Captain Fawley's Innocent Bride

by Annie Burrows

  If she did not love him…if he did not need to reduce her to the level of exposure he was suffering, by having her invade his personal space…

  ‘You are shivering,’ he finally observed. A wave of goose pimples had swept across her body, tightening her nipples into the hard peaks that also betokened arousal. He knew she was not aroused. She was just plain scared. Her eyes were huge in her pale face, fixed on him as though he were a wolf, and she Little Red Riding Hood.

  He felt wolfish. He wanted to devour her. Claw at her and bite her, and hear her cry out as he sank into her soft warm flesh.

  Yet he also wanted to wipe away that look of uncertainty, and replace it with yearning, and wonder and rapture.

  She knew nothing of what went on between a man and a woman. How could she? She was standing there, completely naked, completely bemused by his request to take down her hair. She shifted her weight from the foot she had been favouring, stroking the sole over the arch of the other, chewing at her lower lip, like a little girl, completely unaware of what the sight of her naked body was doing to him.

  Any man with a shred of decency would let her grow accustomed to intimacy by gradual stages, he sighed. Not plunge her straight into the sort of torrid encounter he had planned to subject her to tonight.

  ‘Get into bed now,’ he said, ashamed of himself for toying with her like this, ‘and I will warm you.’

  ‘Th…thank you,’ she breathed, scrambling in beside him with alacrity, and pulling the covers up to her chin as she lay down. ‘I am all over goose bumps.’

  ‘I saw.’ He put his arm about her waist, pulling her closer. ‘Is that better?’

  ‘Mmm…’ She nodded, the top of her head bumping the underside of his chin. She kept her arms demurely by her sides, knowing he would not wish her to hug him, dearly though she wished to. But the entire length of her leg rested against his. He was warm, and hard and his skin was covered all over, it seemed, with coarse hair that made her want to rub herself against him—twine herself about him like a cat. Each breath he took, expanding his chest, brought him temporarily, tantalisingly closer to her upper body and made her yearn to roll on to her side, and press herself up against him, till there was not a single inch of air between their naked bodies. She wanted her breasts pressed against his chest, her legs entangled with his. She wanted the right to put her arms about him, and kiss the scars on his face, and, yes, the ones she had briefly glimpsed bubbling down the left side of his chest. She wanted to plunge her fingers into his overlong hair, while she kissed him with all the love she felt welling in her heart.

  But she was so afraid he would repulse her.

  He gritted his teeth, lying rigidly upon his back, while he felt his naked young bride shivering with cold, and probably a large dose of trepidation, against his side. He did not know where to start. Not so long ago he had feared he would never want to lay with a woman again. Yet now he was experiencing a hunger so fierce he scarce knew how to hold it back. The things he wanted to do to this innocent young woman were so brutal they even shocked him. He gritted his teeth, knowing she needed a gentle introduction to a pastime she scarce knew existed. Not a clumsy, blundering cripple, who, even at his peak, had never known an innocent. His encounters, as a soldier, had been of the mercenary kind. Pleasurable enough for him, but not exactly good training for the polite coupling that he guessed ought to go on in a marriage bed.

  She deserved far better than to marry a wreck like him. She had made it possible for him to have everything he had ever wanted. A home of his own, financial independence and revenge on the perfidious Lampton family.

  And all she was getting in return was a bad-tempered cripple, who had scant idea how to initiate a virgin. Perhaps he ought to tell her to put her nightgown back on. If she was not naked…but then he imagined her getting out of bed, and bending over to retrieve that seductive confection of textures from the floor, raising her arms to slide it over her head…he would just want to rip it straight off her again.

  He stifled a groan.

  ‘Is aught amiss?’ she asked, peering up at the rigid lines of his throat.

  ‘No, nothing that need trouble you.’ He sighed, shifting so that no part of him quite touched any part of her any more. There was no way he could talk to her about what her marital duties would entail, not tonight. It was bad enough just thinking about it. If he tried to verbalise exactly what was going through his mind, he would end up wanting to give her a demonstration. And end up traumatising her, no doubt. For he was pretty sure he was not going to be able to take it slowly enough not to hurt her.

