ROMANCE: His Reluctant Heart (Historical Western Victorian Romance) (Historical Mail Order Bride Romance Fantasy Short Stories)

by Jane Prescott

  Later, as they lay together in the hay, her head on his shoulder and one arm across the broad expanse of his chest, everything around them was calm. It had been a long time since Anabelle had felt that safe, and it was perhaps no surprise at all that the place where she felt most cared for was in Henry Princely's arms. As she recalled what had just happened between them on the hay, she felt no shame. Looking up at the hayloft that was above them, she felt instead that everything in her life had come full circle, and if this was the beginning, rather than the end, then it was a good place to be. The last time she was here and feeling like this, Lady Givens was still alive and Henry Princely was demanding that she be his wife.

  “Did you mean what you said before, Henry?” she asked him suddenly, tilting her face up to catch his profile in repose.

  “About what?”

  “About asking me to marry you,” she replied, after a moment's hesitation.

  He looked down at her from the corner of his eye, then closed his eyes again. “Would you regret what just happened between us if I did not?”

  Anabelle's heart beat faster, but she considered the question; Henry had never before given any indication of asking nonsense questions, so here he was again, demonstrating the kind of masculine vulnerability she was fast beginning to understand was his bread and butter. “No,” she answered him finally. “I would not. I came to you willingly, and you made me feel safe.”

  Henry rolled up, taking her with him in the process. Taking her hands in his and placing them on his chest, he looked Anabelle right in the eyes with a look so piercing it clean took her breath away. “We have more in common than anyone else I know, sweetheart. I would do what we just did every night for the rest of my life with you and never grow tired of it. Do you understand how potent that is? And it is not because you are the most beautiful woman in the world to me. It is because I know that you do not hide your real face from me, that there is no falseness in your joy, and that you would do this with nobody else.”

  Anabelle gulped. She could not stop the shaking that seemed to come from somewhere deep inside of herself.

  Henry kissed her hands and continued. “I am saying that I wish to roll around in the hay with you, and then I wish to speak with you. You are my helpmate and my partner. Anabelle Givens, will you build a future with me, or will you make me ask you to marry you a third time today?”

  She laughed aloud, a shaky, relieved laugh that betrayed how terrified she was for the length of his soliloquy. “I will marry you, Henry Princely. I will be your lady.”

  “Your Grace,” he said with an impish smile.

  “Your Grace,” she cracked back, and the day shone bright around them.

  * * *

  “So you ended up with the Givens girl,” slurred Lady Princely from the velvet-backed chair.

  It had been an interesting day for all parties involved. The wedding arrangements had been swiftly arranged, with Jack Whetstone having traveled to the nearest magistrate to obtain the special wedding license. There had been some talk as to why exactly the wedding had happened quite so quickly, but Henry and Anabelle had not cared. After the wedding feast and party was over, Henry had decided to brave bringing Anabelle over to the Princely mansion.

  Years had passed it by as they had Anabelle's childhood home, but because it was her childhood imagination that had captivated Henry as a child, she had never seen it much. Fantastically clean and spacious, Anabelle could see that Henry put a lot of work into maintaining it; his father's bedchamber remained largely untouched since his passing. When she asked Henry why that was, thinking to a few rooms in her own home that had also begun to grow cobwebs as of late, he shook off the question and quickly changed the subject. It also seemed that his mother, who Anabelle remembered as a lady of great industriousness, was present, as well.

  As they had neared the drawing room, Anabelle noticed a tension in Henry's face. “What are you afraid of, darling?” she asked him as they neared the heavy oak doors, intricately carved with bronze reliefs.

  Henry hesitated, taking in the wide-eyed concern of his newly minted wife. “It has been a long time since you have seen my mother, Anabelle,” he finally said, taking her hand and tucking it into his arm. “Do you remember what your father was like, towards the end?”

  Anabelle nodded, recalling how she had tried to hide evidence of her father's debauchery from everyone.

  “My mother has not been quite the same since my father passed, and I am afraid she did not deal with his illness as smoothly as I did.”

