Untamed Bride

by Stephanie Laurens

  While she’d lain in the bed tied to the headboard waiting for dawn to arrive, she’d had plenty of time to consider the timing of Del’s offer for her hand. Being a spouse-to-be gave him certain rights—one of which he’d claimed mere hours later.

  Had he made the offer so he would have the right to do what he felt he had to to protect her? Was that why he’d offered for her hand?

  The uncertainty tried to insinuate itself into her mind. She considered it, but rejected it. Felt confident enough to reject it. Del was too practical a man to, as it were, sacrifice his future merely to protect a woman he considered to be in his charge—a woman he had no real feelings for. He could have tied her up without her promise to marry him, risking her wrath and subsequent alienation, if he’d had no feelings for her. If he hadn’t wanted a future with her.

  She remembered enough of his words, his declarations of the night. He’d been sincere and absolute in his wishes and wants, his view of them together as the cornerstone of his future.

  And the very fact that he’d gone to exceedingly domineering lengths to protect her was an irrefutable indication that he did, indeed, harbor strong feelings for her.

  But she didn’t like being tied up, helpless to help him.

  That, she was going to make very clear, simply would not do.

  “There.” Bess slid the last pin into place. She glanced at the pelisse. “Will you be going out later?”

  “Yes.” Deliah rose, tweaked her gown straight. “And I suspect it will be sooner rather than later.”

  Turning, she headed for the door and the breakfast parlor. “I’m going to see what the other ladies think.”

  On more than one front.

  “So he proposed, and then he tied you up? Congratulations!” Eyes twinkling, Alathea beamed at Deliah. “On the proposal front, I mean. As for the rest.” Wryly, she glanced around the table. “Welcome to the club.”

  Deliah glanced at the other ladies gathered about the long table in the breakfast parlor. All seemed to share Alathea’s sentiments. “So we really were all tied up?”

  Nods and affirmations came from every occupied seat. It transpired their men had been rather inventive in their choice of restraints—silk scarves, cravats, silk curtain cords, even silk stockings.

  “And,” Honoria said, eying them all from her position at the end of the table, “not one of us got free. For that, they’ll all have to pay.”

  “Hear, hear,” echoed around the table.

  Having discovered, the instant she’d smelled food, that she was ravenous, Deliah made steady inroads into the selections she’d heaped on her plate, and tried to assess the other ladies’ thoughts and intentions. In the end, she simply asked, “What do you mean by pay?”

  Honoria’s fine gray eyes came to rest on her face. “After behaving in such a high-handed fashion, they’ll expect us to react. They’ll be expecting us to extract our ounce of flesh”—she paused to smile—“in one way or another. And, of course, we will, not least because we would never want them to believe we’d grown resigned, or, heaven help us, were no longer annoyed by said high-handed ways.”

  “If they ever thought that, we’d be in dire straits.” Patience sipped her tea.

  “But,” Deliah allowed her inner frown to show, “you don’t seem all that annoyed. You do seem rather resigned. Much more so than I. When Del first left, I was furious.”

  “That’s because you’re new to this…for want of a better description, emotional game.” Phyllida toasted Deliah with her teacup.

  “The emotional game of being married to a strong, dominant, possessive—and protective—gentleman,” Flick added. “Sadly, you can’t take the protective-to-a-serious-fault characteristic out of the mix. It’s an inescapable part of who they are—the sort of men they are.”

  “Exactly.” Chin propped in one hand, Alathea nodded. “If we want all their other characteristics exactly as they are—as we do—then we have to accept their sometimes overactive protectiveness.”

  “Especially,” Catriona said, “when you realize that that protectiveness, and its sometimes extreme nature, is a direct reflection of how much we mean to them.” She smiled at Deliah. “They’re really quite simple and straightforward in that way.”

  “Mind you.” Honoria set down her teacup with a definite click. “That does not mean that they get to exercise that protectiveness to the extreme without paying us our due.” She met Deliah’s eyes. “Over the years, we’ve grown increasingly shrewd. Anything you ask—and if you’re wise you can extend the boon time to quite a few days—he’ll feel forced to grant.”

