The Bridegroom

by Joan Johnston

  “She’s yer wife,” Pegg argued.

  “She’s a pawn. A means to an end.”

  “I can see ye care for her.”

  “I need her healthy if she’s to bear me an heir,” Clay said.

  “Ye don’t deserve her,” Pegg retorted.

  Clay stood abruptly, shoving the rickety wooden chair back so hard it fell over with a clatter on the stone floor. “Nevertheless, she’s mine to do with as I like. I—”

  Clay was cut off by the resounding clang of metal striking metal at the front door of the castle. While Clay had worked on the roof and his wife had worked in the garden, Pegg had repaired the front door, adding a fantastical brass sea dragon as a knocker.

  Clay turned to Pegg. “Are you expecting anyone? Servants? Gardeners? Grooms?”

  Pegg shook his head.

  It was nearly dusk, and Clay could not imagine who would be visiting them at this hour of the day, unless … “Come with me,” he ordered, as he headed for the door.

  Clay waited for Pegg to stump his way over to the front door before he opened it to find Reggie’s father, the Duke of Blackthorne himself, standing on his doorstep. Though the duke was a man of five and forty years, he appeared quite capable of tearing Clay limb from limb. He looked almost sinister in a black, many-layered greatcoat.

  Except for the gray that lightened his dark blond hair at the temples and the webbed lines at the edges of his eyes, he looked exactly as Clay last remembered seeing him, the day Clay had been transported to Australia. He remembered the vow he had made that day on the London dock, chained hand and foot like a common felon. “You’ve convicted an innocent man. One day I’ll come back to England. And when I do, I’ll ruin your life, as you’ve ruined mine.”

  Adrenaline raced through Clay’s body, heightening every sensation. He could recall everything as though it had happened yesterday.

  He remembered standing before the House of Lords in disgrace as Blackthorne accused him of forging documents that would allow him to buy Blackthorne Hall, along with the Carlisle land his elder brother Charles had previously sold to Blackthorne, in the event of Blackthorne’s death, and then attempting to murder the duke in order to exercise his rights under the forged documents to claim the land.

  He relived the frustration of trying to defend himself when the one man who knew the truth, and who was, in fact, the guilty party—Mr. Cedric Ambleside—had disappeared. And experienced the same impotent fury he had felt while Blackthorne watched him leaving England in chains, relishing the misery he had inflicted.

  Clay had not forgotten any of it, nor the agony of the years that had followed.

  His muscles tensed for action as his heart pumped blood to every extremity, preparing his body for this long overdue confrontation with his enemy. His hands curled into fists as he fought to bring himself under control.

  “May I come in?” the duke said.

  “You are not welcome here,” Clay replied in a hard voice. He deliberately omitted the duke’s title, to ensure that His Grace recognized the insult. He started to slam the door closed in Blackthorne’s face, but the duke caught it with his open palm and shoved his way inside before the door banged shut behind him.

  Blackthorne grabbed fisted handfuls of Clay’s shirt and pulled him close so they were eye to eye. “I want to see my daughter.”

  “She’s no longer your daughter,” Clay shot back. “She’s my wife.”

  “Bring her out where I can see her,” the duke demanded.

  Clay felt Pegg take a step closer to his side and said, “Keep out of this, Pegg.”

  Blackthorne’s eyes never left Clay’s. “I came because of your letter,” the duke said. “I want an explanation.”

  “I thought it was clear enough,” Clay replied, his lips curling derisively. “I have your daughter. She is mine. You are not to see her again. Ever.”

  The duke’s piercing gray eyes searched the large entryway and the parlor beyond, and Clay could not help feeling shame at what he knew Blackthorne saw. The rotting gilt furniture with its worn cushions, the tattered velvet drapes, the stains left by rodents on a once-exquisite Turkish carpet brought home by a Carlisle knight who had fought in the Crusades.

  He let hate rise up—it was easy after so many years of conjuring it—to take the place of shame. “Get out.”

