Wedding Wagers

by Donna Hatch

  He caught her easily, her slippers being no match for his boots and the longer strides he could take on the cobbled path. He grasped her from behind, lifted her around her middle, and swung her once around.

  “Eli,” she shrieked. “What will the neighbors think?”

  He laughed. “We have no neighbors, remember? Claymere has not been inhabited for many years, and I doubt it will be for some time to come.” He set her down and turned her in his arms to face him. “Thanks to you, milady, I am quite wet. And we are quite alone.”

  They had been behaving thus the past several days, dancing around one another, hinting at things to come, and at their feelings for one another, sometimes getting close to crossing that line into intimacy, but always she had withdrawn before he might explore those avenues.

  No more. “Do you realize that tomorrow we have been married for two weeks?”

  “The best weeks of my life.” She placed one hand on his shirt sleeve and the other on his soaked shirt front, over his rapidly beating heart.

  “Do you mean that?”

  She nodded vigorously. “I do. I feel—different here. Free. Happy. Accepted.”

  Loved? “Excellent. All that chocolate is working.”

  She laughed, a sound he heard frequently and never tired of. “It is.”

  “And yet... you repay me with a bucket of water to the face.”

  “It was for your own good. You were beginning to smell like the manure you spread.”

  “I shall keep that in mind for future reference.” He would. He would bathe every night if that was what it took to be close to her.

  “May I ask how your first weeks of marriage have been?” Her eyes flickered to his, and he glimpsed the vulnerability he had seen before. He understood it better now. She is worried about pleasing me.

  “Aside from the forced bathing, it has been—wanting.” Eli took a chance, hoping his gamble was not too great.

  Hurt widened and filled her eyes. “How—”

  He could not bear her stricken expression and rushed to explain. “I want more time with you. The days are not long enough. I want more laughter, more time before the fire at night reading stories, more hours to ride and walk and dine together. More kisses. I want to hold you close as you sleep and see your face first thing when I awake.”

  “Oh.”

  He watched her swallow and waited for the blush he was sure to follow. It didn’t.

  Instead her hands fidgeted on his shirt. “I have been wanting those things, too. Only I did not know if it was proper for a wife to feel that way.”

  She too... His heart pounded beneath his wet shirt. “We do not concern ourselves with what is proper in this household. We concern ourselves with what is right. Do you feel it is right for a husband to want, very badly, to kiss his wife?”

  She nodded.

  “I, likewise, feel it absolutely correct for a wife to want to kiss her husband. I feel I have let you down.” Eli hung his head as if shamed. “I promised you would want for nothing, and here you are, practically starving for affection. We shall have to remedy the situation at once.”

  Instead of laughing at his silliness, her look turned more serious. “Please, Eli,” she whispered. “Don’t tease about this. Of all the things I fear I shall make a mull of, it is this. What it is between us is most of all what I am frightened of—of losing.”

  “What is between us is only going to grow.” He took her face in his hands as he had that morning in her room, and bent to kiss her. This time his lips lingered, exploring the softness and shape of hers and feeling his heart soar when she kissed him back.

  Slowly, tentatively, her hands slid up his arm and chest to wrap around the base of his neck. Eli felt himself pulled closer, his wet shirt pressed against her bodice. Their kiss grew fiercer, full of need and desire and passion. The wick had finally caught fire.

  But he intended it to be a slow burn. Like a precious candle, he intended to savor every drip of their ardor and stretch out the moments before them. They were in no hurry. They belonged to one another and had a lifetime together to look forward to.

  With a last, playful nibble to Emily’s bottom lip, he pulled back a little, allowing them to catch their breaths and him to regain his sanity. Restraint. If he was not careful he might make love to her right here amongst the roses, and that was no way to treat his wife—at least at first.

  “You realize we are kissing one another out in the open, in the middle of the garden, in the daylight hours.”

  “We were kissing,” Emily corrected. “You stopped.” The pout she gave him could only have been learned from her sister.

