Pru stood on the other side of the room, staring out of the tiny window at God alone knew what.
Perhaps she was simply tired, he told himself. Women who were not Mary Elizabeth probably did not like to sleep in carriages. He could sleep damn near anywhere, but his neck was crooked past bearing and needed a good crack. He raised his chin and gave it one, feeling the sweet relief as his bones slipped back into place. Prudence turned to him when he did that, her eyes filled with something bad. Displeasure? Irritation? He had never found her hard to read before, but in that moment, he could not guess at a thing, only that she was miserable.
He waited until their dinner of chicken and hot bread, potatoes, and carrots was served on the polished table.
The serving girl withdrew, and he pulled out a chair for his wife. Once Pru was seated, he sat across from her, and when she did not to eat, he began to worry.
“What’s the matter, Pru?” He ignored the food before him, and focused on her face.
His wife’s face fell then, and he cursed himself for not speaking sooner. Tears had not only risen in her eyes, but were spilling down her cheeks. He rose to his feet and went around the table.
He picked her up out of her chair and carried her over to the settee. The fire blazed nearby, burning off the Yorkshire chill.
Robbie did not speak for a long while. He simply held Prudence close and let her cry. She was a bitty thing, as light as a feather against him as she finally relaxed and leaned on him. She sniffled, reaching into her sleeve for the handkerchief he had once given her. He kissed her hair, and smoothed her curls where they had come loose from her pins.
“Wife, why are you weeping?”
“I’m afraid,” she said at last, her voice muffled against the wool of his coat. He shifted so that he could see her face. “I’m afraid you’ll regret marrying me.”
Robbie did not take his eyes from hers, but held her gaze in the hopes that she might see that he meant every word he said. “If I live to be a hundred and ten, I will never regret marrying you.”
“But those people at the inn, the lady and her husband. They gave us the cut direct because of me.”
Robbie frowned, thinking back. “You mean that scrawny woman and her whippet of a husband? They cut us, you say?”
“Yes.” She wiped her eyes again. “And it’s all my fault.”
“Well, now, sweet Prudence, if being married to you will keep people like that from speaking to me for the rest of my life, I count myself a lucky man twice over.”
She met his eyes then and touched his cheek with her fingertips. “Being tied to me will make it harder for Mary Elizabeth to get on. She might never be received in London again, not even with the duchess’s sanction.”
“I don’t think Mary Elizabeth will ever notice if she’s received by the English or not. Now that she’s north again, we’ll never get her back to London Town. She’ll head home, right as rain, and no doubt her recluse duke will follow her.”
“What if her connection to me keeps the duke from offering for her?”
Robbie smiled and kissed her, lingering on her lips just for a moment to please himself before he spoke again. It seemed his Prudence was willing to be persuaded a bit as well, for she kissed him back before she pulled away.
“The duke seems like a man who knows his own mind,” Robbie said, keeping his focus with some difficulty on the matter at hand. “Your brother and all his past disasters won’t keep him from her. Not if he’s a real man. And if I’m wrong, and the recluse duke is no man at all, Mary would not want him anyway.”
That last statement seemed to get through to her, for Prudence smiled a little.
“Pru, I am sorry those English bastards insulted you. If I had been paying the least bit of attention, I would have beaten them both bloody. I should have stood up for you and held them off. But I wasn’t listening, and I am sorry for it. From now on, whenever we are in the south, I will do my level best to keep the insulting bastards away from you. If you know their names, I might call the man out, if man he be, and settle the question.”
She clutched him close. “No, Robbie, don’t shoot him, please.”
“What was his name, just for curiosity’s sake?”
But she knew him well and was not deceived by his mild tone. “I don’t know, Robbie. I had never met them before. I’d only seen them at the duchess’s ball.”
“At Mary Elizabeth’s ball, you mean. It’s just as well. I’ll leave them be, as we have important work in the south looking for your brother. I don’t suppose I can be shooting every Englishman between here and London just for stupidity.”
She was smiling then, the last of the tears gone from her eyes. “No,” his wife said, “I don’t suppose you can.”
He leaned close and nipped gently at her earlobe so that she caught her breath. “I don’t have enough bullets.”
Thirty-five
Prudence was not sure how he did it, but her husband had once again worked his magic, and had even managed to make her laugh. For the first time in four hours, she was feeling better. She had finally wrapped her mind around the incontrovertible facts that Mary Elizabeth would be fine and the Waters family could not care less about the English ton. Now if she could only rescue her brother, all would be right with the world.
The matter settled, she moved to get up from her husband’s lap, to go back to the table and perhaps eat a bite of chicken, when Robbie’s hands caught her and held her, moving along the front of her gown to cup her breasts.
“I slept all the afternoon away. If I had been awake, I’d have done a little of this in the carriage today.”
Pru took a deep breath for though his touch felt lovely, she was hungry. She moved to stand again, but Robbie drew her down beside him on that uncomfortable settee and kissed her. His lips tasted of chicken, and of wine. At first, she thought to turn him away, sure that he meant only to canoodle a little before dinner. But he would not let her go.
