The Winter Bride (A Chance Sisters Romance)

by Anne Gracie

  “Who told you that piece of nonsense?”

  She blinked. “My father.” Repeatedly.

  “Well, forgive me, but if that’s what he thought, the man was a fool. Granted, some fellows prize virginity in a bride, but that’s usually about securing paternity, of the first child, at least. And because some men are clumsy brutes and prefer their brides ignorant. Besides, I’m somewhat of a rake, which means I’m not a virgin, either. Which makes us equal.”

  She shook her head. “It’s different for men, as you very well know. You’re not taking me seriously. I would rather live alone than live without respect.” As Mama had.

  He frowned. “I’ve already said I don’t blame you. No one could possibly blame you for what happened.”

  She could not quite believe him. She lifted her chin and said half defiantly, “I would do it again if I had to, so though I was shamed by the captain, I am not ashamed of my decision. And I won’t be forgiven for it.” Because the forgiven one was always in the wrong. Forgiven didn’t mean forgotten. Papa had forgiven Mama, but he’d never forgotten, not for a minute. She’d had to endure his forgiveness daily.

  His eyes warmed. “My dear girl, I wouldn’t dare.”

  There was a short silence. “Are you . . . are you laughing at me?” She couldn’t believe it.

  He squeezed her hands. “Not precisely laughing. Smiling a little at your fierceness, perhaps. There’s no need for it, truly there isn’t. You don’t have to defend your decision to me. I thoroughly approve it. Where would I be if you’d believed that ‘death before dishonor’ nonsense, for instance?”

  She decided to take him literally. “For a start, you wouldn’t be stuck in a cottage, cut off from the world by floodwaters and being compromised into a marriage you never wanted.”

  “Exactly,” he said cheerfully. “I did mention that I enjoy a little adventure from time to time, did I not? I have no regrets at all about this one. And neither should you. Let us make the best of the situation life has presented us with. Speaking of which, are you going to do anything with those alleged dumplings, or are they meant to be served dry and cracked around the edges?”

  She glanced at the dumplings and tucked the damp cloth over the few that were exposed to the air. She didn’t understand this man at all. He seemed not to take her situation at all seriously. She told him so.

  “Oh, make no mistake, my dear, I take what was done to you very seriously. Very seriously indeed.” She glimpsed a flash of ice in his eyes, but then they warmed as he said, “But as far as I’m concerned nothing you have told me presents any barrier to our marrying.”

  It was a sliver of hope but she couldn’t count on it. “Then let me tell you the rest,” she said. She had hoped not to have to tell him this last part. “When we landed in England, instead of setting me ashore, as he’d promised, the captain told me he had found me a job. And then he laughed.”

  She still felt ill, remembering the moment she’d realized. Her shock, and momentary disbelief, followed by helpless, bitter fury.

  What a fool she’d been to believe that such a man would keep his word to a friendless girl.

  “He’d sold me to a brothel.”

  Freddy made some sort of incoherent noise. She glanced at him, but he shook his head. “Go on.” His jaw tightened, as did his grip on her. It crushed her fingers a little, but was oddly comforting. Connection, instead of repudiation.

  “Of course I refused. I tried to escape, to get off the ship myself, but he was prepared for that. He had me bound and gagged and carried ashore wrapped in an old blanket.” The blanket was moldy and damp and the stench of it made her sick. “My first sight of England was from the inside of a brothel. From a locked room.”

  He swore. “The bastard!”

  She forced out the words that still scalded her with shame. “He told me, as they carried me away, that I was born for it.”

  “The swine will die for that,” he said quietly, and then he fixed his gaze on her. “Of course, you do know there’s not the slightest word of truth in what he said.”

  She ran her tongue over dry lips. “That day at the lake, you said—”

  “I know what I said, and it’s not the same thing at all. I’ll show you what I meant, and it’s a world away from whatever that bastard told you. But first, finish your tale. You’re almost done now—and you need to tell me, I know, though it will change nothing, I promise you. Now, how did you get out of the brothel?”

