‘Please, please don’t bring that up! I put some quite dreadful things in it. Things I didn’t mean. You are kind. Nobody else has ever given me their coat to shelter me from rain. And when I think of you going round the house without your shirt to get more coal, so as not to take a single covering off me...’ She leaned forward, and placed one palm against his cheek. ‘And you did consider my opinions, too. You asked me if I wanted to stay at Mayfield or remove to the Dog and Ferret...’
‘Yes, but you wouldn’t have written any of those things at all, if I hadn’t made a stupid list of my own first.’ He covered her hand with his own. Enfolded it. Drew it to his chest. ‘That was my worst offence, in your eyes, wasn’t it?’
She shook her head. ‘After a while I think I understood why you might have written it. The thought of getting married was so abhorrent to you that—’
‘That’s another thing you need to understand. Why it was so abhorrent. The thing is, you see, it changes people. That was what scared me. Julia’s mother, for instance. She was quiet and withdrawn all the time she was married to my father. And then she bloomed with Geoffries. She was like a different woman. Laughing all the time and full of energy. Her third husband turned her into a shell of what she’d been. And so I decided, if I had to get married, it would be to a woman who wouldn’t have the power to change me. A woman who’d accept me just as I am and let me carry on living the way I always had.’
‘I don’t want you to change, either,’ she said, gripping his hand hard. ‘In fact—’
‘Just hear me out,’ he said firmly, cutting her off before she had a chance to deflect him from his purpose. ‘I never meant you to ever know I’d written that stupid list. It was only a means to help me get my thoughts together. And my friends, seeing how low I was at the prospect of getting married, made it all into a bit of a joke. The thing is...’ he raised her hand to his mouth and kissed it ‘...it was a meaningless piece of nonsense. Whereas the one you wrote...’
Letting go of her hand, he dug into his pocket for the list she’d written.
She gasped when he unfolded it and she saw what it was, her eyes widening in horror.
‘You raised some serious points,’ he said, getting to his feet. ‘Which I fully intend to answer.’
‘I really wish you wouldn’t! I’ve already said I was wrong about you being unkind and inconsiderate.’
‘We’ll skip over the bit about not having any money as well then, shall we?’
Her hand flew to the pearls about her neck.
‘I know it was a bit wicked of me to buy jewels as well as the clothes you promised me...’
‘You really are the most absurd creature,’ he said with a tender smile. ‘If you wanted to punish me by squandering money on jewels—and I wouldn’t blame you if you did—you should have bought diamonds.’ He glanced down at the note. ‘I was trying to amend my behaviour, you know. I was trying to think of what you wanted, and to treat you better. I just made a mull of it.’
‘Yes, yes, I see that now....’
‘And as for the bit about family...’ he looked down at her, sorrowfully ‘...I can see how my original list made it sound as if I don’t care about family. It was another stupid, selfish thing we wrote down when we were trying to see if there was some way to make marrying anyone slightly less unpalatable....’
He cringed when he thought how crass his behaviour had been when he’d first started to match what he liked about her to the items on his list.
‘The thing with family is that you can wish them at the devil three-quarters of the time, but the minute you find one of them in real trouble, you have no choice but to help them out. And not just close family, either. Not even true family, come to that. Take Julia’s little brothers, for example. After spending the happiest school holidays in their home, with their father, I’ll never be able to turn my back when they need their school bills paying, or when they want sponsorship into their career, will I?’
‘Plenty of men could,’ she pointed out, a strange expression flitting across her face. ‘My own relatives didn’t think twice about turning me away.’
‘You’ve been on the receiving end of such shabby behaviour, you’ve come to expect nothing else. Even from me.’
‘Oh, please, please don’t take what I wrote so...seriously. I was angry when I wrote it. I didn’t mean the half of it.’
‘Yes. Well...’ He looked down at the scrap of paper in his hand. ‘I wrote mine when I was drunk. And before I met you, at that.’
His heart was beating so hard now, because what he said next, how Mary responded, was going to shape his whole future.
‘Tell you what I’d like to do,’ he said, fishing in his pocket for the list he’d written, before he’d known there could be a woman anywhere in the world like Mary. ‘I’d like to tear these lists up, scrap our original agreement altogether and make a fresh start.’
‘What do you mean? Scrap our agreement? Don’t you want,’ she said in a small, scared voice, ‘to be married to me any more?’
‘Mary. I want to be married to you more than anything. But not in the way we said. When we were both so convinced marriage couldn’t work we gave ourselves permission to walk away from it without even trying to smooth things out when we hit our first bumpy patch. Now, if you will just bear with me a minute, I have something I’d like you to consider.’
