The Raider’s Bride

by Kimberly Cates

  "What the devil?" Blackheath growled.

  Emily didn't have to act when she jumped at the quick, savage anger in his voice.

  He was every bit as intimidating as she'd feared he would be. The sight of him, still half hidden in shadows, made her pulse trip. A scarlet cloak was flung over his shoulders, sweeping down his back like the wings of a fallen angel. His shirt still hung open, the glistening bronze plane of his chest temptation garbed in shadow, beautiful, so beautiful.

  The scent of wind and rain and leather filled Emily's nostrils, so alluring she could almost taste it on her tongue.

  "God’s teeth, I took you for a housebreaker!" Blackheath snarled. "I could have skewered you where you stand! What the hell are you doing wandering about the house at this ungodly hour?"

  "I'm looking for a... bed to sleep in," Emily said, with a huge feigned yawn. "I'm exhausted, and no one remembered to tell me where I am to... go."

  She stole a peek at Ian from beneath her lashes and saw that she had caught him totally off guard with her words. The wrath drained out of him in a rush, leaving in its place a very real chagrin.

  "No... bed? The servants didn't get you settled in?"

  "Let's just say I'm amazed they didn't nail the door to Lucy's room shut and be done with it. I think they stayed as far away from the mayhem as possible."

  His manner changed abruptly, one corner of his mouth curving into that lazy smile. "You mean to tell me that they left you stranded without a bed to sleep in?" Blackheath's voice was teasing now, silky. "It's insufferable. Criminal. Fortunately I am a most generous fellow. I shall be happy to offer you half of mine."

  Emily's mouth went dry as pictures of Ian danced in her head, his sun-bronzed body naked against the startling white of love-tumbled sheets, his dark mane tousled across the pillow. Temptation incarnate. But then, the devil's own angel would have to be beautiful on the outside to lure the unwary into hell. She had to remember the emotional shallowness that lurked beneath that seductive smile.

  She struggled to swallow. "You, sir, have a most abominable reputation. I am quite certain that you would attempt to swindle me out of my portion of the bed if I were to accept your offer."

  "How can you know me so quickly, Emily Rose? I am an incorrigible cheat at everything but gambling and horse races. And yet, think of the offer as a challenge, my sweet. You could prove to the world, and to yourself, that you are able to resist my charms."

  "You are the most arrogant, most..." Emily looked into those teasing blue eyes and couldn't stop the laugh that rose to her lips. He was trying to be outrageous and was enjoying it far too much, judging from the beguiling curl at the corner of his lips and the twinkle of his eye, just visible in the shadows.

  "I would hate to damage your high opinion of yourself by rejecting you, Mr. Blackheath," Emily said, running her fingers back through her hair until the last of the pins tugged free. "So if you will kindly tell me where I can find a bed of my own, I'll spare your vanity such a fatal wound."

  He favored her with a courtly bow. "Ah, my lady of mercy, my angel of understanding. Such a rare jewel..."

  But his teasing banter was lost in Emily's gasp as the candlelight flowed over him and a cold droplet of water splashed Emily's bare forearm. He straightened up at the sound of her distress, and she held the candle closer to him, unable to stifle the quick twist of panic in her stomach as her gaze locked on his face.

  It gleamed with a sheen of moisture, his hair clinging in dark wet strands to his neck. The fine linen of his shirt stuck to his skin, the front of the garment still hanging wide open, baring his hair-roughened chest.

  The breeches that fit him like a second skin were soaked, outlining every curve and ridge of his muscular thighs, while water dripped from his hair, running down the corded muscles in his neck to pool in the hollow above his collarbone.

  "Emily?" His fingers curved around her cheek, and raw terror knifed through Emily as she felt the chill of his skin.

  "You're soaked!" Emily cried.

  In the shadows she could see the white flash of Ian's grin. "I've ridden through storms before and been so drunk I slept in the wet clothes. Believe me, I barely noticed—"

  "Have you never heard of lung fever, you great fool?"