  ‘Go to sleep.’

  There was a short pause. Then she said, in a very small voice, ‘May I kiss you goodnight?’

  She must have felt him tense, because she added hastily, ‘My mother and father always used to kiss each other goodnight. And we are married now, so, should I not kiss you?’

  ‘Only if you really want to.’ He was sure no woman could really want to kiss him. ‘You do not need to,’ he said, suddenly angry with Deborah’s need to do her duty, as she saw it. ‘It is not required.’

  ‘But I do want to,’ she stunned him by saying. Raising herself on to one elbow, she looked down into his face, right into his eyes, adding uncertainly, ‘If you don’t mind. It is what married people do, is it not?’

  ‘Part of it,’ he grated, his heart breaking into a gallop as her hair brushed across his chest, and he thought of what else married people did. And people who were not married, either, when the urge took them.

  He had arranged it so that she was lying on his left side, his injured side. But she did not think he would like her to kiss the scarred side of his face. So she leaned across him, and placed a gentle kiss on his right cheek. As she did so, her breasts grazed across the hair-roughened surface of his chest. He sucked in a sharp breath.

  ‘What did I do wrong?’

  His eyes were squeezed shut. ‘Nothing,’ he grated. ‘Lie down. Lie down at once.’

  Chastened, she did so.

  And shifted away, until she was right on the very edge of the mattress. But he could feel the warmth emanating from her skin. Could hear her breathing. Shaky, uneven breaths, as though…

  ‘You are not crying, are you?’

  ‘Of course not!’ came her muffled response.

  He rolled on to his side, raised himself up on his injured arm and looked down into her face with concern.

  ‘Yes, you are…’ he groaned ‘…and it is all my fault. I have been a complete b-beast today, have I not?’

  ‘N…no…’

  ‘Yes, I have. I know it.’ When he thought back over the way he had treated her, he was amazed she had not given way to tears much sooner. What kind of man forced a timid young virgin to strip naked on her wedding night? Repulsed her so curtly after she had drawn the courage to place a shy kiss on his ravaged face?

  ‘Forgive me, Deborah?’ He ran his thumb along the poor, bruised lower lip that she had been chewing more and more as the stresses of the day had piled up.

  ‘Of course I forgive you.’ She sighed, looking up at him solemnly with tear-drenched eyes.

  God, but he wanted to kiss her. If he could manage to be gentle, could she manage to stomach it? He thought she, of all women, might really be brave enough. Look at what she had already endured at his hands. All day long she had borne the brunt of the emotions that churned inside him. And had stoically maintained a dignified mien.

  He lowered his head and gently sucked her lower lip into his mouth, soothing it with his tongue.

  He felt a tremor run through her, and broke the kiss, with a feeling of intense regret. He should have known she would recoil.

  ‘Are you afraid of me?’ he asked ruefully, looking down into her face. Her hair had fanned out across the pillows, making her look…he gulped…incredibly alluring. He gritted his teeth as a fresh flood of desire surged through him. ‘You do not need to be. Though I don’t suppose after today’s performance you will believe me….
’

  ‘No!’ she replied, as he made to shift away from her. ‘I am not afraid of you. Not at all. Only—’ She broke off, and began chewing at her lower lip again.

  ‘What are you afraid of?’

  ‘That I might not please you,’ she admitted, her eyes darting away from his.

  ‘There has been no pleasing me today, has there?’ he admitted, brushing his thumb over the lip she seemed so intent on abusing. As he recalled how soft her mouth had felt under his own, his breath hitched in his chest.

  ‘I am sorry,’ she said solemnly. ‘I wish I knew…’

  ‘You have nothing to be sorry for!’ he insisted. She could not help the way she was. He did not even know now why seeing her in her true light should have hurt him so deeply. Women were none of them what they appeared. Even Lensborough’s wife, a woman who had a reputation for being shy and demure, had turned out to have a sordid secret buried in her past. Before that marriage could proceed, they’d had to deal with a villain who had been blackmailing her for years.

