How to Wed a Warrior

by Christy English

  Mary Elizabeth let out a war whoop worthy of her forebears, and danced a jig around the wooden board as if it were the dark duke’s corpse.

  He applauded them both, and Pru looked back at him, smiling and proud. Mary Elizabeth finished her jig with a flourish, then picked the knife from Cumberland’s dead carcass and placed it gently back in its box, closing the lid.

  “She would only use one knife at a time, Robbie,” his sister said, passing him on her way back to her room.

  “It looked to me as if she needed only one.”

  Mary Elizabeth shot him a look of warning, but coupled it with a smile as she left them alone. She was right; he must tread carefully, especially after he had made the misstep with those gowns. Still, he did not like seeing Pru in black.

  Even now she stood, her hands behind her back, examining the wound she had made in the wood—a thick, deadly wedge right in Cumberland’s overcoat. She rose on her toes, and slipped her fingertips into it. Her curling honey hair was beginning to come down from beneath her ugly widow’s cap. Her cheeks were pink, but with exertion, not with ire. When he deemed it safe, Robbie crossed the room to stand beside her.

  “You’ve done the duke in for sure this time,” he said.

  “The duke?” Pru raised a questioning eyebrow. “You don’t eviscerate your host on a daily basis, surely.”

  Robbie smiled. “No, I understand that Northumberland is a good sort. For an Englishman. No, that fellow there is the Butcher of Culloden. The man who crushed the ’Forty-Five.”

  Prudence went very still. She seemed to have heard a little of the history. Perhaps her tutor had given her a taste of it when she was a child. He could tell that she did not know what to say, so he spoke on, making light of a dark subject.

  “I have told Mary that the duke never would have worn a top hat, but she will not heed me.”

  Pru smiled at him then, an open, lovely smile. He could stand in the light of that smile for the rest of his life and never look back. She was nobody, from nowhere, and he would have her.

  The knowledge was simple and clear, like the water of the burn that ran into the loch beyond Castle Glenderrin. It was a fact of life, like summer sun and winter’s ice. He would have her, the rest of the world and all in it be damned.

  He looked down into the blue of her eyes, realizing that there was no one left in her family to fight him for her. He could take her and marry her, or not, and there was no man to say him nay. She had no man to defend her.

  Her smiled faded a bit, puzzled at his intensity, no doubt. He took her hand in his and pressed his lips to her palm. Her glove was off, and for the first time he saw the abrasions from her fall at the wharf, before he had gotten to her, before he had saved her life.

  “I swear by God and His saints, you will never have to defend yourself again.”

  “Robbie, I…”

  The sound of his name on her lips was music, but he stopped her mouth with his own—a quick kiss, not for passion, but to gain her silence.

  “I am taking an oath, Prudence. Pay attention.”

  She did not speak again, but looked at him, her eyes wide, their indigo depths calling him to his doom. He would die happy.

  “I swear that I will defend you, all the days of my life. I will stand between you and trouble, because there is no one else to do it.”

  She seemed to hear him then, and to understand what he meant. Tears came into her eyes, and two overflowed, coating her cheeks in rivulets of salt. He used his free hand to wipe them away, his thumb taking the water from her. He licked the salt from his thumb, and she blinked at the sensuous gesture.

  Then he kissed her again, this time lingering over her lips as he might his whisky, playing at them as he might his fife. She kissed him back, moving to arch against him, when he stopped her, his hands on her arms. He would not muck the moment with desire. He wanted only to mark it, so that she would remember.

  “I never break my word,” he said. “A man’s word is all he has to defend him in this benighted world. That, and his sword arm.”

  Prudence blinked at him, and he had to restrain himself like a dog on a leash not to kiss her again.

  “If your brother is alive, and anywhere on earth, I will find him for you. I swear it.”

  * * *

  The rest of Pru’s day was much less dramatic, which was both a relief and a disappointment. She had no desire to continue throwing knives, and absolutely no interest in ever again stabbing a man. But as the evening progressed, Robert Waters did not touch her again either. She even lingered in the drawing room after supper. He did not try to catch her alone, though she had worn one of the blue shawls he had given her. She could not bring herself to put on one of the gowns, but the blue of her new shawl matched her eyes. She might wear it at home, at least, and please him.

  If he noticed it, he did not comment. After his dramatic declaration in the ballroom, he had withdrawn behind a wall of politeness that she could not breach.

  Not that she wanted to, of course. She was a lady. He had saved her life. Perhaps there were a few cultural confusions about buying a lady gowns and the evil of the Duke of Cumberland, but beyond that, she knew that Robert Waters was a good man. A man of honor. She had been sure that her brother had been a man like that. No matter what the gossipmongers said about him stealing away with fortunes to the darkest Indies, she was still sure. Albert had sunk to the bottom of the sea, and taken a mass of the ton’s wealth with him.

  Even so, after her foolhardy attempt to look for a different answer down at the docks, Robert was still willing to search for him. She did not know how he would do such a thing, especially since they left tomorrow for Northumberland, and she was afraid to ask. There was a tenderness between them now, a strange diffidence that had sprung up since their moment alone in the sunlit ballroom that made her hesitate to ask him anything at all.