  "I'm fine. I promise you." But at that moment a shiver worked through him, as if to belie his words.

  "To your room. Now," she said, tugging him out of the room and toward the stairs. "Hurry. You don't know how quickly the fever can settle in your lungs. How swiftly it can sicken you."

  "I'm disgustingly healthy. Always have been. I—"

  "Do you think that matters?" Emily cried in alarm. "It only takes one bout of illness to send a man to his grave. We need to get you out of these clothes at once, dry you—"

  "Getting me out of my clothes is a wonderful idea," he said, following her up the staircase. "That is, as long as you follow suit. After all, turnabout is fair play."

  "This isn't a jest!" There was real desperation in her voice. "Please! Do as you're told."

  With a quizzical look at her, he struggled with the clinging fabric of his wet shirt. She reached out with her free hand to help him, her fingers skimming the cold material away from his broad shoulders and heavily muscled arms, as they hurried up the stairs.

  She peeled the fabric down his back with fingers that shook, barely aware of the hardness of his flesh or the firm, sleek silk of his skin. Tossing the garment on the floor of the upstairs corridor, she hurried into the room he indicated, pressing the taper she held into his hand.

  As Ian lit a branch of candles, Emily rummaged through the ornate washstand, shoving aside a bone-handled razor and soap, a china shaving bowl, and a bottle of Hungary water, the scent shoved so far back it was obviously rarely used. On the bottom shelf she found what she was looking for. She grabbed up the toweling. Then she hurried to pull a wingback chair closer to the crackling fire and guided Ian to it.

  He sat watching her from beneath brows lowered in puzzlement as she rushed over and began rubbing the rough, warm linen across his chilled body.

  She leaned close against him to reach the dark, damp cap of his hair, blotting up most of the moisture that ran from the soaked locks onto his skin. She sponged away the droplets that clung to his cheeks, his jaw, and smoothed the cloth down his neck. Her fingers brushed his skin as she applied the towel to the curve of his arm, the muscled ridges of his chest.

  His head arched back against the chair, his eyes squeezed closed. Emily glimpsed his mouth compressing in a tight line and was certain that, despite his protest that he was fine, he was now feeling the aftereffects of that mad race through the rain.

  With renewed haste she moved to dry him lower down, the slight curve beneath his nipple, the flat disk hardened in its silk-spun web of dark gold. Her little finger grazed the point, and his muscles jumped beneath her hand, a sharp hiss coming from between his teeth.

  "I'm sorry," she said, hurrying to dry the other side, then moving down the ridges of his flat stomach. "You're so cold."

  She knelt down to reach the area near his navel, her hair, falling in a cascade against his chilled skin as she skimmed her cloth over the waistband of his breeches. Her forearm brushed the thick bulge beneath the breech flap. Her cheeks burned, but she was too desperate to worry.

  Her mind was filled with memories of Alexander. He had endured her ministrations in the same, searing quiet. His flesh had been less heavily muscled, less taut and sleek, but every bit as clammy-cold as the skin beneath Emily's fingers now.

  She tugged off boots sodden with water, then closed her palms over the tops of Ian's mud-spattered stockings and rolled them down rock-hard calves that were dusted with prickly dark hair.

  Her own fingers were chilled now, that sick lump of dread feeling like a stone in her stomach as she worked the buckles that fastened his breeches at the knee.

  "You have to take them off!" she warned, instinctively reaching for the waistband of the garment.
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  "Whoa, now, Emily Rose." He caught both of her hands in his to stop her, his eyes staring down into hers with an unreadable expression.

  She knelt before him, her hair a stream of midnight over the flat plane of his stomach, her breasts pressed against the corded muscles of his calves. Her heartbeat thudded where she touched him.

  The smile he gave her was more than a little strained, the sudden sulky heat about his mouth making her pulse flutter beneath his fingertips. "If I had known that this was part of a governess's service, I would have hired one for myself long ago." He was attempting to tease her, but the words were frayed with just the slightest rough edging of something Emily couldn't name.