  “To make up for his high-handedness,” Flick explained. “I once managed to get Demon to take me to a horse fair he never would have countenanced me attending otherwise.”

  Alathea nodded. “I’ve managed to get Gabriel to more than one ball on the strength of an overprotective incident.”

  Catriona smiled serenely. “And then there’s the other, more personal benefits.”

  All the ladies smiled in what was clearly fond memory, and equally fond anticipation.

  Deliah blinked, imagined…. “I see.”

  “Indeed.” Honoria folded her napkin and laid it beside her plate. “And, of course, they’re all together.”

  “We would be much more exercised if it was any of them alone,” Phyllida told Deliah, “or even just two of them against unknown others.”

  “In this case,” Honoria said, “we don’t need to actually worry for their safety—they’re as safe as they could be even were we there to watch over them. However, while I will admit us being anywhere near the cathedral while they’re dealing with this Black Cobra person would distract them utterly—and we don’t want to forget they have Sangay to protect—there’s no reason I can see that we shouldn’t arrive the instant the action’s over.”

  “Which by my calculation,” Patience said, “means we should leave as soon as possible.”

  “My thoughts exactly.” Flick glanced around the table. “So—how many horses, how many gigs?”

  Del sat on the floor of one of the stalls around the octagon in Ely Cathedral and prayed he wouldn’t get a cramp. At least the stall floor was timber, not stone. The cathedral—so much massive stone in the depths of winter—was as cold as the proverbial tomb.

  Waiting for time to pass—it was exactly like being on picket duty. Not that he’d been a picket all that often, let alone recently, yet at least in war, there was an element of omnipresent danger to help keep one alert. Here…they all knew nothing would happen until after Sangay arrived.

  Which would be shortly, Del hoped. Shifting silently in the confined space, he pulled out his fob-watch. It was almost nine o’clock. Outside the stained-glass windows of the octagonal tower, it was full daylight—or as full as the light was going to be that day.

  Settling back into his hunched position, he found himself staring at the hilt of his sword. The sheathed blade lay on the floor beside him. He had a loaded pistol, too. Many of them had elected to carry one, just in case Larkins resorted to firearms. The cultists, thank heaven, abjured such weapons on some convoluted religious grounds, which was all to the good. He had no doubt that, regardless of how many came to the cathedral, his side would see victory, at least of a sorts, that day.

  He was in a mood for victories. Succeeding in gaining Deliah’s promise to marry him had meant more to him than he’d thought it would. He’d intended to ask her regardless and had told himself he’d been asking then because of the necessity of his mission—because he’d needed the right to ensure she didn’t arrive at the cathedral too soon.

  While all of that had been true, he’d needed to know she was his on some much more crucial, personal plane. Knowing she’d agreed had filled him with a…certainty. A jubilation, an assurance and an absolute conviction that this—all of this—was proceeding exactly as fate decreed. Exactly as it was supposed to be.

  His only remaining uncertainty was a small, tiny, niggling one. He hoped
his and Deliah’s exchange of promises would be strong enough to stand against the inevitable ramifications of his morning’s actions. He hoped she’d understand that he’d simply had to do it, that given what she meant to him, he’d had no choice.

  Regardless, he thought, as he shifted awkwardly again, he couldn’t regret tying her to the bed. She was safe, and in his new world—the future he’d taken his first steps into last night—that, to him, was the most important thing.

  A loud creak had him raising his head, listening, straining his ears.

  Light shafted above his head, then slowly faded as the sound of a heavy door closing reached him.

  Someone had just entered through the main doors at the end of the nave. Sangay? Or someone else?

  Carefully shifting into a crouch, he slowly raised his head, until he could look out over the front lip of the stall. His line of sight was across the octagon, past the altar, and down the nave. He could see Gervase in his borrowed monk’s robe seated halfway along a pew three rows from the front, head bowed, apparently deep in prayer. Glancing to his right, Del saw Tony, also garbed as a monk, all but invisible, seated at prayer in the shadows of one of the stalls across the octagon from Del’s position. Gyles, the other monk, Del couldn’t see, but he knew Gyles was sitting or kneeling in prayerful attitude beyond one of the columns on the other side of the nave.

