Linda Needham

by The Wedding Night

  “I’m so damned happy, Mairey.”

  “You look it, Jack.” She cozied her hands around his waist inside his coat.

  “Are you happy? You didn’t want this marriage.”

  She caught her lip, and tears sprang to her eyes. “Oh, but I did, Jack. I did with all my heart.”

  “The child changed your mind?”

  “You did. I’ve never been happier in all my life. Never felt so loved.”

  “You are.”

  “Nor quite so naked.” She glanced down her length, then up into his eyes.

  “You’re cold, love. I can see it here.” He covered her breast with his palm, hungry for the hard little nipple and its shadowed boundary. He leaned down, drew its twin into his mouth, and wanned it, rolled it.

  She sucked air between her teeth and wriggled beneath him, pressing him closer with her enticements.

  “Not cold at all, Jack. Just wanting you to come join me in my fantasy.”

  “I am astounded, madam, how our thoughts entwine.”

  Laughing brightly, her eyes catching all the sparkling grays of the twilight, his unconventional wife laid her hands on top of his and slid them down to fit around the perfect curve of her hips. Then her warm hands disappeared beneath his greatcoat and his shirttails, to seize his bare haunches and give a beckoning shove with her heels.

  And she took him just inside her. Just. A suckling pressure around the end of his penis that overwhelmed him and shattered his resolve to take his time.

  He hauled her into his arms and propelled himself into her until she sat astride him, her legs hitched up around his waist. He was deeply engulfed, struggling to keep his sanity and his seat, while her muscles played him as her fingers had.

  “Oh, that’s much better.” She trembled like the willows that hid them as she gripped his upper arms, rocking on his lap, arching backward and then pitching forward, as though he were a swing and she had plans to soar to the moon.

  He wanted this ecstacy to build forever, to fly on the same trajectory as his love—preposterous, then undeniable, then absolute and timeless.

  “I want your skin against mine, Mairey.”

  “In our wedding bed.” She was clinging to his neck, breathless and sweat-slick, whimpering against his mouth.

  “Oh, yes.” He found her with his fingers, feverish and damp, her portal filled with his thickness. Her eyes got smokey, her voice sultry and low.

  “Oh! Jack! I’m—oh!” She drove against him, arched like the pale crescent moon, her hair streaming silver down her back, her gaze fastened to his. His nymph, his naiad. “I love you so!”

  “Ah, wife!” Jack came unraveled and his release thundered through him along the length of his rod. He thrust deeply, and Mairey took him to the shank. He cocooned her in his arms as he pulsed into her, gushing out his passion.

  Mairey felt every long and straining inch of him. Peace came as deeply seated as he was, and all she could do was cling to him, hoarding the last of his shuddering, already feeling the loss that would come when he wasn’t inside her.

  “The happiest night of my life, Jack.”

  “And mine.” He held her tightly as he kissed her, rocking gently with her in the moonlight, whispering of all the many nights ahead.

  He was just beginning to harden again when something rustled in the brush.

  “What was that?” Mairey hung on around Jack’s neck, and he closed his coat over her. He pulled out of her and half stood, lifting her up with his arm beneath her backside.

  “I am Viscount Rushford, the master here. Come out of hiding, immediately!”

  “Blazing toads, Jack! What if it’s the girls?” she whispered.

  “Impossible—with all their chattering, we’d have heard them a mile away.” He pulled a coin out of his pocket and hurled it into the underbrush. “Show yourself!”

  A great fluttering and flapping shook the brambles, and a blurring phantom launched itself out of its shadows right at them.

  “A hawk owl!”

  “Bloody hell!” Jack clamped his hand over Mairey’s head and dove to the right, pitching them into the stream.

  Jack shifted as he fell to take Mairey’s weight, landing with a growl on his back. Mairey bounced off his chest and then rolled into the calf-deep icy water.

  “Heavens, that’s cold!”

  “Mairey, are you all right?” Jack sputtered, reaching for her as she clambered to her feet in the gravelly bed.

  “I’m fine. But you’re going to be sore.”

