The Fairy Tale Bride

by Kelly McClymer

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  She tied Celestina several hundred yards away from the pond and picked a path through the high grass until she heard the sounds of rhythmic splashing. Had the dowager been right? Was Simon fishing with such fury that the water splashed?

  Within moments she could see him swimming, pumping his arms furiously in the air as he raced toward the edge of the pond where she stood. She watched for a moment, knowing that he was coping with the battle within him, worried that he would kill himself from the exertion.

  Water cascaded from his body and yet still the silence grew loud as he stood up in the waist-deep water and shook himself. His gaze met hers and she burned from the anger in his eyes.

  "Go away, Miranda. I am not in the mood for company."

  "You will kill yourself with all this exertion. Come and ride with me."

  His laughter was bitter. "I would like nothing better. But it is far safer for both of us if I stay in the water and you ride home alone."

  Miranda blushed, understanding the hidden meaning in her words now that she had been privy to the talk of the married women this weekend. In the heat of his passionate anger he was too easily roused. It was amazing the difference in the conversation between the married women and the conversations she remembered from her partial Season as an unmarried virgin. Some of the women seemed to relish inciting their husband's anger just to get them into their beds.

  The idea appealed to her. He could expend his frantic energy upon her, and she could offer him the comfort a wife offered a husband.

  Certainly the risk was worth it, if only for the fact that he would begin swimming again were she to leave. No wonder he did not want to find a cure for himself. He thought himself a bastard, unworthy of his title and position. And yet he had been created to be duke with more forethought than most children could claim. Three people had chosen to create him, although two had apparently been destroyed in the process.

  I will not let him be destroyed as were his mother and father, she vowed to herself. I will show him that I am proud to call him my husband. "I would prefer swimming. Surely that is a more satisfying exertion than riding?"

  Slowly, she began unfastening her bodice. She had unhooked it completely before he closed his gaping mouth and said sternly, "Go home, Miranda." His gaze, however, was trained upon the skin that she was slowly revealing.

  She stood nude for only a moment upon the bank before modestly plunging into the water and wading toward him. The pond was surprisingly cold and the moment after she began regretting her impulse, she began worrying that the cold water could not be good for him.

  "If you insist upon exerting yourself, then do so by making me your wife in truth. At least then I can put my arms around you and hold you as I wish to. I can offer comfort — and I will not be too wild, Simon. I promise you have nothing to worry about from me."

  Absurdly, as she approached him, he backed toward the opposite bank. She stopped two feet away from him. "Simon, I know we have been worried about your health, but this time, even if I am not perfectly calm, I can do you no more harm than this frantic swimming of yours."

  Miranda's attention was pulled away for a second, and she started quickly when something bumped her hip. She looked down to see a silver fish nibbling at her, apparently in the mistaken opinion that she was dinner. She cupped her hands to capture the fish and with a gentle push, released it in the opposite direction.

  "I thought you would be fishing. That, at least would be a peaceful sport."

  "My health is my concern, Miranda. I have told you that before."

  She stepped closer to him, and this time he didn't move away. Frustratingly, he did not seem any closer to taking her in his arms, either — though his gaze slipped from hers to rove lower more and more often.

  "Simon, I know the idea of the duke deceiving your mother as he did is intolerable to an honest man like you, but you must not let such worries affect your health."

  "My health is the last thing you should be concerned with." The anger in his eyes was so fierce she actually trembled at the sight of it. Or from the chill of the water. She could not be certain.

  "These things happened in the past. They do not have to affect the present."

  "Miranda, you do not understand —"

  She opened her arms and stepped toward him.

  "Let me hold you, soothe you. I am your wife ..." Another fish bumped at her hip and she reached for it. "Oh!"

  Her fingers tightened on the "fish," and it pulsed heatedly in her hand. Shocked she stared into Simon's face. His eyes were closed and he was holding perfectly still.

  "Miranda, please release me at once," he said, his jaw barely moving.

  She began to loosen her grip instantly, and then changed her mind, tightening again. "Not until you agree to let me be your wife in all ways, Simon."

  He said nothing at all, moved not a muscle. Curious, Miranda looked down into the murky water, but she could not see what her fingers encircled.

