Linda Needham

by The Wedding Night

  Her marvelous dragon reared up, nostrils wide and scenting, his sinew and flesh glistening bronze with sweat. He bellowed her name, caught up her bottom into his splayed fingers and then plunged into her, far, far deeper than he had been before, hotter still, and again and again and again. Then, with a convulsive groan, he filled her with a rapturous, spilling heat; his seed, a gift she would cherish but grieve over. It would find no purchase in her womb tonight.

  And she wept.

  Like a great, spent beast falling back to earth, Jack lowered himself to his elbows, snorting air in huge gulps, his muscles still quivering, his hips still pulsing into her. He whispered, “This, Mairey, my delicious love, is what happened to Balforge and his princess.”

  She kissed his mouth, where he tasted of salt and their own erotic fragrance. “You mean she gave herself to him like a wanton?” Mairey clung to his priceless, quixotic romance, not wanting it to end. Not ever.

  “Oh, yes.” He was still inside her, less full now but a tumid congestion that made her want him again. Right now. “They made love through the night—”

  “I’d like that, too.”

  His dark eyes had taken on a brilliant and determined gleam. “And, much to the joy of everyone in their kingdom, they were married the next day.”

  Mairey’s heart ka-thumped, and then somersaulted; terror and joy mingled as sizzling steam.

  “Married?” He couldn’t be thinking that! Wasn’t! She tried to sound scholarly, but he was sliding his huge hand between them to cover her breast, finding her nipple with his fingers. That delicate twist, a husbandly fondness that made her gasp. “A princess can’t marry a dragon.”

  “Oh, yes you can, Mairey.” He was making slow and devastating love to her ear, to the ridges and the valleys, with his teeth and with his tongue.

  “Me, Jack? Why would I marry a dragon?”

  His eyes glittered darkly when he turned her chin. “Because you love me as madly as I love you.”

  Panicked, but slowed by languid limbs and an overwhelming love for him, Mairey tried to scramble out from under his weight, but he was as solid as a mountain, lazing on her like a sunsated lizard. “I don’t like the way this story ends, Jack.”

  “It’s the only possible way.” He shifted onto his elbow, his breathing still ragged; still dallying with her nipple, a tether between them that she couldn’t break for the budding pleasure that was stirring her hips to move again. “You didn’t think I would take your virginity and then leave you?”

  “You didn’t take anything from me, Jack; I gave myself to you willingly.”

  “Brazenly, my dear.” She felt a dreadful loss when he shifted his legs and slipped out of her. A plea was on her tongue to call him back, but he replaced his fullness with his inflaming fingers, and she was filled again with the shock of bliss.

  “Oh, Jack!”

  He laughed gently against her ear. “Another reason that I love you, Mairey.”

  And, shameless bandit that she was, she took his stroking as she had his shaft, her hips meeting and matching him, crying out his name only a moment later, clinging to him, thrusting against him until she was exhausted and breathless, and more in love with him than she could ever imagine. And sadder than she’d ever been in her life.

  “There, sweet. You love me.”

  “Sexual urges,” she managed between close-caught breaths that threatened to be sobs.

  “In some, perhaps, but not in you, Mairey—else we would have consummated our heady alliance weeks ago.” He was nuzzling her neck, her throat, a sated beast toying with a mouse. “Under your desk and mine, in the greenhouse and in the broom closet at Windsor. But I wouldn’t do that to you, Mairey, and you wouldn’t do that to us. Not without love; not without commitment.”

  “It’s impossible. I can’t marry you.” Mairey wriggled out from under him and up against the bank of pillows at the headboard, frightened of his certainty and of the vistas that he offered. “Please, Jack, don’t ask me.”

  “I already have, my love. And I do again. Marry me, Miss Faelyn.”

  “No.”

  He was braced on his elbows, and her legs were spread on either side of his shoulders, knees bent, his face between her thighs and fire blazing in his eyes. Her pulse was still primed for whatever magic he planned, her heart a tattered wreck. But he reached beneath her and the pillows and dragged out a fistful of pristine, white sheet. With indescribable tenderness he wiped the dampness from her thighs and her belly and the place they had joined together.

