How to Wed a Warrior

by Christy English

  It was Robbie who stepped back, and Robbie who made her see reason in the end. “We’ll need to talk, Mrs. Prudence Whittaker. But not here, and not now.”

  “Talk?” she asked stupidly, blinking at him as she tried to organize her scrambled thoughts. Her sense of well-being and peace and passion drifted away as with the outgoing tide, and she was left looking at the man she loved, with all her lies and loss between them. “I’m sorry, Robbie,” was all she said.

  “No need to apologize, Pru. There are stronger women than you who have succumbed to the Waters charm. And I have a good deal more of it than most.”

  She heard the teasing note in his voice, and she laughed out loud, swatting at him ineffectually for his arrogance. Though, having just been in his arms, there was little doubt that he spoke nothing but the truth. Damn the man.

  He laughed a little with her, and took her hand. His other hand fished her glasses out of his pocket and offered them back to her. “My sister had best not see you in all your glory. When she sees how truly beautiful you are, she’ll want to make a match for you, quick like.”

  Pru laughed again. “There’s little danger of that, Robbie. I’m five and twenty and have been on the shelf a long while now.”

  His gaze sharpened on her face, and she saw a hint of the determination he hid behind his winsome, crooked smiles. “Is that so? Likely you know best how a woman thinks of such things. But I am a man.” He pulled her close for one last, quick kiss that left her truly breathless. “You’re in more danger than you think.”

  Twenty-three

  Robbie almost lost his head with Prudence, but that was nothing new. What was new was the sight of her in breeches, and the renewed certainty that he needed to put his ring on her finger, and quickly.

  Mary Elizabeth broke into those pleasant thoughts, as she broke into so many things. She stood on the cliff above their heads, shading her eyes from the sun that was rising higher as the morning wore on. “Alex is here!” she shrieked, running down the rocky peak as if she had a goat’s hooves.

  She did not slip, and took her mount from where she had tied it to the tree. Robbie made himself step back from Pru to seem more decorous, but Mary Elizabeth did not give him a glance. She leaped onto her horse’s back instead and rode like a madwoman toward the stables. He looked along her path and saw no evidence of their older brother, but she had an eagle’s eye and no doubt was right.

  “Come and meet more of the family,” he said, helping her up onto her horse.

  She did not need his help, but he enjoyed giving her a hand up, watching her fine, rounded backside rising over him as she threw one booted leg over her mount. She sat in the saddle as proud as you please, as if she wore a man’s breeches every day.

  “Will your family like me?” she asked, looking doubtful behind the glasses she clearly did not need. Her soft, honey hair had begun to fall, only half of her curls still high on the top of her head like a queen’s crown, the rest around her shoulders in a veil of caramel—Robbie knew he was far gone when he thought words like that. He usually saved his poetry for his songwriting, and he had never before applied his poetry to the sight of a woman. But there was a first for all things.

  “They will love you,” he said, “as Mary and I do.”

  She blushed to hear that truth, and he smiled at her as he mounted his own borrowed steed. “To the stables, then, before Mary Elizabeth burns them down.”

  “She would never do that.” Pru leaped to his sister’s defense, her blush forgotten. Her prim disapproval made him want to kiss her all over again, but he held off, listening for her sniff.

  “She might. A kiss says I’ll beat you there.”

  “A lady does not wager.”

  Robbie laughed. “I think this once, you might.”

  He was off then, and she followed close behind, just as he knew she would.

  * * *

  Robbie did beat her, for his horse was larger and faster, but he did not win their wager by much. He handed the reins of his horse to a groom and stood ready to help her down when she arrived, winded and breathing hard.

  “I made no jumps on the way back,” he said. “I hope you did not.”

  “And face another dressing-down by the likes of you? Once is enough for one morning.”

  He pulled her down from her perch, and let another groom take her horse away. He caressed her backside, just once, unable to resist. She wriggled in his arms and blushed hard, and he kissed her quickly at the sight of the pleasure in her eyes.

