by Cat Lindler
“No strings,” she whispered, bowed her head, and shuffled away.
The tavern atmosphere was subdued, the voices muted near Christian’s table. He sprawled in a corner booth with his back against the wall, one leg stretched out along the bench. Despondency with an edge of danger radiated from him, spiked the air like a noxious vapor, and suspended the gaiety. Other patrons gave him a wide berth, darting surreptitious glances his way, and whispered among themselves. One waitress, younger and bolder than the others, with waist-length red hair and freckles dotting the bridge of her nose, brushed a firm breast against his arm when she leaned over the table to set the tankard of ale in front of him.
He looked up and licked his bottom lip, gaze skimming over the girl’s opulent figure. Perhaps she was the balm he required. To bury himself in a woman’s heat. Lord knew he required something, and ale was failing to soften his mood. He’d not had a woman since … since the night Garrett fetched Samantha from the gaol. He held only a vague recollection of his trip into town and his encounter with the tavern wench. He recalled his terror and the need to expend it. He was harsh that night, and rough, thrusting mercilessly into the girl, not his usual style. She certainly earned her coin. And afterward he got as pissed as a badger and initiated a brawl that ended with his sleeping off his hangover in a rubbish-strewn alley.
Samantha haunted him. When did she not? He still felt her softness against his back, her small arms around his waist, the moisture from her tears against his shirt. What in God’s name was he going to do with her? She was tearing him apart. She had turned his world upside down, and he liked it not one damn bit. At this moment he wanted only to erase her imprint from his memory.
The red-haired wench smiled coyly. His cock twitched, and he winked, nodding toward the stairs. Picking up his tankard, he followed her swaying hips up the stairway to her room. After pulling the door to, he leaned against it and sipped his ale while she discarded her clothes. The removal of her bodice and skirt revealed a firm young body, plump and ripe, but the haste, expertise, and oft-practiced moves with which she stripped left him cold. No fumbling fingers like Samantha, no lingering, no naïve nervousness.
When she lay on the bed and spread her legs, his desire waned. He wasn’t foxed enough. He cursed under his breath and threw some coins on the dressing table.
“Come on, luv,” she crooned, beckoning with her fingers. “Somethin’ wrong? Want me ta give ye a hand?”
He offered an apologetic smile. “Not tonight, sweetheart. Another time, perhaps. I have too much on my mind.” He turned and walked out of the room.
When he left the tavern, he wandered from taproom to dance hall. No matter the quantity of ale he consumed, he remained sober, his thoughts dwelling on one small, lithe, curious woman, an image of butterscotch hair and golden eyes. She possessed him, following him throughout the night. He couldn’t get sotted. God, he couldn’t even get laid! What ailed him, and what did he plan to do about it? How could he purge her from his system? Was that what he honestly desired? Questions continued to badger him until dawn’s faint light crept over the horizon and washed the sky with pink.
Christian burst into Samantha’s cabin at daybreak, startling her out of her hammock and onto the deck. She yelped when she landed on her bottom, pushed the hair out of her eyes, and stared up at him, swallowing her irritation when viewing his lunatic expression. He repeatedly ran his fingers through his rumpled hair and over his bristly jaw. His wrinkled clothing looked as if he had slept in them. His shirt had three missing buttons and hung out of his breeches.
“Get dressed,” he said brusquely, muttered, “Bloody hell,” then continued in a softer tone. “Wear something decent … something”—he waved a hand in the air—”becoming. And do something”—the wave again—”with your hair.”
“Chris—”
“Just get dressed.”
She sat there with her mouth agape.
“Damn it,” he blustered. “Get on your feet and dressed now before I change my mind or carry you out clothed in naught but a night rail.”
“Carry me where?” she sputtered, but he let the door swing to with a slam. His boot strides thudded down the companionway.
A thrill bubbled up inside her. They must be sailing today, and Christian had changed his mind. He was allowing her to join the expedition. If that was so, why should she wear something becoming? Perhaps she was misinterpreting his words, and he had something else in mind. From his manner, though bizarre, she grasped she was no longer in his bad graces. Mayhap not completely in the clear, but he was speaking to her again.