He reached into his pocket yet again.
‘I’ve written another list,’ he said, feeling his cheeks heating and his collar growing tight. ‘Setting down what I want from marriage, now that I understand a bit more what it’s really about.’
He cleared his throat.
‘“My perfect wife,”’ he said and glanced at Mary. She was sitting stock-still, her hands clasped on her knees, her dark eyes staring up at him with trepidation.
‘“My wife needs to be as tall as my shoulder. She will have straight dark hair that feels like bathing in silk at midnight.”’
He heard her gasp. Glanced up. Her hands were still clasped together, but they were at chest height now, not on her lap. And her eyes...
‘Brown eyes,’ he said, because he’d got this part off by heart. ‘That look right to the heart of me and accept me just as I am, because her own heart is so generous,’ he said, hoping it was true right now. But just in case it wasn’t, he lowered his gaze to the paper again, unwilling to say the rest in the face of any direct opposition.
‘“She won’t be afraid to work hard. She won’t be afraid of being poor. She will be a little shy and uncertain, but so responsive to my kisses that after a bit she will forget where she is and surrender to the waves of passion that break over us, drowning us both. She won’t care about my title. She would feel just the same about me if I never had one. She will judge everyone by a yardstick of kindness and generosity. She won’t care so much about her appearance that she would rebuff a child.” Oh, and one last thing,’ he finished, lowering the sheet, and making himself look her steadily in the eye, no matter what.
‘Her name must be Mary.’
A little sob escaped her throat. ‘I never knew you had it in you to be so...poetical.’
‘If I could write poetry,’ he scoffed, ‘I would have done. Setting all this down so it made any kind of sense took me hours and hours. But the thing is, you’re worth it, Mary. I want to court you. Woo you, if you like. Make this marriage one that’s full of romance, and...’ he gulped ‘...and love.’
‘Love?’
‘Yes, love. Don’t look so shocked. I don’t expect you to fall in love with me, the way I’ve fallen in love with you. Don’t suppose it’s possible. But I can stand that,’ he said, drawing himself up to his full height. ‘I can bear anything, so long as you don’t forbid me to love you.’
‘Of course it’s possible,’ she cried. ‘I’ve loved you practically from the ve
ry first night I saw you!’
‘From the...’ He shook his head. ‘No. You couldn’t have. You didn’t give me the slightest bit of encouragement. I had to get your cousins twisting your arm to even get you to come out sightseeing with me.’
‘That’s because I was afraid.’
‘Afraid of me?’
‘Not of you. But the way you made me feel. I’d never thought of any man in...that way before. I thought those sorts of feelings made a woman weak and vulnerable. It shocked me. Scared me. So I fought it. Tried to deny it.’
‘Right up to the altar.’ He nodded.
‘And after. I didn’t admit to myself that I loved you for a while. And even then, I tried to hide it....’
‘You did that extremely well. You always kept me at arm’s length. You wouldn’t even call me by my given name.’
‘I didn’t know I was allowed to,’ she put in, a touch indignantly, he thought. ‘You never said.’
‘It never occurred to me I had to. But I want you to. It would make me feel so much closer to you.’
‘Gregory,’ she said shyly. ‘I am so sorry.’ She got to her feet and closed the distance between them. ‘Sorry that I never showed you any sign of my growing affection for you.’ She took hold of his hands.
‘But then, I had told you not to expect, or request, affection from me,’ he groaned.
‘But if you do want it to be part of our...our fresh start,’ she said hesitantly, ‘then...’
He was about to crush her to his chest and shower her face with kisses. But before he could do anything of the sort, she’d stretched up on tiptoe, put her arms round his neck and kissed him.
Kissed him.
For the first time, she’d been the one to initiate an embrace.
‘My God, Mary, Mary,’ he gasped. ‘This feels like a miracle. Can it really be true? Can you love me?’
‘How could I not love you?’ There were tears in her eyes. ‘I am only sorry I was so miserly with my heart before. If I’d been as generous as you said, I would have shown you how I felt, rather than hiding it all, to try to save face. And speaking of hiding things...’
* * *
She’d known it was wrong to keep the news of her pregnancy from him. Even when she’d feared it would mean the end of any chance of a reconciliation. But now, after he’d professed his love and his hope they could have a fresh start, it would be tantamount to saying she didn’t trust him.
And how could she say she loved him, if she didn’t trust him, completely?
She did trust him. He’d never lied to her, not even when the truth had hurt. So if he said he loved her and wanted a different sort of marriage from the one they’d agreed on at first, then he meant it.
