Fortune's Bride

by French, Judith E.

  “Garrett,” she pleaded. “I can’t . . .”

  “Oh, you can torture me, but you can’t take it?” he teased. His lingering kisses trailed along her inner thigh, and his fingers brushed her love-dampened cleft.

  “Garrett . . .”

  He slid a forefinger between her folds. She gasped with pleasure. “You’re wet,” he murmured. “Wet and tight.” He withdrew, then caressed her again, this time with two fingers.

  “Oh, yes . . .” she whispered. The flame consumed her and only he could put it out.

  She felt his lips on her . . . his tongue. Without warning a spasm of sexual delight rocked her body, followed by another and another. She shut her eyes and dug her fingers into his shoulders as she climaxed with fierce abandon.

  “Oh, oh,” she gasped, when she could breathe again. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t—”

  “Shhh, shhh.” His laughter was soft in her ear. “It’s all right, darling. It’s all right. I wanted to give you pleasure.”

  “But you . . .” The waves of rapture still rolled through her. “I wanted to . . .”

  “And you will,” he promised. “You will, little witchling wife of mine.” He kissed the corners of her mouth with infinite tenderness. “That was only the beginning, Caroline,” he said. “I’ve waited too long not to make this a night you will remember.”

  “Are you sure?” She drew in a ragged breath. “I . . .”

  “Shhh,” he said, and he rubbed her bare nipple between his fingers. “Sweet little innocent.”

  To her surprise, the glow radiating through her body intensified. “Make love to me again,” she said. “This time, I want to please you.”

  He laughed and bent his head to kiss her breast and draw a nipple into his mouth. The gentle tugging struck a spark that flared through her veins.

  “Surely,” she said. “I couldn’t—”

  His fingers touched her intimately and she sighed. It wasn’t possible. She had just . . . But . . . Ripples of desire ran up her spine and she gave her mouth over to be kissed again.

  And moments later, when she felt the silken head of his tumescent erection pushing hard against her, she was ready for him. She raised her knees slightly and met the fire of his first deep thrust with eager cries of throbbing need. Her eyes widened as he filled her until she thought she could take no more.

  “Oh,” she cried. “Oh . . .”

  He plunged deep, then pulled back and entered her again, sweeping her along in the searing heat of his passion. His mouth covered hers and they clung together, riding the new tide of wildfire to the ends of the earth . . . letting free the emotions they had held back for so long. And when at last they reached the instant of fulfillment, they leaped over the edge together, giving and taking a love so powerful that each was left with a pounding heart and utter exhaustion.

  Caroline lay very still and listened to the rise and fall of Garrett’s breathing. She could not speak. There were too many words and not enough. He had taken her where she had never gone before, and now he held her as though she were precious and fragile.

  “Is your back broken?”. he whispered finally.

  She shifted in his arms and closed her eyes. “Mmm,” she murmured.

  “Am I—”

  “What’s going on?” The shrill voice of the serving maid filtered through the door. “Mister? Ye didn’t pay for the meal. What are ye—”

  The door cracked.

  Garrett caught it and pulled it shut. “Go away,” he ordered.

  “What’s going on in there?” she shouted. “I’ll have the keep on you?”

  “Go away, I say,” he repeated.

  Caroline giggled. What a picture they would make. They must have left a trail of her clothing from the table to the staircase.

  A fist banged on the outside of the door. “This is a decent ordinary. None of your lewd ways here.”

  “Let her in,” Caroline said, trying to pull her shirt over her bare breasts and her skirts down. “If you don’t, she’ll have the whole tavern around our ears.”

  “I won’t let her in. She has a hairy mole on her lip. If I make love to two women, they must both meet my standards,” he teased.

  “Mr. Stewart! Mr. Stewart!” the maid cried. “A customer has a slut on the stairs.”

  Caroline burst into laughter. “Get up,” she urged Garrett. “You’ll have me in the stocks for harlotry.”

  “Give me a chance to get my breeches up. If she sees how I’m hung, we’ll have to bring her in here,” he countered.