  With her thumb, she explored the rounded tip of him, to find a Valley at the very center that made her feel a dizzying rush of warmth throughout her limbs. For a moment, she thought she might faint, she felt so very strange.

  Simon did not allow himself to move when her fingers curled over him. He could not. "Release me."

  She looked down into the water. And then she swayed toward him, her fingers tightening with delicious results. He crushed her to him with a groan, and she had to grab his shoulders for balance.

  He buried his face in her neck and she released him at last. But it was too late. Far too late. "Miranda you have no idea what you're asking of me. This is impossible."

  "You're wrong, Simon." She smiled as she rubbed her silken belly against him, pressing closer.

  He groaned again and tightened his arms around her. "Miranda, Miranda, Miranda ... " His control broke as he stared down into her eyes. There was a triumph in her eyes that she had affected him. And no sign that she thought him one whit less desirable now that she knew the truth.

  The flash of triumph fled however, when he bent to claim her mouth. He knew his passion was too much for her. It was too much for him. But he could not stop.

  He had wanted her five years ago, he had wanted her that night in the hunter's cottage, and he wanted her still.

  She pushed against his chest with her hands as if to slow his sensual assault, but he did not release her mouth, and in a moment he felt her relax against him once again. He lifted her easily, and carried her to the bank.

  He touched her breasts, her throat, her belly; he parted her thighs with his knee and rubbed himself against her. He knew he was moving too quickly and tried to slow himself. But when she brought her hips up to meet his, he was consumed with the need to be one with her.

  He did not pause, knowing and yet not able to know, that he would regret this haste as he pushed into her, entering her, stopping only for the briefest of times before he groaned into her mouth, deepened his kiss, and pushed past the flimsy barrier that was no barrier at all against his need.

  It was only once he was deep inside her, when she lay stiff and still under him that he remembered that he should have been cautious. He took his mouth from hers and buried his head in her neck, as still as he had been when she first touched him, thinking he was a fish. He laughed raggedly against the dampness of her skin. Certainly she would never make that mistake again.

  She bucked her hips under him. "Simon, you're hurting me. Stop."

  He wanted to. He tried to. But the urge to make her his was a burning need that overrode everything. His arms tightened around her as he began to shake in a silent battle with his body's need to stroke into her until he made her forget the pain and cry out with the wonder of joining.

  "Simon!" She tightened her arms around him then and tried to roll him beneath her.

  "Stay still, Miranda," he gritted out between his teeth. "Stay very still, and I think I may manage to remove myself before I —" He did not finish
his sentence, but rolled away from her and lay still for another moment. She reached out to touch his hip and he jerked away from her as he began to shake. "Don't touch me Miranda. For God's sake — and my own — don't touch me."

  She leaned over him, ever eager to ignore what he told her.

  He looked into her beautiful eyes and wished with all his heart that he could forget his burdens for a moment longer. He had hurt her. Worst of all, if he had not hurt her, he would never have had the strength to pull out of her before he achieved his own release. And then he'd be worrying about babies. "That should never have happened."

  "Why not?" He could see she was hurt. But she was trying to make sense of things, as always. "You seem to have survived it, Simon." She smiled. "And I am your wife in truth, now, am I not?"

  He knew, suddenly, the words that would send her away from him for good. "Of course I survived it. I am perfectly capable of making love to you. I am not really dying Miranda. I lied to you."

  "You are not dying?" He could see her confusion, but terribly, there was joy there. He needed to puncture the hope that might even now be burgeoning in her fairytale heart.

  "No. But the bastard Duke of Kerstone is."

  "What riddle is this, Simon?" she asked impatiently.

  "No riddle. Just the truth, Miranda. The truth I dared not give you before." He paused, to make sure that she was heeding him closely. "In little over three months, the bastard Duke of Kerstone will die. The dukedom and all its responsibilities will be handed over to Arthur, the rightful heir."

  She stared at him with incomprehension and suddenly he knew a way to convince her. He rummaged through the clothing piled upon the bank and pulled out the leather pouch she had eyed so curiously for so long. Without a word, he tossed it to her.