‘I’m...’
The words stuck in her throat. It felt as though she was about to fling herself off a cliff into his arms, hoping he really would be there to catch her.
‘What is it, Mary? Whatever it is, I swear I won’t be angry with you.’
It had never been his anger she’d feared. And wasn’t now.
Taking a deep breath, she flung herself over the edge.
‘I’m increasing.’
His eyes widened. He glanced down at her stomach.
Then laughed with what looked like absolute joy. And hugged her. ‘You clever, clever girl,’ he said, sweeping her into his arms and over to one of the strategically placed armchairs, where he settled her on his lap.
Where he kissed her a bit more.
‘It doesn’t matter how we started, does it?’ she said, after a while. ‘We both made mistakes and both hid what we really felt, but we can do better from now on, can’t we?’
‘Well, I’m certainly determined to do better,’ he said. ‘From now on, I mean to show you how much you mean to me, every second of every day. I’m going to treat you like a queen.’
‘I’m not sure,’ she said thoughtfully, ‘I want to be treated like a queen.’
‘Very well. What would you like, then? Bearing in mind you want me to take your opinions into account whenever I have to make a decision.’
* * *
She pulled away from him a bit, her lips pursing. For a moment, he wondered whether he’d ruined the moment by referring to her list of complaints. But then she darted him a distinctly saucy look.
‘All I want,’ she said, with a glint in her eye, ‘is for you to want me so much you can’t keep your hands off me. Day or night. I know I’m not pretty. But you made me feel as if I was, to you, when you were so on fire for me you chased me round sofas, scandalising everyone from the butler to the scullery maid.’
His heart seemed to turn over in his chest. And when it settled, it was pounding like a galloping horse. ‘Is that so?’ He pushed her off his lap. ‘Go on, then,’ he said.
‘Go on, what?’
‘I shall give you a head start.’ He leaned back in the chair and crossed one leg over the other. ‘I shall count to twenty. No,’ he said, ‘actually I can’t wait till I’ve counted to twenty. Make it ten.’
‘Ten?’ She edged away from him, a confused frown on her face.
‘One,’ he said, or rather growled, leaning forward and eyeing her hotly from head to toe.
‘Two...’
She shivered where she stood. An answering heat flared to life in her eyes.
‘Three...’
She glanced round the room. At the hearthrug at his feet. At the table. Back at him, a smile playing about her lips.
‘Four...’
She turned, and made her way slowly towards the door.
‘Five...’
She hesitated, her hand on the latch, and glanced back over her shoulder.
‘Six...’
He got to his feet.
‘Seven...’ He stalked away from the chair.
Her face lit up. With a little shriek of laughter, she fumbled open the door, hitched up her skirts and ran from the room.
‘Eight-nine-ten,’ he yelled and set out in hot pursuit.
* * * * *
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ISBN-13: 9781460338919
Lord Havelock’s List
Copyright © 2014 by Annie Burrows
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“THERE IS NO ONE. I TRAVEL ALONE. I LIVE ALONE. ALWAYS.”
Battle-scarred Thrand the Destroyer has only one thing on his mind: settling old scores. But with the beautiful Lady of Lingfold as his prisoner, the unyielding warrior starts to dream of a loving wife and a home to call his own.
Cwen is also seeking justice, but she knows the fragile alliance she’s built with Thrand will only last as long as they share a common enemy. Unless they can find a way to leave revenge to the gods to forge a new life together.
“Maintains the myth while adding sexual tension, nonstop action and spice.” —RT Book Reviews on The Viking’s Captive Princess
“War is my life, my whole life,” Thrand said. “It is what I have chosen.
There is nothing else for me.”
He stalked away, ending the conversation. Cwenneth stared after him, weighing the jar in her hand.
“Curiosity can get you killed, Cwenneth,” she muttered. “Treacherous Norse blood runs in his veins. You have to think about saving your life and escaping. Keep away from him. Stop trying to see good where none exists.”
The trouble was a small part of her heart refused to believe it.
* * *
Saved by the Viking Warrior
Harlequin® Historical #1202—September 2014
Author Note
Some characters just decide they want to be written. Lady Cwenneth was one of those characters. She popped into my head and refused to go. Part of the trouble with writing this book is that the primary source documentation is not very good for Northumbria in the ninth century. It is a mixture of legend and fact. Sometimes the facts masquerade as legends and sometimes it is the other way around.
Harlequin Historical September 2014 - Bundle 2 of 2: Lord Havelock's ListSaved by the Viking WarriorThe Pirate Hunter Page 24