  “Garrett Faulkner, you’re shameless,” Caroline whispered. “Make yourself decent.”

  “It’s your fault, woman. You lured me into this. On my own, I’m the soul of propriety,” he grumbled.

  “Open the door, Garrett,” she insisted.

  He pushed open the door, gave her his arm, and escorted her down the steps and into the family parlor just as the innkeeper entered the room.

  “What’s amiss here?” the red-faced man demanded. His wig was askew and his shirt out. Caroline wondered if he’d been disturbed in the midst of the same occupation.

  “My jacket, if you please,” she said to the stunned serving girl. Garrett retrieved her stock from the floor under the table.

  “I demand an explanation,” the innkeeper roared.

  “Look at ’er!” the maid cried. “Just look at the both of ’em! Ye know what they been up to.”

  Caroline sniffed. “Pay them, Mr. Faulkner,” she said in her haughtiest tone. “The service here is somewhat lacking.”

  “I agree.” He tossed a few coins on the table.

  “Out!” the innkeeper said. “Out of here!”

  Garrett scooped up Caroline’s cloak and put it around her shoulders. “Shall we, my dear?” he asked.

  “Yes, Mr. Faulkner,” she replied, unable to keep a straight face.

  “I’ll call the watch!” their host threatened. “I’ll have the sheriff on you both.”

  Garrett glanced at Caroline, she nodded, and he grabbed her hand. Together, they ducked through the door, hurried down a shadowy hall, and dashed out nearest doorway into the rain. The innkeeper followed onto the street, shaking his fist and cursing.

  “You are the craziest woman I’ve ever been married to,” Garrett yelled in Caroline’s ear as they rounded the corner in the downpour.

  “I hope I’m the only woman you’ve ever been married to.”

  He led her a few dozen yards more, then stopped. “Where are we going?” he asked her.

  “I don’t know.” She began laughing again as her hood fell back and rain began to soak her hair.

  He pulled her against him. “I’ve nowhere to be alone with you,” he said, threading his fingers through her drenched curls. “And I don’t want to let you go.” He kissed her full on the mouth. “I’ve waited too long to be with you like this.”

  She pulled up her hood and tugged at his hand. “Come on,” she said. “I have an idea.”

  The Widow Gordon’s home was only a few blocks from the Fox and Hound Tavern. Still laughing, Caroline led Garrett down one block, through several back yards, across a wide deserted street, and through an alley to the widow’s stable. Once they entered the barn, it was pitch-black.

  “I haven’t been in a hayloft with a girl since I was fifteen,” Garrett began. “I got hay burns on my—”

  “Shhh,” she cautioned. “We’re not going to a hayloft. Trust me.”

  “That’s what the recruiter told the country boy,” he quipped.

  Caroline chuckled and clasped his hand tightly. She had wandered into the stable on her second day as the widow’s houseguest and she remembered the simple layout of the low-roofed structure perfectly. Even a blind woman would have known that a cow and calf were penned on the left, the driving horse in a box stall on the left. The air was heavy with the scents of cured hay, molasses, and livestock. For Caroline they were familiar smells of home and childhood.

  The gray mare nickered sociably as t
hey walked past, and Caroline could hear the rhythmic nursing of the newborn heifer. Next was a woven willow pen for chickens and the barrels with wooden lids where the feed was stored.

  “I know where you’re taking me,” Garrett said. “A pig pen. I’ve been whisked off for a romantic evening with a herd of Charleston swine.”

  “Shhh.” She giggled softly. Rain was cascading off the tin roof so loudly that they could have danced a reel without danger of anyone hearing, but sneaking around like fugitives from justice was more fun.

  A few steps past the chicken run, she stopped and put out her hand. She felt the paneled door, right where she expected it to be. “Tell the truth,” she urged Garrett. “You are a rebel, aren’t you? You blew up that powder.”

  “What are you? The Spanish Inquisition?”

  “Garrett. You have to start trusting me.”

