His Cinderella Bride

by Annie Burrows

  But then he ran his hands down the length of her leg, propping her ankle on the rim of the bath as he soaped his hands again. When he reached into the water for her right foot, she gasped as a shocking thrill of anticipation shot through her. He was going to repeat the whole delicious process all over again, and this time, because of the way he had positioned her foot, her legs were sprawled indecorously apart, making her throbbingly aware of his ultimate destination.

  She made no move to resist him, or alter the way he had positioned her limbs. She was boneless, mindless, just a piece of clay for him to mould however he saw fit. Again he teased her with a touch that was not quite there, before releasing her leg. She stirred impatiently as he slowly soaped his hands yet again, her lips parting as he leaned over her to draw aside a ringlet that curled around her left nipple. When he kissed it, before gently draping it over her shoulder, she had to fight down a very strong urge to pull his head down to her breast, so she could feel his mouth there.

  But when he slid his soap-slick hands down her flanks, she could keep still no longer. She found her waist flexed first one way, then the other as his hands swept round and over the clenched muscles of her stomach, and up her rib cage. She bit down hard on the urge to cry out when at last he cupped her breasts, but she could not stop herself wrapping her arms round his neck, and burying her face in his shoulder. She just clung to him, panting, as he kept on caressing, kneading, stoking the fires that were banked in her belly higher and higher.

  ‘Jasper,’ she breathed, turning her face up to his, her mouth blindly seeking his, opening to him as one hand slid beneath the waterline. She was on fire. Her blood pounded through her veins, making her restless for something, for more.

  And then Jasper’s knowing fingers were giving her what she hadn’t known she craved. She clung to him, moaning as he rotated the heel of his hand against the juncture of her thighs, stoking the craving to a furnace of need. When he slid one soaped finger gently inside her, she instinctively clamped her thighs together against the intrusion, her eyes flying open in shock. But the action only intensified the pleasure, and he kept up the gentle, insistent pressure, until she found herself bucking up against his hand, and finally arching up almost out of the water as something like a lightning bolt of bliss streaked from the pit of her stomach to the tip of her toes. Then every muscle in her body went completely slack. She was as limp as a rag doll when Jasper lifted her out of the water, wrapped her in a huge bath sheet, and settled her on his lap, with a rather smug grin on his face.

  Dreamily she gazed back as he patted her dry.

  ‘I’ve ruined your shirt,’ she observed. It was soap-stained and sopping wet from when she had clung to him in rapture. She wondered how he had known he could make her feel like this.

  Some of her pleasure in the moment ebbed away as she worked out how he must have gained this sort of expertise.

  Jasper saw the troubled expression return to her eyes and knew that he must not push her any more tonight. She truly did love him. He had thought she had just mouthed the words to soften the blow of rejection. But she could not have manufactured the trust that blazed from her eyes as she yielded to him, like a flower unfurling her petals to the sun.

  She loved him. The truth of it was in her amazing, at first hesitant, then finally rapturous response. His own arousal was ferocious, but he dare not slake it. It would shatter her trust if he pinned her to that bed and degraded her beautiful moment of sexual awakening by ending it with a few minutes’ savage rutting.

  Especially, he did not want to consummate their union here. He did not want her waking up to nightmares in the future, in which his face, his actions, were muddled with Snelgrove’s by association with low taverns. When they came together, it would be in more fitting surroundings. Snelgrove and all he stood for must be utterly expunged in an experience so wondrous it would be like a holy sacrament.

  He got up, walked with her in his arms to the bedroom and deposited her on a chair. Deliberately turning his back on her, he pulled her nightgown from her bag.

  ‘You’d better put this on,’ he said sternly.

  Wondering what she had done wrong, Hester covered herself up while Jasper pulled back the bedclothes.

  ‘Get in,’ he ordered, and she obeyed, sliding down against the linen, amazed at how good her freshly washed, newly awakened body felt.

  And it was all thanks to him. In the space of a few minutes, he had shattered the bonds that Lionel had bound her with all those years ago.

