How to Wed a Warrior

by Christy English

  “Where have you been these five years past?” Robbie asked. “My wife thought you dead.”

  Ian sat, too, but handed Bertie a glass of whisky first. Bertie downed half of it, as if taking medicine, then set the glass down. He did not sit, but stayed standing, as if before a military tribunal.

  Prudence couldn’t care less why he had hidden himself away. It was enough to her that he was found, and he was safe, but the men of her new family did not appear to feel the same way. So she held her tongue, and waited to see if she would need to go to Bertie’s rescue. Of course, she should have known better. He did not need rescuing, it seemed, just as he never had in their past. It had always been he who rescued her.

  “It was my first voyage. I was twenty-one, and thought I was wise in the ways of the world. I had a cargo of spices from India that I had purchased with money from my friends in the ton. I took on Bolton as my lieutenant, thinking that whatever I didn’t know about shipping, he did. Of course, I thought I knew everything.”

  “You were a damn fool,” Ian said.

  Pru stiffened at that, but Albert did not flinch. “I was. Bolton had a ship of Spanish pirates waiting for us just past Malta. He sold me to them, along with the cargo. They scuttled the ship and took me to a gold mine to work until I died.”

  “And yet you lived,” Ian said.

  “I’m tougher than I look.”

  Robbie laughed at that, and Pru got to her feet and hugged her brother again. “Leave off questioning him please,” she said. “He’s home, and I’m grateful.”

  Robbie and his brother exchanged a look that they probably thought went over her head. She glared at her husband, and though he smiled at her, she knew that he and Ian would ask more questions later. But for the moment, Robbie walked to Bertie, and extended his hand.

  “I never thought I would have an Englishman for a brother,” Robbie said. “But I’ll stand by you, for the rest of my life. Don’t go getting yourself kidnapped by pirates again. I don’t like long sea voyages, and I’d have to come and find you.”

  “No, Bantam,” Ian said. “I’d go and fetch him. But it would cost me time, so don’t get up to more mischief,” he said to Bertie, finishing his whisky for him. Ian got up and poured more for everyone but Pru, who had not yet touched hers.

  “The money’s likely gone,” Ian continued, “but we can help you get back your name.”

  “I’ll call on Uncle Philip,” Robbie said, and Ian nodded.

  “Who is that?” Albert asked.

  “The chancellor of the exchequer. He’s an Englishman, but he’s also my mother’s brother. He has the ear of the king, as well as the prime minister. We’ll call on him to get your estates returned to you, and whatever income is left to them.”

  “It won’t be enough,” Albert said. “I must in all honor pay those I owe, even if it takes the rest of my life.”

  “It won’t take that long,” Ian answered. “I’ve a ship for you to sail, if you’re willing. It’s bound for Nova Scotia with goods the colony needs. There, you’ll pick up a load of furs. Once you bring them back, and we sell the cargo, we’ll give you a third of the profit.”

  “I can’t take your charity.”

  Ian raised one brow, but his voice was mild. “And we don’t give it. That’s the pay every captain in my fleet is owed once a ship comes in.”

  “I apologize,” Albert said. “I am used to deception in men.”

  Ian waved his apology away. “It’s because you’ve been dealing with the Spanish and the Dutch, and English thieves. You’ll find none of that among our clan. We work for what we have, and we share it among the family. You’re one of us now.”

  “God help you,” Robbie said, in a vain effort to lighten the mood. Pru did not swat him this time, but kissed him.

  Her husband kissed her back, his hands on her waist, drawing her tight against him. She began to feel embarrassed, and tried to push him away, but he would not let her go.

  “I know you’ve been away five years, and no doubt you need some sleep,” he told her brother.

  Albert smiled at the two of them. “I could use some rest, yes.”

  “I’ll leave you to it, then. If you’ll excuse us, my wife and I are newly married. I believe we’ll take supper in our room.”

  “Robbie!” Pru smacked him on his arm again, this time a little harder. Ian laughed, and Albert was smiling as her Highland husband picked her up and carried her from the room.

  “Don’t leave, Bertie,” she called over Robbie’s shoulder from the doorway.

  Her brother smiled at her, and it was like the sunrise. There was still a bit of the boy she had loved in that smile. He would find himself again, after his long years away.

  “You’ll see me at the breakfast table come morning,” Bertie said.

  She felt tears come into her eyes, but her husband spoke again, making her laugh. “You will if I let her downstairs.”

  So it was the sweet sound of her brother’s laughter she heard as Robbie carried her up the ducal staircase to the sanctuary of their borrowed room.

  Forty

  “I did not get any tea,” Prudence said as he set her on her feet on the fancy carpet in their room.

  “Are you hungry, then?” he asked his wife, his fingers running lightly over the high bone of her cheek where Bolton had struck her, then down to between her breasts, where they nestled beneath the high neck of her new gown.

  To his surprise, she answered, “Yes. I am.”

  He laughed, took his hand away, and went to ring the bell. When Pru was seated with thick sandwiches in front of her, and half a pot of hot tea had been consumed, he watched her eat a delicate tea cake, a chocolate confection covered with an icing filigree.

  “I cannot believe that you chose food over your husband,” he quipped.