He cupped one hand over her breast, while the other held her jaw in place so that she could not pull back. His hands were hard on her body, and she shivered in spite of herself.
She tried to get away from him again, but this time he moved with her. He stood when she did, and pulled her to him. He pressed his hips against hers, so that she might feel his hunger for her. She opened her mouth to tell him to let her go when he kissed her again.
“Let me go eat, Robbie. I’m feeling better now.”
“I’ll let you go. After I’ve made you feel even better still.”
His lips gentled then, sliding down from her lips to her throat, his breath hot against her skin. She felt her hunger begin to take second place to her desire as it rose for him. She pressed herself to him, so that the contours of his body were hard against her. She never felt as soft as when he touched her. She wriggled against him, this time to get closer.
“I love you, leannan. Let me have you, as my wife.”
She kissed him then, and he must have taken her mouth over his as consent, for he lifted her in his arms. He carried her across the threshold of their rented bedroom, to the feather bed that was already turned down, strewn with herbs and flowers, waiting for them.
The scent of rosemary was in her hair, and the scent of thyme beside her cheek. She lay back on the soft bed, feeling like a mermaid adrift in a quiet sea while Robbie stripped her pink gown off her, and tossed it on the floor.
“Don’t muss it, Robbie,” she said. “It’s one of my new dresses.”
“Never fear, Pru. A few wrinkles won’t mar it much.”
He spoke as cheerfully as he ever had, but there was a dangerous hunger in his eyes that made her shiver as he looked at her lying against the downy quilt in her transparent shift. He had it off her in a trice, then stared down at her so long that she raised her hands to cover herself.
“No, leannan. Let me look at yo
u. You are a beauty and a sight to behold, and I have it on good authority from a man of God that you are mine.”
“And you are mine,” she answered him, unwilling to accept his high-handedness, naked though she was. He laughed a little at that, tossing his own coat aside on the floor with her gown.
Robbie smiled his crooked smile then, and her heart warmed. Then he lay down on top of her, and the rest of her skin warmed as well.
“You’re still dressed,” she said.
“So I am,” he answered.
Pru frowned and opened her mouth to order him to take his clothes off, but he kissed her, sliding his tongue up and over hers, drawing hers into a dance that distracted her from what she had meant to say.
His hands were between her thighs, and the calluses on his fingertips against her soft skin made her shiver. His tongue trailed from her lips to her throat and then to her ear, where he bit her earlobe gently. She wriggled with pleasure when he did that, and he laughed a little. His fingertips played between her thighs, and she writhed again.
“Stay still a minute, leannan.”
“Robbie, I need you.”
“And you shall have me, in just a bit.”
He bit her nipple then, gently, and she raised her hips to brush against his. He fumbled at his breeches for a moment, and pushed them down just enough to slide between her thighs. She opened to him, and he whispered in her ear. “I can’t take as long as I did last night, love,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“Stop apologizing, Robbie, and take me before I die.”
She was shaking with her need for him. He did not waste time, and slid home. She gasped as her body expanded around him. She had been a virgin only the day before, but it seemed that her body did not take long to learn the way of things. Maybe it had always known, the way salmon knew how to swim home to spawn. They moved together, and her pleasure began to spark and build from a slow flame into a flash fire.
She tried to keep moving with him, but he held her down, raising her hips to a better angle to meet his thrusts. The pleasure was keener then, as he struck the right spots, first inside, then out, and back again. The pleasure built so quickly then that she screamed, as he shuddered in his own release.
As he had the night before, he fell over her as one slain. This time, though, he did not move when she wiggled, but lay across her like a great fallen tree. “Do you believe that I love you, Robbie?” she asked him.
He laughed a little at that, and one blue eye peered down at her from the midst of his auburn curls. “Aye,” he answered at last.
“Then believe me when I say I won’t run off again if you let me up. I find I want some chicken, and a bit of that roasted carrot with onion.”
He laughed again but did not move. “Don’t go eating too many onions, Pru, or I won’t want you in my bed.”
“Nonsense,” she said as primly as she could while sprawled naked with a hulking man on top of her. “You will love my onions, and me, until the day you die.”
He laughed and kissed her. “I’ll love you better without them,” he said.
“Let me up, Robbie.”
“In a little while. Let me hold you for a bit first.”
He turned on his side, and she turned with him and found that they fit together very nicely his front to her back. Her stomach rumbled, but she did not hear it. She was listening instead to his breathing as his arm wrapped around her, and to the peaceful beating of her own heart. She had never shared a bed before, but she found that, as long as it was Robbie in it with her, she liked it.
They slept an hour before they rose and ate their cold dinner. Robbie had told the serving girl that they were newlyweds, so she had left them alone, and their dishes with them.
Pru sat at the table, wearing Robbie’s great, white shirt, munching on chicken that she held between her fingers. A perfectly good knife and fork still lay at her place, but she did not touch them. Perhaps she was turning Highlander already.