  “You told me about the decanters, Henry,” she told him gently, squeezing his hand.

  “I know,” he answered, unable to meet her eyes. “But, to know how someone used to be, to recognize their potential, and then to have watched them fall so low..” he trailed off, unable to continue.

  “You do not have to deal with this alone anymore,” she told him, her heart in her eyes. They walked in together.

  Lovely Lady Princely's face had long since set into a fine web work of lines that made her seem far older than she was. She sat with a glass of something brown and liquid at a chair in her dressing gown, seemingly oblivious to the momentous occurrences of the day that had just passed. Taking in the white wedding gown on Anabelle, something registered, however, and the words with which she greeted her only son and his bride were informal bordering on rudeness. Recalling her father's own behavior when he was in the cups, Anabelle knew better than to take offense.

  “Yes, and I ended up with little Lord Princely,” Anabelle told her, taking a seat opposite from her mother-in-law.

  A shadow of a smile passed over the older woman's face and was swiftly replaced by a look of wistfulness as she took in her very blond, very lion-maned son as he settled in beside his new wife. “He is not so little anymore,” croaked Lady Princely, taking a drink of whatever was in her cup.

  Anabelle looked at Henry, whose face was knotted with anxiety. “No, he's very large now, isn't he? And for that I am glad, for if I were still able to push him into the hay and cry uncle, that would make for a most unorthodox marriage, do you not agree, Lady Princely?”

  For a moment, there was a sharp silence at Anabelle's gamble, and then Henry Princely heard the most delightful sound that had he had heard in the mansion in years. His mother, wound tighter than a fist despite the drink, let out a short, snorting laugh. Henry looked at his new wife with amazement, for it seemed that she was full of even more surprises than he had originally anticipated.

  His mother, in turn, stood up from the velvet chair and smoothed out her skirts. “Well,” she said, more conversationally than he had heard in years, “I suppose it is a good thing that he is grown now. Although I cannot say that I care much for the state of his hair. You look positively bestial, Henry, do something about that,” she told him, smoothing out the great shaggy head with her fingers. Something warm passed through Henry, something he had been missing for many years.

  As she neared the door of the drawing room, Lady Princely turned back to the couple. “And I am glad it was you, Anabelle,” she said, with a spark of warmth for the red haired girl before her. “I know the ladies are supposed to stay behind in the woodwork, but you always struck me as the type of woman who knew her own worth. Do not let him boss you around,” she said, and tugged open the doors, leaving behind her just a faint hint of her presence.

  “I won't,” called out Anabelle in her wake.

  “So I am to continue eating hay under your rule, am I?” queried Henry, stroking his wife's delicate wrist with his fingers. Anabelle closed her eyes and her lashes fluttered against her cheekbones in response to the sensuous touch.

  “How else am I supposed to secretly rule this household?” she asked, but there was a thickness in her voice that she could not disguise.

  Henry tipped her chin up and looked directly into her warm brown eyes. “You already rule my heart,” he told her, and kissed her inviting mouth for all he was worth. The force of it caught her off gua
rd, and she felt him put everything into that kiss, all his desire, all his gratitude, all his relief at having found her after so many years apart. “Thank you for Mother,” he whispered after he had come up for air. They knelt their heads together for many long moments, and Henry's fingers danced over the fine bones of her wrist, making her pulse jump.

  “Always,” she answered him, blood rushing through her body.

  “Betsy has your room ready upstairs,” he told her, looking into her face inquisitively. “Shall I meet you up there in an hour?”

  Mutely, Anabelle nodded. Outside of the drawing room, Betsy waited to take her up to the most glorious bedchamber Anabelle had seen in years. Plush rugs over the floors, and in the center, one enormous four-poster bed that left no doubt at all as to its purpose. Betsy wanted to stay and help her disrobe, but after the girl had undone all the buttons on the back of her dress and unlocked her trunk, Anabelle bade her leave. She had gotten to this moment without anybody's influence save her own, and that is how she wanted to enter this union.