  The duke’s glance shifted to the shadows at the top of the winding staircase before it rested once again on Clay. “Is she upstairs? I want to speak to her.” He used his hold on Clay to throw him aside and started up the stairs.

  Clay did not attempt to stop him. “If you seek her out, I will make her pay for it,” he warned.

  Blackthorne halted on the third step and turned, his face a picture of fury and frustration. “If you harm one hair on her head, I will—”

  “I am not the callow, untried boy you destroyed a decade past,” Clay said. “Swords? Pistols at dawn? I welcome either challenge. I have had practice enough at both as the Sea Dragon. I will be glad to see you dead and your family left unprotected.”

  The duke looked taken aback at the threat.

  “But I would rather you lived, so you may suffer as I have suffered,” Clay snarled.

  Blackthorne clutched the wooden stair rail. “I am sorry—”

  “Apologies will not bring back my wife or my son or the years of my life you stole from me,” Clay said in a cold, deadly voice. “I meant what I said in my letter. Stay away from my wife. Stay away from Blackthorne Hall when she visits there. Or she will be the one to suffer.”

  The duke turned and started up the stairs. “Reggie!” he shouted. “Are you up there? Come down! I want to see you! Are you well? Are you all right?”

  “Papa, is that you?” Reggie yelled back.

  Blackthorne halted on the stairs at the sound of her voice. “Come down, please! Now!”

  “I’m coming, Papa,” Reggie shouted. “Wait for me. I’m coming!”

  “She will pay for your mistake,” Clay repeated.

  He saw the struggle on the duke’s face. The need to stay and see his daughter. The fear of what would happen to her if he did. “I only want to see that she is well,” the duke said. “To make certain that no harm has come to her at your hands.”

  “No harm has come to her … yet. Whatever harm she suffers from this moment forward will be on your head.” Clay took a step back, folded his arms, and looked up the staircase, waiting for Reggie to make her appearance.

  The duke looked from Clay to Pegg and then back up the stairs. He crossed swiftly down the stairs and confronted Clay. “Do you swear on your honor as a gentleman that no harm has come to her?”

  Clay sneered. “My word of honor? As a gentleman? Would you believe me if I gave it to you?”

  The duke looked physically ill. He glanced up the stairs again and then met Clay’s dark stare. “I will accept your word that she is well.”

  “I swear it,” Clay said. “If you wish to keep her safe, you will leave now.”

  Blackthorne had already opened the front door and was halfway through it when a word stopped him.

  “Papa!”

  Both men looked up to see Reggie at the top of the stairs. She was barefooted, wrapped in a sheet that she clutched around her with both hands, her bare shoulders shining with beads of water, her blue eyes glistening with tears. “Oh, Papa!”

  Clay turned to meet Blackthorne’s distraught gray gaze and murmured, “The choice is yours.”

  The duke swore an oath and stepped through the door, slamming it behind him.

  Chapter 13

  Reggie grabbed handfuls of the trailing sheet she had draped around herself when she climbed out of the tub and ran down the winding wooden staircase as fast as she could.

  “Help me!” she begged as she struggled to pry open the massive front door. She bit back a moan as her wounded hands protested the effort.

  “He’s gone,” Carlisle said, keeping his arms folded across his chest, to avoid the temptation to touch.


  Reggie shot him a look of disgust and returned to her struggle with the door. By the time she managed to open it, her father’s horse was too far down the road for her even to call out to him. She whirled and confronted Carlisle. “What did you say to him? Why did you send him away?”

  “Your father left of his own accord,” Carlisle replied.

  “I cannot believe he would go without speaking with me,” Reggie said heatedly. “You must have said something!”

  “The choice to stay or to go was entirely his.”

  “Pegg? Is that true?” Reggie turned to challenge the one-legged Scotsman, only to discover he had withdrawn. The tiled entryway to the castle, the hall, and every room that opened from it seemed abandoned. “Pegg?”

  The sound echoed back to her from the cavernous ceiling.

  Reggie turned back to Carlisle. And discovered an avid look on his face that both frightened and excited her.

