Megan Mulry

by Bound to Be a Bride

  She punched him. Rather hard, she thought with a touch of pride. “That’s exactly what I shall not be! Damn you.” She liked the sound of those long-forbidden desecrating words far more than she thought she should. “How dare you? You think I went to all the effort of escaping that destiny to fall into the indentured servitude of marriage to the first man I happened upon? The arrogance!”

  “If you would let me finish?”

  She stewed for a few more seconds, then waved her hand in his face. “Fine then. Go on.”

  “You will do my bidding in all things… here.” He reached between her legs and cupped her with a hard, possessive grab. “And here.” His other hand took one of her breasts. He began to knead the round flesh through the bone corset. She felt a relief and a budding desire unlike anything she had experienced in her shadowy dreams.

  “And always, always, here.” He leaned in and kissed her.

  He began slowly, but after a few gentle strokes of his tongue tracing her lips and the tender, silky skin just within, he began to ravage her mouth, to make it entirely his. She felt possessed. Owned, yes. But also enchanted. By a demon. The most desirable, satisfying, delectable demon lover she could have ever conjured. And she wanted to give him everything he asked for. She wanted him to do what he was doing forever. Did that not make it her decision?

  She pulled away, her breathing short and gasping.

  “I knew you were a devil the first moment I saw your face in the red glare of the campfire.”

  He touched the fabric over her nipples, carelessly bringing them to pert attention beneath his experienced touch.

  “Stop that!” she cried.

  “Why? Do you dislike it?”

  She blushed, hot and fast. “No. I like it too much,” Isabella confessed.

  A look of pure male pride crossed his face. Isabella made a mental note that he loved when she voiced her reluctant confessions.

  “But we have to get to that jeweler before we board the ship,” Isabella reminded him. “And I’m sure we have to do something to secure my passage, do we not?”

  A few feet away, the front door of one of the handsome townhouses swung open and a young dandy sauntered out. Javier bowed cordially, moving Isabella slightly behind him, and the stranger tipped his fine, tall hat to them out of courteous habit. After a second glance, however, he furrowed his brow in confusion and let his hand drop when he took in their ragged attire. His chin lifted haughtily as he continued on his way.

  Javier took her hand in his. “You are right. We should be off. Do you have your items with you now?”

  “Of course I have them with me now!” Isabella was incensed. “What sort of softhead do you take me for?”

  They were walking along as though they were any normal couple, any normal travel-weary, frayed couple, Isabella amended.

  He smiled at her, then put his hand over hers where it rested lightly on his forearm. “Pardon my foolishness. It goes without saying that you exercise only the greatest discretion and tact.”

  She looked up at him skeptically. “No need to embellish.”

  He leaned down toward Isabella and kissed her lightly on the cheek. A passing matron in heavily brocaded black silks pulled her young daughter away from them, muttering something disparaging about people who parade about the city in all manner of intimacy.

  “I told you I needed one well-made dress. As soon as I sell my… item, I must find a shop that stocks old clothes. I have heard there are such places. Do you know of any?”

  Javier continued to direct their steps. His numerous previous visits to the city for reconnaissance with his British allies in the fight against Joseph Bonaparte had given him a familiarity with the winding streets. “This way. Pay attention!” He jerked her arm as she nearly tripped on an uneven paving stone.

  “No need to be so rough.”

  “Oh, darling, you have no idea.” Javier smiled down at her and Isabella felt a combination of fear and delight. Really? Rough, hmm? If she had contemplated any such innuendo in the abstract prior to meeting Javier, she would have summarily dismissed the prospect. But the way he said it made it sound like a dark promise.

  He leaned in and whispered in her ear. She thought fleetingly how bold he was to be touching her so in public. She was about to point out that he had no respect for convention and then decided instead to add that to the list of attributes she adored about him. “I am going to use those ropes to get you exactly where I want you.”

  She gasped, at first in shock, then when she realized the idea sent a thrill of anticipation through her veins, she closed her mouth and smiled to herself.

  “Aha!” Javier slapped his thigh as he walked. “I knew it! I knew ever since that first night!”

  She nearly tripped again. “Knew what? What about that first night?” She blushed as she remembered her dreams about his hands and the ropes and… his hands… and the ropes.

  “There’s the shop, just up ahead.”

  Isabella pulled her hand from his forearm and stopped abruptly on the busy sidewalk, putting her fists on her hips. They had been walking for about fifteen minutes and they were now in a bustling thoroughfare near the port. Shops selling everything from dried fish to fabrics to dry goods dotted the street on either side, interspersed with a stable, a blacksmith, and a fresh fruit and vegetable purveyor.

  “What did you surmise that first night?” she said through ground teeth.

  “I surmised that your mind might be pure, but your body is quite well acquainted with its… desires.”

  He turned toward a beveled glass bay window that had a shingle swinging above the door. Sweets.

  “Come with me,” he ordered.