  He saw Alex standing by the stable door and knew he had better explain himself or face a dressing-down.

  “Mrs. Prudence Whittaker, this is my brother, Alexander Waters of Glenderrin.”

  “How do you do?” Pru spoke as calmly and as primly as if she stood up in one of her ugly gowns, and not in borrowed breeches that showed the curves of her hips and thighs. Alex, God bless him, did not even blink or look below her waist, but bowed as if he were being presented to a queen.

  “Good day, madam. It is my honor to make your acquaintance.”

  Prudence smiled, and Robbie thought that even Alex, mad as he was for his own wife, felt the warmth of it. The sun came out whenever Prudence smiled. Robbie knew it would be so for him always, for the rest of his life.

  Alex blinked at the onslaught, and Robbie took pity on him and sent Prudence away. “Go dress and meet Mary Elizabeth at the house, if you will, Mrs. Prudence. Her best friend is likely here, as she’s married to this one.”

  Pru looked confused until Alex had the grace to say, “My wife, Catherine, is close with Mary Elizabeth. They are both up at the house, having breakfast. I hope you will join them. Catherine is very excited to meet you.”

  “She is?” Pru looked blindsided by Alex’s warm words, as they did not match the formality of his tone. Robbie thought to take her hand, proper or no, but she rallied almost at once. “That is very kind,” she said.

  Robbie stepped between them. “Off to your hot chocolate now. We’ve men’s business to discuss.”

  Pru didn’t look to Alex again, but focused instead on Robbie and his attempt at dismissal. “Men’s business, is it? You’ve a horse to trade with your brother, or some such?”

  “Never you mind.” Robbie steered her toward the door, and with one last uneasy look at Alex, she did as she was told. “We’ll discuss the winnings of our wager later.”

  She blushed again at that, and he almost laughed. She left him then, before he said anything else inappropriate in front of his family. He sighed, watching her go. It was a fine sight to see, a well-rounded woman in breeches.

  “So that’s the one,” Alex said.

  They often did this, beginning a conversation as if they were already in the middle of it. Alex pushed his dark hair out of one eye and looked at his brother, waiting for an answer.

  “Aye. She is.”

  Alex did not smile, as Robbie expected him to. Indeed, his brother looked grim for just having been introduced to the next addition to the family. “We had better talk,” was all he said.

  * * *

  Alex would say nothing more as they walked back to the house without stopping in the breakfast room. They heard the high-pitched, excited voices of Mary Elizabeth and Catherine as they passed, and alongside them, Prudence’s low, sultry laugh. Robbie’s body turned toward the sound like a pointer toward a fowl, but Alex steered him into the library, where hot tea and buns were waiting.

  “Why are you here?” Robbie asked. “Are you taking Mary Elizabeth off my hands?”

  Alex smiled a little at the mention of their sister, but his smile did not reach his eyes. “We’re here to help you with her, that’s sure.”

  “Your wife is little help, if I recall. No offense intended.”

  “None taken. Between the two of them, they are quite a handful.”

  “There are th
ree of them now,” Robbie said.

  “Then we’re one man down.”

  “Aye.” Alex’s mood was dark, and Robbie could not begin to fathom why. Robbie drank his tea in silence, waiting his brother out. Alex ate two buns, drank two cups of tea as if fortifying himself for battle, then sighed, sitting back in the armchair that cradled his large body. “I didn’t sleep much last night.”

  “I imagine not,” Robbie quipped.

  Alex raised a brow, and Robbie bit back another veiled crack about his nuptial bliss. Alex and Catherine had been married only a short time, and were still in the midst of a merry honeymoon indeed.

  “We’re here for the same reason you are,” Alex said at last. “The duchess summoned us.”

  Robbie frowned, eating a scone with jam. “What for?”

  “If we knew why women did things, we’d rule the world.”

  Robbie laughed at that. “Maybe she thinks I need help with Mary Elizabeth.”

  “Maybe she’s right.”