  “We are alloyed, Mairey.” The sheet was wet and blood-streaked, the stark evidence of a fairy tale gone terribly awry. He bent his head and kissed her belly; held her with the whole of his hand, his palm pressing against her as though to keep his seed from leaving her. “You and I, and the rest of our lives.”

  The Willowmoon was her life, apart and separate from Jack. It had to stay that way. She loved him too dearly to hurt him, and that’s what would happen in the midst of some distant happiness. They would find the Knot and she would have to leave him, stealing his children and his dreams from him when all he had wanted from her was love.

  “I love you, Mairey. We have children to make together. Can’t you see that?”

  She could see it, and it made her weep.

  He left his splendorous kiss between her breasts and on her mouth as he rose up on his knees and carried her onto his lap. She took him inside her again gladly, let him increase and come and spill himself into her, until he was kissing the tears from her eyes and off her breasts. “There, now. We’ll marry tomorrow—”

  “No, Jack. I can’t!” Mairey shoved at him, taking unfair advantage of his still-fevered embrace to scramble away, across the bed and over the side. “Don’t say that! I can’t.”

  He looked so endearingly confused, confessing his love so plainly, his plans for a splendid marriage and even more splendid children.

  “Why? Do you have an appointment in the morning?”

  “Yes.”

  Jack was confounded by Mairey’s refusal of his perfectly honorable proposal, and vastly in love with the lunatic. She was standing in the middle of the room as gloriously naked as the day she was born, lying to him about some damned appointment that she thought would get in the way of their wedding day.

  “Consider it canceled, sweet. You and I are getting married tomorrow morning.” He swung out of bed himself and turned up a lamp to better gauge what Mairey was thinking in her addled head.

  “No!” She put her hand out and backed away, as though that would stop him. “I can’t marry you at all, Jack. Not ever!”

  He walked forward toward her. “Why can’t you marry me?”

  She countered his steps backward, wringing her hands. “Actually, I’m—”

  “Already married?”

  “No!”

  He’d been joking, but he was relieved to hear her furious denial. She was a complicated creature; had contrary views on life that few other women would ever entertain. He’d gained three steps on her while she stood fox-frozen in place.

  “Then why, Mairey? Are you in love with another man? Sir Dithering Walsham of the Tower, perhaps?” This one made his heart stop as he waited.

  “You can’t be serious!” The very best answer in the universe; loaded with satisfyingly appalled horror. She bumped up against his tall-winged reading chair, took a backward step up onto the seat, and stuck her heels into the cushion.

  “I’m not serious about Walsham, Mairey. But I am certain that you love me.”

  “I don’t.”

  “You do. And I love you.”

  “It won’t work between us.”

  “It already has.” He was wreathed in her scent.

  “No!” She laced her fingers, pleading, her nose so close to his he could feel her exhaling. “We’re different people: I’m a scholar and you’re a viscount.”

  “Then wedding me would make you Countess Scholar, I believe.” He knelt in the chair, enjoying the view as
lamplight played on her bobbing breasts, the sight making him hard again and aching for her. “We’ll change the Rushford escutcheon, my love. Add a phallus rampant and a willow leaf environed.”

  “This isn’t a joking matter, Jack.”

  “I’ve never been so damned serious in all my life. You are my life.”

  “What about the Willowmoon?” She closed her arms under her breasts, which only pushed them higher, nearer. “It’s…I’ve got work to do.”

  “And so have I.” He hadn’t expected to have to convince Mairey to be his wife, but he would meet the project head on. “But the Willowmoon has nothing to do with marrying and raising up children together.”

  That launched her into a full-flight panic. “It has everything to do with it!”

  He hadn’t noticed the fear in her eyes before, couldn’t imagine where it was coming from. Mairey wasn’t prone to female jitters in any form.

  “How does a silver mine have anything to do with us?”

  She opened and closed her mouth a few times, before she snorted and threw out a laugh. “I’m your employee.”