  Isabella was too mortified to resist. Had she… what? Cried out… or… dear God, touched herself, or… Holy Mary. She was barely able to walk for the shame. She was already well down the path of wantonness, rubbing up against a man on a fashionable side street, but he had more or less declared himself only moments before. There had to be exceptions for that sort of behavior with one’s intended. And he had not really touched her skin. He had—

  “What is it, darling? You are murmuring terribly.” He looked at her with a mocking smile on his lips, but his eyes were genuinely concerned. “Tell me.” He had guided them to the relative privacy of a recessed, little-used side door in the alley alongside the sweet shop.

  It appeared her seemingly farfetched wish for a husband who took a deep interest in her particular concerns had been very quickly granted.

  “I… did I… am I going to hell?” she blurted.

  He looked like he might have been about to laugh, then turned handsomely tender and protective. “Absolutely not. I won’t allow it.”

  She caught the hint of sarcasm around his mouth. “This is not something to be treated with adolescent levity, Javier.”

  “Is that something the nuns taught you to say?” His face had turned to stone.

  “Whoever said I was taught by nuns?”

  “Everything about you: your confidence, dare I say arrogance; your logic… sound one minute, then utterly specious the next; your combination of audacity in this life and terror of the next. Where else but a convent could such a creature be nurtured and trained?”

  He may have been correct, but that did not change the fact that he was all wrong about her. “You don’t even know me. How dare you—”

  Javier was not going to be gainsaid. He kissed her soundly to stop her denial. She fought him for about half a second, but how was a girl who’d only been kissed once supposed to resist the second opportunity? She hummed her pleasure and leaned into his strength.

  “I know you, Isabella,” he said after he reluctantly pulled his lips from hers. “And you know it.”

  She tried to look away.

  “Look at me.” He sounded angry again, with that gravelly voice that promise
d all sorts of rough justice.

  She obeyed.

  “I saw you that night—those nights—as beautiful as you are at this moment, as beautiful as you are every moment the sun catches your eyes or the wind plays with your hair. You were an angel in the throes of your desires, your deepest dreams.” He kept staring at her—into her—as he spoke. “And I wanted to be the one who brought that brief, heavenly pleasure to your lips, to your heart.”

  “You did,” she whispered.

  He narrowed his eyes, encouraging her to continue.

  “It was you in my dreams, your hands untying the ropes, your… you… some part of you… in my mouth.”

  He pulled her into a fierce embrace, nearly crushing her.

  She spoke into the fabric of his jacket as she rubbed the fine silk of his lapel nervously between her thumb and fingers. “My body loved you first.”

  “Oh, Isabella. Trust that body of yours. Promise me.”

  She looked up at him, confused. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean…” He looked up to the sky, noting the angle of the sun and their rapidly narrowing window of time to do what needed to be done in Aveiro. He looked back into her eyes. “I mean, I want to do things to you, strange and wonderful things, that your body will adore, that you will find great pleasure in, but if you think too hard about what other people—what the nuns or your lady’s maid or your mother or anyone else—might say or think, you will lose. They will have won.”

  “I believe you, Javi. I do. But please don’t mock me or belittle my fears or superstitions. A few weeks ago, I was led to believe those beliefs were the bedrock of human civilization. And now you appear in a small copse in the forest and I am supposed to let it all flow through my open fingers like water?”

  Javier set her slightly away from him so he could hold both of her hands in his. “You want to be free, Isabella. This is the cost. You cannot take those judgments with you. This will be our life. Yours and mine, to be lived as we see fit. To honor one another and, if we are blessed, to celebrate an abundance of children and a life of productivity and generosity. Not a parsimonious withholding of joy.”

  She stared at him, loved him anew. “How was it you came to be in that forest”—she caught herself before she said “my father’s forest”—“on that particular day?”

  “I was traveling from the east, to get here in time to board this ship.” He had learned to speak the approximate truth after several years of spending time with the rebel troops. Moving in and out of aristocratic and peasant circles from one day to the next had taught him to stick close to the facts whenever possible. No point in lying when some version of the truth would serve.

  “I’m glad you were,” Isabella said. “It’s as though we were meant to meet that night.”

  “If you like.” He caressed her cheek with one finger. “I am not a believer in the hand of fate, but if it delights you to feel a guiding hand, then I will delight in your delight.”

  “Fair enough. I shan’t be one of those tedious women always trying to find meaningful connections where, perhaps, none exist. You need not share my belief in the long reach of Providence. It either is or it is not, and neither your skepticism nor my faith will change it.”

  He kissed her again, briefly, then guided her back out to the street and into the sweetshop. They bought four sweets to enjoy when they were at sea; anything more would have been too much of an extravagance. Javier carried the small brown paper parcel in his left hand and offered his right arm to Isabella.

  “Where next?” Javier asked. “The crone who sells old clothes is just there, and the jeweler is across the street, just there.” He gestured with his chin.

  “First, I’d very much like to see what I could find to replace this hideous dress. I have my money from the sale of my mare—”

  “There need be no talk of your money, Isabella. What’s mine—what little nothingness is mine, I should add—is yours. As soon as we are at sea, the captain can marry us and all will be official in the eyes of man.” He paused, seeing her shock. “And in the eyes of God, of course.”