  Anabelle's heart was in her throat. She would have loved to turn to Isadora in that moment and tell her she had none of the fears that usually plague gently bred ladies on their wedding nights, but she would be lying. There was still a distance between her and Isadora ever since that day she caught her out at the tracks with Devon Haversham, but with the panic that was fast rising up in her body, Anabelle wished that they could have put it behind them so that she could have somebody to speak with now. She wondered what she would say to her sister in this moment, and then, with a chord of sadness, she wondered what the late Lady Givens would tell her, as well.

  She knew that it was Henry Princely; she loved him and had for over a decade, and counted herself luckier than many women. But still, he was a man. And as attractive as she found him, she still harbored some doubts in her mind. In the depth of his kisses, she felt a hunger she was terrified, secretly, that she could not satisfy all on her lonesome, and the anxieties of her mind threatened to take over as she pictured Henry doing the very trendy taking-on-a-mistress bit.

  From her chest, Anabelle pulled out the special wedding night ensemble she had prepared. It had many hooks and loops, but she managed them all on her own. Smoothing out the garters holding up her white silk stockings once she was done, she glanced at herself in the mirror on the vanity and was struck, for the first time in so many years, by how ravishing she truly looked. And it made her incredibly sad, just for a moment, but one that seemed to go on forever, that she had had nobody to talk to about this beforehand. Not for the first time in her life, she missed her mother. In a clarity of mind, she realized that this, this was the root of all her fears, that she had been abandoned so many times in so many ways that she could not trust Henry fully. But she would have to.

  Sighing, she closed her dressing gown over the provocative ensemble that she had added to her chest just before leaving Dudley Manor. Her clever fingers had worked the lace into an over-dress for the white silk corset, made without whalebone so that it hugged, rather than constrained her curves. Her low-sloping, full breasts were held up by delicate triangles of fabric, the thin straps contrasting beautifully with her collarbone and shoulders. When Henry entered, Anabelle was perched on the edge of the bed like a nymph, a mix of sensuality and innocence that caught at him, somewhere in his nether regions, but also with a pang to the chest.

  It was unreal, much like a dream often is. Everything rolled together when he saw her, the image of the girl he kissed in the hay and the beautiful woman she had become. His Grand Tour had offered him multiple opportunities in which to indulge himself with female favors, but never once had Henry found himself actually nervous. He moved to her side on the bed, heart thumping in his chest like it was he who was the virgin, not she.

  “I'm scared, Henry,” she whispered softly, unable to look him in the eyes.

  He reached out for her small hand, clasped it in his. “You never have anything to fear from me, Anabelle,” he told her, and when she looked up at him, he leaned in and lightly feathered a kiss on her lips.

  She sank into it. It was not that there was no hunger in that kiss. It was simply that it was a kiss of a different sort. In that kiss, in that melding of soft mouths together, Anabelle gave her consent, she poured her trust into the boy who was once her childhood friend and would now become her lover. She reached up her hands and cupped his face in them, that dear, sweet face.

  It lengthened as slowly, Henry parted Anabelle's lips with his tongue. She received him bit by bit, sucking it into her mouth and rolling it like candy. He moaned lightly and drew her body towards him. One of the sleeves of the dressing gown fell off her shoulder, exposing bare skin offset by silk. Looking down, Henry betrayed his face to Anabelle, and the look on it as his eyes took in one half of her corset-clad body thrilled her, allowed her to feel the power of her womanhood; she had never imagined a man could look at her that way, much less a man who impressed her in so many ways. Lifting his chin with her finger so that he was looking her right in the eyes, Anabelle untied her dressing gown, stood, and let it pool to the floor.

  In sight of her, Henry had forgotten how to breathe. Curves, generous curves, everywhere, with skin as smooth as the silk on her corset. Willing himself to slow down and not throw her on the bed and ravage her there and then, he raised a hand to one of her beautifully rounded hips and drew her closer to him. One last look up at Anabelle's expectant face and he buried his head between the mounds of her silk-covered breasts, breathing in the heady scent there.