  She hesitated. This was not only her story to share; others were involved. “Will you give me your word of honor that what I tell you will go no further than this room?”

  He gave a curt nod, and then, when she still waited, said, “Of course you have my word. Go on.”

  “Jane had also been taken to the brothel by force—she’d been drugged and kidnapped. She was an orphan too, but unlike me—and unbeknownst to her kidnappers—she had a sister in London—Abby—and she convinced a maidservant to send word to her. Daisy—she was the maid—helped us escape. She came with us.”

  “Good God. So that’s how you girls met? I had no idea.”

  “Lady Beatrice knows about the brothel—Abby insisted on telling her everything before we accepted her invitation to live with her. Abby told Max too, before she agreed to marry him.” She bit her lip. “But I never told anyone about the captain; not Lady Beatrice, nor Abby and the girls.” She’d been too ashamed.

  There was a long silence. Then, “How long were you in the brothel?”

  “Only a few days. I was never . . . sold. Daisy got us out just a few hours before we were to make our first . . . appearance.” She shuddered, remembering how close their escape was. She’d been billed as the Chinese Whore, painted in a crude imitation of a Chinese girl and dressed in nothing but a flimsy, embroidered red gauze wrapper.

  “Were you harmed in any way?”

  She bit her lip. “Only beaten a few times.”

  “Only?”

  She shrugged. “Mort—he was the owner—didn’t want to mark me. But the beatings were worth it.” The first few beatings were because of her recalcitrance, but the last . . . She smiled, remembering. “I made up a herbal tea that made Jane ill on the night of her Virgin Auction. She threw up over some of the clients. It saved her.”

  Freddy glanced at his tea and pushed it away.

  “This brothel, where is it?”

  “Closed down now. Max reported it, and Daisy gave evidence. Mort was hanged—Jane wasn’t the only innocent girl he’d kidnapped.”

  “And what was the name of the captain?”

  She stared at him. “What could his name possibly matter? He’ll be well and truly gone now, probably on the other side of the world.”

  “Nevertheless, I need to know it.”

  She shrugged and told him.

  “And the ship?”

  “The Liverpool Lass. But it’s probably on the other side of the world as well.”

  He stood up abruptly. “Right, then, that’s your story told. Makes not a jot of difference to our getting married. Now, I need to chop some wood.”

  “But you already chopped plenty of—”

  But he’d taken three strides across the room and was gone, the door closed firmly behind him.

  Thoroughly bemused by his reaction, Damaris added more water to the soup left over from the day before. It had thickened overnight and she stirred the pot waiting for it to come to the boil.

  Outside she could hear the chunk! chunk! of wood being chopped. There was already a neat pile of firewood stacked beside the fireplace, and more in a box just outside the back door, so it was beyond her why Freddy thought they needed more. At this rate they’d use up the old woman’s entire winter store of wood. Though he’d said he’d pay for whatever they used, and she knew he’d be generous.

  She thought about his response to what she’d
told him. Generous wasn’t the word.

  He’d said, several times, that it would make no difference to him, that he didn’t mind that she wasn’t a virgin, that her sordid exchange with the captain was no barrier to their marriage as far as he was concerned and even—such a shocking concept—that Papa was a fool about such things.

  Could he really mean it? Was it because he was a rake, that he viewed things so differently? Could she dare to hope? She’d lived so long with the certainty that marriage wasn’t an option for her, not unless she was prepared to live with the kind of constant condemnation that Mama had endured, and she wasn’t. She absolutely wasn’t.

  But Freddy had said she had nothing to be ashamed of.

  He’d said he approved of her choice. Approved.

  He’d even laughed at the idea of forgiveness, as if there were nothing to forgive.

  Nothing to forgive. A bubble of hope lodged in her chest.

  The pot was simmering. She stirred in the dumplings, one by one.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  “I did not then know what it was to love.”

  —JANE AUSTEN, SENSE AND SENSIBILITY

  The bastard! Thunk! Chunk! The swine! Thunk!