  Pru leaned back on her cushions, as sated as a cat in the cream. She wiped her mouth delicately, her legs crossed at the ankle, the picture of a true lady. “I did not choose,” she said. “I mean to have both.”

  He laughed out loud at that, trying to squelch the sudden need to have her, then and there. The sight of her with a gun in her face still had not left his mind. He needed to replace the image with the sight of her body naked under his, and to replace the sound of Bolton’s threats to her life with the sound of her sighs. But he had something else to do first.

  He crossed their room to the box his brother had brought. It was an ivory casket, enclosed in an oak box. The oak was carved with leaves and flowers, as women liked, and polished until the old wood shone. He brought the box over and set it before his wife. He opened the ivory casket within it, to reveal the deep purple cushion and the jewels it held.

  “Robbie, that is beautiful,” Pru breathed, pushing her cakes and sandwiches aside to get a better look at the sapphires within the box. The blue of the stones almost matched her eyes, though the facets of the gems did not quite gleam with the same fire as he would soon kindle in her.

  He raised the necklace from its soft bed, and sat beside Pru on the settee, fastening the silver chain around her neck. The stones had been reset by his great-grandfather, and now they gleamed with the passage of the years and the warmth of his wife’s skin. He almost stopped there, and drew her under him. Instead, he reached for the earrings, and fastened them one at a time to her ears, where the blue stones shone against the soft golden-brown of her hair.

  “You look like a princess,” he said.

  “I am happy to be only your wife,” she answered.

  He felt his heart squeeze, and he made a joke, as he always did when his emotions were too stirred up. “Only?” he quipped.

  Pru laughed, as he had meant her to, and kissed him full on the mouth. Before he could let her lead him down that path of bliss, Robbie pulled back.

  “My mother has the bracelets,” he said. “To get those, she sa
ys we must come to Glenderrin, where she will hand them over to you herself.”

  “Holding my new jewels ransom, is she?” Pru’s laughter and her love lit her eyes. He basked in the warmth of it. It was a light that would never go out.

  “Well, they are hers until she hands them over,” Robbie said.

  Pru’s laughter was cut short at last when he took out the last piece, a ring with a four-carat sapphire set in the center of the band.

  “This is too big for your hand,” he said. “And we have not had a priest bless it. But it goes with the set.”

  “We’ll find a priest to bless it when we go home,” she answered.

  He frowned, thinking of how he was going to convince her to leave London with him. Would he need to bring her aunt into a household with them? He shuddered at the thought of that good lady glaring down her nose at him for the next thirty years or more. But then his wife spoke again, and his tentative plans fell to happy ruins around him.

  “Will we live at Glenderrin itself?” she asked. “Or do you have a house on the grounds somewhere where we can be alone when we like?”

  He kissed her and put his ring on her finger, then his hands hard on her body. He was being too rough, but found that he did not care. He had to mark her as his, now that she was wearing his ring at long last. He had to bind her to him, and seal the pact. She would know she was his for the rest of her life, and beyond.

  Robbie did not speak again, but stripped her clothes away one layer at a time. First the cotton gown, then her stays, then her shift, stockings, and drawers, until she was naked save for the jewels he had placed against her skin.

  He picked her up then, and carried her to their bed.

  “I’m not letting you up until morning,” he said.

  She smiled against his cheek, and ran her tongue over his ear, surprising him with a jolt of fire. “I’m not complaining.”

  * * *

  Pru did not even feel shy, though she was naked and covered in jewels. She felt the delicious flow of her blood through her veins. She was safe and alone with the man she loved, a man she had never hoped to find. If someone had told her months ago that she would marry at all, much less a rich and funny Highlander from the back of beyond, she never would have believed it.

  But here she was, in a soft featherbed in the house of a duchess, with her new husband looking down at her like he wanted to devour her whole. She did not let him take the time to undress, but hooked her foot behind his knee and pulled, so that he fell, laughing, on top of her.

  “It’s an aggressive woman I’ve married,” Robbie said.

  She pulled at his clothes until he caught her hands in his and raised them over her head. “I’m a woman in love, who’s glad to be alive.”

  The pain and the sorrow of the day seemed to have fallen away, but her hunger for life remained. She had eaten, but now she needed more. She tried to wriggle one hand free to unbutton her husband’s breeches, but he would not let her go.

  “I can manage myself, Pru, though I thank you. Let me remind you that I am the man in this bed. Today, and every day.”

  “Are you indeed?” She raised one leg and caressed him with her toes, lifting her foot higher and higher until he laughingly caught her beneath his weight. “I would like to touch all of you, husband, to remind myself of that.”

  He had managed to get his breeches undone with his one free hand, and his body lay against hers, his clothes pulled aside enough so that he might enter her. She was wet and hungry for him, and her body expanded as he slid home. She moaned then, tightened around him, and arched in a vain attempt to get closer to him until he pressed her down into the mattress.

  “I am going to love you now, Pru, because I need you.”

  “Robbie, I need you, too.”

  He raised himself on his elbows, and she left her hands above her head, feeling wanton as her desire burst over her, scorching her skin. The rough scrape of his clothing against her naked flesh, and the strength of him behind those clothes made her shiver. He moved, and as she felt the first jolt of pleasure, she almost lost her breath.