  So, when it was time to go to bed that night, she simply took her night lamp and went to her room alone.

  She was sorely tempted to leave her door unbolted, but she knew that he would not come.

  Pru did not sleep right away, though they were leaving at dawn to begin the excruciating chaise journey to the far north of England. Mary Elizabeth’s gowns would follow in few days’ time, so there was nothing to stop them from responding to the duchess’s summons. Pru knew that even Mary Elizabeth wanted to please that woman, so off they would ride come the morning.

  Instead of speculating about the duchess, Pru looked at the clothes that still laid spread out on her bed. The duchess’s servants did not touch her personal things, as if they were unsure of her status in the household, or how long it might last. So she was free to stand and stare at those gowns for a long time before she picked the first one up, the emerald-green one, and put it on.

  She stood looking into the tall pier glass, watching the way the candlelight caught the sheen of the silk. She ran her hand over the softness of the gown where it rode her hip. She wondered what it might be like to be the kind of woman who wore such a gown.

  The woman in question would have to be confident. She would know her place in the world and her role in it. She would no doubt have family and money to back her, and a way of smiling at a man, even a man like Robert Waters, that would make him come to heel.

  Pru spent a few minutes fantasizing over what it would be like to be such a woman, and then she took the gown off. She did not try on any of the others, but she could see that they would fit as well as the first one had, as if they had been made for her. It was too bad that she had not been made for them.

  Still, she did not leave them behind but wrapped each one in tissue paper for the journey north. There was room in her bag for all of the clothes Robert had bought her, though it did strain a bit at the seams. She sat by the fire then and dozed in a chair. She had no idea what the next day would bring, but she wanted to wake early to face
it.

  She woke in the night to find the fire burned down, and Robert Waters standing over her. “Are you awake, Pru? Time to sleep in the carriage.”

  She laughed a little, then wondered what on earth she looked like. She raised her hand to her hair and discovered that her widow’s cap was askew. Some of the pins were threatening to come down, and her curls with them. With the cool aplomb of a seasoned lady’s maid, Robert adjusted her hair with a few deft tucks, securing the pins properly, and her cap with it.

  She did not feel embarrassed so much as cared for, as he offered her his hand and hefted her bag in the other. “Come along then, Pru. Mary’s waiting.”

  “Is she bringing her sword?” Pru asked without thinking. Robert did not laugh as she had meant him to, but winced.

  “God in His Heaven, I hope not.”

  He held her hand all the way down the stairs, until they reached the landing, where the servants might see. She followed him the rest of the way, until they came to the carriage, and he handed her in.

  They still had not spoken of the oath he had taken, nor had they spoken again of her brother. Prudence wondered if their encounter in the ballroom had been some oddity that she should forget, like a dream that faded once dawn had come. She could see no change in Robert Waters’s face as he climbed into the carriage and sat beside her.

  Mary Elizabeth was already stretched out on the backward-facing seat, her neat white boots pulled up beneath her gown, her blonde head pillowed on the velvet squabs. It was the most comfortable carriage Pru had ever sat in, but she knew that five days from now, when they finally reached Northumberland, she would wish to see it consigned to the fires of a kiln somewhere, stick by stick.

  The traveling chaise began to move, and Mary Elizabeth fell asleep before they had turned the first corner. Pru watched her, bemused, wishing she might sleep as easily.

  “Lean your head on my arm, Pru,” Robert said. “We’ve a long way to go before breakfast.”

  She knew it was improper. She knew she was seven kinds of a fool. But Prudence Whittaker, born Lady Prudence Farthington, daughter of the Earl of Lynwood, laid her head on Robert Waters’s shoulder and slept like a babe in arms.

  Eighteen

  Robbie might have died a happy man on that road out of London. He was grateful that he did not, of course, for there was so much to look forward to.

  Pru rested her head on him as if he were her favorite bolster pillow. He was careful not to move—he barely allowed himself to breathe. When he did, he took in the sweet scent of her hair, hair that smelled like hyacinths from his mother’s castle garden.

  She was soft against him, and he wanted her as he always did when she was near, and often when she was not. But he felt content even in his desire, waiting for the thing he knew would come.

  He was not sure of her. She was not a woman a man would ever be sure of. But he was sure of himself. For the first time in his life, he knew that he wanted more from a woman than a night of pleasure, or a week of frolic between the sheets. He wanted her for as long as he might have her, for as long as she would let him keep her.

  He wondered what his mother would say when he brought home a penniless, nameless beggar for a wife. His mother understood the vagaries of love and all they led to, for she had left all she knew and run away to the Highlands with his father over thirty years ago. Her fancy English family had not been pleased, but they had made the best of what was to them a bad situation. The Bishop of London, his uncle, still received them, and his other uncle, the Earl of Carlisle, still dined at their table whenever he came north. So his mother would take his bride in stride, and the rest of the family would follow her.

  Pru snuggled against his arm, so that she was pressed to him, her breast against his bicep. He swallowed hard and shifted in his seat. It was his movement that woke her. He cursed himself silently when she woke and sat up straight.

  “Are we stopping for breakfast?” she asked.