  ‘Truly?’ she asked, with a hopeful expression. ‘Even the kiss…’ she persisted. ‘Was that all right?’ Her face fell. ‘You did not seem to like it all that much.’

  ‘The kiss was perfect.’ He thought of the way her breasts had brushed across his chest, the way her hair had hung round both their faces like a curtain of living silk, cocooning them in a moment of dark intimacy. And how he had wanted to pull her fully on top of him, hold her in place and thrust up inside her. He swore under his breath.

  ‘I wish to God I could trust myself to kiss you again.’

  She frowned up at him. ‘I don’t understand. If you want to kiss me, then why don’t you?’

  ‘Because, my sweet little innocent, it will not stop at kisses. You would be shocked if I were to tell you…to show you…’ The breath hitched in his chest again as his mind flooded with a series of images so erotic, he was amazed the sheets did not go up in flames.

  ‘No, I won’t,’ she assured him in a breathy little voice. ‘You said kisses were only part of what married people do. And…I don’t want to stop at kisses. I want all of it.’

  ‘You don’t know what you are asking,’ he growled.

  She looked crestfallen. ‘And you don’t want to show me,’ she said, turning over on to her side.

  ‘What!’ He pulled her over so that she lay on her back. ‘What I want right now, is…what I want…’ He groaned, finally abandoning his attempts to hold back. He plundered Deborah’s mouth, plunging his fingers into her hair to anchor her against the force of his kiss. Need ripped through him, sweeping aside any thoughts of restraint. He looped one leg over hers, pinning her body beneath his, wanting to feel the softness of her skin against the full length of his own hardened need.

  She arched up against him. For one terrible moment he thought she was trying to push him off. But instead, she looped her arms round his neck and kissed him back for all she was worth.

  It was like striking a spark into dry kindling.

  Just as he had known it would, any hope of initiating her gently went up in smoke. Amazingly, she seemed as greedy for sensation as he felt. She matched him, kiss for kiss, touch for touch, until the moment when he went to push her legs apart. Though she opened for him willingly, and he found her lusciously ready for his possession, it still hurt her. He felt no regret when she gave a yelp of pain, only a soaring triumph at the audible proof she was his now, utterly his in a way no other woman had ever been. And when she began to move against him again, winding her legs about his waist, her little hands clawing at his back, he felt a rush of power, that he had somehow, miraculously, against all the odds, brought her to this pitch of wild abandon.

  He felt as though their rising pleasure was fusing them together. It was swifter, more intense, than anything he could ever have envisioned. For a blinding second or two, when he felt her convulse around him, crying out her rapture, he felt as though he had left the hell of his existence behind, and found a slice of heaven. When he came back to earth, he was shocked to find his face was wet with tears. He had to bury his face in her neck to stifle the shuddering sobs that shook his whole body.

  How could a mere woman reduce him to this? He pulled away, rolling on to his back and flinging his arm over his face. He could not let her see what she did to him. If she said one word that mocked him, gave him so much as one look that showed she knew the power she could wield over him, he would make her rue the day she was born!

  When he had regained control over himself, he lowered his arm and turned his head to confront her.

  Her eyes were closed, her lips parted, her cheeks flushed with sleep.

  Relief flooded through him, leaving him limp and shaken. There was no need to deal with her now. If he played his cards right, she would never know how deeply her response had moved him.

  For she must never know. Once a woman got the upper hand, a man was doomed. Let her but guess how much he desired her, and she would start to trade on it.

  Women were all the same. Deep down, they were scheming, manipulative creatures who would twist a man round their fingers, to get what they wanted.

  Well, no woman was going to manipulate him. And if Deborah tried it, she would soon find she had picked the wrong target.

  Chapter Seven

  Bliss. There was no other word for it. Deborah stretched, and yawned, her whole being thrumming with lazy sensuality.