  Robbie did not argue the point. He knew his brother had more important news, or they would not have arrived from the depths of Devon so quickly.

  “There’s word from Ian,” Alex said at last.

  “Good news?”

  “Is it ever?”

  Robbie didn’t smile at that jibe. They both knew the answer to that.

  “Which do you want first?”

  “Whichever is worse.”

  “I received word from our uncle before I left London.”

  “The Bishop of London made time for you twice in one month?” Robbie smiled at his own halfhearted joke, feeling dread rise in his belly. He wondered why he had not heard from the bishop himself. Whenever his mother’s brother had to get directly involved, sending word by mouth and not by post, the news was usually dire indeed.

  Alex did not smile, and Robbie swallowed a bit of tea, leaving the sugarless dregs at the bottom of his cup. “There is no Reverend Whittaker among the vicars of the Church of England,” Alex said.

  “I knew that,” Robbie answered. “The man is five years dead.”

  Alex sighed. “The man is a fiction. There hasn’t been a Reverend Whittaker in the English church, not since the last one took sail for India to tame the heathens twenty years ago.”

  It took a moment for his brother’s words to move from his ear to his brain, but as soon as they did, Robbie felt well and truly sick. He breathed through his nose, hoping his breakfast would stay down. He pressed back against the growing tide of nausea. He was a man, not a fool. If Pru had lied, there had to be a reason.

  “Who was she married to, then?” he asked his brother.

  Alex stared back at him. “We’d have to know who she really is to answer that question.”

  Robbie stood and paced toward the library windows. He looked out at the garden in full bloom. Summer was at its height now; before long, the cold of autumn would take every blossom down, save for a few hearty chrysanthemums and whatever languished in the ducal hothouse. Robbie felt as if he were trapped in a hothouse himself. The walls seemed close, and he felt as if his neat-tied linen was strangling him.

  “There’re more,” Alex said.

  “Let’s hear it.”

  “As I said, Ian wrote to you, but I was the only Waters at the duchess’s town house, so the letter came to me. He’s found more. There is one well-born man missing at sea, a man who sounds very like the brother your girl mentioned. First sons don’t generally take to the seafaring life. Not English sons, at any rate.”

  “They don’t,” Robbie said, wishing his brother would just get on with it. Better to make a clean, quick cut than saw away at a man with a serrated edge.

  “There was a rumor that an earl’s son, one Viscount Stanhope, went down with a load of cargo bought with ton money five years ago. Ian says that the parents are dead, but the son is still alive, though the cargo is nowhere to be found. He was last seen hiding in London, near the East India docks.”

  Robbie felt black curses rise to his lips, dark enough and hot enough to sear the walls around them. He clenched his jaw and held his tongue as long as he could before the words burst out of him like a dam breaking. “The black-hearted son of a whore. The cowardly piece of midden filth. Skulking about the docks of London, hiding from his creditors, when his sister is alone in the world and needs him.”

  “We don’t know your girl is his sister.”

  “You know we do.”

  Alex did not protest again, but stood beside him. His brother did not touch him—he knew better—but Alex’s silent support was all Robbie needed to collect himself and keep his head.

  Pru could not help who her family was, nor could she make a man of honor out of a cur. Even if he was her brother. She had been in grief and sorrow the one time they had spoken of him. The loss had cut her deep, and not just because she was left alone and defenseless. She loved the son of a dog. Whatever else he was, the erstwhile viscount was the last of her kin.

  “If I marry her, I’ll have to help the bastard,” was all Robbie said.

  “Aye,” Alex answered. “If you marry her, we’ll have to save the fool from himself, if fool he be, and pay his debts in the bargain.”

  Robbie swore then, and his brother did not flinch. They had both heard far worse at sea.

  “I’m still going to marry her,” Robbie said. “Whatever cur she has for a brother.”

  Alex frowned, and Robbie knew that he was not best pleased. His brother loved him, but his misgivings lay between them like so much ballast. Robbie saw the moment when Alex decided to speak of them.

  “It troubles me that she has told you nothing of this,” Alex said. “Not even her own name.”

