Anne Gracie - [Merridew Sister 03]

by The Perfect Stranger

  Plenty of dogs panicked at the sound of thunder, but not Beowulf. He didn’t mind thunder or guns. Checking on the dog was an excuse. He had to get out of that small room with its big, high bed: the storm beating outside and the soft-voiced, soft-skinned girl inside.

  Damn those English harpies. He could have throttled them both, and not only for the way they’d treated Faith. If it hadn’t been for them, he wouldn’t have committed himself to sharing a bedchamber with his bride. Now, if he chose to share a chamber with his men, it would reflect badly on her.

  He’d promised her a mariage blanc and was honor bound not to touch her. Even though her soft, gentle voice opened up chasms of need in him he’d thought were gone forever.

  And the scent of her drove him wild.

  The sooner this blasted storm was over and he could send her on her way to England, while he headed south to Spain, the happier he’d be.

  He and Mac headed for the stables. Stevens had earlier braved the kitchen in order to meet the innkeeper’s widowed sister, a cook of some reputation. Having breached that lady’s defenses by begging to know the source of the glorious aromas coming from the kitchen, he was then questioned by Madame herself, exhaustively. His answers, even for an Englishman, were not totally despised, and thus he was graciously allowed to assist Madame herself, performing menial tasks as he learned her particular way of preparing moules à la crème.

  Nicholas returned to the small bedchamber some time later and knocked on the door. “Dinner will be served in fifteen minutes. Do you want me to have a tray sent up, or would you prefer to come down?”

  She opened the door. “I’ll come down.”

  With all the extra, stranded guests, the inn’s resources were stretched to the limit. The dining room was crowded, but the innkeeper had broken it into two areas, one for the upper class and one for the common folk—never mind the effects of republicanism. The common folk served themselves; the others were served and paid extra for the privilege. As Nick and his bride threaded their way to their table in the superior dining area, they saw that Stevens had been pressed into service. He bustled past carrying a huge tray of dishes and threw Faith a wink. He looked hot but happy.

  Nicholas shook his head philosophically as he seated Faith. “He’s hopeless. Never could stand to be idle. Loves to be needed, Stevens.”

  Faith smiled. Everybody loved to be needed, she thought.

  Lady Brinckat and her daughter were already seated. The landlord whispered that someone else had been willing to give up their room.

  As Stevens passed the two ladies, Faith heard the girl say, “Oh, Mama. Look at his face! How beastly ugly!”

  The girl was talking about Stevens, Faith realized, horrified. Referring cruelly to his war injuries.

  The mother said in a loud, spiteful voice, “Avert your eyes, my dear. A fellow like that has no business in a dining room. If his master had any delicacy of mind, he would keep a grossly deformed servant like that out of sight, so that ladies with true sensibilities would not be offended.”

  She was using Stevens to get back at Nicholas, Faith realized, and suddenly her temper flared. She flung back her chair and marched over to the women’s table.

  “How dare you!” she raged. “How dare you refer to a man injured fighting for king and country—and yourselves—in such a callous, unfeeling way! Call yourselves ladies? You should be ashamed of your lack of sensibility! You should honor a man like Stevens—yes, servant or not! You should honor every man who has risked his life for your comfort and defense!”

  The two women stared at her, stunned, as if a mouse had turned on them.

  Faith glared at them, her chest heaving with emotion and her eyes prickling with angry tears. “And if you ever—ever!—make a nasty remark about Stevens’s face within my hearing again, I’ll—I’ll slap you both, very hard!” She wished she could think of a worse threat, but she was so upset, she could hardly think straight.

  To think that anyone could use dear, kind, Stevens’s scars as a way to get back at Nicholas and her for refusing to share a bedchamber—it made her blood boil.

  There was a fraught silence. Faith braced herself for further nastiness from Lady Brinckat and her daughter, but they seemed to be so shocked at her unladylike outburst that they said nothing. Lady Brinckat’s face was white, her daughter was flushed.

  The sound of clapping came from the corner table. Everyone stared. Nicholas Blacklock stood, applauding. Faith stared at him, shocked.