  She kept her voice pitched low so as not to wake Mary Elizabeth across the way. His sister slumbered on, wrapped in her pelisse, her bonnet and gloves discarded. Mary Elizabeth, like their father and their brother Ian, could sleep anywhere.

  “In half an hour,” he answered her. “We’ll come to the March Hare. They have the best bannocks south of Aberdeen.”

  “A rabbit bakes bannocks?” she asked. Robert laughed quietly, hoping to steal a few more minutes alone with her before his sister woke up.

  “It’s an inn,” he said. “How do you know what a bannock is?”

  “Mary Elizabeth told me,” Pru answered. He watched her mind shift from sleep into waking slowly, as she kept leaning against him as if he were her favorite armchair. He shifted closer to let her breast push against him harder. She seemed not to notice, but to be off entertaining some womanly, secret thoughts of her own. He did not have long to wait to find out what they were.

  “Do you think they have apple tarts?” she asked.

  “Not this time of year.”

  She slumped a little in defeat, and Robbie spoke at once to assuage her. “They might have a blackberry tart or two.”

  She brightened visibly at that, moving even closer to him. He savored his reward, as well as the sight of the soft smile on her face. He would pick the blackberries himself and bribe the cook to make tarts for her. For the first time, he wished he were as fancy as a duke, that he might bring his pastry chef with him on the road.

  He chuckled at himself, and at the lunacy of that. If he did not have her soon, he would go as soft in the brain as he was hard in the britches. He wondered how to persuade a gently bred, penniless woman to marry him. He supposed he should just ask.

  He was tempted to do so just then, but Mary Elizabeth woke, as if hearing the tenor of his thoughts in her sleep. She was awake as soon as her eyes opened, unlike Prudence, who seemed to take her sweet time coming to full awareness. He liked his women soft and supple in the morning.

  His sister was not a soft woman, no matter the time of day. She glared at him, seeing how he was cozened up with her friend. He simply smiled back at her, waiting for the fireworks to start. He hoped she wasn’t too loud, and would not startle the horses.

  “I’ll thank you not to noodle along with my friend and companion, Robbie.”

  “Noodle? Do you mean canoodle, little bird?”

  Mary Elizabeth glared at him even harder for calling her by her childhood nickname. “You know exactly what I mean, Robert Bruce Waters.”

  Prudence perked up at the sharp tone in Mary Elizabeth’s voice. She did not address the matter in question—namely the fact that she was sitting almost close enough to be in his lap. Instead she asked, “Are you named for Robert the Bruce then?”

  “None other,” Robbie answered.

  “He’s named for our father’s brother,” Mary Elizabeth said. “Our uncle was named for the Bruce.”

  “Ah.” Prudence nodded sagely, as if the point was a salient one. Mary Elizabeth continued to glare at him.

  “I have my eye on you,” his sister said.

  Robbie only smiled, as innocent as any lamb. “It looks as if you have both of them on me at the moment.”

  Mary Elizabeth did not rise to that bait, but she did not take her eyes off him either. Prudence moved discreetly to the left, so that as they drew into the inn yard of the March Hare, there was an almost decorous distance between them. Robbie felt the loss of Pru keenly, but he would bide his time. Five days was a long time to travel in a closed carriage. And Mary Elizabeth was a great one for sleep, when she could not be moving. Like a housecat, she would nap her days away, and Robbie would be left alone with Pru.

  He smiled, a little wolfishly, as he handed Pru down from the chaise. Her eyes widened a little at the look he gave her, so he tamped it down a bit, and offered her his arm. No need to give away the game, and them only forty miles outside of London T
own.

  Pru kept her eye on him until blackberry tarts were served, and then she had eyes only for her breakfast, as any sensible woman should.

  His mother would like her. Robbie was sure of it.

  * * *

  The trip to Northumberland was not nearly as horrible as Pru had thought it would be. Like a cat, Mary Elizabeth seemed content to sleep most of the day away, though she seemed not to wake in the night, either. Pru had wondered if her charge would be a difficult bedfellow, but Mary Elizabeth lay down soon after supper, and slept as soon her head touched the pillow. Pru wished that she herself were as sanguine in their travel.

  She had no objection to the opulent ducal chaise, nor to their accommodations, which were the best inns that could be found on the North Road. It seemed that no matter what inn they came to, the best room was prepared before they even opened the carriage door. The ducal crest paved the road in soft sheets and downy mattresses all the way to York. Pru hadn’t been so far north since her father had died, and it made her a bit homesick, wishing that she had her brother with her to see the sights. Albert had always made travel fun when they were children.

  Pru didn’t sleep much in the carriage, nor did she sleep well at night, because her nerves were beginning to fray. It was Robert Waters’s fault. She blamed him, though it was not his intention to vex her. He was as polite as a curate, but she had not forgotten his strange vow of protection. She could not fathom what he meant by that, so she did not dwell on it. But even so, though she managed to be polite in return, she could not keep her overactive imagination from running away with her. His very presence in the building was enough to send her into a daydream of what else they might be doing on those soft inn sheets—and she, a gently bred spinster! Heaven alone knew what experienced women thought when Robert Waters turned his blue eyes on them.