  With her heart full of love, she watched as he got ready for bed. His torso was quite the most beautiful sight she had ever seen. It was strange to consider a man beautiful, to regard muscular arms, a tapering waist, even the patterns of rough black hair swirling round his nipples and arrowing down into the waistband of his breeches as nature’s work of art. Most strange of all was to want to feel all that masculine muscularity pressed against her soft and yielding feminine flesh.

  She had always dreaded becoming intimate with a man. But now, oh, now she just wanted to hold him close while he found the same pleasure he had just gifted to her.

  ‘I never want you to feel dirty or ashamed again, Hester.’ His voice sounded strangely harsh.

  ‘I know,’ she said. And her heart began to beat wildly in anticipation.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Jasper got into bed on top of the sheet that covered her, rolled on to his side, and turned his back to her.

  For a moment or two Hester just lay there, baffled. They were married. Why didn’t he mount her? What had she done wrong?

  Heat flooded her face at the memory of just how wild she had gone in the bath. She had clung to him, and writhed, and water had sloshed all over the floor and she had made…noises.

  Had her ecstatic response caused Jasper to wonder about the veracity of her account of what Lionel had done to her? Did he wonder if she had enjoyed it as much as she enjoyed his caresses just now? Did he think that she might have encouraged Lionel, then twisted the story to make herself sound like an innocent victim?

  A shaft of ice speared her through. Perhaps it had been her fault. Perhaps she did have a dark core to her nature that only needed a spark to make it flare into fully fledged depravity. Somehow Lionel had discerned it. And now Jasper had too.

  He couldn’t bring himself to touch her again. He had attempted to symbolically wash her, somehow understanding how dirty she felt, deep down inside. But it had not worked. For a while she had forgotten everything but the feel of his hands on her body, but now doubts and fears assailed her from every side, and as she drifted off to sleep, the guilt broke free in a wave of jumbled memories more powerful and terrifying than the reality had been. She could hear the rain drumming on the roof. She could taste acrid smoke in her mouth, and feel Lionel’s weight pinning her to the rough planks of the floor.

  As she tried to fight free of him, she felt a hand stroking her hair, heard a voice that compelled her to listen.

  ‘Hush, Hester,’ the voice said. ‘It’s only a dream. Nothing can hurt you now. I’m here.’

  And in her sleep she turned to the source of comfort, trusting the solid warmth of the body she clung to to shield her. She wept, in her dream, that although she had found a safe harbour at last, in finding it, she had lost something infinitely precious.

  * * *

  It was still dark when Jasper shook her awake.

  ‘Get dressed,’ he said, turning his back and reaching for his own shirt.

  Humiliation slammed into her like a fist, and she pulled the sheet to her chin. With her hair rioting across the pillows, she knew she must look like one of Bacchus’s wild maenads. No wonder he couldn’t bear to look at her.

  ‘Is there anything of value in your overnight case?’ Jasper reached down and picked his breeches up from the floor.

  ‘N…not really.’ There was a comb. She would value time to ply it now, but she guessed that was not what he had meant. She saw that her chemise was draped across the
foot of the bed. Keeping the blankets clutched to her chin, she shuffled down the mattress and made a grab for it.

  ‘Then you must leave it behind.’

  She tried not to gape at his bulky thighs as he stepped into his breeches.

  ‘When we meet up with Miss Dean and Stephen in the park, we need to make it look as though we are just returning from our usual early morning ride. The presence of luggage may give rise to curiosity.’

  Hester struggled out of her nightgown and into her chemise under the blankets. ‘Whatever shall we say to your mother, though? She has been looking forward to our wedding, and now she’s missed it.’

  The chair across which her dress lay was beyond her reach. She was going to have to get out of bed wearing only her flimsy chemise, walk across the room, move Jasper’s coat…

  ‘We are not going to tell anyone we are married, Hester.’

  ‘What?’ She stopped in the middle of the room, her mouth gaping.

  ‘Think about it.’ He eyed her dispassionately as he stamped his feet into his boots. ‘What possible reason could we give for running off, scarce two weeks before our wedding? If this information gets out, the very gossip that I am endeavouring to suppress on your behalf would run like wildfire through the ton.’

