The Bridegroom

by Joan Johnston

Pegg’s fingers never missed a move, though his one good eye left his work and focused intently on her. “What is it, lass?”

  “Do you think perhaps Carlisle does not want …? You see, he has not … Is it possible he did not …?”

  “Spit it out, lass.”

  Reggie swallowed hard. “I believe there must be some flaw in me that my husband cannot excuse. Perhaps he was offended by what he saw when he came to rescue me. Or perhaps I am not the sort of woman he desires. You see …” Reggie leaned close and whispered the rest in Pegg’s ear.

  The Scotsman stared at her in disbelief, then slapped his knee and guffawed. “I dinna believe it, lass! Are ye saying he hasna touched ye since that first night? Not once?”

  “Shh!” Reggie cautioned, pressing her fingertips across his lips and glancing around her in search of the nearest sailor. “Someone might hear you.”

  Pegg made a tsking sound and shook his head. “Stubborn, he is. And honorable to a fault. It comes of having been accused of wrongdoing when he was innocent, ye see. ’Twas yer father did the blaming, and Clay canna forgive him for it. And he canna forget. Nay, I canna either, if the truth be known.”

  “Were you falsely accused, too?” Reggie asked.

  Pegg chuckled. “Not me, lass. I was a thief, right enough.”

  “A highwayman?” Reggie asked, her eyes wide with wonder.

  “Nothin’ so fancy. A simple card sharp. I cheated the wrong man and got caught.” Pegg shrugged. “I had cheated more than him what caught me, so I suppose I deserved what I got. But it turned out more terrible than any of us ever guessed.”

  “What happened?” Reggie asked. “I have never heard the whole story.”

  “I shouldna be tellin’ ye this,” Pegg said.

  Reggie shot him an imploring look and said, “Oh, please, Pegg. Please.”

  “Them bright blue eyes of yers turn my spine to mush,” Pegg grumbled. “Here’s the long and the short of it, then. We got caught in a storm, and the ship foundered. One of the guards took pity and began unlocking the chains, but it was too late for most. I was free … but Clay was not.”

  “Then how did he escape drowning?”

  “Well, that’s where I come in. Ye might have noticed, I’m a wee bit of a brawny fellow.”

  “A giant of a man,” Reggie agreed with a grin. “Did you save him, Pegg?”

  “I did,” Pegg said, bowing his head modestly.

  Reggie leaned over impulsively and kissed his grizzled cheek. “Thank you, Pegg. I’m glad you did.”

  Pegg’s eyes focused on his hands again. “I pulled the rotten board that held his chains right out of the ship, I did, and hauled him with me up on deck. That was not the end of it, though.”

  “Because you were marooned at sea on a piece of flotsam,” Reggie guessed, imagining in her mind’s eye what it would be like to be caught in such a storm, to be certain one would drown, and then to be miraculously saved. “With no food or water and the hot sun beating down on you—”

  “Who’s tellin’ this story?” Pegg asked.

  “You are,” Reggie said sheepishly. “Go on.”

  “When we saw sails on the horizon, we slapped each other on the back and grinned, though our lips cracked, they were so dry. It was one of His Majesty’s frigates.

  “The captain saw the metal cuffs on our legs and knew we were convicts, so he gave us a choice. We could go back to England and be transported again to serve out our sentences. Or we could serve with him for five years. So Clay and I joined the British navy.”

  “That doesn’t sound so bad,” Reggie said. “It must certainly have been a better fate than becoming a bondservant in Australia.”

  “Aye, lass, so ye would think. But Captain Taylor was fond of the lash, and yer Clay was not a man to suffer fools gladly.”

  Reggie’s eyes widened in horror. “Are you saying the English captain whipped him?”

  “Aye, lass. We served with Taylor for five long years, but at the end of it, the captain said we’d misunderstood, that we must serve the full seven we’d have owed if we’d been transported. Not long after that, Clay and I slipped over the side at one of those Caribbean islands where the captain stopped to take on water.”

  “And that’s where Clay won his ship and became the Sea Dragon?”