  The door to the kitchen burst open, and a large woman dressed in a white apron and mobcap stood in the doorway. Madame, the cook. Arms akimbo, she demanded in French, “What happened?” Her brother, the innkeeper, hastily translated what the English ladies had said about Stevens.

  Madame swelled to even greater proportions and, enraged, began to march purposefully toward Lady Brinckat’s table. Just as she reached it, her brother finished translating Faith’s words, and she stopped in midstride. She made him repeat what Faith had said, and when he had repeated it to her satisfaction, she embraced Faith, kissing her heartily on each cheek. Sud denly everyone in the dining room started to applaud. Faith was flushed with embarrassment but could not escape.

  Finally Madame finished embracing Faith. She turned on the English ladies and glared. “You!—old bitch and young one!—out!” She jerked a thumb. “I do not feed swine such as you in my dining room! Get out before I kick you out!”

  Shocked by such blunt vulgarity, not to mention the implicit threat of violence from a large, sweaty, irate Frenchwoman, Lady Brinckat and her daughter hurriedly rose and scuttled from the room.

  “And good riddance!” the cook declared. “Now, ma petite tigresse, my brother will give you some champagne.” She glanced at Nicholas, still standing, a look of amusement on his face. “The friends of Stevens are most welcome here.”

  Stevens said something in her ear, and she started and then beamed with all her chins. “It is a bridal? Why did you not say?” She turned and announced it to the room in French. “Ma belle tigresse and this handsome man were married only this morning by Father Anselm. Eh bien, a wedding, my friends! We must celebrate!”

  And so the party began. An absolute feast poured from the kitchen, dish after dish of wonderful food, the best morsels coming first always to the blushing bride and groom, washed down with bottle after bottle of champagne. And once the food had been eaten, a fiddle, an accordion, and a flute were produced by patrons, and there was music and singing. Enthusiastic hands removed tables and chairs, then dragged Faith and Nicholas out to the center of the floor, and the dancing began. The celebrations drowned out the sound of the storm that raged outside.

  Finally Faith decided it was time for her to go up to bed. She whispered to Nicholas that she was tired and wanted to retire. Her voice trembled a little when she told him. He knew why she was nervous.

  “Go now,” he said. “And lock your door. I will share a room with Stevens and Mac. Don’t worry.”

  She gave him a look of relief and slipped quietly away.

  But when Nick, an hour or so later, attempted a discreet exit, he was caught, amid much raucous and bawdy laughter. It seemed half the room had seen Faith’s exit. There was no possibility, no question of Nick being allowed the same. It was a bridal!

  Fifty-seven happy, drunken people escorted the groom up to his nuptial chamber. Dozens of well-wishers carried him up the stairs, shouting gleeful and explicit French advice. Nick devoutly hoped his bride could not hear it.

  Dozens of exuberant fists pounded noisily on Faith’s door, calling to the bride to come out and behold her master. And when she finally opened the door and peered nervously out, dressed in a long white lacy nightgown and wrapped in an eiderdown, Nick was thrust in the door with happy congratulatory cries and further, very French suggestions. He shoved the door closed on the happy throng behind him and bolted it, panting slightly.

  Chapter Seven

  If one scheme of happiness fails, human nature tur
ns to another; if the first calculation is wrong, we make a second better: we find comfort somewhere…

  JANE AUSTEN

  THE ROOM LOOKED DESERTED, THE ONLY SIGN OF OCCUPATION the rippling bed-curtains, testament to a nervous bride’s hasty retreat.

  “Sorry about that,” Nick said. He had to raise his voice to be heard over the storm and the noisy celebrations continuing outside his door. He parted the bed-curtains, and in the soft light of the turned-down lantern he saw her, huddled to her ears in the eiderdown.

  “Don’t worry,” he assured her. “I’ll just wait here until they go away. As soon as the noise dies down, I’ll slip out and go to the other bedchamber.”

  But the noise continued. A group of men had decided to continue their celebrations on the stairs outside the bedchamber, and the sounds of drinking and talking and laughing continued.

