Self-consciously, she forced herself to think of the lovely ring he’d produced from his pocket rather than the mysteries of the bedchamber. How could he afford a ring? Perhaps it was part of the entailed estate.
As long as she thought of practical matters, she wouldn’t expire of nervousness in front of their audience. She wished she had family here, but her father had been an only son, and her mother’s few relations had always been distant. The children banging their heels against the wall were her family. She would do anything for them, and although they weren’t old enough to do the same for her, Fitz would. She knew that with all her heart and soul.
He gazed deeply into her eyes as he slid his ring on her finger, leaving her breathless with desire . . . and love. She loved him so dearly, she did not even need to hear him declare the same. She had never believed she could feel like this, and she wanted to weep with joy that she had found a man to treasure.
She blinked back tears and smiled brilliantly when her new husband bent to kiss her. The vicar’s blessings flew right over her head. She hadn’t heard a word that was said.
Lady Sally began playing the out-of-tune pianoforte in the gallery as they turned as a married couple to greet their guests. Lady Belden bent to kiss her cheek and murmur congratulations. Released from the nanny’s hold, the twins raced to grab Abby’s legs.
Fitz laughed and bent over to pick up Cissy.
He’d just begun to straighten when an arrow flew past his shoulders. It bounced off the glass gallery windows with a loud crack.
Lady Belden screamed. Terrified, Abby dived to pull the children to the ground, heedless of her beautiful wedding gown. Montague vaulted over the terrace wall and melted into the shrubbery in pursuit of the villain.
With a grim expression around his eyes, Fitz merely picked up the arrow, detached the note, and read it.
With a gesture of disdain, he shoved the paper into his pocket before helping Abby up again. “A love note from an admirer,” he shouted cheerfully to their audience. “The ladies will sorely miss me now that I’m off the market.”
Lady Belden smacked him on the back of his head with her parasol and soared into the house in high dudgeon. Startled, not knowing whether to laugh or not, Lady Sally and Lady Margaret hastened to follow the marchioness.
Frowning, her heart still racing with fright, Abby noticed that even indolent Atherton had slipped into the shadows in the direction of the creditors, while Lord Quentin had disappeared entirely. Fitz’s friends were covering his back while he played the part of host. She had seen him put up his fists and run after the stone-throwing culprit, but for her sake, he set aside his natural impulses in order to act as host and newly wedded husband.
Abby thought she understood why Lady Bell had smacked him on the back of the head. Such charm and insouciance could be infuriating—if one didn’t know the depths seething beneath the surface smoothness. As Abby did.
So for Fitz’s sake, she shoved aside her fear, planted a smile on her face, and helped Penny and Jennifer up from the terrace stones. Tommy glanced uncertainly from his new hero to the woods where the arrow had originated. “Cakes,” she said to distract him. “And rhubarb tarts.”
The older children instantly forgot their shock and raced for the door, while Fitz carried the twins. If Abby hadn’t seen it for herself, she’d think nothing untoward had happened at all. His chiseled lips held a cheerful smile while he bounced the twins, then set them down inside so he could deftly catch his daughter crawling on the table before she could reach the biggest tart.
“You will show me that note later, won’t you?” Abby asked, holding his arm and wearing a false smile as the servants bobbed and offered their good wishes.
“Probably not,” Fitz replied, accepting a glass of wine from Bibley. “This is our wedding night, and I mean for our minds to be on quite different matters.”
Abby looked around for a parasol with which to smack him, but the innuendo had her blushing. Never in all her years had she been assaulted with such conflicting emotions.
“I can see why you did not choose a younger lady who has no experience with trying situations and perverse males,” she said in frustration as they circled the tables, seeing that their guests helped themselves to the hastily prepared burgundy beef and fresh green peas and asparagus. “An hysterical bride might make consummation tiresome.”
Fitz almost snorted up the wine he was sampling. “Give fair warning before you bludgeon me with salty comments next time.”
“You married a farmer’s daughter, not a lady. Expect it,” she countered.