  “God, you’ll freeze, wife. From lack of clothes, from this water—what’s so funny, madam?”

  But Mairey was laughing too hard to reply. He was hardly more than a shadow in the pale twilight, and shaking off the water like a hound, hitching up his trousers and fastening them when they wanted to cling to his knees.

  He lifted her off her feet and sloshed to the pile of clothes she’d left near the tree. Their tree. “Do you often sport about naked in the woods, madam?” He draped her shoulders with his coat, wet but still warm from his heat.

  “Only the occasional bath in a stream when I can’t get a room at an inn. Why?”

  “I thought as much.” He found her shoes and stuck one on her foot “But no more stream bathing, Lady Rushford, unless you’re with me.”

  “It wouldn’t be fun any other way.” Mairey stood up when she had both shoes on and stepped into her petticoats and skirt, her hair dripping all over the ruffle like little faucets.

  Jack displayed her drawers and then stuffed them into his pocket. “I like the idea of you without these under all those skirts.” His grin caught the moonlight as he lifted her into his arms and carried her the rest of the way to the front steps of the main house.

  His hair was wet and his clothes were still dripping water and flecked with moss. Mairey’s own hair was twisted ropes and leaf-strewn.

  “Welcome to our home, Lady Rushford.”

  Jack carried her through the door to Drakestone with pomp and majesty, and a whole lot of kissing.

  They met Sumner coming down the stairs, frowning at them like a disapproving father.’ Good evening, sir.”

  “You mean good wedding night, Sumner. I’d very much like you to meet the Lady Rushford. We were married today.”

  “Well, finally.” He winked at Mairey, then wrinkled his nose at their clothes. “I shall have bathwater drawn.”

  Jack left Mairey to their chamber and bathed in the laundry. “Much quicker,” he’d said, “and I welcome the cold water, madam.”

  Mairey soaked up the heat in her bath and scrubbed until she was glowing and scented with orange blossoms. Then she tucked herself into their huge bed to await her husband.

  His counterpane was lush, and the pillows, deep. She was warm and sleepy and so contented that she could feel her thoughts drifting toward dreams.

  A dragon lived there. A man-shaped one, but with a dragon’s heart—as impenetrable as it was predatory. She’d cowered from him at first, afraid that he would tear her family from her. Instead, he held her as though he thought her infinitely precious. He had kind eyes, and an honest soul, gave her his child to care for. And when the child came, he would be there to soothe her, to call her name—

  “Mairey.” Mairey, Mairey. He seemed to like her name, liked to whisper it against her mouth, to follow it with his tongue, in the same way he liked to kiss her.

  He was big, weighty like sunlight on a wheat field. And his hands were so able. Oh, yes, able to, liable to, do most anything. He could turn a hillside to rubble with a simple gesture, and that still frightened her. But most of all he loved her, loved her family, and gave her children.

  Mairey’s dream fused seamlessly with her waking.

  “I love you, Mairey.” Jack was leaning on his elbows, claiming her leg with his, tugging at her breast with his lips—little nips, little tugs, and she was making little whimpers to match his rhythm, circling her hips to bump against all his astonishing nakedness.

 
“You are particularly pliant when you’re asleep.”

  “And you arc ever-hard, husband. Ever ready.”

  “Are you?” He found her slickness with his fingers. “Mmmm, you are.” He parted her legs with his hands and caressed her until her breasts were ripe and wanting, her hips riding the clouds where Jack’s tongue played her, sought her. She rose with his tides, joined in his joyful, raucous surges, until they were both wild and straining against each other and the world was spinning.

  Yes, this was life and hope. Jack was her fairy tale come true.

  She lost herself in the bliss of their wedding night. Her husband pleasured her for hours and gave her fathomless peace and the whispering of his heart in the quiet.

  It was in the deepest night, while she was cocooned within his arms, that Jack shot up on his elbow, a wild rejoicing in his eyes.

  “Bloody hell, Mairey! I forgot!” He kissed her soundly and leaped off the bed. “I can’t believe I forgot!”

  “Forgot what?”