  Whoever had entered had hesitated at the far end of the nave. Thinking of how awestruck Sangay would feel in an edifice that struck awe into the hearts of grown men, Del prayed the boy would remember his instructions.

  Assuming it was he.

  Finally, on slippered feet, the newcomer crept slowly up the central aisle. It was Sangay.

  Del exhaled. Watched as the boy, still wary, but with increasing assurance—presumably he’d sighted his bodyguards—made his way to the second pew from the front, and slid into it to perch at the end by the aisle.

  Everything was in place. No matter how he strained his ears, Del could hear not even a shuffle to give away the presence of the other men concealed at various points inside the cathedral. Even the monks were as still and silent as statues; in their gray robes in the shadows, they were difficult to see unless one looked directly at them.

  Sangay looked around, scroll-holder in clear view in one hand. Seeing no one frightening, the boy settled on the pew.

  He didn’t have long to wait. As they’d surmised, the Black Cobra had had someone watching the cathedral, too wise to get trapped inside. Less than two minutes had passed when a door somewhere opened and shut, then footsteps—confident and assured—came striding in. They were coming from the south transept, past the vestries.

  Whoever had come to fetch the scroll-holder would appear through the massive archway on Del’s left. He ducked down, peered through a narrow gap he’d found in the front paneling of the stall.

  Held his breath.

  A man—large, heavy, close-cropped dark hair—Larkins!—strode into the octagon.

  Del looked at Sangay. The boy’s eyes had widened, locking on Larkins. To his credit, Sangay didn’t do the one thing that might give their game away—he didn’t glance at any of his bodyguards.

  Instead, even though he was visibly trembling, he gamely stood and slipped out of the pew. And halted, waited. There, at the top of the long nave, in the middle of the central aisle, the scroll-holder clutched in one thin hand.

  As they’d hoped, Larkins saw no reason not to go to Sangay. The boy was the epitome of unthreatening. Larkins slowed, but didn’t break stride, almost swaggering as he crossed to halt before the boy, towering over him.

  Watching Larkins from behind the man’s back, Del couldn’t see his face, but he saw no evidence of a glance to either side, no indication Larkins had even noticed the monks. None of them had been, or were, in his immediate line of vision.

  Larkins looked down at Sangay. “Well?” His voice was rough, dark with suppressed menace.

  Sangay ducked his head respectfully. “I have brought the scroll-holder as you wanted, sahib.” Sangay offered it up, balanced across both his palms.

  Unseen by Larkins, Tony slid silently from the stall in which he’d been sitting and, sword in hand, glided to the altar. Gyles appeared, hovering just behind the column to Larkins’s right. Gervase held his position, apparently as yet unseen, but he was closest to Sangay—he would be the last to move.

  “Good.” Reaching out, Larkins took the scroll-holder. He turned it in his hands, examining it. Then his fingers flicked and tugged, releasing the six levers. Opening the unlocked holder, Larkins slid the single sheet of parchment from within.

  Ignoring Sangay, still standing before him, Larkins unrolled the letter. The decoy copy. Half turning so the light from the tower windows above fell on the sheet, Larkins quickly perused it. Then he smiled.

  Del caught the satisfaction in that smile—also saw the evil anticipation infusing Larkins’s features. He tightened his grip on the hilt of his sword, felt his body tense.

  Still turned away from Sangay, Larkins slid the letter back into the scroll-holder, closed and locked it, then put it into the pocket of the heavy coat he wore.

  Focused on securing the letter and holder, Larkins missed seeing the three monks draw closer.

  Focused on Larkins, Del didn’t miss the glint of light along the blade the bastard drew from the pocket into which he’d dropped the holder.

  “Run, Sangay!”