  “You’re the woman I want to spend all my days with.”

  “No! We’re partners.”

  “Indeed.”

  “I don’t love you. I don’t!” Protesting too much, my dear.

  “Ballocks, madam.” She looked small and lost, goose-fleshed and shivering from head to toe. He wasn’t sure what was frightening her about his proposal, but he’d be damned if he gave up without a fight. “Tell me why we shouldn’t be married. One reasonable reason might satisfy me, though I’m confident that there are none. Debate me with your cons.”

  “I…I don’t have to tell you anything.” Her lower lip stuck out in a weepy pout.

  “My turn, Mairey. The pros: I am irrevocably in love with you. I am obscenely rich, and well-behaved most of the time. I love your Aunt Tattie and your hat, and the fact that you wised me up to my follies, and I am mad about your precocious sisters. Who, by the way, unanimously agree that I should marry you without delay.”

  She closed her hands over her mouth, her eyes wide in horror. “You discussed our marriage with them?”

  “Briefly, at their instigation. They are very wise. And you are my life, Mairey. To the end of my days.”

  “No, Jack.” That faint keening of his name, that plaintive whimper, tugged his heart up into his throat. Then huge tears suddenly pooled in her eyes, soupier than before, spilling over her cheeks in a great wash. She sobbed, her whole sweet face crumpling and working, her shoulders hunched and quaking.

  Hellfire! This wasn’t going at all well. He lifted her into his arms and held her tightly, fortified by her clinging. “I refuse to say that I’m sorry I love you, Mairey. I won’t. It’s the bloody truth. If you’ll just tell me how I offend you—”

  “No, Jack, you don’t! It’s just that—” A hiccoughing belly-sob shook her. “You’re…you’re just too…too—”

  “Too what?” He was ready for the worst.

  “Too wonderful.” She was howling again in her inexplicable anguish.

  “I’m too—” Wonderful? Not greedy or pig-headed, not an unredeemable monster? Wonderful he could work with. Irresistible might take a few days.

  “So—” A hiccough. “So—” Another sob. “So, you’d better just forget about meeeee.”

  Jack tucked her chin over his shoulder and held her close, letting her tears fall while he tried his most wonderful to soothe her.

  “Ah, Mairey, if I’ve learned anything in eighteen years of waiting for my life to begin, if I’ve learned anything from you at all, it’s that I must champion my family with my bare hands and that I must love them relentlessly, as I love you.”

  Which only brought on more weeping, and led finally, blissfully, in the wee hours of the morning, to a fevered bout of lovemaking that set Jack’s ears ringing and had Mairey crooning his name in a most encouraging way.

  Chapter 17

  “Impossible, arrogant, pig-headed man!” Mairey stood in the parlor of the lodge, stuffing her most recent notes from the Gazetteer into her work-satchel, and snuffling away the tears that seemed to burst forth in floods of biblical proportions whenever she thought about Jackson Rushford.

  Which was so bloody constantly that she’d not only picked up the man’s cursing but she’d also lost the ability to put one thought in front of the other.

  Six weeks ago the man had resolved that they should be married, and since then he had led an unflagging campaign toward meeting that resolution. Leave it to him to be honorable and persistent after he had deflowered a virgin.

  Marry Jack? Ha! There was a cautionary tale to be collected and cataloged.

  Viscount Jackson Rushford was her greatest enemy in all creation. Even now he was dogging her tracks, eager to accompany her on today’s trip to the British Museum, sniffing after the ripening scent of the Willowmoon Knot, no longer confused by the scent of red herrings.

  To make matters worse, he was damnably cheery, ruthlessly loving, and paid no attention at all to her rebuffs. Which, she had to admit, in recent days had become downright indistinguishable from encouragement.

  She couldn’t help it. He was masterfully cunning in his crusade. The girls crowded him with their love, charmed him out of a pony for each, and he took it all in his stride, like a huge old hound who didn’t mind having his ears pulled, but who would tear out the throat of anyone who tried to harm his family.