  “Where the devil did I put it?” He took a twice-around tour of their wedding bower, lifting damp clothes and sorting through the mess they had made in their abandon.

  “What are you looking for?”

  “Ah, yes!” He was a hunter sniffing the air as he started toward the dressing room. “My wedding gift to you.”

  “You’re wearing it, Jack.” She couldn’t help but laugh when he stopped mid-stride and turned a crimson-cheeked grio on her and then on his own half-risen penis.

  “That’ll have to wait, Mairey.” Though that didn’t look as though it was of the same opinion. “Don’t move, wife.”

  Mairey fell back against the pillows, deliciously married, profoundly in love, and admiring her husband’s flanks as he bounded into the dressing room. Hard-shadowed flanks and all that masculine equipage. No wonder it was so difficult to keep her hands off him.

  He burst back into the bedroom a moment later, stabbing around in the pockets of his soggy jacket.

  “I’ve had no time to wrap it up in a velvet bag, Mairey.”

  “Your wet jacket will do—though I can’t imagine how you slipped away from me today to find a wedding gift. Unless you divined our baby and planned our wedding for today.”

  “My hindsight is excellent; I should have seen the signs: my rosy wife and her ripening breasts and a waist which is just a bit thicker than I remembered.”

  “I was neither your wife nor amenable to your fondling.”

  “Ha! Not amenable? That’s not my recollection.”

  Mairey blushed, aching for him, because everything had turned out so very right.

  “However, Mairey, my stupendous divination talents do run to coal and lead, and, with your help—” he pulled a wadded handkerchief out of his pocket, tossed away the jacket, and planted himself in front of her on the bed, a huge, astounded grin on his face.

  “Give me your hand, Mairey.”

  A wedding ring? The absolutely dear man—it must be. Though the object wrapped up in his wet handkerchief wasn’t at all wedding-ring shaped…more like a small, thick saucer. The gladness drained out of her heart for a moment and flew away in fright, leaving her stomach flipped on edge and her head light. Her palms were damp and fisted into her lap.

  The baby again—already making itself known as forcefully as its father, interrupting her every thought.

  “Your hand, my sweet wife.” Jack was jubilant, his dark eyes gleaming the brightest she’d ever seen them while he waited impatiently with his gift.

  “All right, Jack.” Mairey smiled back at her marvelous husband and gave him her hand, trusting him. He took it to his lips, kissed her fingers and her palm, then held it flat against his bare chest, where his heart pounded as though it would fly away from her.

  “Full circle, Mairey. We were meant to find each other.”

  She hoped so; prayed that she hadn’t stolen this moment of happiness. “I love you, Jack.”

  “Which makes me the most fortunate man in the world.” He put the kerchief and its weighty contents in her palm and closed his hand over the gift.

  This odd prickling across her scalp wasn’t a manifestation of her pregnancy. It was fear, dark and cringing; an inexplicable foreboding having something to do with Jack’s wedding gift.

  “For you, Mairey. For us.”

  It came again, a great winged terror that swooped over her head and made her flinch, made her clutch her fingers around the round object. No! Not a disk. It couldn’t be!

  …one silv’red disk, anciently ornamented…

  “Jack!”

  His eyes were so guileless and proud, so eager with his harrowing secret. “Open it, Mairey.”

  No, please. Not the Willowmoon. Impossible! She didn’t want to risk it all, didn’t want to know. They could throw it into the fire, and it would be gone.

  The piece in her hand was unbearably heavy, a murky darkness inside the crumpled linen. Her fingers shook in her dread, though she tried to hold them steady as she peeled back one corner and then the next, catching the sob in her throat before Jack could hear it.

  “A crest of silver knot-work, Mairey,” he breathed. “No larger than my palm.”

  The linen fell away like the petals on a spent poppy. It was beautiful and wicked and molten hot in her hand.

  The Willowmoon Knot.

  She would know it anywhere. The sweeping spirals of willows and the cycles of the moon. The shale slopes of Nevisfell and the meanderings of the Stoney, the heart of silver and the tiny valley where her village slept. As fine a map as any that Moule could have drawn.

  Oh, Papa, what have I done?