  Nicholas stuck his head around the door. “Do you mind leaving?” he attempted in his imperfect French. “My bride cannot sleep.”

  This was greeted by a roar of laughter and many lewd congratulations. He tried again, but everything he said seemed to amuse them heartily. Nick, nettled, withdrew. He could get men to do almost anything, but not in another language and not when they were drunk. He could throw them bodily down the stairs, he supposed, but it seemed ungrateful to commit violence on men for overenthusiastic celebration of his good fortune and future happiness. He decided to wait them out.

  An hour passed. Nick was getting chilly. He wished he’d built up the fire, but it was out now. He peered behind the bed-curtains.

  “Are you awake?” he asked the mound in the bed.

  There was no answer.

  Nick pulled off his boots, shrugged off his jacket, took one of the extra eiderdowns, and sat on the bed, his legs stretched out. He could at least be warm and comfortable while he outwaited the merrymakers.

  Another hour passed with no abatement of the noise on the stairs or the storm outside. He’d have to stay the night. He removed his breeches and shirt and slipped into bed, taking care not to touch her. He’d promised a mariage blanc and, even if it killed him, he would deliver it, for this night at least. And tomorrow, they would be on their separate ways.

  He could smell the elusive fragrance of roses that seemed always to hover around her. He felt anything but chaste.

  She lay there, unnaturally still. Her breathing seemed to have stopped. She was awake. Had she been awake all this time?

  The sheets were cold and thin. The coverings were heavy. There was no pillow, not even one of the long thin tubes the French used as a pillow. He was sure he’d seen one on the bed earlier. Long and round, like a bolster. He felt around in the bed. And then he found it, the long French pillow. Not placed across the top of the bed for two heads to sleep on. Placed down the center of the bed, to separate two bodies.

  She went even stiller than before, if that were possible. She knew what he’d found. She was no doubt braced for his reaction. Did she expect him to explode with rage? Rip the bolster off and seize his husbandly rights? Probably. She didn’t know him very well.

  “Go to sleep, Mrs. Blacklock,” he said softly. “I may be trapped here by our well-wishers outside, but I am a man of my word. Your virtue is safe.”

  She lay as quiet as a mouse, but somehow, he felt her slowly relax. Nicholas laid his head back down and closed his eyes. Sleeping with no pillow would be no hardship.

  Sleeping next to a silken-skinned girl who smelled of woman and roses was quite another thing.

  They lay in bed, side by side, separated by the bolster, listening to the storm and the rise and fall of voices on the stairs, punctuated by bursts of occasional laughter. Most men got little sleep on their wedding night, Nicholas reflected ironically, only not quite for the same reason…

  He finally got to sleep, but was awoken before dawn by the feel of a soft, feminine body burrowing against him.

  “Changed your mind, have you?” he murmured, and turned over to take her in his arms. As he did, a flash of lightning illuminated her face, and he froze. She was still asleep. Her face was crumpled with some emotion, the flash was too quick for him to read it, but her eyes were tight shut.

  “Faith?” he asked softly.

  Thunder followed the lightning, crashing down so close around them that the building shook. She gave a start and burrowed hard against him like a small animal seeking safety, or warmth, or comfort.

  Nicholas gritted his teeth even as he drew her into his arms. His new bride was no coy seductress. She was scared of the thunder. Sound asleep and scared of the thunder. His promise to her still held, dammit. Even though his body was afire to take her.

  Her cheek was silken soft against him, and he could feel her breath through the fabric of his shirt. Her hair smelled of roses. Her night rail had ridden up, and her lower limbs twined around one of his legs. Her feet were cold, and he felt them slowly warm from the contact with his skin. Her scent surrounded him. He was hard with wanting, and his reckless promise of chastity racked him.

  But a promise was a promise. Just one night to get through. Less than a night, and she’d be gone from this place, gone from him. He’d return to living with men and dogs, creatures who troubled his sleep not at all.

  She snuggled against him, and her breathing evened and relaxed. Her head was pillowed on his chest, tucked under his chin. Where was the damned bolster now? he wondered.