Wide awake now, she levered herself off the deck and raced to the basin to wash. Rummaging through her chest, she pulled out a white muslin dress trimmed with lace and green ribbon around the low neckline and short, puffed sleeves. She brushed out her hair and fought the heavy mass to pull it up into curls. Her fingers trembled too much, and she settled for tying it back with a green ribbon and leaving two long curls in front of her ears. She slapped on a dainty straw hat with trailing green velvet ribbons. Jewelry? No, she had no time to look.
Time! Her pulse escalated into a mad rhythm.
Christian had neglected to tell her how much time she had. He always timed her.
She prayed she was not too late, though for what she still had no notion, and darted out of the cabin. In her haste, she stumbled up the ladder to the deck, all but falling on her face when she snagged her toe in her dress hem. Christian caught her before she banged her chin on the boards. With a freshly shaved face and slicked-back hair, dressed in snug fawn breeches, black boots, a white shirt open at the collar, and a black frock coat, he looked exceptionally striking, but his eyes still had that wild look, like a snapping turtle caught in a trap.
He spun her around, looking over her white dress.
“Is my gown appropriate?” she asked.
He nodded curtly. “It will do.” Then he murmured, “The color is certainly appropriate.”
She raised her eyebrows and smiled hopefully. “Will you now tell me where we are going?”
“No, and don’t ask questions. Let’s be off before I forget why I’m doing this.” He took her elbow and helped her into the dinghy. He rowed to the dock, silence wrapping about them like a woolen blanket, where he lifted her in his arms and set her on the pier. After climbing out of the dinghy, he took off at a rapid pace, pulling her along by the elbow.
Sweat poured off Christian’s forehead by the time they reached their destination, and the ocean breeze whipping around Samantha had blown her into disarray while he hurried her along. Then he stopped and turned to her, seizing and holding both her hands in a tight, clammy grip. “Samantha Eugenia Colchester, you will marry me,” he said in a voice sounding as if it rumbled up from his gut with excruciating effort.
Like an unwound clock, her heart stopped in her chest.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Samantha was a dead woman, her heartbeat only an illusion, or, at the least, she was a madwoman suffering from delirium. She turned her head slowly, as though sudden movement might cause it to unhinge, and took in every aspect of the building beside them. Built of whitewashed wood with a stubby steeple topped by a bell tower, Hobart’s small church screamed of propriety in an immoral town. The sight persuaded her. She was dead, lying somewhere inside the church, her stiff body reposing in a pinewood coffin. Why then did Christian’s grasp send prickles through her hands? She stared blankly at the church, unable to make a neural connection between it and his words.
Did he ask me to marry him? She mentally shook her head. He did not pose a question, did he? She did not believe so. The wind must have whistled through her ears, carrying the cries of gulls from the pier, and she mistook the sounds for what she desired most in the world to hear, the world she so recently departed. Would Christian attend her funeral? Would he mourn her?
Christian slid his hands to her upper arms, holding her tightly, and uttered a strangled plea. “I require an answer, Sam.”
He shook her gently.
She looked up at his face and processed his tortured look. The skin stretched so tightly across his cheekbones, she could have carved mutton on their sharp angles.
He shook her again. “Yes or no. I must know.”
She voiced the sole word she could push past her lips. “Yes.”
His face paled, his mouth crimped a bit, and small creases lined his forehead. “I feared you would answer that way.” He straightened his shoulders, tucked her arm in the crook of his elbow, and led her into the church.
Garrett met them in the entryway. He shoved a bouquet of golden roses into Samantha’s hands and whispered aside to Christian, “Are you certain you want to do this?” When Christian snarled, Garrett scurried away and took his seat, his face as pale as Christian’s.
Aunt Delia, Chloe, Gilly, and Pettibone sat on the left side of the aisle with Captain Lindstrom, Cullen, and Jasper on the right. The remainder of the ship’s crew lounged on pews in the rear of the chapel. Roses bedecked the altar in hastily thrown-together arrangements. Their heavy scent barely masked the odor of unwashed bodies emanating from the back rows.
