Any Groom Will Do

by Charis Michaels

  She laughed. He stooped to kiss the smile from her mouth and lifted her in the same deft movement. He carried her to the bed, breaking the kiss long enough to deposit her in the center.

  “Boots,” he told her, stepping back. “I need five seconds to pull my boots.”

  “Oh, they are lovely boots.” she said.

  “Lovely, perhaps. Hurt like the very devil. But thank you. I bought them in Falmouth to impress you.”

  She thought of this; she thought of all of his clothes, damp and caked with mud but clearly new. She’d not considered his attire before, not really, and she thought of him making landfall in Falmouth and then dashing about, outfitting himself with her in mind.

  She looked down at her own ivory day dress. She was too old, not to mention too married, to wear white, but the fabric was a rich oat-ivory, pretty for spring but thick and expensive enough to not appear flimsy or juvenile. It wasn’t practical on rainy, muddy days or days when she maneuvered through the construction of an unfinished house, but she’d worn it today anyway, on a whim. It was unique and made her feel pretty; it set off her auburn hair. She was glad she’d worn it. And now she was glad she would wear it no more.

  She asked, “Are we to . . . remove all of our clothes?”

  He was balancing on one foot, and he tipped. “Yes, Willow, all.”

  She considered this, slipping off her own shoes. She wondered if she should undress now, or if he would do it.

  “Don’t worry,” he said, reading her thoughts, “removing our clothes is something we will venture together. But I’ll save you the bother of my boots. Too much mud and the new leather has no give.”

  He grimaced, pulling, and Willow watched in rapt fascination at the entirely male ritual. His hands were so large, his muscled leg so long. After his boots, he stripped off his waistcoat and tossed it on the chair. The thin white fabric of his shirt was billowy and loose. He reached for his shoulders to pull it off.

  “No, let me,” she heard herself say, coming up on her knees.

  He eyed her, a flash of conspiratorial green that flooded her with pleasure. He let the shirt to fall back over his chest. “Let’s take off your dress,” he said. “Let me see what irresistibility awaits me underneath.”

  She looked down at the dress and wondered if she should have made time to change into the silvery negligee. “You’ve missed my wedding-night frock from France, I’m afraid.” She pointed to the chair. “One detriment to waiting five months to determine whether you like me or not.”

  He growled and came to her, leaning a knee on the mattress and sweeping her to him. “I always liked you, Willow. I liked you too bloody much.”

  She fell against him, burying her face in his neck. He always made me feel beautiful, she thought, despite anything else he may have done.

  It was true, he’d wanted her from the start; he seemed unable to resist her. It was a fervor she struggled to accept after all the years of feeling so very . . . neutral in the eyes of any man.

  She lifted her head, allowing the heavy weight of her hair to fall down her back. He sighed as if she’d touched him and skimmed his hands down her shoulders. When he found her hands, they locked their fingers, squeezing, only for him to disentangle them and cup her face. He kissed her, the first deep, real kiss since he’d declared himself by the fire. Willow’s mind went hazy, doubts and questions floating away, and she succumbed to his command of her body. He caught her up and lay her back.

  “You’ve not delivered on the promise to relieve me of my shirt, madam,” he said, his voice low in her ear.

  She reached up, only to discover that her arms were like straw. She fumbled at his shoulders, taking up loose, ineffective handfuls of fabric. He laughed and sat up, pulling the shirt over his head and tossing it to a chair.

  At the sight of his bare chest, Willow gasped. She propped up on her elbows. “Cassin,” she began, and then she trailed off, stunned speechless.

  “Yes?” A small, prideful laugh.

  “You’re so . . . strong. And your skin is so tanned.”

  “Like that, do you?” He laughed again. “Compliments of pickax mining under the blazing Caribbean sun for twelve hours a day.”

  “But you must never wear a shirt again.” She laughed, running her hands along the firm pockets of muscle on his stomach and chest. His skin twitched and jumped beneath her touch and she went back, retracing every contour. His arm bulged with muscle. She wrapped two hands around his bicep, and her fingertips barely touched. He looked like an Italian marble sculpture. “You look like a statue,” she said.