  She held it as she stared at him. And then she opened it and, hands trembling, began to read the first of two folded pages. When she was done with the two pages, she hefted the envelope marked For the eyes of the Duke of Kerstone only and looked up. "This is sealed, should I open it?"

  "It will be opened by Arthur when he inherits. Until then, I will keep it safe with me, to remind me of what I am — and am not."

  She quietly put the two pages and the sealed envelope back into the leather pouch and fastened it closed before she handed it to him.

  He wondered if she had truly taken all the implications in when she asked merely, "Where will you go?"

  "To America. To a city called Charleston. I have acquired a modest property there."

  She watched him, saying nothing, but he could see the narrowing of her eyes as she pondered his answer. And then her breath caught and her eyes locked with his. "Oh." Her eyes filled with tears. "And you were going to leave me behind."

  He did not want to see her pain, her growing distrust. For a moment he wished that she would refuse to believe it of him. But then, why would she not believe it of him? Had he not married her, tantalized her with kisses and caresses, yet refused to make love with her? He said grudgingly, "You would have been an honorable widow."

  "I would have been a virgin widow." She colored brightly, the flush descending to the tops of her breasts, and he wanted to laugh, to groan, to listen to his mother and let everyone believe he deserved to be the Duke of Kerstone.

  But he did not. "I didn't mean to make love to you. I should never have touched you." He had the blood of a cowardly Watterly in him. A man who would bed his own father's wife. That alone tainted him beyond redemption.

  Unconscious of her nudity, she bent toward him. Her face was taut with grief for his betrayal. "Then why did you marry me?"

  "Because I wanted you." It was the wrong answer and yet he could give no other. It was time for the truth. She had heard the worst and not flinched from him. Surely she could understand how important it was to him that the Watterly name not be soiled by a bastard duke. "I wanted just a taste of what could have been mine if I were not a bastard. I wanted you as my wife."

  Incomprehension narrowed her eyes as she struggled to understand his motives. "But you refuse to make love to me."

  "I cannot leave an heir behind." He realized how foolish his words sounded to his own ears, they must be doubly so to hers. She had argued against the marriage; he had been the one to insist. He had thought he could control events, control his own desires. But today had proved that near Miranda he had not nearly enough strength to deny himself.

  She wrapped her arms around her knees and rocked back and forth, caught in her own misery. She whispered, almost to herself, as if no answer he might give would satisfy, "How can you do this? I can't bear the thought of being without you. And to know that it isn't death, but you yourself who have separated us? How can you ask this of me?"

  He reached out to touch her hair, but did not. "I have no other choice, Miranda, I will not breed a child to one day make false claim upon the dukedom."

  She looked up at him, reached out her own hand to grasp his, still hovering near. "We can prevent that from happening. We did not consummate our marriage for months, Simon. We shall simply never do ... that ..." Her nose wrinkled and he had the absurd urge to laugh — or to cry. He didn't suppose this was the time to confess that even now his body was urgently requesting that he do ... that ... again.

  "It is better if I go alone." He had never thought she would agree to go; that was why he had only dreamed it in his darkest nights, never spoken the thought aloud. But he could not consider it. It was too dangerous. And she had not counted the cost to herself.

  "Of course it is not better that you go alone."

  "Miranda, you do not understand what would be required. I have another identity in Charleston. I am not the duke there. I will have no contact with anyone here ever again."

  "I love you, Simon. I want to be with you."

  The blood roared in his ears at her confession. But he did not deserve her love and he could not accept it. "Can you imagine living your life without hearing another word, exchanging even a letter, never mind visits, with your sisters? With Valentine? I have seen the bond between you."

  She did not answer, which was in itself an answer to his questions. Stung by the truth, however, she attacked. "Do you want to be alone your whole life? Haven't these last five years been enough for you?"

  Yes, they had been. Perhaps that had been why he was so vulnerable when the woman full of fairytales whirled back into his life. "I grew used to it. I will grow used to it again." He stood and began to dress. Presently, she did the same.

  He noticed that she had not referenced one single fairytale and knew in his heart that he would bear that symbol of her despair as a sadness deep in his heart for a very long time to come.

  ***