“My lady, we have run out of sherry,” Bibley murmured, halting their parade around the room.
My lady. Abby paled and went weak-kneed at the title. Fitz gallantly held her up.
“Then bring out the nonexistent brandy, old boy,” Fitz said. “We command miracles tonight.”
Lady Belden waved the butler aside. “You shouldn’t disturb the countess with domestic problems on her wedding day.”
Countess. Abigail Merriweather, a countess. Not a farm girl. She couldn’t speak salty anymore. She didn’t even know when she should speak to butlers. She’d never had a butler.
Still, she’d shaken a broom under the nose of this butler. Abby thought perhaps their association was a little less formal than the usual between countess and servant. She would prefer general to private, and a gun with which to shoot off Bibley’s palsied toes, the old fraud.
That thought gave her the ability to breathe again. “Lady Belden, I’ve not had time to thank you personally for all the joy you’ve given me. This gown . . .” She gestured helplessly.
“That gown is a work of art,” Fitz finished appreciatively. “Even I thank you, Lady Bell. Although now that you’ve elevated my bride to goddess, I’m a trifle terrified of her.”
Goddess? That was almost as ridiculous as countess. But for a little while, Abby’s lips turned up in a smile and her fears dissipated.
Then his friends returned and Fitz abandoned her to Quent’s sisters while he vanished into another room to consult about terrifying arrows.
Had someone actually tried to kill him?
“He had a horse. We didn’t. He escaped,” Montague stated bluntly. “Saddling up our mounts and tracking him didn’t seem practical, as he’d be long gone.”
Fitz nodded and smoothed the crudely written note on the table. MAYT ME ET MEDNIT BY FAHTON ER DY. He couldn’t take such a preposterous threat seriously. Fahton? Did that mean the crumbling water hole with broken pipes that once constituted a fountain? Dy? In what manner? From badly aimed arrows and egregious misspellings? Or perhaps the shooter was threatening to dye his clothes, say, an elegant purple? The idea was too ridiculous to consider.
Perhaps he could send Bibley to the fountain. If one of Geoff’s workers had written this note, the pair deserved each other. Nothing made sense. Frustration welled in him.
If Quent was correct, his heir had dared show his face back in town without seeking out Fitz as he’d requested. Did that mean Geoff knew nothing of the missing money—or that he was confident Fitz would come to an early demise as his father and brother had? He wanted to throttle Geoff if only for being so damned elusive.
“Well, looks as if I’ll just have to die, because there isn’t any way in this world or the next that I’m leaving Abby’s bed tonight,” he decided. Abby took precedence over idiots in his book.
Reclining on a fainting couch, admiring the painting of Diana the Huntress on the ceiling, Atherton tapped his fingers against his bent knee. “We’ll tell your creditors that you mean to meet them after the guests go to bed. Then we’ll assign each one a different meeting place at different doors so all entrances are covered. Free bodyguards,” he said idly.
Fitz laughed at the preposterous idea of his creditors guarding his doors. It made about as much sense as meeting anyone at midnight.
“Ath and I will watch the fountain for you. We’ll dunk the perpetrator and leave him
tied to the mermaid statues until you decide to come down in a day or two.” Montague’s dark expression reflected fiendish anticipation.
Atherton sighed. “Since the house is packed full of respectable innocents, I suppose that will do for entertainment. Might we use your assailant for archery practice?”
“You may dunk him, pelt him with turnips, and hang him upside down from the portico for the children to use as a punching bag, for all I care. Just don’t let anyone disturb my bride. She’s nervous enough as it is,” Fitz declared, relieved that the problem was temporarily in hand. “No shouting. No guns exploding. Just brutal silence.”
Hands behind his back, Montague eyed the gun collection on the wall. “I think you underestimate the countess. If she comes after me with a broom, I’m aiming for the door.”
Montague had faced three men in duels without quaking. Fitz grinned in pride. “Wait until you see Abby wield a hoe. I don’t underestimate her at all. I simply want her to be happy and not have to take brooms to anyone’s hides anymore.”