  Robbie weighed the truth of that against his own love for Pru. The truth made him ache. He stayed silent.

  “You know I stand with you, whatever you decide. But take care, Brother. That’s all I ask.”

  Robbie wanted to say something glib at that point. He wanted to smile, as if to dismiss his own fear. But he could not shrug it off. Instead, he wondered why Prudence had done what she had done. No doubt she had her reasons. But would she tell those reasons to him?

  Alex clapped one hand on his arm, then his hand fell away. Neither spoke again. Alex left the room, no doubt to find his soft and willing wife. Robbie sat down with a set of charts he had found in the library the day before, and stared at them, as if to plan a voyage he would never take.

  Twenty-four

  While Alexander made her uneasy, Pru found that she liked Mary Elizabeth’s new sister-in-law. Catherine, though young, was a charming girl who seemed head over heels in love with her husband. Pru almost envied her that joy, and the freedom to feel it. No dark past plagued the girl, no lies or loss. She seemed as sunny and hopeful as any girl of eighteen ought to be, and Alexander seemed to dote on her as the best of husbands might.

  Pru told herself to stop being mean-spirited, and squelched the envy that lurked in her heart. She felt old next to the new addition to the Waterses’ household, but then, she was several years older than both of the girls in her company.

  She spent the afternoon holed up in her borrowed room, ashamed of herself and her dark thoughts. She let Mary Elizabeth catch up with Catherine without her present, saying that she had a slight headache and would lie down for the afternoon. Mary Elizabeth had not looked pleased but had let her go when Catherine had laid a gentle hand on her friend’s arm.

  Pru went down to dinner in the frumpiest gown she owned. Wearing brown worsted suited her mood, as well as the cooler climate of Northumberland. Alexander had avoided her gaze throughout the meal, save for one time when he stared at her as if he would search out her secrets from behind her eyes. She could not seem to shake her nervous agitation even as she sat among the women after dinner, waiting for the men to come out of the dining room. Mary Elizabeth gave her an
eagle-eyed stare, and Pru shifted uncomfortably on her settee.

  Mercifully, the duchess had retired directly after dinner and Pru sat alone with her charge and her young friend. So there was no one else to hear when Mary Elizabeth asked, “What is wrong with you, Mrs. Prudence? You’ve been down at the mouth all day since our ride. Did Robbie say something else to vex you?”

  As usual, Mary Elizabeth had better eyes and sense than Pru herself. In spite of the kisses and caresses he had given her that morning, like his brother, Robbie had barely looked her way all evening. He had not knocked on her door all afternoon, and had barely spoken to her at dinner. She realized then the true reason for her low spirits. How could she be such a dolt about her own feelings?

  “No, Mary, he didn’t say anything rude.”

  “No ruder than usual, at least?” Mary Elizabeth smiled a little at that, and Pru felt her own lips tilt.

  “No more than usual, no.”

  “Mrs. Prudence is here to civilize me,” Mary Elizabeth told Catherine. “A task which, of course, cannot be done. But she gives wise counsel, and has had a marvelous effect on my brother. I’ve never seen him so attentive to a woman, and he’s known more than six or seven.”

  “Mary Elizabeth!” Catherine Waters gasped, as if pretending to be scandalized, but all three of the women ended up laughing. Pru had forgotten how good it felt to laugh with other women. She had not had a friend since her coming out Season, when John Vaughton’s sister had almost become her own. She had not realized how much she missed that good-humored, feminine fun until Mary Elizabeth and Catherine drew her into it once more.

  “He did not fawn over you at dinner as is his usual way of late,” Mary Elizabeth said. “He may think that he has won you already.”

  Pru thought of how eagerly she had kissed him that morning. She tried to sound prim as a companion should, but knew she failed. “I am sure Mr. Waters does not try to win me at all.”

  “Mr. Waters! Now there’s the spirit! Make him jump for it, Mrs. Prudence. Make him work and leap, and he’ll love you for it.”