  “I did trust you. I married you, didn’t I?” He made a patient sound. “Then you told me you didn’t really have the money I married you to get.”

  “One small misunderstanding.”

  “From my side, it doesn’t look small.”

  “Are you or are you not a Tory?” she demanded, suddenly serious.

  “And if I said I was—would you believe me?”

  “No.”

  He chuckled. “And if I said I was an aide to General Washington himself, would you believe that?”

  “No.”

  “Then I might as well keep my truth to myself.”

  “Garrett, you’re impossible.” Secretly, she was pleased. She wanted him to be on the same side of the war she was on, but she didn’t want him to be the kind of man who would forget caution because he’d slept with a woman.

  She giggled. They hadn’t slept at all. And if she had her way, they wouldn’t do much sleeping for the rest of the night either.

  Politics was a subject that meant a great deal to her. She was as committed to the cause of American freedom from English rule as she was to ransoming Reed, but as always, Fortune’s Gift was her first responsibility. As long as Garrett Faulkner was a proclaimed Tory, her land would be safe if Washington lost his struggle. And if the troops at Valley Forge survived the winter and united the fledgling country, she would be exonerated because of Wesley’s heroic death and her brother’s service.

  Her fingers found the simple wooden latch as she pushed open the door to the servants’ quarters. The room was small, snug, and cleaner than the rooms at any inn. And Jane, the widow’s cook, had told Mistress Gordon that she would be away tonight attending the birth of a grandchild. “Wait until I strike a light,” she said to Garrett. “There was a lamp by the door and . . .” She found the tinder box exactly where she’d seen it before.

  The Betty lamp cast a soft glow over the enormous bed. It was crudely made, a simple square of lumber resting on the floor, filled with a home-sewn mattress stuffed with corn husks and covered with a bright patchwork quilt. There was nothing in the room but the small table, a sturdy bench, a wooden chest, and a few pegs in back of the door.

  Garrett grinned. “The bed is rather large for the room, isn’t it?” There was barely three feet between the lamp table and the bed, covered by a braided rag rug. Longways, the footboard and headboard touched the opposite walls.

  “Obviously, Jane has her priorities,” Caroline answered saucily. “And she is a woman of ample proportions.” She hung her wet cloak on one of the pegs. “She’s away tonight. We won’t be disturbed until daybreak, at least.”

  “You are an amazing woman,” he said. “Do you always plan your seductions so carefully?”

  “Always.” She took his coat and hung it beside hers.

  He put his arms around her, tilted her chin up, and kissed her tenderly. “Most women would have gone into hysterics when we were caught on the stairs.”

  She shrugged. “I don’t see why, Mr. Faulkner. We are lawfully wed, are we not? I was only fulfilling my wifely duties.”

  He kissed the tip of her nose, both eyelids, and the center of her forehead. “Had you chosen another occupation, you would have made your fortune,” he teased.

  She smiled and looked up at him through her lashes. “You are a delicious surprise,” she said honestly.

  He laughed. “I’ve not been called that before.” He sat down on the bed, and the mattress crackled under him. He bounced. “It’s soft, but noisy.”

  “We could lie very still.” She removed her riding coat and hung it over a worn apron.

  “I don’t think so,” he said huskily.

  “It’s cool in here.”

  “Come to bed, wife. I’ll warm you.”

  She shivered then, but not from cold. She turned her back to him and began to undo the buttons on her waistcoat. “Shall I blow out the light?”

  “Leave it. I want to see your face.”

  She glanced back at him. “Only my face?”

  “And a few other parts.” He removed his boots and stockings. “You have run me a ragged chase, little vixen.”

  Ribbons of sweet delight tumbled through her veins, and her heart began to hammer like the quick roll of a drumbeat. “You are very nice when you aren’t being obnoxious,” she admitted, unfastening the last button on her cuff.

  “You are nothing like Wesley said,” he murmured.

  She moistened her top lip unconsciously. “Oh? And what did he tell you about me?”

  “That you played a mean hand of whist.”

  “Is that bad?”

  “Only if you beat me.”