He realized the truth of that even as he said it. He would do whatever it took to make Abby happy. Fitz hoped that didn’t mean throttling his heir because, if his suspicions about the banknotes could be proved, Geoff had a great deal to lose if Fitz lived. Which made arrow-shooting assailants a little more worrisome than he wished to acknowledge.
34
Abby tucked the children into bed after telling them a bedtime story. She startled the nanny with the simple act of thanking her—once more proving she didn’t know how to go about being a countess—then bumped into Fitz outside the nursery door.
“I’ve made our good-nights and left our guests well occupied,” he declared, taking her arm and leading her down the hall. “I don’t want you to feel as if you must hide in the nursery on our wedding night.”
Which she’d been doing, she must admit. She was far more comfortable with the bouncing children than the fashionable guests drifting about Fitz’s faded but elegant home.
“I wasn’t hiding from you,” she murmured. Or she didn’t think she had been. His easygoing smile had disappeared after his discussion with his friends. She was just a tiny bit nervous of the determined man he revealed under his surface charm. She had seen that fierce focus turned to action, and she wasn’t certain she wanted it turned on her.
It occurred to her that she had made a very rash decision in trusting a man she really didn’t know—
No, she told herself. She had made an excellent, very wise decision, and she was proud of it. She would not second-guess her marriage or Fitz.
“Not hiding,” he corrected himself, proving he understood her well, “but squirreling away and pondering and fretting until you work yourself into a state. I’ve hidden all the rotten apples so you can’t throw them at me.”
Abby chuckled as she recalled their first argument. Not having to be on her very best behavior every moment was a freedom she could easily come to love, a freedom she would never have had as a vicar’s wife. “I apologize for that episode. It was very rude of me to pelt a guest with apples.”
“In the face of your generous apology, I will admit that I am inclined to impulse and not much inclined to consulting anyone else about my affairs, so you had some right to be aggravated. May we kiss and make up now?”
Her husband lifted an expressive eyebrow in a lascivious leer that had Abby laughing even as he opened the door to his bedchamber. Their bedchamber.
She entered a room illumined by dozens of tall white tapers that reflected off hundreds of lamp crystals hung deliberately to produce dancing rainbows over the floor and walls. And amid all the rainbows and light sat vases spilling white blooms: elegant lilies, simple daisies, luscious roses. . . .
Abby gasped in awe and clasped Fitz’s waistcoat to steady herself while she scanned the ethereal chamber. “How did you do this?” she cried, wanting to weep in response to the exquisite gift he’d given her. If she had any doubts left, they fled in this moment of awe at his thoughtfulness.
“I called in a few debts,” he said with his usual confidence, before tilting her chin and studying her with worry in his eyes. “I did not have any magnificent jewels to give you, but I hoped you would understand that I would give you the world if I could.”
Tears rolled down her cheeks as she lost herself in the depths of her husband’s honest gaze. “No one has ever given me beauty,” she whispered, choking on a sob of pure joy. “I’ve received many practical gifts, but this . . .” She stood on her toes and planted kisses across his freshly shaven jaw. He’d even stopped to shave just for her! “Gifts from the heart are the very best ones of all. I wish I had thought to do the same for you.”
“You are the gift I claim,” he murmured, swinging her up in his arms and carrying her to the bed. “You are giving me a present more precious than gold. I have waited forever for this night, so in part, the candles are pure selfishness. I want our wedding night to be perfect, to be the start of the kind of life I’ve never had.”
She ought to be paralyzed by fear at the enormous dream he’d just laid at her feet—he was asking for the love and family he’d never known, trusting that she would provide it. But her brave Fitz’s admission washed over her with warmth, and the unusual tenderness in his expression melted her heart. If he thought she could offer what he needed, she would be proud, not frightened.
She settled on the mattress and reached to break a daisy stem so the flower bent less formally over the side of the vase. “There is beauty in imperfection, too,” she reminded him. “It’s our flaws that make us special.”