  “Of course,” she replied tartly.

  She found a dress that was a little long, but the bodice tied up the front so she would be able to dress without assistance. It was made of a beautiful, very practical navy worsted bombazine of sturdy wool and silk. The proprietor of the shop, a wizened old woman who confessed she got her best items from the undertaker, handed Javier a few coins in change along with the brown wrapped parcel that contained the old rag of a dress.

  When Isabella emerged from behind the rough cloth that served as a makeshift dressing room, she felt suddenly shy in the womanly dress. She hoped Javier would think her pretty.

  Javier gave her the best courtly bow that the tight space would allow. “My lady…” He extended his arm in invitation.

  They crossed the street to the jewelers, but before they could enter, Isabella hesitated. “Perhaps I should go in by myself.”

  “Don’t be daft, Isabella. I have one or two things I’d like to have valued and I wouldn’t dream of letting you negotiate with one of these swindlers by yourself. You’d be fleeced in a matter of moments.”

  “Javier.”

  “I know.” He put up one hand. “You think I am belittling you. I am certainly not. Have you ever purchased anything in your life?”

  “Of course!” She pictured the ribbon shop in the tiny village outside of Burgos where the convent allowed them to stroll one morning each month.

  “With actual coins?”

  “Well. What difference does that make? I had an account.”

  “Of course you did,” Javier answered, as if she had made his point for him.

  “I know the meaning of thrift and value. I know it takes work to…”

  “Go on.” Javier was challenging her with those piercing amber-brown eyes of his again. “Did your father work?”

  “Yes! I mean, he was responsible for many, many people. That is work… to manage… like that…”

  Javier continued to stare at her. He could not blame her for accepting as right an entire social structure that had been in place for centuries. “Let us not argue here in the street. You may read my Spinoza on the ship. I merely want to get you the best price for your jewelry, Isabella. There is a vast and important difference between me trying to impose my will and me trying to assist you. I assure you this is the latter.”

  “I want to believe you.”

  “Then why don’t you?”

  She sighed and looked into the jewelry shop. The windows were small and did not offer a very clear view to the interior. Perhaps having Javier with her to assist in the negotiations was not such a bad idea. “Oh, all right. I suppose you are right.”

  “Qué?!” He yelled in a way that attracted the attention of several British seamen who happened to be walking nearby. They looked from the handsome gentleman to the pretty lady in blue, confirmed that a fight was not about to erupt, and moved on.

  “I said…” Isabella smiled and hesitated for effect. “You. Are. Right.”

  “It just sounded so… novel! And lovely, and the way it curls your lips. Perfect!”

  She gave him another coy smile and a swift slap across his upper arm. “Basta! Let’s go in and see how much I am worth.”

  He furrowed his brow at her odd choice of words, but followed her into the shop without pursuing the subject.

  The bell above the door alerted the tall, thin German jeweler that he needed to look up from the handsome gold timepiece he was repairing.

  “Olá,” he said cautiously as he stretched to his full height.

  “Hello, how are you?” Javier replied in High German. The man smiled and invited them to come toward the back of the shop, gesturing toward two small stools across from his workbench.

  “Sit. Please. It is not so often I hear the
language of my countrymen here. Where did you learn?”

  Isabella watched, fascinated, as her almost-husband spoke with easy grace in a language she had never heard spoken aloud. The nuns had a variety of books in their library in other languages, but nothing could have prepared Isabella for the way it rolled through her when Javier spoke German. The hard consonants, the rounded vowels. He sounded like another person altogether. Someone important. Even so, he sat on the stool with his usual casual ease. She knew by now that he kept a knife hidden in his left boot as well as the rather heavy looking saber that hung from the leather belt at his waist.

  Javier was looking at her expectantly. “Please let us show the gentleman what you have to sell, my dear.”

  “Oh. Yes.” She stumbled over the words. “It’s in rather an awkward spot. Do you have a separate chamber where I might… remove it?”

  Javier smiled at his little rebel. “Sewed it into your dress, did you?”

  “Drawers, if you must know.” She answered haughtily, as if she said the word drawers in front of two men in a disreputable jeweler’s shop in an unsavory part of a foreign seaside town at every possible opportunity.

  “Allow me to assist you, my lady.” Javier rose to join her.

  “That’s very kind of you, sir, but I’m sure I can manage. You are not the only one with a small knife hidden on your person.”

  The German man repressed a chortle and Javier crossed his arms over his chest and sat back down on the stool with a huff.

  “The first door on the left is a small storage closet, my lady,” the German man directed. “It should do.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Isabella was gone for a few minutes and returned with a victorious grin spread across her face. “Very well. Here it is.” She handed the rough cross to the German, but just before he could take it into his eager hands, Javier leapt from his seat and clamped his hand around Isabella’s wrist.

  “Ow!” she yelped. “You’re hurting me, Javi! Stop that!”

  He pried the cross out her hand with his strong fingers. His face was dark with fury. “Give it to me now!” His voice was cruel and foreign to her ears.