  Faith woke to a wonderful feeling of warmth and safety. She lay for a moment, savoring it. The world seemed peaceful and quiet, and it took her a moment to realize that the storm must be over. There was no sound of wind or thunder or pelting rain. She was wonderfully warm and comfortable, and she had no desire to move, but then it all came flooding back to her. She’d married a man called Nicholas Blacklock yesterday. And today she was going back to England, to her sisters and Great Uncle Oswald. She had better get up and get ready. Ready to go home and face the consequences of her actions. Still with her eyes closed, she stretched.

  And froze as she encountered a big, warm, masculine body, lying practically beneath her.

  She hadn’t only married a man called Nicholas Blacklock yesterday, she’d shared a bed with him last night. And she distinctly remembered putting a bolster between them in the bed.

  The heavy weight of his arm curved around her back, keeping her pressed against the full length of his body. She could feel something pressing into her thigh, and it certainly wasn’t a bolster.

  “What do you think you are doing?”

  He groaned and stirred beneath her. Faith hurriedly shifted position.

  “Stop that at once! You promised!”

  He stretched and opened his eyes. “Looks like I got some sleep, after all,” he murmured.

  His skin was rough with stubble, his hair was rumpled, and his skin a bit crinkly with sleep, but his eyes were as gray as a misty morning. Windows to the sky, though never a sunny sky.

  She belatedly realized he was watching her with an intense gaze. Her heart started thudding. She felt herself flushing, and the look sharpened. There was a gleam in his eye she didn’t trust, and she suddenly recalled exactly what was pressing most insistently against her thighs.

  She tried to scramble off him, but his arm tightened around her.

  “What are you doing?” her voice squeaked.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Blacklock.”

  “Good morning,” she babbled and tried to move off him again.

  His arm didn’t budge.

  “I trust you slept well.” His voice was deep and a little raspy. Not unlike his raspy, dark chin.

  “Yes, thank you,” she said politely, willing him to let her go. “I would like to—” She pushed against him with her hand on his chest. He seemed unaware of it.

  “Storm didn’t bother you?”

  She shook her head stiffly, feeling uncomfortably aware of the intimacy of their relative positions. “No. Not at all.” As she shook her head, the tips of her hair brushed against his skin. She stra
ined her head back away from him. But his arm didn’t budge, and the action arched her body, pressing her lower half more closely against him. She immediately stopped pushing.

  “Not afraid of storms, are you?”

  “N-no. Not since I was a little girl,” she said firmly. It wasn’t quite true; they still made her nervous. But she had managed to conquer her childish terror of them.

  “Thunder doesn’t bother you at all then?”

  “I am no longer a child, to be frightened of such things.” He was wearing a shirt, but the front had come unbuttoned and fell open to the waist. It was very hard not to be distracted by the muscular planes that rose and fell under her hand. And not to notice that the center of his broad, firm chest was covered by dark hair that looked appealingly soft. She forced her fingers to remain still.

  “No, you are no longer a child. You’re a married woman.”

  Faith swallowed. “Yes. And now I would like to get up, please.”

  “Not yet. There’s a small matter of your wifely duty.”

  “W-wifely duty?” Faith squeaked. “But you promised—”

  “Every wife has a morning duty to her husband. I’m sure you know what it is.”

  Faith had a very good idea of what it was. Something to do with the part of him pressing so insistently against her thigh. His arm remained locked around her waist, loose, yet immovable.

  “Surely you don’t mean…” She licked her lips anxiously. She barely knew him.

  “Surely I do.” The gleam in his eyes intensified. She pushed against his chest, but his other hand came up and gently, implacably brought her head down. His lips came up to meet hers.

  His lips were cool and firm, and the taste of him was hot and dark and spicy. The taste of him spiraled through her in a heated shiver, shuddering through her bones in a dizzying wave and curling her toes up tight. She opened her eyes, and the room dipped and wavered around her, exactly as it had in the church, and she quickly closed them again. She heard a soft chuckle, then he kissed her again, quickly.