  “You don’t like to be beaten by a woman?”

  He grinned wickedly. “Only if she’s holding a buggy whip.”

  She sat on the bench and began to roll down a damp stocking. “You, sir, are no gentleman. What gentleman would talk about a widow’s last husband on their wedding night?”

  He stripped his shirt off over his head, and Caroline’s throat constricted. She looked down quickly at the rag rug, hoping he hadn’t seen what she knew she must be revealing in her eyes. She wanted him again. Wanted him badly. She began to take off the other stocking.

  “He was a good man, and he loved you. I’m beginning to see why.”

  “What did Wesley say that you didn’t like?”

  “Did I say that?”

  She laid her stockings neatly over the bench. “You implied it.”

  “He said something about your tongue being as sharp as your foil. You fence, I believe?”

  “A little,” she admitted.

  “More than a little?”

  She laughed, feeling the familiar flutter of excitement in the pit of her stomach. “And is that a problem?”

  “Most men want only one sword in between their sheets.”

  “Do they?” She forced herself to take shallow breaths. “I’ve not had great experience,” she said modestly. “You’re only the second man that I’ve—” She began to unlace her corset.

  “Come here,” he ordered, removing the last of his clothes.

  She was very aware of his nakedness. A warm flush flashed over the surface of her skin and her nipples tingled with anticipation. “But I’m getting—”

  “I’ll do that, Caroline.”

  She raised an eyebrow quizzically. “Not ‘I’d like to do that, Caroline,’ or ‘Please, darling, let me—’ ”

  “Come here, woman.”

  Her pulse quickened. She folded her arms over her chest and smiled. “No.”

  “Caroline.”

  “Garrett.” She squealed as he leaped off the bed and grabbed her, threw her over his shoulder, and dropped her into the center of the heaped cornhusk ticks. Before she could catch her breath, she was half buried in the bedding with Garrett astride her, pinning her thrashing arms to the mattress.

  “Do you yield, wench?” he demanded in a masterly tone. His gray eyes, full of devilish mischief, flashed silver in the lamplight.

  “Never.” She joined his game eagerly. “No torture can make me yield.”

  “We shall see about that,”
he murmured. “I am a master at putting disobedient wives in their place.” He kissed the corners of her mouth, then outlined her lips with the tip of his warm tongue. His naked loins were pressed against hers; his stiffening rod throbbed through her thin linen shift.

  “Mercy,” she whispered.

  “No mercy.”

  He cupped her breast in his strong hand, and she gave herself over to the magic of their true wedding night.

  Noah awoke at the sound of knocking. He rose from his pallet on the floor, retrieved his pistol, and went to the door leading to the outside staircase. “Who’s there?” he asked.

  “It’s Amanda. Please let me in.”

  “Good God, woman,” Noah growled. “It’s the middle of the night and pouring rain. Are you alone?” He hoped it wasn’t trouble. Neither Eli nor Garrett had come back tonight.

  “I have Jeremy with me.”

  “You brought a baby out in this downpour?” He lowered his flintlock and swung open the door. “Nobody followed you?” he asked as he lit a lantern.

  She shook her head. “There’s nobody on the streets. Please, is Mr. Faulkner here? My—Caroline went out to supper with him and she never came back. I was afraid something—”

  “She’s with Garrett. She’ll be fine.”

  “But she never stays out.” The baby stirred in her arms. “I’m sorry to bother you. I couldn’t sleep. I was so worried—”

  “Here,” Noah said. “Look at you. You’re soaked through. Damned town is nothing but a swamp.”

  Amanda’s teeth began to chatter. “Caroline doesn’t stay out—”

  “Take that wet cloak off and wrap a blanket around you. There’s no heat in this loft, but there’s no need for you to catch an ague. You had no business bringing your boy out on such a night,” he scolded.

  No female, white or black, that looked as she did would be safe on the streets. Amanda Talbot was a striking woman. Her body was soft and shapely, and she carried herself proudly, like an Egyptian princess. Her eyes were the kind a man could get lost in.