A mist cloaked Samantha from that moment on, clouding the events in a ghostly haze. Sounds emerged only as echoes, faint and far away, words barely comprehensible, and voices vaguely familiar. Though she was aware of Christian standing beside her and the pastor in front of them, their images blurred, fuzzy at the edges, as indistinct as spirits. Candle flames flickered on the altar, halos of soft light, spreading a gentle glow over the assemblage. The perfume of the roses teased her nostrils, sweet and cloying at times, then drifting away, becoming elusive, as though she only dreamt it.
Christian’s hand held hers. Warmth and strength flowed from his body to hers as her only link to reality, her only solid ground. She clung to him to keep from falling.
The pastor’s anxious eyes monitored Christian during the ceremony, as though he expected the groom to swoon. Christian’s face remained as white as paste, and moisture beaded his forehead. Nonetheless, he managed the proper responses, speaking his vows in a deep, resonant timbre that rumbled through his hand and into her bones. When Samantha opened her mouth to speak, the sound of her own voice startled her.
Christian slipped a wedding band on her finger. It held two stones, an emerald and a topaz, shaped like stars and embedded side by side in gold. His stunned expression altered only once, when he looked down on her stubby fingernails and frowned.
Aunt Delia and Chloe wept uncontrollably into their handkerchiefs. Gilly wore a wide smile. Throughout the ceremony, the men in the church, with the exception of Pettibone, sat glumly and grimaced as though in sympathy with a fellow companion falling into the trap of the leg shackle.
“Way to go, m’lady!” Pettibone yelled out after Samantha said her vows. “Now you have to obey him. You just made a promise to God.” Aunt Delia elbowed him in the ribs, eliciting a loud grunt.
Christian claimed her lips in a possessive kiss that Samantha felt to her toes, but she still wondered whether it all was not a dream. When he pulled back, his eyes focused on her upturned face. “I trust you were listening to Pettibone. Now I have the law and God on my side. You’re mine to do with as I wish.”
His words shook her from her dreamlike state. She leaned back into the circle of his arms. “Is that why you married me?” she asked with an arch look.
His mouth quirked in a rueful grin. “Not at all, tigrina, though the notion deserves merit and should have occurred to me earlier. One might speculate that the only way to ensure your safety and obedience is to keep you beneath me in bed, so I’ll always know where to find you.” Then he lowered his voice so only she could hear him. “In truth, I want to be inside you so desperately I can taste it.”
Heat crept up her neck and into her cheeks. She wanted him, too, felt as if she had wanted him forever, though she would never be so bold as to tell him inside a church, no less!
He pressed his fingertips to her cheek, and his breath warmed her ear. “Did I ever tell you how much I adore the way you blush?”
Samantha blushed even more furiously, and Christian laughed.
Married!
Shock still rippled through her veins, though the full weight of the vows only now impacted her brain. Was it all a dream? Perhaps I’m still locked away in Christian’s cabin, delirious from hunger. She pinched herself and winced with very real pain.
Married! The word descended like a crushing weight. Love … Honor … Obey … Obey? What had she done?
Husband and wife. Till death do you part. It seemed so … so frightfully final. What would happen to Samantha Colchester, modern woman? Was she now but an appendage, an extension of Christian Badia?
She whispered, “Mistress Christian Badia.” The words were strange, impersonal. The name took away her individuality and reduced her to a subordinate role in one fell swoop, one moment in time.
She brought to mind an image of Christian. Tall, dark, utterly masculine, and desirable. Tender and intelligent, gentle and sensual. Short-tempered and overbearing, arrogant, infuriating, maddeningly passionate. She sighed, aware it was a tad late to cry off. They were well and truly wedded.
Samantha sat on the padded stool before the dressing table mirror to remove her hat and studied her reflection while pulling the ribbon from her hair and releasing it from its confinement. The heavy butterscotch mass slipped from its bond and rippled around her shoulders, falling to her waist in glowing waves.