  "You can't sit around in wet breeches," she said, a trifle breathless. "You'll take a chill and—"

  "I am quite warm now, I assure you." He gave a hoarse chuckle. "And as for removing my breeches, let's just say that after the attentions you've given me, I'm not about to display how... er, revived certain parts of my anatomy are behind this doeskin," he brushed his breeches with long fingers.

  "Don't you understand? It's dangerous!" She tried to pull away, but he held her firm.

  "I can assure you I know just how... dangerous the feelings I'm having at the moment are."

  "Please." Her voice quavered. "You must not treat this so lightly—"

  "Why not, Emily Rose?" The teasing in his features eased. His voice was soft, his face wearing a solemn expression at odds with the rakehell facade she'd seen so many times before. "Why this?" He smoothed his thumb over her cheek.

  "Why what?" Impatience edged her voice.

  "Fear."

  She stared at him, taken aback by that single, insightful word. She could see her reflection in his eyes—her wariness, the soft grief in the exhaustion-rimmed amethyst of her own eyes. The hand that had been applying the towel dropped limply onto his knee.

  "My husband died of lung fever. He was walking home in the rain one night. He was never the most robust of men. He took a chill. Began to cough. These horrible racking coughs." Her voice dropped low. "Three weeks later he was dead."

  Blackheath peered down at her, his eyes darkening with compassion and a tenderness Emily had not suspected him capable of. "It must have been very hard for you."

  Emily drew in a shaky breath and looked away from the compelling softness in his eyes. "Alexander was a very good man. Gentle and sensitive." Her voice broke. "Kind."

  "Everything I am not." There was a faint thread of regret in his voice. "You see how unjust the world is, Emily Rose? That good, kind man you loved died by merely walking in the rain. I am not a good man. No woman waits for me. Loves me. But no matter what I do, the devil will not take me.

  He was quiet for a moment, one hand reaching out to stroke a mahogany tendril of her hair. "You deserve someone to be kind to you," he said.

  She gave an unsteady laugh. "How can you know that? You don't know anything about me."

  "I've seen the way you are with Lucy. I see a goodness along with the sorrow in your eyes. But I would know more." His callused fingertips feathered across the sensitive skin behind her ear, tenderly, so tenderly. "Who are you, Emily Rose?" he queried softly. "And what on God's earth could make a lone woman leave everything she's ever known to come to a place she's never seen before? A woman of obviously gentle birth? A lady?"

  It was a question more dangerous that Ian Blackheath could ever imagine. Emily stared down at her hands, afraid that her eyes would betray her.

  "There was nothing left for me in England," she said. "Except memories."

  "Of your husband?"

  "Yes." Emily hesitated for a heartbeat before adding in whisper, "My husband and... and my daughter." Never could she remember willingly speaking of her child to another person. Her grief over Jenny was too precious, too devastating, to share. She was stunned as her words seemed to hang in the air like mist between her and this man who was all but a stranger... this man with a thousand mysteries in his eyes.

  "A child?" Blackheath prodded, that sensual mouth seeming to soften with an echo of her pain.

  "She died five years ago, swept away by the same fever that took Alexander," Emily confided. "She was only three. So small. If she had lived, she would have been about Lucy's age. She would have been wearing long dresses and curling up her hair. She would be stitching at her samplers and helping me with my tasks. And chattering on and on and on...”

  The words trailed off. Her gaze dropped to her hands.

  "Eight years ago," Ian said, stroking back her tumbled curls. "You must have been little more than a child yourself."

  Emily gave a strained laugh. "Seventeen is hardly considered a child in these times. Some women are mothers three times over by then."

  "But you... Forgive me, but you're so small, your face so sweet. I can't imagine the agony you must have suffered."

  "Bearing a child was the most wonderful thing that ever happened to me. I loved her... so much." Emily's voice trembled. "I still wonder what she would have been like if she had lived. Her papa was musical, and she loved to listen to him play. She would dance about with her little arms in the air. She would laugh and laugh."