  The order rang out from multiple points around the octagon as Larkins turned and lunged for the boy, but Sangay had already yelped and danced sideways, avoiding Larkins’s grasping hand and his deadly knife.

  Leaving Larkins momentarily off-balance.

  Before the heavy man could recover, Sangay shrieked, “Ai-ai-ai!” and fled—flew—past him, straight to Tony, rounding the altar some paces beyond Larkins.

  Larkins whirled with a roar—then gaped. Froze at the sight of Tony, monk’s robe thrown back over his shoulder, sword raised, his other arm clamped protectively around Sangay’s shivering shoulders.

  Larkins’s eyes widened. He looked to the left, toward the north transept, and saw Gyles move out from behind the column.

  Larkins whirled to face down the nave.

  Only to find Gervase waiting, sword in hand, in the middle of the aisle, with Vane coming up behind him.

  Larkins took a step back, then swung to the south—to the corridor through which he’d entered. He’d already taken a step before he registered that Del stood there, blocking that route of escape. Demon hovered in the shadows behind him.

  Meeting Larkins’s eyes, Del saw recognition flare—felt grim retribution curve his lips as Larkins stared.

  Then Larkins glanced around, and bolted.

  Tony had grasped the moments of Larkins’s distraction to draw Sangay back to safety beyond the choir screen. Larkins thought that meant the east corridor was unguarded—mistakenly.

  He ran into Gabriel and Lucifer, avenging angels with swords in their hands. Larkins saw them a few steps before it would have been too late. He slid to a halt, then reversed direction and came pelting back toward the altar.

  One glance down the north transept revealed Devil and Richard, coming up fast to corner him.

  With a scrape and a hiss, Larkins drew a long cutlass from beneath his coat, then swung to put his back to the altar, facing them all, menacing them all, a snarl distorting his features.

  None of them were impressed.

  “No need for any heroics.” Del stepped forward. They had Larkins exactly where they wanted him, trapped in the octagon. Their plan was to take him alive so he could talk about his master. And none of them were all that keen to even wound him literally on the altar.

  However, Del doubted Larkins possessed any such reciprocal sensibility.

  Larkins had one hand on the altar as, head slightly lowered, he stood watching Del. Larkins could possibly vault onto the altar. Standing atop it, he’d have something of an advantage, but, regardless, he couldn’t�
�wouldn’t—escape them.

  Rather than prolong the standoff until Larkins sensed their reluctance, Del switched his sword to his left hand, intending to make use of his pistol to capture Larkins.

  Larkins saw the move. Desperate, he thought to capitalize. Raising his sword high, he uttered a bellow—

  “Good gracious! What’s going on?”

  All of them jolted. All of them swung to look.

  At the two middle-aged ladies who had appeared behind Devil and Richard. Both ladies had huge flower-filled urns in their arms.

  Between them, a pace behind them, stood a cleric, the vicar. He’d halted, blinking myopically toward the altar. “Great heavens! Is that a sword?”

  Behind the vicar, the door through which the trio had come stood open.

  The next actions happened in the blink of an eye, but to Del, viewing them, time slowed.

  Like all of them, Larkins had swung to face the intruders. As Del saw the open door, so did he.

  Del saw Larkins’s body shift, knew what he was going to do. With a muttered curse, he stopped reaching for the pistol in his pocket, grasped his sword in his right hand and started forward.

  Just as Larkins’s sword arm started to rise again.

  Larkins raised his sword above his head, with a roar swung it wildly—and charged.

  Devil and Richard had no choice. They turned. Ducking one shoulder, each grabbed one of the women, and in a shower of water, flowers and urns, to ear-splitting screams they hoisted them and rushed them back down the corridor, beyond the door through which they’d come, to safety.

  His way cleared, Gyles leapt in and hauled the vicar to him, sword raised, sparks flashing down its length as he used it to ward off Larkins’s roundhouse slash.

  Then Larkins was through, past, and racing for the open door.

  Del raced after him, but wasn’t close enough. Larkins barreled through the door, then whirled and slammed it shut.