as much as I did.”

  She had no intention of admitting any such dangerous thing. “Move your arm. Let me out.”

  “I could understand if you didn’t want to, but you do, so what’s the harm? We’re going to marry anyway, so why put ourselves through the strain of unnecessary celibacy?” He seemed genuinely puzzled by her refusal.

  He took her hand, and caressed it. “Come now, sweetheart, why not alleviate the tedi—” He broke off.

  She snatched her hand away and thought about punching him. She knew what he’d been going to say. Alleviate the tedium of their quarantine. He wanted to seduce her as a way of keeping boredom at bay.

  “It’s a pity it’s so dark in here,” she told him.

  There was a short pause. “Why?” he said cautiously.

  “Because if you could see my expression, you’d be only too happy to let me out, for fear I’d murder you in your bed.”

  He laughed. “Not when you worked so hard to save my life—”

  “We all make mistakes.”

  “You’re cross,” he said. “Perhaps I could have phrased that last suggestion more felicitously, but—”

  “I’m not going to argue. You know my decision.”

  “Yes, but it’s not entrapment when I’m perfectly aware of the situation and happy to go along with it—”

  She glared at him. Happy to go along with it?

  “More than happy,” he assured her hastily, seeming to realize his error. “Delighted, really, I promise you.”

  She fumed silently. Boneheaded, idiot man! “Either give me your promise—on your honor!—not to try to seduce me, or I’ll ask the captain to put me ashore at Malta.”

  His brows snapped together. “But they’ll put you into quarantine in Malta.”

  She shrugged. “I’m in quarantine here.”

  “Yes, but it’s much more comfortable here.”

  “At least nobody will be trying to seduce me there.”

  He snorted. “Don’t count on it.” He thought for a moment, then sighed and said, “Very well, I promise to do nothing you don’t want.”

  She shook her head. “Not good enough.” The trouble was, she wanted his kiss, and once caught up in it, there was no saying what else she might want. Everything, she suspected.

  She had to force a promise from him that would protect her from herself as well as him.

  She wanted him, but she didn’t want to live the rest of her life as someone who’d tricked him into marriage, and until he knew the whole truth about who she was, she couldn’t even think about accepting him.

  Besides, who wanted to marry a man who spoke of alleviating tedium? She glared at him. The big bonehead!

  “I must have your promise—on your honor as a gentleman—that you will not try to seduce me. Otherwise I leave the ship at Malta.”

  “Does that include kissing?”

  “No kissing.” She felt a pang as she said it, but she knew what kissing was, now: something that dissolved all her common sense.

  “If I promise, will you remain in this bed? I won’t have you sleeping on the floor.”

  “It’s quite comfortable if you’re used to—oh, very well. But one wrong move—”

  “I promise, on my honor as a gentleman, to make no attempt to seduce you.”

  She should have felt relief—and she did. But not as much as she should have. And there was a definite pang of regret.

  But it was the right thing to do, she told herself, as she lay down next to him in the dark. Despite his thickheadedness, she wanted him: to marry him would be a dream.

  But who founded a dream on a lie?

  It would be like building a home over a snake’s hole. Sooner or later the snake would come out to bite you, and it would poison everything you’d built.

  She would gladly marry him, free and clear, though not for the sake of propriety. And not to alleviate tedium.

  She couldn’t even consider him seriously until he knew who she truly was and who her parents were. She would marry him without hesitation then—if he still wanted her, that is.

  She was far from certain about that. He might still want her, but not necessarily as a wife. Who knew that reality better than the daughter of a mistress?

  She closed her eyes and tried not to think about the man in the bed beside her. She could smell him, that delicious clean-linen, soap, and man smell of him. She inhaled deeply.

  “Can I just explain what I meant about alleviating tediu—ooof! No, all right, we’ll leave it at—ooof!”

  “No talking,” she said sternly.

  “Very well, good night. And may I just say, what a pleasure it is, sharing a bed with—ooof!”

  Rafe lay in the dark, smiling. He still had her where he wanted her. Maybe not quite as close as he wanted her. He rubbed his ribs reflectively. Even her anger pleased him.

  He didn’t blame her a bit. Whatever had possessed him to speak of alleviating tedium? He could have phrased that a lot more felicitously.

  What the hell was the matter with him? He used to be famed for his dry and witty way with words. Now, every time he opened his mouth to her, he seemed to put his foot in it.

  It was the fever.

  No, he thought, it was her. He was deeply frustrated and it was scrambling his brain.

  He hadn’t meant “alleviate the tedium” in the way it had sounded. He’d been having visions of it all day, ever since quarantine and the possibility of marriage had arisen: a blissful ten days of enforced isolation, free of the irritations of the outside world, sailing peacefully along, making love, kissing, talking, kissing, getting to know each other, making love.

  His idea of the perfect honeymoon.

  Too late to explain that now.

  Now it was going to be ten days of torture, having her and not having her, sleeping with her and not sleeping with her.

  What the hell was the matter with him? It was only going to get worse.

  Fifteen

  Would you really give your firstborn son to your brother to raise?” Ayisha asked him as they were taking their last promenade of the day. Ahead of them Cleo, now accustomed to her lead, stalked a shadow.

  “What?” he asked. He’d been miles away. These promenades, three times a day in the open air, were his lifeline—and he didn’t mean the cat’s safety harness. Being locked up in a cabin with Ayisha was the punishment of Tantalus; he could see, hear, smell, but was unable to touch or taste.

  She climbed into bed each night, a stiff little prickle of propriety, insisting on sleeping on the outer edge of the bed, threatenin
g to sleep on the floor if he so much as moved an inch toward her.

  But in sleep, her body sang another song. In sleep her body sought him, snuggling closer until she was curled against his length, her hand resting over his heart, her cheek nestled against his shoulder, her limbs twined around his. In sleep, she was warm and soft, separated from him only by a promise—and it was driving him mad. He slept badly, and woke each morning rock hard with desire.

  “I beg your pardon, I was woolgathering,” he said. “What did you ask me?”

  “You said you were going to give your firstborn son to your brother to raise.”

  “I said Lavinia and my brother had agreed on it. I was never even consulted.”

  “Well, would you?”

  “Give away my child?” He stared out to sea a long time. “Never,” he said quietly. “Not while there was breath in my body to protect him.”

  She slipped her arm through his. “Then why did they think you’d agree to such a thing?”

  He shook his head. “I think they—well, George, thought he’d be doing me a favor. Perhaps he thought because I’d never settled, a son would get in my way.” George’s exact words.

  She frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “He thought a son would slow me down, stop me having fun.” After eight years at war, Rafe and the others had indeed broken out and kicked up their heels a little. But in the last year the “fun” had palled and become something almost . . . desperate.

  Eight years as an officer got a man used to responsibilities, to having a purpose in life, and being cut loose from that was . . . difficult. Rafe hadn’t thought a great deal about the future—in the army he’d been almost superstitious about it. Many soldiers believed that if you planned for the future, you’d be sure to be killed, so he’d lived in the here and now.

  But when the fighting was all over and he’d decided to sell out—he couldn’t stand the endless drilling of a Hyde Park soldier—he’d thought he’d take up some sort of position on one of the family estates. When he was a boy, several of his uncles had run various family businesses, and he rather thought he’d be good at that.