  Anabelle's breath hitched. There was something so primal about his touch that it was all she could do not to lose her self-control as she clasped his head closer to her chest. She heard the smack of a little kiss and his hands traveled up her calves, the backs of her thighs, and finally, pleasingly along her backside, which Henry kneaded in his palms. She knew that he could feel her heartbeat accelerate, and the thought of it appealed to her. His hands did not stop their exploration there; nimbly his fingers climbed up the smooth skin of her back and climbed up into her hair.

  The pressure of his fingers was rapturous; he buried his hands in her head, massaging her scalp until Anabelle found herself weak in the knees. Was it possible that something could feel so good? she wondered. She leaned her head back into his fingers, and the image of their stance in her mind electrified her; she let loose the softest of groans, and finally, Henry looked up. There was a wicked glint in his eyes, had Anabelle had hers open to see it; instead, she felt his hands curl over her shoulders and deftly slide the thin straps of her undergarment off her shoulders, pulling them down to her waist until all her creamy soft curves were bared to the room.

  He drew a sharp breath and she looked at him. Grabbing a hold of her right thigh, he pulled her forward so that her knee was on his left side, upsetting her balance and causing her to have to rest more of her weight on him. He pressed his hand into the small of her back, arching her so that her breasts thrust more prominently into his face. As he stroked a hand down each of her beautiful globes, he willed himself not to lose his composure, to savor this moment with her. Her head did a slow rotation on her neck at the sensation of his hand on her, drawing circles around each of her breasts until she gasped aloud and squirmed, willing him to touch the center jewels with her entire body, yet not with her words.

  One hand on his shoulder and Anabelle was bent over his head. Henry slid his hand lower and lower on her abdomen until his fingers skirted the edge of the tantalizing little girdle to which her stockings were attached. One long digit skimmed the top of her stockings, brushing against the silky skin inside, and Anabelle whimpered. Spurred on by the sound, Henry touched her higher and higher until he had laid his hand flush against her most secret skin, feeling the soft promise of her through the fabric of her undergarment. Anabelle drew in a ragged gasp.

  In a fluid motion, Henry upended them both. Anabelle barely had time to blink before she was on her back and her bare breasts were laid out be
fore Henry Princely like a feast. Moving her up until her back and head were cushioned against the lush pillows, Henry drank her in. Positioning himself above her, he dipped his head down for another kiss, this one hungrier, more full of purpose. Anabelle felt the blood rush to other, more sensitive areas of her anatomy, warmth and excitement pooling intoxicatingly between her legs. She had never felt this way before, never believed that this feeling could be possible. Still, there was an ache somewhere deep in her stomach that nagged at her. Surely, there was more?

  Stroking her cheek, Henry smiled. She was so tender and lovely, his young wife, and, what mattered most, she was allowing herself to be so completely vulnerable to him. And then Anabelle turned her head towards his hand and his opinion of her changed forever.

  Capturing his index finger with her bottom lip and teeth, Anabelle instinctively drew it into her mouth. Running her tongue up and down the digit, Anabelle began to suck, the pink pucker of her lush mouth riding up and down the digit, slowly at first, and then faster. Quite suddenly, she was a new person altogether, someone so utterly seductive and primal that Henry knew he could not contain the tightness pressing against his breeches for much longer. As she parted her lips to release her tongue and run it in circles around his fingertip, Henry caught a mischievous little glance that she threw up at him and knew that Anabelle was playing a game. Frankly, one that he enjoyed a great deal, but he could not help the competitive spirit that rose up in him. He would be damned if his wife would best him at so intimate a game.

  Removing the teased digit from her mouth, he bent to swiftly kiss her before she knew what was happening. Dropping his face down to hers, he peppered her cheeks and forehead with kisses, her eyelids closing against him, her heartbeat thrumming against her throat. As he reached her chin, the kisses slowed, and when he reached the curve of it where it joins the neck, they became altogether deliciously tardy. She smelled musky and excited, and the faint dew of her perspiration tasted wonderful against his lips. The small kisses lengthened and as a slight whimper rumbled in the back of her throat, Henry flicked his tongue against the sensitive skin and reached up to cup her breast in his hand.