  His family: that’s what they all had become to him. Not a substitute for the one he had lost so long ago, but a new beginning which, as he had stated, he was pursuing relentlessly.

  She couldn’t deny him a minute of his newfound happiness. It would be cruel of her; would haunt her for all her days if she did. Just as he haunted her nights. She hadn’t been sleeping well lately, flopping around in her bed until her nightgown was sweat damp and her head was spinning in circles.

  A spinning that sometimes tilted the ground even in the middle of the day.

  Her stomach gave a rolling lurch, breakfast bubbled and squeaked for a moment, and settled only when she sat down and gripped the edge of the table to stop it from whirling.

  “He’s here, Mairey, dear.” Tattie came trilling through the arch, beaming at whoever was following her—as if Mairey couldn’t tell who that was. “His lordship has come for you.”

  Jack filled up the doorway with his height, and her heart to the brim with his courting smile. Relentlessly.

  “Good morning, my love,” he said, as though they were intimately alone and the world belonged just to them and her aunt wasn’t glancing eagerly between them, patting her hands together, ready to applaud, or pray, or both. “You look good enough to eat.”

  “Jack!” Mairey frowned at him, but flushed to the tips of her breasts, which had become tender and weighty since that night she’d spent in his arms.

  Jack’s smile grew lazy and wicked as he leaned against the jamb, obviously aware of the crimson blush staining her cheeks—and proud of who’d caused it.

  Aunt Tattie only giggled—not a dignified sound from a woman of her age and refinement. “Doesn’t our Mairey look pretty today?”

  “More lovely every day, Tattie. She puts the sun and the moon to shame.”

  More giggling from a woman who had been perfectly sane and a dangerous she-wolf of the highest rank when they’d first arrived at Drakestone.

  Now Aunt Tattie was Jack’s chief promoter. “Doesn’t his lordship look fine today, Mairey?” Maybe even a bloody conspirator.

  “He’s dressed well enough for a trip to the museum.” Damn the man for his persistence. And bless him. “We’d best get going. It’s nearly eight.”

  “Shall we, Mairey?” He proffered his proper elbow.

  “No,” she said, answering his artful pun sharply, but receiving a patient, boyish grin in reply. She took his arm, treasuring its warmth, painfully aware that she was playing with fire.

  Jack always looked uncomfortable in
London’s private hackneys. They were never tall enough for his head, nor was the foot-well wide enough for his legs. Whether he sat beside her or across from her, riding with him was an intimate affair. Today he lounged in the seat opposite, his knees outside hers, his gaze attentive and too loving.

  “I missed you yesterday, Mairey.”

  I miss you always, Jack.

  He’d been in Manchester again, systematically combing the parish registries and orphanage files. Mairey had gone with him the first time, to show him his mother’s grave. He left a fistful of flowers that Anna had picked, quiet tears that made her ache for him all the more, and a stalwart promise to find his sisters.

  He had fired Dodson with an amazing amount of restraint.

  “If I kill him, Mairey, I’ll go to jail,” he’d told her. “I’ll never find my sisters, and I’ll never be able to take you to wife. The bastard isn’t worth it.”

  Then he had taken up his own investigation with all the fervor of a zealot newly come to a demanding God.

  In truth he was very good; he had a memory for names and dates and places that made him dangerous—because unfortunately, he had transferred this newfound skill to the investigation of the Willowmoon Knot.

  Now she replied, “I’m sorry I couldn’t go to Manchester with you, Jack. But you found a name that might lead you to Emma.” He had come home to the lodge elated but wounded by his efforts, and needing a family to share in his joy. Mairey had slipped into his embrace without thinking and had stayed far too long.

  “A slim lead. I still can’t believe that it’s come so quickly.” His grin was so natural and hopeful. “I’ve drafted letters to three manor houses, asking to see their employment records. The letters went out in this morning’s post.”

  “And you did it without me.” She hadn’t left him stranded.

  “Because of you, Mairey.” He leaned across the cab and took her hands. “Marry me today.”