  Freddy swung the ax savagely, imagining each log as the neck of a certain sea captain. When Freddy found him—and he would find him, no matter where in the world the bastard was skulking—the man was as good as dead.

  After all she’d been through—losing her father in such a brutal manner, that endless walk across China, surviving God knew how—of course she’d thought an English ship, an English sea captain, would be her salvation.

  Thunk! Chunk! Wood chips flew. It damned well should have been.

  Sea captains were by nature a tough lot—they had to be, to command the ruffians and roughnecks who made up the average ship’s crew. But most captains had a streak of decency in them, and a recently orphaned girl, an English girl, and the daughter of a missionary, for God’s sake! To use such a girl as a whore! To use Damaris . . . ! Rage boiled in him and the ax flew.

  He split a log viciously, remembering the tender innocence of that kiss by the lake.

  Christ, the bastard must have taken her with no tenderness, no consideration for her youth or innocence. She’d been fucked from one side of the world to the other, but never—God damn the bastard forever—been kissed. Sold into a brothel, and never been kissed.

  And he’d told her she was born for it.

  Thunk! Chunk! The pile of chopped wood grew.

  The courage it had taken for her to tell him—Christ, there was honor for you! She’d bared her soul to him, to save him from a marriage she thought he didn’t want. He’d told her what had happened to her didn’t matter. It damned well did.

  He’d told her he didn’t mind that she wasn’t a virgin. He bloody well did.

  But not in the way she thought it.

  He wanted to be her first. Not some grubby little sea captain who couldn’t be bothered to show her the slightest care. God knew what she thought men and women did together. Between her ass of a father and the swine of a sea captain, it was a miracle she wasn’t bitter and hostile toward men, let alone trusting Freddy as far as she had.

  For the first time in his life, he understood why men wanted a virgin bride—and it was nothing to do with securing paternity or preferring ignorance. It was something deeper, wilder, more primitive.

  Not civilized in the least.

  It was an utterly primitive desire to possess her, wholly and completely. To initiate her into a world only they two would share. To be her man, her bridegroom, to witness the dawning awareness in her eyes—to cause it. To introduce her to an intimacy she’d never known, to bring ecstasy to her body. And to share it.

  That kiss by the lake, that tremulous, precious, exquisite moment—best kiss of his life, dammit. Shook him to his very bones. It was a reminder of what they could have had, if Damaris had not been violated by a filthy sea capt—

  The ax paused in midair.

  She’d never been kissed. And she’d never been made love to. She’d been used, well and truly. But she’d never been made love to.

  Freddy put down the ax.

  • • •

  “Delicious dumplings,” Freddy commented later that evening, as he spooned up the last of his soup with dumplings. He’d seen to the horses and locked up the hens—they’d returned to their pen as dusk had fallen, just as she’d said they would. Now supper was over and there was nothing to distract her. Nothing except him. “And the soup was excellent too, thank you. How delightful to be acquiring a wife who can actually cook. So useful, should we ever be stranded again. So, have you developed a distaste for the, er, carnal intimacies between a man and a woman?”

  The abruptness of that question caused Damaris to almost choke on her soup. She gave him an indignant look.

  “Does that mean yes or no?” he said when she’d recovered her breath. There was no delicate way to ask it, so he’d decided to be bold. Best have it all out in the open.

  “I—I don’t know.”

  I don’t know. What did that mean? How could she not know? But at least it must mean she didn’t have an active horror of it. Indifference, then. He could work with indifference.

  “Does it matter?”

  “Does it—” He stopped himself in time. “In one sense no, it does not matter. We’re still getting married—don’t think you’re wriggling out of that. We can make this thing work. We’ve become friends, have we not, in these last weeks?”

  She hesitated, then nodded.