  “Never go alone into such a place again,” he said to her, spinning her pleasure out, holding some back.

  She thrashed under him, trying to gain it for herself, but he held still. That crest stayed elusive, even as her desire mounted in one long, delicious spiral. “I swear,” she said. She did not remind him of the fact that she had been at gunpoint that day, and not out for a pleasure jaunt. Truly she would have sworn to anything in that moment, if it would only make him move again.

  He drove into her body once more, bringing her closer to completion, and she shook with joy at the way he felt inside her. But still, her peak lingered just out of reach, a sweet she could almost, but not quite, taste.

  “Robbie,” she said. “Please.”

  “I love to hear you beg, leannan. But I’ll hear your promise again. You will never walk into danger without me again. Swear it.”

  “I’ve already promised not to run into danger, Robbie.”

  He held her pleasure from her, and she gasped and wriggled and finally gave in. “I won’t walk or run into danger without you again. I swear it.”

  He contemplated her face for a long moment, and she met his eyes. She was drawn into the blue of them, a sea she would happily swim in for the rest of her life, and beyond.

  “I love you, Pru. Never endanger yourself again.”

  “I love you, Robbie. I won’t. I promise.”

  The third oath she took seemed to assuage him, for he started to move, and as he dove frantically into her body, one thrust after another, she felt his fear behind the motion, and the keen edge of his pain.

  She wrapped her arms around him, and held him as he made love to her, his body battering hard against her as if he were the sea and she, the shore. Her own pleasure started to rise again, and she forgot his pain and her own as she lost herself in it.

  She called his name as the spiral took her higher than she had ever yet gone, so high that even the descent was filled with pleasure—a pleasure so keen and so strong that it frightened her. She did not turn from it, or from him, but held him tight and let it come.

  He shuddered against her, his own pleasure and pain wordless as he groaned into her hair. She clutched him close, and he curled his body around her as if to protect her from the world, and from all things in it. They lay together a long time as the sun began to slant from beyond the glass windows, casting the last of its light along the carpet on the floor.

  “I’ll have you again, leannan. Don’t go to sleep yet.”

  “I won’t,” she told him, stroking his back. Her lips could reach his ear, so she kissed him there, and whispered to him. “I love you, Robbie. Thank you for saving me.”

  “You helped save yourself in that warehouse,” he answered. “You threw the knife before I could get to you.”

  “Not today,” she said. “In the park. When we first met. You saved me from ever having to be alone again. I want to thank you for that.”

  He did not meet her stark confession with a joke or a smile. His blue eyes met hers, and for once, there was not a hint of humor in them. He kissed her, long and lingering, as if to drink her in.

  “We’ve saved each other, I think,” he answered. “You’re the woman of my life. I did not think I had one, but here you are.”

  She smiled, stretching like a cat beneath her husband, the warmth of his body a bulwark against the world. “Indeed, Robbie. Here I am.”

  Read on for a sneak peek at the third book in the Broadswords and Ballrooms series

  How to Train

  Your Highlander

  Mary Elizabeth Waters did not know it, but she was to end her days in England at the palatial estate of the Duke of Northumberland. If she had known it, she would have been well pleased. Her sojourn in the South could not end soon enou
gh.

  She and her brother Robbie had borrowed the duchess’s carriage on their journey from London, and arrived in sartorial splendor on the white-graveled drive of the pristine estate. Though the lines of topiaries were as clean and well matched as any in England, and while the flowers that flanked the front of the grand mansion made her want to rifle them and plant some decent heather, as she climbed from the traveling chaise, she could hear the distant sound of the sea.

  Mary Elizabeth took comfort in the sound, though she could not see the sea itself. She would hare off and find it as soon as she might.

  As she raised her eyes from the graveled ground, she thought to find her mother’s tiresome friend among those who greeted them. Instead her gaze fell on a boy from the stables, a boy with ice-blue eyes and large, competent hands.

  He was not a boy, of course, though for some reason the English called their stable hands boys long into their dotage. This fair-haired stable boy was tall, taller than all her brothers, save for Ian, and his shoulders were wide, as if he might carry the burden of the world on them and not notice the weight.

  Atlas did not shrug as he greeted her. Indeed, he did not greet her at all. Nor did he start to unhitch the horses from their traces. Instead, he simply stared at her, as she stared at him.

  “Hello,” she said at last, remembering that he was English, and as such, had no manners to speak of.

  “Hello.” He answered her in the posh tones of the English gentry, and she wondered why the duchess would allow such a man to work with her horses. The English were usually mad about class distinction, and would not even allow their stable hands to read, if the boys were ever so inclined. This stable hand seemed not to care a fig for any of his so-called betters, including her, and that made her smile.

  “Here,” she said, handing him her favorite bag in all the world.

  He accepted the soft leather satchel that held her tartan and fishing lures, as well as her throwing knives. Her best knives were on her person, but these were the pearl-handled knives her father had given her before she was sent away. The bag held all that was dear to her in the world, save her home and family, and she handed it to this stranger without even a thought.