  “I need a bath, remember?” Eli said. “And we need to pay the cook. It is Friday. She will not come tomorrow.”

  “Yes. Of course. You bathe. I’ll pay Mrs. Judd. I’ll prepare the table for dinner. I’ll—” Emily pulled him close once more, as their mouths found one another again.

  “You are not as shy as I had supposed,” Eli said, breathing heavily when at last they broke apart again.

  “Neither are you as gentle as I had believed.”

  I will be.

  They smiled at one another, both unwilling to move from their embrace until Eli finally, regretfully stepped back. “A half hour,” he promised. “I’ll bathe at the pond.”

  “I’ll pay Mrs. Judd and prepare the table.”

  He wished she wouldn’t. He wasn’t hungering for food at the moment. “I love you, Emily.”

  She smiled in return. “Perhaps almost as much as I love you.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Emily, wearing a long white apron over her pastel gown, hummed to herself as she laid out the plates and silverware. Noting that the cloth covering the table was fraying, she decided she would begin embroidering a new one. She adored the cottage as it was, but had begun to see small improvements she might make here or there, which would make it even cozier.

  When she had finished the tasks indoors and Eli still had not returned, she left the kitchen and walked along the tidy rows of the vegetable garden, stooping now and again to snap beans from the vine. It was one of the few outdoor tasks Eli had allowed her to help with thus far.

  When her apron pockets were full, she wandered from the garden, past the roses he had tended earlier, and the bucket and dipper still lying on the ground where they had fallen. Emily touched her lips, remembering Eli’s kisses and yearning for another. Any minute now he should be coming up the path; she decided to walk toward the pond and meet him along the way.

  Her light steps had not carried her far when voices—Eli’s and one other—stopped her. Emily paused, undecided if she should return or continue on.

  “You know this is not why I married her.”

  Eli’s words persuaded her to the latter.

  “Nevertheless, Claymere is yours—if not by rights of our wager, by right as the firstborn and legitimate heir.”

  Lord Rowley? Wager? Emily left the path to hide behind a tree where she might listen but not be seen.

  “My mind has not changed,” Eli said. “I want no part of the earldom. I wish to be left in peace with my wife.”

  “You call this peace?” Lord Rowley sounded incredulous. “I saw you earlier—laboring in the dirt then getting a face full of water.”

  “Ah, but did you see what followed? I assure you Emily’s warm affection counteracted any ill effect of the cold water. And laboring on her behalf, for her support, does not seem a labor at all.”

  She heard the smile in Eli’s voice and hoped Lord Rowley had not witnessed their kissing by the roses, though could not exactly fault him for spying when she was doing the same.

  Eli continued. “There is a great satisfaction to be found in living this way, truly earning one’s bread or growing the food brought to one’s table.”

  Fingers curling around the beans in her pocket, Emily silently agreed. After only a short while here she was beginning to understand what he meant. To have purpose, to be useful... To be th
ankful for what one has.

  “Madness,” Lord Rowley muttered. “As would be your refusal of Claymere. I intended to hold you to your bargain and would have made you work without wages the ten years. Take now what is yours.”

  Emily flattened herself against the tree as they passed. Ten years. Was that the new position Eli had alluded to before it was decided they would marry?

  “Had you lost our wager,” Lord Rowley suggested, “I doubt you would find digging in the dirt as satisfying.”

  “I would not,” Eli agreed soberly.

  Peeking from behind the trunk, she saw that he walked with his hands clasped behind his back, as if he did not wish any chance of receiving the scroll Lord Rowley held clutched in his fist. Eli’s hair was still wet from the pond, and he had changed from the clothes he wore earlier.

  “I would have been pleased to work at Claymere—under any circumstance—but I would have mourned your victory and my loss greatly. I love Emily. Already she has brought more joy to my life than I had imagined possible.”

  Not wishing to diminish that joy by eavesdropping further, Emily stepped out from her hiding place.