  Reggie suddenly realized she was wearing nothing more than a cotton sheet tucked around her breasts, rucked up in front to reveal not only her bare feet, but her limbs all the way to her knees. She shivered as a draft from a broken window slithered across her damp shoulders. The feral look in Carlisle’s dark eyes made her throat feel tight. She tried to swallow, but her mouth was dry.

  “Clay …” He could not expect her to lie with him now. Not after he had so ruthlessly sent her father away. Especially when she had just warned him he would never get his heir on her unless he made peace with her father.

  He reached out and tucked a finger into the front of the sheet between her breasts and drew her toward him. She stared at him defiantly, daring him to touch her. When she felt the sheet coming free, she grabbed at it with both hands to keep herself decently covered. “Don’t do this,” she warned. “I will never forgive—”

  His mouth closed over hers, stopping speech, stopping breath. Her knees collapsed, but before she could fall, his arm circled her waist to hold her tight against him.

  Reggie knew she had to fight him now, or she would lose the battle forever. She bit his tongue, and he reeled back, staring at her in surprise.

  “You bit me!”

  “I said no and I meant it.”

  He lifted her into his arms and started up the stairs.

  She grabbed his hair and yanked hard. “Stop this, Clay!”

  “Ow! That hurts!”

  “Put me down!” she shouted, pummeling his head and shoulders as he carted her up the stairs. “Let me go!”

  He threw her down hard on the bed. When she looked up Reggie was appalled at the hunger she saw in his fierce gaze. All her resistance had done was increase his passion.

  She scooted across the bed and off the other side. “Get out! I don’t want you here.”

  Unfortunately, he had grabbed the sheet, and she found herself on the other side of the bed stark naked. She ran for the dressing screen, but he caught her before she had gone more than a few steps and threw her back onto the bed. This time he used the weight of his body to hold her captive.

  “I don’t want you,” she said, determined to resist him. Her breath caught in her lungs as Carlisle lowered his head and kissed her breast. Before she could recover from that assault on her senses, his mouth closed over her nipple, and he began to suckle her.

  Reggie grabbed handfuls of his hair, intending to shove him away, but she moaned deep in her throat, and her body arched toward him as his fingers intruded between her thighs and forced their way inside her. “I—will—not—do—this,” she grated out.

  And yet her body responded to his skilled touch. He seemed to know where to kiss her, where to fondle her to create the greatest sensation. She writhed beneath him, feeling so much—too much—and surrendering at last to the desperate need for relief from the tension building inside her.

  “Clay,” she moaned. “I cannot bear it.”

  His mouth found hers, and the thrust of his tongue mimicked his fingers below. She heard a guttural sound in his throat as her body arched instinctively—against her reason, against her will—toward his.

  He freed himself from his clothing, and a moment later he was inside her, filling her deeply, fully.

  This time she was the one who mimicked the sex act with her tongue, urging him to completion. Their tongues dueled as their bodies danced together, the pace frenzied, the pleasure enormous, building until it seemed they could reach no higher. And yet he took her further, faster, in a wild and reckless race toward something … someplace … wonderful.

  Reggie cried out in fear. There was nothing she could do to stop what was happening, what she was feeling. Her body seemed caught in a never-ending spiral of desire. She heard Carlisle cry out as well, and her eyes opened in time to see his head thrown back, his jaw clenched tight as though in pain. She stepped over the cliff with him and fell deep into a well of unbearable, unbelievable pleasure.

  Reggie felt her husband’s weight settle onto her. His face nuzzled against her throat, his breathing as tortured as her own. He should have been too heavy, but the feather mattresses cushioned them both, and he provided a warm cover as her sweaty flesh cooled in the evening air.

  The tears came without warning, and Reggie turned her face away and blinked hard to keep them from falling. She did not understand herself. How could she have made love to Carlisle? Although making love hardly seemed to describe what had just happened. She should have fought harder. She had not only surrendered to her husband’s attentions, she had enjoyed them!

  Reggie knew she had to find a way to make Carlisle understand this could never happen again. Not until he had forgiven her father. Not until good relations between the two men had been restored.