  He reached round her, then calmly handed Hester her dress, bringing her cringingly back to awareness that she was practically naked. Turning her back, she stepped into the gown and frantically did up the buttons.

  ‘We must go through with the public wedding as if nothing untoward has occurred.’

  ‘B…but Lionel can still…’

  ‘Leave him to me, Hester. Now that I am in full possession of the facts, I know exactly how to deal with him.’

  He wanted to crush Snelgrove for his attempt to harry his own, dear, brave wife into adulthood, after having effectively robbed her of her childhood. He was certainly not going to permit the scoundrel to get anywhere near Hester ever again. It might mean enlisting help to flush him out of whatever hole he was hiding in, but he had friends on whose discretion he could rely. Farrar was already in this business up to his neck. Captain Fawley, too, would do whatever was necessary to protect the one woman in London who had treated him like a whole man, not a cripple.

  His face looked so fierce as he tugged the door open that Hester’s stomach clenched in fright. He kept his anger reined in, but, sat up on the saddle in front of him, she could feel the rigidity of his body, the way he tried to keep contact between them to the minimum. Discovering all there was to know of her had clearly filled him with revulsion.

  * * *

  It was Stephen who helped her down when they got to the rendezvous, while Jasper watched, in brooding silence; Stephen who boosted her into Strawberry’s saddle once Em had helped her to tie the ribbons of her riding hat in place.

  When they finally dismounted at the foot of the steps that led up to Lady Augusta’s front door, Hester’s courage almost failed her.

  ‘I don’t know how I’m going to face her,’ she admitted, grabbing wildly for Em’s hand.

  ‘Then don’t.’

  She spun round at the first remark Jasper had made since leaving that wretched inn. ‘Go to your room.’ He glowered down at her. ‘Have breakfast, get changed…’ he made a vague gesture with his hand ‘…whatever you would normally do. I will speak to her for you.’

  Another battle he was going to have to fight for her.

  She couldn’t bear it. The proud name of Challinor was on the brink of scandal, all because of her. And he was furious.

  She waited until he had disappeared into the bowels of the house before she went in, dashing up the stairs two at a time and slamming her bedroom door behind her.

  She stayed there for two full days.

  On the third day she went to Lady Augusta’s room during the breakfast hour.

  ‘My uncle and aunt are arriving in town tomorrow,’ she began, fixing her eyes on the snowy white hands that rested atop the satin quilt. ‘It would be sensible, don’t you think, if I were to remove to Vosbey House, to make sure their stay is as comfortable as I can make it?’

  ‘Sensible?’ Lady Augusta bit down on her lower lip. Jasper had told her she was not to badger Hester about the details of exactly what steps he had taken to ensure she would not bolt again. But she was no fool. He was so head over heels in love with this skinny little freckle-faced chit that he had dashed off into the wilds disguised as a highwayman and bedded her to make sure she could never escape. Since then, Hester had cowered in her room, unable to face anyone. She wouldn’t even receive Jasper, not even when he called to take her out riding. And every rejection had sent her son sliding deeper into the sort of despondency that only thwarted passion could inflict.

  She only wished she had someone to share the joke with. He was still strutting round the drawing rooms of London, looking down his proud nose at lesser mortals as if he was the epitome of sang-froid, maintaining the fiction that he was content with the convenient marriage his mother had arranged, when all the time he was in so deep he hardly knew what to do with himself.

  ‘Jenny and Julia and Phoebe all need to procure dresses, since they are to be my bridesmaids,’ Hester persisted. ‘And since Uncle Thomas is going to give me away it would be more logical for me to stay at Vosbey House with them all.’

  ‘Logical…’ Her voice shook slightly. ‘Of course it is.’

  ‘Not that I’m not very grateful for all you’ve done for me.’

  ‘But naturally you want to spend these last few days of your legal girlhood with your family.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  Lady Augusta coughed into her handkerchief before saying, ‘Naturally Jasper will call upon you and your family, to pay his respects. And escort you all to whatever functions you wish to attend.’