Standing beside the bed, Fitz peeled off his tight coat. “I am more a rutting bull than a daisy right now. I have done nothing but plot this moment for four days.”
His confession that he’d been thinking of her for four days stirred the hungry desire she always felt in his presence, but she could not let him reduce her to mindless-ness just yet. She hurriedly tugged up her crushable skirt and knelt on the bed. “Then you may wait a moment longer and tell me what the arrow meant. And the stone thrower last week. There cannot be secrets between us. I think it is a law of some sort.”
“Not unless it’s the law of just deserts.” He flung himself beside her and dragged her down on top of him, planting kisses across her cheeks and tangling his hand in her hair.
Abby shoved her hands against his waistcoat and sat up again. “No, I mean it, Dane. Fitz. Jack. My wonderful husband. No secrets.” She was amazed that she could find her tongue so easily. “I am much happier if I know the problem and don’t have to fret over what it might be.”
“You are supposed to be a shy bride,” he complained, pulling her down to lie beside him and whispering kisses down her throat. “Enthralled with my lovemaking and forgetting all else.”
Fighting fire with fire, Abby untied his neckcloth and kissed the taut skin revealed at the base of his throat. Finally, she had the opportunity to touch him. She began fumbling with his waistcoat buttons. “I am a farm girl aware that we will be making more children. I have no desire to raise a brood all on my own. So if you are in danger, I must know.”
“And do what, my warrior queen?” He found the hidden hook at the front of her bodice and slid it open, exposing more of the translucent chemisette beneath. He trailed a seductive finger over the fabric covering her breasts. “Run scared back to Oxfordshire? Let us have a night of romance without thought to the real world.”
He was right, of course, which didn’t make it any easier to accept that he had secrets. But she had five children upstairs and now a husband to worry about, and she wouldn’t relax until she knew. A countess must be strong and decisive, even if her mind washed away while her earl played a seductive game with the greedy beggars her nipples had become.
“Please,” she murmured ambiguously, pushing at Fitz’s unfastened waistcoat until he sat up, shrugged it off, and threw it to the floor. His shirt draped across broad, muscled shoulders and powerful arms, and she had some inkling
of how ridiculous she was being. He was all huge, raw male, capable of handling mad archers, and she was mere cotton fluff in comparison. But she wasn’t used to anyone taking care of her problems for her. “Tell me,” she demanded, but even she’d forgotten the question.
Leaning over her, he untied her skirt and bodice and began unfastening her corset. “There is nothing to tell. Some madman keeps aiming at my hat. He holds some grudge, but I don’t know about what. My friends will hunt him down if he comes near us. The house is locked up as safe and sound as a prison. The children will be fine. And if for some inane reason my heir thinks to frighten me into running away, he is sadly mistaken in my character. Tonight, I intend to beget the next earl.”
Abby gulped as he divested her of corset and bodice and leaned over to suckle at her breast. She had not given her actions enough thought.
Her son would be an earl. How could she possibly raise an earl? This was what came of it when she rushed into something.
“And whatever you’re worrying over now, don’t,” Fitz ordered, rolling back to the bed and carrying her on top of him. “I desperately need you, and you need me, and that’s all that matters.”
And he was completely, totally, irrevocably right, Abby decided as her husband tugged at her skirt until it fell below her hips, leaving her with no more than an unfastened chemise to cover her nakedness. And he was still dressed.
If she was to be countess and mother of an earl, then by George, she would have to learn to act with the same assurance as Fitz. Grabbing handfuls of his linen, Abby tugged his shirt up until she could finally touch his muscled waist and chest and the line of hair dipping into his breeches. “Take it off!” she ordered.
Laughing with pleasure, he did as instructed.
Fitz thought he’d surely died and gone to heaven as he lay beneath his new bride and admired the curve and bounce of her nearly naked breasts from below. No shrinking wallflower was his Abby. Once she made up her mind, the little general raced full speed ahead. And apparently, she’d finally decided he would suit.
The Wicked Wyckerly Page 28