  “Ye have the right of it. And a menacing creature he was, especially whenever he spied a vessel escorted by a ship in His Majesty’s navy. To tell the truth, I think he was lookin’ for Captain Taylor. Someone else got to the captain first, though the story told is that he fell overboard in a storm.”

  “None of this explains why my husband is avoiding me,” Reggie said.

  “Dinna ye see, lass? Clay likes ye more than he wants to. But he canna let himself love ye, not when he hates yer father. He canna give up his vengeance. Not even for you.”

  “Then why did he marry me?” Reggie asked.

  “Ye must see it, lass. Do ye need me to draw a picture?”

  “Just tell me, Pegg. Why?”

  “To punish yer father, lass. To make him wonder and worry if Clay is mistreatin’ ye. To take from yer father what he thinks yer father stole from him—a beloved child.”

  Reggie stared at Pegg in horror. “You cannot mean it.” How had she fallen into Clay’s web? How could he have dissembled so thoroughly?

  “ ’Tis sorry I am, lass. Ye asked, and I told ye. With all the demons the lad’s fightin’, ye should be grateful he’s left ye alone.”

  “I will give him more than demons to fight,” Reggie muttered.

  “Now, hold on there. What are ye plannin’, lass?”

  “Nothing that should worry you, Pegg,” she said. She focused her eyes on the earl. “But Carlisle had better batten down the hatches!”

  • • •

  Clay saw Reggie coming and called a sailor to take the ship’s wheel. He crossed to the rail and waited for her to reach him.

  The wind had whipped her hair into curls around her face, and the blue ribbon that held her long black hair had come half undone. The sun had brought out freckles across her nose, and her cheeks were burned pink.

  She was wearing one of his old shirts, open at the throat, the sleeves rolled up to reveal her bare forearms, the cotton so thin he could see a faint outline of her nipples beneath the flimsy chemise she wore under the shirt.

  But the shirt was not the worst offense. She was wearing a pair of breeches that lovingly hugged her figure, making it easy for him to imagine slipping his hand between her legs to palm the heat and the heart of her.

  He arched a disdainful brow. “Breeches again, my lady?”

  “Would you rather I wore one of those dresses fit for a doxy?” she replied with a brow arched as high as his own.

  “I have made my preference clear,” he said.

  “As I have made mine,” she replied.

  He took a step back and crossed his arms over his chest—to make certain he would not be tempted to reach for her. “Then what has you so bedeviled, my dear?”

  “I have been a bride for three days,” she said, closing the distance between them. “But I do not feel like a wife.”

  He perused her body in a way that suggested she most certainly was.

  She looked up at him, temptation in her body, surrender in her eyes. He knew there must be a good reason why he should not enjoy her, but right now he could not think of it.

  “Pegg said you only married me to punish my father, to make him know how it felt to lose a child.”

  “Bloody hell!” What the devil had Pegg been thinking, to speak so frankly? Of course, he had told her nearly as much himself on their wedding night.

  Reggie reached out and laid a hand on his arm. Goose bumps rose the entire length of it.

  “I’m your wife, Clay. If we are to have any hope of happiness—”

  Clay snorted and pulled away, denying the need that made him quiver like a beast in rut. “My chance for happiness ended when your father watched me board that convi
ct ship in chains. I lost everything I had, everything that was dear to me. Well, I have taken something dear away from him.”

  “I suppose I am dear to my father,” Reggie said. “How were you planning to separate us? Are you going to make me walk the plank?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  Reggie raised a brow. “I promise you, nothing less than death could keep us separated for very long. I will seek him out when we arrive in Scotland. I love my father. I do not intend to give him up.”

  Carlisle did not argue with her, though the subject demanded discussion. He turned his face toward the horizon—and saw the faint outline of the rocky Scottish coast. “I intend to travel directly to Castle Carlisle once we reach port.”