  “I feel like a statue.” He grimaced, unbuttoning the top buttons of his breeches.

  “Oh,” Willow said, wonderment stealing over her. She looked lower. “Oh,” she repeated, darting her eyes away.

  “Less bold now, I see,” he said, laughing. “Never fear, Countess; we’ll get to that. But first, off with this dress.”

  He reached behind her and deftly unbuttoned the dress and then slid it from her shoulders while he kissed her neck. She swam in the sensation, barely aware of her chemise, which slid down next, nor her corset, which was unlaced with five or six urgent tugs. All the while he nuzzled and kissed her neck. She whimpered and listed backward, but he righted her—three times, he nudged her upright—and returned to unbuttoning, unlacing, removing.

  When her corset drooped in her lap and her dress and chemise were in a bunch at her waist, he gently laid her back on the bed and gave her three firm kisses on the mouth. She reached for him, trying to keep up, but he slid away, pulling the gown and chemise down her legs, taking her drawers with them.

  When he’d finished and she lay naked, except for her stockings, he leaned back on his haunches and stared. The night was cool and the bed was some distance from the fire, but when Cassin explored her body with his eyes, she burned. The impulse to cover herself came and left almost in the same instant. Some unknown instinct propelled her to slide her hands through her hair, to preen. She dropped long wild curls on her shoulders and across her breasts. The green of Cassin’s eyes went three shades darker.

  “You’re beautiful, Willow,” he whispered. His voice was a reverent rasp. “So beautiful. I cannot believe that you are mine.”

  “But what will you do with me?” she whispered, instinct driving her again. She reached for him.

  “Everything,” he growled. He pulled away long enough to shuck his breeches and drawers. He kissed her, gathering her close, and sensation exploded in her body. The first skin-on-skin contact. All of her nakedness bussing up against all of him. She sighed, arching into him like a cat, reveling in the feel of his hands sliding possessively down her back and bottom. He answered her sigh with a moan, burying his face in her hair.

  “Oh God, Willow,” he said against her neck, “I am trying so bloody hard to go slowly. Perhaps if we had one of your lovely chats. Would you like me to tell you what’s about to happen?”

  “Oh, I know what’s about to happen,” she assured him, digging her hands into his hair. She would hold his mouth against the skin of her throat forever.

  He looked up. “Who told you? Not your mother?”

  She shook her head. “Tessa,” she said.

  “Of course,” he said, dropping back to her neck. “At least you’re not the last to know.”

  He kissed her shoulder next, and then her throat, and then lower, to her breast. Willow’s sighs turned to moans, and the slow, undulating arch of her body turned to a maddened squirm. She was a strange combination of listless and driven. She wanted to float in his arms, languishing in each touch, but she also felt a thrumming sort of propulsion, a search. Each kiss, each touch, set off a small fire that burned a little brighter with each repeated touch.

  “My God, you are responsive,” he sighed.

  “I want, Cassin,” she cried, hearing her lack of articulation but not caring. “I want . . . ” She was at the mercy of her unnamed need.

  “Then we are in perfect accord,” he growle
d, kissing his way back to her mouth. He rolled, centering himself on top of her, and the weight of him pushed the air from her lungs.

  “Careful,” he breathed, rising onto his forearms. “I don’t want to crush you.”

  “No,” she gasped, pulling his shoulders down, “I want . . . I want to feel all of you.”

  “Lucky,” he managed, groaning, and he sunk a knee into the mattress between her legs. “Careful, darling,” he whispered into her ear. “Can you raise your leg? Remember, after the wedding, when we fell onto your bed at Leland Pa—”

  Her knees came up on either side of his body. He chuckled into her neck, seeking out her hands and entwining their fingers.

  “Ready, then?” he whispered into her ear. “Breathe, darling.”

  And then he moved, and she felt a fullness . . . and then even more fullness . . . and then almost too much fullness . . .

  “Breathe, Willow,” he whispered again.

  Willow breathed, and then she gasped, and then she breathed again. By degrees, her body relaxed.