Why did she waver now? She had wanted this, asked for it, pined for it. Perhaps not the wedding but certainly the bedding. She flushed at her thoughts, at the times in the past when she all but begged Christian to bed her. He would now answer her pleas and satisfy her curiosity.
For better or worse.
At times she suspected she had experienced the worst and seen only occasional glimpses of the better. Perhaps now the state of affairs between them would change. He would treat her more as an equal, cease ordering her around, allow her more freedom.
Don’t count on it!
The girl in the mirror looked so young and frightened. Her color was a trifle too pale, amber eyes a bit too wide, lips slightly parted and trembling.
She examined the ring on her finger. Topaz and emerald stars. For the first time since entering their suite at the inn, a smile eased the tight line of her mouth. ‘Twas not some cheap bauble bought without a moment’s thought. Notwithstanding his panicky state and hasty action, he’d not married her on the spur of the moment. The ring was fashioned especially for her.
She recalled that enchanted night in the desert when she snatched the stars from the velvety sky to the accompaniment of Christian’s laughter. The first night they spent together. The first time they truly talked with civility. As she inspected the ring, she knew he remembered that night, too, and marked it as the beginning of a special bond between them.
Christian came through the doorway, crossed the room, and stopped behind her. She drank in his image in the mirror. He buried his hands in her hair and sifted his fingers through the tangle of curls. Lifting them to one side, he bent and pressed his lips to the nape of her neck, searing her skin like a brand of ownership. Samantha closed her eyes and leaned back into him.
“Nervous?” he asked quietly.
She nodded.
“Then I’m in good company.”
Her eyes flew open, and she swiveled her head to gape at him. “You? Nervous?”
One corner of his mouth lifted in a half smile. “I’ve never married, and I’ve never made love to a virgin.”
She returned to the mirror. “I find that difficult to swallow.”
“What?”
“About … virgins.”
“Why?”
“You are s-so knowledgeable,” she stammered, her fingers fiddling with a silver-backed brush on the vanity. “You always seem to know what you’re doing.”
He removed the brush from her hand and swept it slowly through Samantha’s tr
esses. Her eyelids drifted half closed at the rhythmic stroking. “I never had the desire to deflower a virgin,” he replied. “That task I leave to Garrett. He has a penchant for tender, young things. In the past, I’ve preferred my women with more experience.”
She opened her eyes and fixed them on his reflection. “And now, do you have regrets?” she asked in a small voice.
“For marrying you or for your virginal state?”
“Either. Both.”
Would he repent this precipitous action? For thirty-eight years, Christian had avoided becoming too deeply involved with any one woman. Did being literally trapped aboard a ship for months on end force an intimacy he had neither sought nor required? Were he and Samantha to part at some point, would her memory fade as quickly and easily as the others? What did the little imp possess that enticed, no, compelled him into marriage, when with all the others, he’d not even come close? He could have had her anyway, without the benefit of vows.
Was he sorry? No. At this moment he could truthfully say he was not. However, he had no knowledge of the future and what it would bring. He could envision a lifetime with Samantha, a home and children. Would the newness of his current bliss last, or, like a silver tea set, would it tarnish with age?
At Christian’s silence, Samantha examined his face, seeking his answer, the reassurance she required. He seemed to sense her insecurity and lowered his gaze to her. A warm smile spread across his sensual mouth.
“No, tigrina, I have no regrets.”
He pulled the brush once more through her hair, from scalp to ends, and slid his hands beneath her arms to bring her to her feet and turn her toward him. His lips hovered over hers and skimmed them, tracing their outline with his tongue, dipping into the corners and parting their softness. The kiss was tender, breathtaking, and full of sweetness, flavored with champagne from the wedding dinner, sugar from their wedding cake, and his dark, underlying desire.
When his tongue moved into her mouth, she met it and followed when he retreated, probing, exploring. His arms tightened around her, molding her smaller, softer body against his larger, harder one, and he took control of the kiss. It deepened, his lips firmer and hungrier, his throbbing erection burning into her belly.