  “Of course, my love, the achievement is yours.” Jack was bent over the Knot, his cheek next to hers, grazing her with his mouth and his fine whiskers. “You led me right to it—I merely picked it up. Though I haven’t the faintest notion what all those markings mean.”

  The end of us, Jack. Not a disk, but a lethal arrow, pointed directly at everyone she loved. Aim it anywhere and precious blood would spill. Mairey wrapped the hateful thing in the kerchief and set it on the bed beside her.

  “I’ll have to study the design myself, Jack.”

  “But not for days yet, Mairey. We’ve a marriage to begin.”

  He was such a fine man, immeasurably decent. She grasped at that tiny shred of hope and logic. He loved her. And that being so, wouldn’t he, in his enormous capacity to understand, also love what she loved? Wouldn’t he see the infamy in scraping away the willows to mine a cold-breasted metal that had no meaning to anyone? Wouldn’t he see that not all treasure can be held in the hand?

  “When did you find it, Jack?”

  He looked sheepish, a scoundrel caught doing a good deed and liking it too much. “This morning, in one of Larkenfield’s trunks. Can you imagine my luck?”

  Yes—and all of it cruel; ill-timed and far-reaching.

  “You’ve had the Knot since this morning, Jack, and you didn’t tell me.”

  “No time, my love.” He lifted her chin, studied her eyes. “You fainted, Mairey, if you recall. And then there was our baby”—he spanned her waist with his hands—“and a wedding at the registrar’s office. And we’ve been making love every moment since.” His easy smile devastated her. “Priorities.”

  “Yes.” They fell into place too easily. A pledge; a promise to keep. One of them older and bred in the bone. A daughter’s duty to her father, as deeply felt as a son’s. Jack would have understood—if she’d been able to explain to him all the reasons she had to leave him tonight.

  “I thought you’d be a little more excited, Mairey. After all, I’ve done a rather miraculous thing.”

  Her miracle. She couldn’t move for the grief bearing down on her. “You’ve overwhelmed me, Jack.”

  He feigned injured pride with one of his roguish brows. “I’ve seen you overwhelmed, my love, and you make a lot more noise than that.” He leaned her backward against the pillows and began his tender crusade to steal what lit
tle she had left of her heart. “Let me see if I can do better this time.”

  To embrace him once more, to last through all their lives—long into those empty years when she would reach out for him and he would be but her dearest memory.

  “I love you, Jack!”

  “You are my heart, Lady Rushford, forever more.”

  She took him into her, and, in the same exquisite moment, she found the Knot beneath her hip, cold and exacting. Furious and already grieving, she shoved it over the side of the bed, unwilling to share her last embrace with its shadows. It landed with a leaden clunk, a sound that echoed through her heart.

  Jack looked up from his nuzzling, a brow cocked. “Not going to sleep with the Willowmoon Knot under your pillow to help you dream about a silver mine?”

  Her wayward dragon, who would never learn his own strength, whom she loved more than her own life.

  “Oh, Jack, I’d much rather dream of us.” Mairey gloried in his touch, wept through every caress, and spent her passion for him through that final release, while the moon in its infallible course crept across the counterpane.

  Jack was deep into his untroubled dreams when she left him.

  Without another breath, for fear of collapsing into sobs and slipping back into the bed beside him, Mairey retrieved the Willowmoon Knot and stole out of Jack’s life forever.

  Chapter 19

  “Wake up, Anna!” Mairey’s hands were icy cold and shaking badly as she untucked the covers from beneath Anna’s chin. “Sweet? You’ve got to get up now.”

  Anna stretched and yawned, then blinked up at her through the dim predawn light of the garret. “Mairey? What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing, sweetheart. We’re going away.” Mairey hadn’t shed a tear since she’d gotten to the lodge—couldn’t, because there wasn’t time, and the girls would panic. She had to get them out before Drakestone House began to stir and Jack found them. She feared that most of all.

  “Going where?” Anna sat up. “Where’s Lord Jack?”

  Lost to us, love. “He’s sailing away to Canada on the morning tide, to see to an emergency in one of his mines.”