  ‘Oh.’ Hester went white.

  ‘You will naturally wish to introduce them about.’

  ‘Yes, I will, won’t I?’

  Lady Augusta couldn’t resist turning the screw one last twist. ‘And of course you must bring my goddaughter to call here. And I, of course, will positively haunt your drawing room—it has been so long since I have talked, really talked with my dear friend, your aunt Susan. Jasper can escort me. I dare say we will all see so much of each other, it will hardly be as though you are living apart from us at all.’

  Hester had shot herself in the foot. If only she had not come up with the stupid plan to escape Brook Street. She could have kept on using the excuse of ill health to stay in her rooms and avoid Jasper right up till the morning of their wedding. Now she had pledged herself to entertaining her family, she would be obliged to go out and about. She would have to face him. Speak to him.

  How did women do it? How did anyone bear the pain of being hopelessly in love with a man who did not want emotion of any sort to feature in his marriage? Who was at this moment so angry that he could hardly bear to look at her?

  * * *

  She soon found it was impossible. All he had to do, the first time she saw him again, was bow over her hand and murmur ‘good evening’ for her to feel horridly conscious that he had seen her naked, in a most ungainly position, gasping and shuddering, while his skilful hands had roamed all over her eager body. It was beyond her power to stutter a conventional response, let alone look him in the face. All she could think to do was escape him, and by dint of becoming very busy entertaining their guests, and convincing her family that she was happy, when inside her heart felt like a lead weight, that was what she did.

  But wherever she went, she could feel his hard black eyes boring into her with disquiet.

  Jasper could see she was quivering under the strain of keeping up a cheerful front, but since he believed that nothing but Snelgrove’s utter destruction would ever bring her true peace of mind, he disdained the very notion of offering her empty platitudes.

  * * *

  To his great relief, two days before their public wedding, he received news that Captain Fawley had run the v
illain to ground. Dismissing the footman who had brought him the message informing him that his trap was in the very process of being sprung, he crossed the room to where Hester sat rigid between his mother and her aunt, pretending to listen to the soprano who had been hired for that evening’s entertainment.

  Leaning over the back of her chair, he murmured into her ear, ‘A word, if you please, in private.’

  When she would have denied him, he took the simple expedient of taking her by the arm, lifting her from her chair, and towing her from the room.

  ‘This will end tonight,’ he promised her. ‘Tomorrow you will go riding with me, as we did when first you came to London.’

  Conscious that somebody might overhear, he gruffly added, ‘I have a matter to discuss with you, that must be for your ears alone. Before the wedding ceremony. Do you understand?’

  Miserably she nodded her head, mentally preparing herself for a scolding. Or perhaps he was just going to lay out the terms for their marriage. He’d had time to consider how to deal with her, and her past. He would definitely want to ensure that she got into no more scrapes. He would probably have a list of exactly how she was to behave as his wife. He certainly had not approved of her behaviour in public since they had secretly married. Whenever she dared take a glance at him, he had been scowling at her, looking as though he wondered what on earth had possessed him to choose her above her lovely, placid, blameless cousins.

  When he strode from the room, she lifted her chin, and returned to her seat, from where she gazed with unseeing eyes at the opera singer. She would accept whatever restrictions he imposed on her. He couldn’t unmarry her now. So she had her whole lifetime to demonstrate that though her past had been chequered, she would do all in her power to be a conformable wife.

  And in time, his desire for an heir must override his distaste for the woman he was legally shackled to.

  Mustn’t it?

  * * *

  Jasper’s heart was pounding with anticipation as he strode through the streets to Captain Fawley’s rooms, the prearranged venue for Snelgrove’s demise. Stephen Farrar was already there, his face grim with purpose. They waited in silence, both rising to their feet when at last they heard the unmistakeable sound of Captain Fawley’s uneven gait upon the stairs. Farrar went to the door. The moment Fawley stumbled into the room, supported by a red-faced, wheezing Snelgrove, he slammed the door shut behind them and leaned against it, his arms folded across his chest.