  “I wish you the same happiness with Lady Grayson,” Eli said.

  “Then I beg you to accept this deed.” Lord Rowley stopped walking and extended his hand with the papers. “You are aware of my selfish nature. On my own I should have been extremely reluctant to part with this property. Sophia insists I must, or she will withdraw from our agreement—a most awkward situation as the banns have been posted two weeks already. If nothing else, her mother will have my head if the wedding is off.”

  “Why banns? I thought you’d obtained a license.” Eli stopped as well, turning toward Lord Rowley and catching sight of Emily hurrying to catch up with them.

  “Yes, well... I’d hoped to make better use of the £5 Sophia gave to purchase the license. I gambled it—and lost. Seems to be rather the way of my luck lately.” Lord Rowley gave a short cough. “Ah, here is your lovely wife now.”

  “Lord Rowley.” Emily curtsied and allowed him to take her hand and kiss it, feeling somewhat awkward as only a month earlier he had been courting her.

  His eyes lingered on them as she stepped closer to Eli and he put his arm around her. “Marriage suits you both, it seems. You are looking very well, Lady Rowley.”

  “Thank you.” She found she did not care for that title anymore than Eli would likely enjoy being called the earl. “I regret that I cannot say the same of you.” Lord Rowley’s trousers and boots were dusty, his face drawn, eyes bloodshot. “Were your travels overly tiresome?” Selfishly she hoped he would not ask to stay with them tonight.

  Lord Rowley’s mouth turned up curiously. “I do not believe I have ever heard you speak your mind like that. I must say it is a vast improvement over your previous reserve. And yes, my travel was tiresome. I came by horse, as quickly as I might. Perhaps you can talk some sense into your husband. If I cannot persuade him to my way of thinking, I am in danger of losing your sister, and I have grown to care for her a great deal.”

  “Her? Or her money?” Emily asked, concerned as she had been before, for Sophia.

  “Both, if I am being honest. Though I do not believe I shall have much control over the latter. Sophia is rather put out with my gambling at present. I shall have to toe the mark if I am to win her affection as it appears Eli has so readily won yours.”

  Lord Rowley held out the scroll. “I have here the deed to all of Claymere. It is Eli’s for the taking.”

  “By right of birth—and wager,” Emily added, her eyes shifting from one man to another. “You made a bet who would be the one to marry me?”

  “When I was twelve, Sherborne ten.” Eli’s hand tightened at her waist as if he was afraid she might flee. “I was lovestruck—even then—and foolishly let my desire to make you mine be known.”

  “I forced him to the wager, believing it impossible that he could win,” Lord Rowley admitted. “Eli was to have all of Claymere if he married you. If he did not, if he lost, he was to work for me, ten years without wage.”

  “My time and labor was the only thing of value I had to offer,” Eli said quietly. “And it had to be a great deal of both, if Sherborne was to risk Claymere.”

  Emily’s lips pressed into a thin line until she remembered the way her mother appeared when wearing such an expression.

  “But I don’t want Claymere anymore.” Eli turned her toward him, taking both of her hands in his. “I was a boy then, one who had just found his father only to learn that he had another son—a brother I could not claim—and that boy was to have it all. Sherborne asked what I wished if I won, and I named the place that had been dear to my parents.” Eli caught her eyes, his own pleading. “All I really wanted was what they had shared together—a tremendous love, to be happy here and never alone. I have found that in you.”

  “Yet you would have left Shrewsbury, would have allowed me to marry another, without even attempting to win my hand? When all you had to do to ask for it yourself was to reveal your true identity?” Emily’s head was spinning, questions, accusation, and hurt firing through her mind at rapid speed.