Robbie sat across from her, eating his own dinner, but after a long moment, as he watched her finish one bit of chicken and reach for another, he dragged his chair over and sat close beside her. She liked that, for she could smell the hint of cedar on his skin and on her own, and she ate happily in silence for a while longer. But it seemed he still was not close enough to suit himself, for as she reached for another piece of roast chicken from her plate, he lifted her into his arms and onto his lap. He was only wearing breeches, and his chest was bare and thick with auburn hair. She savored the change, but she chastised him just the same.
“Robbie, you are a scamp. I’m eating now. Don’t make me drop my chicken.”
“So it’s the chicken you love now, and not me. Oh, you fickle woman.”
She laughed a little and kept eating, snuggled up against him. She was going to get more food, but he turned her around, lifting her easily as if she weighed nothing at all. She faced him for half a moment, bemused, taken in by the blue of his eyes. Then his mouth came down over the peak of her breast through the linen of his shirt, and his wicked tongue made her forget everything else.
She was naked as her first day under his shirt, and his hands snaked up beneath it, lifting her a little as he did so. Pru was not sure how he managed to loosen his breeches at the same time, but he did, lowering her onto him so that she gasped, her eyes wide.
“It’s like riding a horse, love,” he said, his voice thick with desire. She drew her knees up under her, which gave her a bit of purchase, and she experimented with raising herself slowly and then lowering herself again over him. His hands tightened on her hips beneath the linen, and his breath hissed through his teeth.
Along with her own pleasure building at the center of her body, Pru felt a little wicked, and a little wild, as she had when he laid her out on the table in the library. She moved a little faster, and he moaned. The delicious power she felt then made her smile from ear to ear. Robbie raised her hips once, and lowered them slowly. She kept moving, too, leaning close to him, exploring the beauty of his body with her hands, kissing his ear and along his throat.
“You’re getting distracted, my wife. We can’t have that.”
He drew her up and off him, and laid her out on the table next to their dinner. “Don’t knock the plates off,” she said as he slid into her again.
He laughed. “Forget the damn plates, Pru, and pay attention to me.”
He slipped his hand between them and did something she couldn’t see, but it brought her over the edge of reason not once, but twice. She called his name, and he buried himself in her, his arms shaking as he braced himself above her. He did not fall across her then, as he had in the bed, but when they had both taken all of their pleasure, he drew her up from where she lay sated, and kissed her sweetly.
“I did not touch the chicken,” he said. “But I fear the carrots are done for.”
And indeed, that pewter dish had hit the wooden floor sometime during their interlude, but Pru had been so involved with what they were doing that she had not even heard it.
“I’m not that fond of carrots anyway,” she said.
Robbie laughed at that, handed her what was left of the chicken, and carried her back to bed, where they had a picnic, and another interlude before they slept.
* * *
Prudence Waters woke from her wedding night feeling blissful, and more relaxed than she had ever been in her life. The sun had begun to creep in the window, and the chicken carcass lay on the bedside table, picked clean. They had worked up an appetite while they played.
She smiled, rubbing her face over the soft hair of her husband’s chest, listening to him breathe. She felt so contented and so at peace that, for a moment, she forgot everything about the waking world, and all that lay beyond the shadows of their bed.
And then, like a crash of thunder, she remembered.
“Albert,” she said, sittin
g up and clutching the bedclothes to her.
“Pru, don’t wake a man by calling out another’s name.”
She swatted him. “Robbie, my brother. We have to get back on the road. We have to get to him.”
“We will, love. We will. But let us lie here a little while longer—”
Robbie started to reach for her again. If he touched her, she would forget herself and the rest of the world completely. Pru was on her feet in the next moment, washing up behind the screen. She dressed quickly, grateful that her stays hooked in the front so that she had no need for a maid.
Her husband watched her, his eyes gleaming like a predator’s, but he did not move to draw her back to the bed. When she pulled on her gown and tied the fastenings, Robbie sighed and rose as well. “You keep a man jumpin’, and that’s the truth, little wife.”
“Mary Elizabeth says you need a woman who’ll keep you jumping,” she answered him, handing him his shirt.
She got too close to him as she did, for he took her hand in his and pulled her toward him, trapping her between his body and the bedpost. “I ought to have tied you down,” he told her. “Then you wouldn’t be leaping out of bed and away from me, and running off.”
“I’m not running off,” she answered. “You’re coming with me.”
She slipped away from him deftly, letting her hand caress his very fine posterior as she did so. He growled and reached for her again, but she danced out of his way as she would if they were fencing.
“Breakfast in the carriage, Robbie. I might let you have me as we ride.”
His eyes brightened. “Might you now? You are turning into a randy little baggage, Mrs. Waters.”
“Look who’s talking, Mr. Kettle.”
“And that would make you Mrs. Pot?”
She laughed. “It would. I’m going down now, Robbie. Are you with me?”
He finished dressing so quickly, she would not have believed it possible if she had not seen it. He even managed to tie his cravat with a little flare.
How to Wed a Warrior Page 23