  Cassin kissed her, and she had the idle thought, Oh, there is more kissing, and she kissed him back.

  For a while they kissed, almost until she forgot he was inside of her, and then he made a guttural sound, and she blinked up at him. His face hovered above hers, his eyes closed, his expression anguished. He looked so anguished, in fact, that she almost asked him if he was quite alright. But then he moved, and the agony eased from his face, and she felt a snap of sharp pain.

  She sucked in her breath, and he froze. She looked again, opening just one eye. The jokes and the intermittent conversation had tapered off. Everything had tapered off except the incredibly close, incredibly intense feeling of being so intimately joined. And now they felt locked, fused together, his face a mask of discomfort. Willow considered the onslaught of new sensations—the fullness, the pain, and now the ever so small, ever so persistent impulse to move—and decided to hitch her hips up, just once. An experiment.

  As she did it, she watched his face. Cassin’s eyes were squeezed shut, and he made an indistinguishable sound—pleasure or pain?—and bit his lip.

  She thrust again. He opened one eye and stared down at her. She smiled.

  “You’re alright?” he asked on a breath.

  Willow nodded and thrust a third time.

  Cassin growled and swept his arms beneath her, pulling him to her, and resumed movement, far more demonstrative and powerful than she had been. But she met him, push for push, and he leaned down and kissed her.

  When the explosion happened, Willow pressed her head into the pillow and cried out. No warning could have prepared her for the complete incineration of every nerve, inside and out. No warning could have prepared her for the floating, the tingling as she floated, the slow drift back to earth, the tiny shocks, the blissful feeling of release.

  Cassin paused, understanding somehow, that it had happened. But he did not pause for long; in fact, she would have happily indulged in more pausing, more floating, but she understood now; he sought an explosion of his own, and the drive for this goal was nearly unstoppable.

  He cried out when it happened, calling her name, and then he collapsed on top of her, and she gathered him up in her arms, however weak, and held him. He buried his face in her hair. Idly, she stroked the bands of muscle that formed his powerful back. He relaxed within seconds, growing heavy, drifting to the same, boneless state in which she now reveled . . . and she savored it.

  I love him, she thought.

  And then, I almost missed it all.

  If we hadn’t needed to leave Surrey, and if marrying had not been the only way, I would have missed all of this.

  But she hadn’t missed it.

  He was here, and she was here, and he—

  Well, if he had not yet said he loved her, he had said many other things. Things about the authenticity of their marriage and being together every day and for the rest of their lives.

  And she had not said these precise words either, not yet, but she would.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  In the five months since the brides had moved to London, breakfast in Belgrave Square had settled into a lively, communal affair.

  Willow would rise early, eager to be ready for whatever her aunt and uncle might require of her.

  Naturally diligent and purposeful, Sabine, too, was an early riser, and she would be up, dressed, and ready to explore the next quadrant of the city on her ever-ready list.

  Since girlhood, Tessa was the friend most prone to sleep late into the day, but her pregnancy put an end to this practice, and now she would frequently be up before them all, too uncomfortable to sleep.

  And so the brides would convene each morning, filling the small, windowed breakfast room with laughter and chatter. A buffet of fried eggs, toast, fresh breads and jams, sausages, and fruit with cream was laid by staff on a sideboard. Uncle Arthur did not take breakfast, but he always presided at the head of the table, drinking coffee and reading the news, while the women spoke around him.

  The morning after Cassin arrived should be no different, Willow told herself. Eggs, coffee, chatter. And the unexpected presence of a man, fresh from her bed. With him, a thousand unanswered questions.

  It only prolonged the awkwardness to be cowardly about it, she thought. Together, the two of them had survived the potentially awkward scene of awakening to the bright light of day with him sprawled, naked, beside her in her bed. The scene had played out so shyly and sweetly, eventually giving way to hilarity. They had laughed until they became too occupied to laugh any more. Now Willow had very high hopes for breakfast. The only way to surpass the strangeness of the situation was to face it.

  “Can I trouble the footman to lay a place for the earl?” Willow said brightly from the doorway to the breakfast room.