  “You cannot keep me from seeing my father,” she said. “You cannot guard me every minute of every day and—”

  He turned to look down at her, feeling the blackness roil inside him. “I do not have to guard you,” he said. “I will merely make it plain to the duke that if he ever speaks to you, if he ever so much as lays eyes on you, you will suffer for it. He will make certain he is never at home when you come to call.”

  Clay saw from the stunned look on Reggie’s face that he was right. It was a diabolical plan, but it would work.

  Her eyes brimmed with tears, but none fell. “Am I correct in assuming you would have no objection if I see my stepmother or my brother Gareth or my new sister?”

  He shrugged. “My fight is not with them.”

  “How long must my father and I be parted?” she asked.

  “I only ask that he suffer what I suffered,” the earl said. “A child taken away for a child taken away.”

  Reggie’s face blanched, and she wavered on her feet as a rogue wave rolled under the ship. Clay reached out to steady her, but she jerked herself free and said, “You are blaming my father for something over which he had no control. Your son died in childbirth.”

  “And do you know why my son died being born?” he asked in a ragged voice.

  “It must have been God’s will,” Reggie said.

  “God had nothing to do with it! My wife could not bear the shame of being married to a convict, a man who had been stripped of his title, a man who was nothing and nobody. She wanted to be free of me, and she most definitely did not want my son!”

  Reggie put her hands over her ears. “Do not say any more. I don’t want to hear—”

  He grabbed her wrists and shoved them behind her back, forcing her against his rigid body, forcing her to listen.

  “She murdered my son. She tried to rid herself of the child growing inside her and died herself in the killing of him.”

  Reggie stared at Carlisle in horror. “No woman could do such a thing!”

  “But she did,” he said coldly. “And who shall I blame for such a tragedy? An abandoned woman too weak to deal with the vagaries of life? Or your father, who helped sentence an innocent man to transportation and left that woman to fend for herself?”

  “I’m sorry—”

  He released her abruptly and stepped back, his features contorted with rage. “A nice, neat apology will not bring back my wife or my son or my life before your father ruined it.”

  “I should never have married you,” Reggie said.

  “But you did,” Carlisle said. “Till death us do part.”

  Chapter 11

  Reggie stared at the man sitting on the opposite side of the carriage. She could hardly imagine the horrors Clay Bannister had suffered in his lifetime, but every time she thought she had heard the worst, there was worse to be told. She still could not believe his wife had killed herself and their unborn child. No wonder he was such a bitter man. No wonder his heart was filled with so much hatred.

  She chose not to converse during the ride from the docks near Mishnish to Castle Carlisle. She felt Carlisle’s eyes on her as they drove past the turn that led to Blackthorne Hall, but she was not willing to give him the satisfaction of revealing how much she yearned to feel her father’s arms around her in a comforting hug.

  Several estates bordered the vast acres surrounding Blackthorne Hall, but Reggie had been too young when she was last in Scotland to know which of the neighboring estates belonged to Carlisle.

  “There it is,” Carlisle said. “Castle Carlisle. Your new home.”

  Reggie gasped. “But that’s Sleeping Beauty’s castle!”

  At least, that was the name she and Becky had given the crumbling stone castle when they had stumbled across it on one of their afternoon forays. The Carlisle ancestral home truly looked as though it had been lifted from the pages of a storybook.

  The turrets and crenels were even more overgrown with thorny vines than Reggie remembered. And there were no vestiges of the expansive lawn, only a dense growth of intimidating thistles. The path to the front door had disappeared entirely beneath a garden of weeds.

  She turned to Carlisle and said, “You cannot mean to live here! It is not habitable. Except by rodents, a great many of which, I can assure you, must have taken up residence.”

  “Nevertheless, it will be our home.”

  “The front door is off its hinges,” Reggie said, pointing to the off-kilter portal that had left the abandoned property so accessible to curious neighborhood children.

  “A new one can be made.”

  “The windowpanes are all cracked and broken,” she protested.

  “How can you tell?” Carlisle asked. “I do not see any that are not overgrown with vines.”

  Reggie turned on him angrily. “Is this part of my father’s punishment? To keep his daughter in a pigsty?”