  “Many married couples don’t even have that. But if the very idea of sexual congress appalls you, then I won’t touch you, of course.” And what a whopper that was. He had every intention of touching her. He could barely keep his hands off her as it was. He wouldn’t force her, of course—damn that swine of a captain to hell and back—but he’d known other women who’d been mishandled by clumsy brutes and conceived a distaste for bed sports. Freddy had shown them the pleasures that could be had.

  He would show Damaris too. She was currently staring at him with a strange look on her face.

  “Now, what does that look mean?”

  She shook her head.

  Seeing she wasn’t going to explain, he continued, “If you find you can’t bear to live with me, you’ll always have your cottage to retreat to—don’t look at me like that. Of course it will still be yours to keep. So, that’s the way it will be. There’s no need for you to worry. I’m a man of my word. I won’t pester you.”

  She didn’t say a word. She just gathered up the dishes and took them to the bench at the back of the room and started washing them.

  Freddy made no move to help her. He remained at the table, watching her back view, admiring the elegant line of her spine and the slight jiggling of her rear as she scrubbed away at the dishes.

  It was true. He wouldn’t pester her.

  He would seduce her.

  You’ll always have your cottage to retreat to. Oh, he was a villain indeed, assuring her of her freedom. He was determined to bind her to him in any way he could, not only because he desired her with an ache so deep and fierce it colored his awareness of everything, but because she’d become . . . necessary to him. Her soft voice, her serenity, her stubbornness, her bravery, her beauty, that laugh of hers . . . her understanding . . .

  She seemed to regard him as no one else had ever seen him, as he’d never seen himself. Poor deluded girl, thinking him some kind of hero.

  He needed to marry her if only to stop her from falling under some other scoundrel’s sway.

  Her seduction, now, that was purely for his own benefit. And hers, of course.

  • • •

  Damaris dumped the bowls and plates in a basin and poured hot water over them. A distaste for the carnal intimacies between a man and a woman? What so
rt of a question was that to throw at her while she was drinking soup?

  And why bring it up now? He’d pointed out, indirectly, that they’d be spending another night in the cottage. Together. Alone. With all this talk of carnal intimacies hanging in the air between them, was he suggesting that they . . . ?

  Before the wedding? If there were to be a wedding, and she wasn’t yet convinced of that.

  She rubbed soap onto a wet rag and began to wash the plates. She refused to believe a marriage between them was a foregone conclusion.

  It was highly possible that no scandal would result from this event. If nobody realized they’d spent a night—two nights—together unchaperoned, there would surely be no need for a wedding.

  She glanced out the small window at the back of the cottage. A tiny robin hopped onto a bare twig and looked at her, his little head cocked curiously. In the cold gray daylight, he looked so bold and jaunty in his little red waistcoat. He chirruped a couple of times, then flew off.

  She didn’t want to have trapped Freddy into a marriage, even if he was the one insisting on a wedding. Why, when he was famous for being averse to marriage?

  Oh, it was all so confusing.

  She didn’t understand him at all. It was hard enough working out what she wanted. Everything she’d believed about herself and her eligibility had been turned topsy-turvy.

  She cleaned the spoons, rubbing them to a shine. What did she want? Not what she ought to want, or what was possible, or polite, or politic to want—what did she really want, deep down?

  There was no hesitation in the answer that came back. Him. She wanted him.

  She dried the dishes slowly, reflecting on her choices. There was no point in worrying about the future—that was too dependent on others—what they thought, or thought they knew.

  Did she have a distaste for the carnal intimacies between a man and a woman?

  She wasn’t sure. She feared not.

  What sort of a woman wasn’t sure? Until today, that lack of certainty had shamed her. A decent woman should have been disgusted by the whole thing—and she had been, for most of the time with the captain. She’d fought him—not physically, because after all she had agreed to it to save her life—but she’d held herself stiff, her eyes closed, trying to block out what was happening as he used her body, refusing to react, or cooperate, refusing to acknowledge in any way what was happening, pretending it was happening to someone else, not her, even though at first it was frightening and painful and deeply humiliating and invasive. She’d loathed his every touch, his smell, the way he pawed at her with his thick-fingered hands.