  Her sleep had been deep, and completely restful, nestled against the strong body of the man she loved. Sighing, she snuggled closer, daringly placing one hand upon his waist and pressing a kiss against his back.

  He rolled over, and looked down at her with a perplexed frown.

  He had hoped that last night had been an aberration. He had reasoned that he must have been more worried about his ability to function normally than he had admitted to himself. That was why he had wept. It had been relief on finding he was whole, in that respect. It was not unprecedented. One of the company sergeants, one of the most hard-bitten men he had ever known, had wept with relief when the regimental surgeon had told him they could save his arm.

  Last night’s outpouring of emotion had nothing to do with the particular woman he was with.

  And there was no reason why his heart should seem to be expanding and melting within his chest, just because she was touching him voluntarily this morning.

  He was damned if he was going to melt into emotional mush every time his wife reached out to him!

  He sat up abruptly, plucking her hand from his body, and flinging it from him.

  ‘We have no time for that. We need to get up, and on the road. Go to your room, now, and get dressed.’

  Shaken by the vehemence of his rejection, Deborah slid from the bed, fumbling her arms into the totally inadequate silken wrapper that had lain on the floor all night. He would not even look at her, but lay with his arm flung across his eyes as though the very sight of her made him angry.

  Not that she could believe he held her personally in aversion, or he would not have asked her to marry him at all. But she could not forget the stunned look on his face when he had rolled over, and seen that it was her. Just before the shutters had come down, and he had repulsed her, he had looked positively confused.

  Then it hit her with blinding clarity.

  She was not Susannah.

  Head bowed, she fled from the room, shutting the door firmly behind her.

  For a few moments, she sat on the edge of her untouched bed, her arms wrapped about her middle, which seemed to be completely hollowed out.

  She was glad that Linney would be sharing the carriage with them today. She did not know how she would have coped being shut up with her husband, not today. She felt he had reduced her to nothing, somehow, by throwing her out of his bed this morning.

  And she was nothing, to him.

  Last night, she had interpreted his groans of pleasure as a sign that he had felt something for her. But while she had been pulsing with love, all he
had wanted was a convenient female body. She understood now, in the clear light of day, why he had spoken of urges, rather than love, when he had insisted they share a bed.

  She found it hard work to climb into the carriage later, weighed down as she was by the conviction that not only did he not particularly care which woman he used to satisfy those urges, but that in order for him to be so proficient at it he must have done it with many other women. He had known exactly how to touch her, where to press his lips, to reduce her to a quivering mass of throbbing need.

  He did not seem inclined to talk today, either, though she could feel his eyes upon her from time to time. Once, she returned his look, flinching at the ferocious blast of hostility that met her gaze.

  Depression settled over her then, like a greasy pall. She felt unloved, and used and so lonely! Why had she ever imagined she could reach him and heal him? He did not want to be healed, least of all by her.

  Had she made a terrible mistake, in marrying such a deeply wounded man? She certainly felt way out of her depth with him this morning, and half-convinced that she would not be able to keep her head above water for very much longer, unless he threw her some kind of lifeline.

  ‘We are here,’ he said, jolting her out of her silent misery.

  They were slowing down to pass through a pair of wrought-iron gates, set between two stone pillars.

  ‘Wh-where is this, exactly?’ she plucked up the courage to ask. ‘Am I permitted to know, now?’

  ‘There is no harm in telling you now we are here, no,’ he grunted. ‘You cannot blab to anyone, and it would be too late to do anything about it, anyway. This is The Dovecote. In the county of Berkshire. Our new home.’

  He craned his neck to look out of the window, as they swept round a curve in the drive, and a house came into view.

  It was not as big as Deborah had imagined it would be from the way he had talked about it. The four-square, three-storey building was not even as big as the vicarage where she had grown up. She would guess it had no more than six or seven bedrooms, and the grounds that surrounded it were more of a large garden than an estate. Had he put her through so much unhappiness for this?