  Reggie saw the flash of pain in Clay’s eyes and felt a flicker of uncertainty. After all, this was his home, or what was left of it after years of neglect. Perhaps he had not realized the extent of the decay. She returned her gaze to the castle and tried to see it as it must have been when he was a boy growing up there.

  She imagined the windowpanes sparkling in the sun, the severity of the gray stone walls relieved by a manicured layer of ivy. The path to the massive wooden doors, with their heavy iron hinges, might have been edged with a profusion of purple heather. And the lawn had surely been an elegant vista of rolling green that swept one’s eye all the way to the sea.

  “It is a hovel,” Carlisle said, brusquely interrupting her daydream. “It will be your duty to make it a home.”

  Reggie surveyed the dilapidated castle. “I am sure I can do wonders with time and enough money.”

  “I have no desire to spend my hard-won fortune refurbishing Castle Carlisle. The only memories I have of the time I spent as master here are unpleasant ones. You will have to make do with what you find.”

  Reggie stared aghast at the ruins before her. “But you cannot wish your own comfort to suffer,” she protested.

  For the first time since they had argued on board ship, he smiled. “You need not worry, my dear. I have made arrangements to ensure my comfort.”

  Reggie noticed he had not said anything about her comfort.

  She could not remember the last time she had been inside the castle, but it must have been nine or ten years past. Even then the furnishings had been in ruins. She wondered how much everything had deteriorated since then from the damp weather and the salty winds off the sea.

  As a child, she had entered the castle through an opening at the base of the off-kilter door. But she had no intention of entering her new home by crawling in on her hands and knees. She waited impatiently for Carlisle to join her.

  “Would you please pry open the door for me? I want to see inside.”

  It took Carlisle and Pegg working together to move the heavy portal aside. Carlisle gestured her inside before he and Pegg followed on her heels.

  Reggie had opened her mouth to decry the condition of the house when she happened to glance in Carlisle’s direction. She did not think, she simply reacted to the anguish she saw on his face. She linked her arm through his and pressed her body close, offering comfort for t
he spoiled ruins they had found.

  “We can make it what it was, Clay,” she said.

  When he turned to her, his eyes were shuttered. “I am afraid the burden of repairing Castle Carlisle will fall on your shoulders, my dear. A more important matter will be occupying my time.”

  Reggie took a step back and stared at him in dismay and disbelief. “What could be more important than making this hovel a home?”

  “Finding the miscreant who gave false information against me twelve years ago, the man who convinced your father I was guilty of forgery, theft, and attempted murder.”

  “How did my father come to suspect you in the first place?” Reggie asked.

  “I had signed a contract to buy back a vast tract of land surrounding the castle, which my brother had sold to your father,” Carlisle said. “I had no idea that the papers authorizing the transaction—on credit—had been forged without your father’s knowledge or consent. Or that someone had tried to kill your father to make certain the deal was consummated.”

  Reggie frowned. “If you are not guilty, then who is?”

  “Your father’s former steward, Cedric Ambleside.”

  “Mr. Ambleside tried to murder Papa?” she said, aghast.

  “Several times.”

  “Then why would Papa blame you?”

  “Because Mr. Ambleside told him I was guilty.”

  “Where is he now?” Reggie asked.

  Carlisle stopped pacing and turned to face her. “Ambleside disappeared twelve years ago.”

  “Disappeared? No one just disappears.”

  Carlisle shook his head disgustedly. “Cedric Ambleside did. I have had detectives searching the width and breadth of Scotland for the past year looking for the man and all they have been able to find out for sure is that he was last seen twelve years ago in this neighborhood. I intend to find him. When I do, I will make him pay.”

  Reggie felt a shiver of alarm roll up her spine. “Pay how?”

  “With his life,” Clay said flatly.

  Reggie stared at her husband with stricken eyes. Clay was planning cold-blooded murder. If he killed Mr. Ambleside, he would likely be hanged for it. She imagined Clay with a stiff hemp rope around his neck, imagined him choking, strangling. Suddenly, she could not catch her breath.