  Eli’s face crumpled with distress. “Until that night in the stable, I believed I had no hope of winning your hand or heart. I thought you content being courted by Sherborne, and I knew such pleased your father—and that you would wish to please him. As soon as I realized you were not happy, I did what I must to marry you. Have you any idea how difficult it was for me to go before the Archbishop? I didn’t want what came with my parentage. I’d had the education I yearned for years before, and had known since then—after seeing the expectations and restrictions placed upon those who are titled—that I did not wish for that life.”

  “Yet you risked that, to be with her?” Lord Rowley sounded perplexed.

  “I would risk far more,” Eli said. “I will be the earl if that is what you wish, Emily.”

  Both men stared at her, and she read equal trepidation in their expressions. Lord Rowley did not wish to lose his privileged life, while Eli did not wish to take it upon him.

  She was still not pleased at having been the subject of their wager. But it had been so long ago. Eli has cared for me for so long. He truly did wish to marry me. She had not quite believed that until now, thinking he had only gone along with her proposal that fateful night, out of the goodness of his heart.

  His love for her was not new, as was hers for him, but had been growing these many years. Thinking back on those years now, and their many interactions, she felt a sort of dizzy panic. What if she had not come to the stable that night? What if Sophia had not come as well and brought Lord Rowley with her?

  What if I had missed the opportunity to be Eli’s wife? Knowing this and feeling as she did for him, she could not ask him to assume a position he did not want. She would not force the life of an earl upon him. Yet... could not Claymere still be his?

  Tugging her hand free of Eli’s, Emily turned slightly toward Lord Rowley and took the scroll from him. Facing Eli once more she placed it in his hand.

  “Your father wanted this. He wished to live at Claymere with your mother—wherever they pleased upon the estate. We shall do that for them, but no more. Lord Rowley will continue on as the earl.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Eli stared at the scroll in his hand then slowly allowed his fingers to close around it. Claymere. He thought not of the grand house at the top of the hill, but the whole of the glorious gardens, the fields that produced already, the tenants who lived upon the land. Though long neglected, Eli knew that, if managed correctly, the estate could turn a handsome profit. He and Emily would never want for anything.

  We do not want for anything now. He pulled his gaze from the papers to his wife, her eyes anxious as she looked at him.

  “Eli?”

  Just hearing her say his name was heaven. He leaned forward and kissed her softly, answering the question in her voice with a token of love followed by his o
wn smile.

  Eli turned to Sherborne. “Thank you—brother.”

  Sherborne’s reaction appeared mixed. For a fleeting second a pout appeared, as if he was offended, but then the corners of his mouth turned up.

  “I should have known long ago that you were my brother. You were always a pain.”

  “Likewise.” Grinning, Eli held his hand out. Sherborne took it at once in a tight clasp of brotherhood, and Eli felt a new kind of joy and hope. In the future, family might come to mean more than Emily and their children. Perhaps those children would grow up having an aunt and uncle and cousins.

  As if she had read his mind, Emily spoke. “You must come visit us here, and bring Sophia.”

  “And we request your presence at our wedding, Saturday next,” Sherborne said. “Providing I can keep myself out of trouble between now and then.”

  Eli caught Emily’s eye. “A man can do a lot of things for love.”

  * * *

  Moonlight shone through the bedroom window and the open curtains flapped gently in the breeze as Eli looked down on his wife. With care he brushed the strands of hair from her face then leaned over and whispered, “Emily.”

  She stirred at once, responding to him in sleep much as she had when awake. He marveled to think of it, how in the two weeks of their marriage she had been both trusting of him and giving of herself, stepping willingly into this new life. She was everything he had imagined her to be and more.

  Her hand came up to touch his cheek. “Are you having a nightmare?”

  His heart squeezed then expanded at her concern, and he recognized the feeling. His love for her had grown a little more.

  “Quite the opposite.” He took Emily’s hand from his face and pressed his lips to her wrist then proceeded to work his kisses up her arm to the bend of her elbow.

  She giggled. “Oh. I see.”

  “Not yet, you haven’t.” He flung the covers away from both of them then jumped from the bed and held a hand out to her. “Come on.”