  The tinkle and hum of conversation in the room stopped.

  Four faces turned to the door, their expressions frozen mid-chew.

  Cassin stood behind her, washed and shaved and dressed in dry clothes. Willow had struggled to stop staring at him.

  She cleared her throat and took a brave step into the room. “As you may know, Cassin has made a surprise journey home from Barbadoes. He was my guest last . . . ”

  Now she lost heart. It had been a glaring breach of manners not to approach her aunt and uncle about Cassin’s installment in their home as a guest. She’d simply been so overcome, and he was her husband, after all, and—

  “I beg you, forgive the intrusion, Mr. Boyd, Mrs. Boyd,” said Cassin, stepping around her. He presented himself to Uncle Arthur with a deferential bow.

  The middle-aged man smiled up at him, stirring his coffee. After a long moment, he tapped the spoon and stood, extending his hand. Aunt Mary rose beside him.

  “Do not interrupt your breakfast, please,” Cassin said, taking Uncle Arthur’s hand. “I am so grateful to be your guest. I’ve returned to England on urgent business at my home in Yorkshire, but my first stop is London. I was also . . . urgently motivated to call on my wife.”

  Tessa dropped her knife, and it landed with a clatter on her bread plate. Willow winced but did not look.

  “Of course you are always welcome in Wilton Crescent, my lord,” said Uncle Arthur. Cassin bowed over Aunt Mary’s hand.

  “But you must join us for breakfast,” said Mary. To Willow, she said, “We’ve already laid a place for the earl, dear. There, next to you.”

  Willow released a breath and led Cassin around the table. Slowly, the clink and scrape of silver on china resumed, but the chatter did not. A rare silence descended in the sunny room. Her friends and aunt cast sidelong glances while Willow unsteadily poured two cups of tea.

  “Mrs. Chance?” said Cassin suddenly, speaking to Tessa. “I’ve a letter for you. From Joseph.”

  Tessa’s knife clattered a second time. Cassin reached into the pocket of his waistcoat and produced a letter. Tessa stared at it like a stolen jewel.

  “My decision to sail ho
me was hasty and unplanned,” Cassin went on. “Joseph had time only for a page or so. This was scrawled, I believe, on an overturned barrel outside the fishmonger’s.”

  Tessa glanced from the extended letter long enough to nod at him. She rose and took the letter, studying the inscription. And then she was gone, dashing from the room as quickly as her swollen condition would allow.

  When she was gone, silence reclaimed the room.

  “And I’ve also one for you, Mrs. Stoker,” Cassin said.

  Sabine’s head snapped up. “I beg your pardon?”

  Tessa received occasional letters from Joseph—their contents never discussed—but Willow knew of no correspondence between Sabine and Jon Stoker.

  “From Stoker,” said Cassin, extending a second letter. “Also hastily written, I’m afraid. Even so, I’ve promised to deliver it.”

  Sabine paused a moment and then smiled tightly and reached for the letter. She tucked it smoothly in the pocket of her skirts and returned to her blueberries. “Thank you, my lord,” she said.

  “What? No letter for me?” asked Uncle Arthur, weary, perhaps, of the tenseness around his table. “I dare say, I might cry.”

  Willow laughed; Aunt Mary, too, and Cassin made for the sideboard with his plate.

  Through her chuckles, Aunt Mary asked, “How long will you be in London, my lord? You’ve come at a beautiful time of year.”

  “Yes,” he mused, “how I enjoyed that beauty as it dripped down my neck, all the way from Falmouth.” He shot her a wink, and Willow’s heart clenched. “Thanks to my wife,” he continued, “I’ve learned that my uncle endeavors to dig a new mine on my land in Yorkshire—a dangerous undertaking that I do not want, nor have I sanctioned. My purpose in London is to stop his intrusion. I will call on him first, although my suspicion is that he is not in London at all, but in Yorkshire instead. I also have a brother there who has fallen ill. Some accident in a field. For this reason, I cannot tarry long in town. But before I go, I must approach my uncle’s mining investors and, depending on his progress to form a joint-stock company, relevant members of Parliament.”