  “Clay?” When he did not answer, she nudged his shoulder. “Clay?”

  The rogue was asleep.

  Reggie half-shoved, half-slid her way out from under him. She was surprised to discover, when she tried to stand, that her knees were still wobbly. She crossed to the copper tub of bathwater, frowning when she saw the soap scum on the surface. Reggie shivered when she dipped a toe in and felt how cold and slimy the water was, but she would have jumped into a murky, icy pond, if necessary, to free herself from the musky smell of lovemaking that clung to her.

  She stood and sluiced herself with the cold, soapy water using a sponge, noticing how tender her breasts were where Carlisle’s day-old beard had rubbed and how tender she was between her thighs. Reggie wasn’t sure when she realized she was being watched. Her gaze skipped to the bed. She hissed in a breath when she met Carlisle’s dark, intent gaze.

  Her first instinct was to cover herself, but he had already seen all there was to see. Instead, she turned her back to him, ignoring him as though he were not there, and continued her ablutions. Reggie was so determined not to pay Carlisle any attention that she was startled when she felt his hand touch her back.

  She jerked upright, but managed at the last instant not to turn around. She kept her back to him and glanced over her shoulder. “What are you doing?”

  She held her breath as his fingertips traced a line on her back, and then another, and another.

  “I never noticed these scars before,” he said. “Did he beat you?”

  She stared at him in confusion. “What?”

  His jaw was taut, his dark eyes dangerous. “I recognize the mark of a lash, my dear,” he said in a harsh voice. “Someone beat you. Was it your father?”

  She shook her head. “No. A governess. Miss Tolemeister.”

  Carlisle lifted a brow. “And your father allowed it?”

  “Of course not! He was the best of fathers.”

  “Obviously not,” Carlisle countered.

  Reggie felt his fingertips once again trace the three marks where Miss Tolemeister had wielded her rod so efficiently. “Papa is not responsible for those welts. He left me and my sister with my uncle Marcus while he traveled to Scotland. He was gone for a year. We later learned that he had been shipwrecked and had amnesia from a blow to his head.<
br />
  “It was not long after Papa left that Uncle Marcus was wounded grievously at Waterloo. He did not want anyone to see him scarred so horribly, so my sister and I had a series of governesses during the year Papa was gone, six or seven in all. And one of them …”

  She felt his lips against her back, kissing her, as his hands captured her waist. Goose bumps rose on her flesh.

  “You’re cold,” he said, abruptly releasing her. He turned to look for a towel and found one near the fire, which he wrapped around her from behind and tucked around her breasts. Then he lifted her out of the tub and turned her to face him.

  As he kissed her throat beneath her ear, she continued breathlessly, “I am trying to explain—”

  “Your lips are swollen,” he said, kissing them gently. “Does that hurt?”

  “No,” she murmured.

  He walked her toward the looking glass, staying behind her, and reached for the jar of salve that Pegg had left on the dressing table. He opened it, dipped in his fingers, and began to smooth the figwort concoction onto her blisters.

  She hissed at the sting as the salve touched her skin.

  He bit her ear, distracting her from the pain, and she moaned with pleasure. He continued kissing her the entire time he ministered to her hands. Reggie closed her eyes and concentrated on the feel of his lips, instead of the sting in her hands, until she heard the lid being replaced on the jar.

  When she opened her eyes, she saw herself reflected in the looking glass. Her eyes were heavy-lidded, her body languid in Carlisle’s embrace.

  He was seducing her again! As Reggie jerked herself free, she nearly fell over backward into the tub. She grabbed hold of Carlisle’s arms to keep her balance, wincing as her blisters brushed against his flesh. Once she was steady, she stepped away from the tub and turned to face him, wrapping the towel more securely around her, forcing herself to keep her eyes on his face and not the rest of his very aroused body.

  “I was explaining why my father was not responsible for the scars on my back,” she said. “I think it is a story that bears telling. It proves he is a good man, not at all the kind of person who would unjustly accuse another.”