  Silence fell. A tear trembled at the ends of her lashes and then trickled free. Emily looked into Ian Blackheath's eyes, and she was astonished to see within them a vivid reflection of a tiny golden-curled moppet, whirling about gaily in a dance that was all her own. The arrogant planes of his face were touched by her sorrow.

  "You say that this tragedy befell you five years ago," he urged gently. "Why did you wait so long to make a new start? Why come to the colonies now?"

  Emily looked away, pleating a damp fold of her gown between fingers suddenly unsteady. "Does it really matter?"

  "I think it does."

  "Mr. Blackheath," she started to protest, "I—"

  "Ian. Call me Ian." There was a poignant urgency in his voice that she had never heard before. She'd had no idea how wrenchingly tender that whiskey-warm voice could be.

  "Ian," she repeated, softly.

  He reached out to cup her hand in his large one and held it as if it were something precious.

  "Emily, I want to know. I want to understand. Tell me."

  Never in her life had she spoken about the aftermath of Jenny's death. Not even with the Quakeress who had taken her in, like a wounded bird. Allowed her to heal, and then, in spite of her reluctance, forced her to fly.

  But as Emily felt herself drawn deeper into the shimmering blue of lan Blackheath's eyes, the soft compassion that clung about his mouth, she found herself speaking in halting phrases.

  "We were barely scraping by on what Alexander could earn giving music lessons. He had half a dozen students—most of them abysmally tone-deaf. But one of them showed enough promise to make up for all the rest. There was never money for extra things, but we managed. Especially since the boy's parents, were most generous. Then one day the child just refused to play another note. Ever. Alexander was never the same after. And financially it was impossible for us to afford even the most basic things... things like doctors. It wasn't long afterward that Alexander got sick. I was desperate. I took him back to his parents and begged them to help him."

  She paused a minute. "Alexander was the younger son of a duke. His parents were furious about our marriage. While they felt duty bound to take in Alexander and our daughter, I was not welcome."

  "Heartless bastards!" Ian bit out with some savagery, his fingers tightening protectively about hers. "Your husband should have told them to go to bloody hell."

  "I forbade anyone to tell him that I... was made to leave. He was so sick by then that I can only hope he never knew."

  "But your daughter? Your little girl—"

  "They took her in, too. When I left her she was—was crying. Clinging to me. But she was healthy. I swear to God she was. Her cheeks all rosy, her eyes bright. So bright. They used to sparkle like a handful of stars. I never saw such life in anyone's eyes."

  Rough,
callused fingers stroked her hand with fierce tenderness, but he said nothing, just waited. After a moment Emily went on.

  "I was crazed with grief when I found out she was gone. I didn't want to live. I wandered down to the river. Stepped into the water. I can still remember how cold it was about my legs. I can still remember the feel of my skirts swirling in the currents."

  She turned her face away, watching the gold and crimson tongues of flame on the hearth lick at the darkness. "I just had to keep walking," she whispered, "deeper, deeper, and I knew the current would sweep me away. I would be with my baby then. I didn't want her to be alone, even with angels to tend her."

  Silence. The pain pulsed inside her, deep, so deep.

  "A Quakeress found me and drew me back out of the water. She put me to work helping others. Sewing things for the inmates of Newgate, brewing stew to take to the sick. I could work until I fell into bed. Exhausted, past seeing, past feeling."

  "Did the pain ease?" The words were a gentle probing. He leaned toward her, and she could feel the warmth in him, the caring. Strange, to feel such caring...

  "I didn't feel anything at all," she said softly. "I deadened myself. It was the only way I could bear the pain."

  "What happened to awaken you?"

  "One day we were stitching in the garden at sunset, and the Quaker woman took my hand. She told me I was still standing in the river. That it was time for me to decide whether to walk deeper into the water or turn around and take my first steps back into life."

  Emily’s hair was a curtain about her face, dark and rich. Ian stroked it back. His finger curved beneath her chin, tipping up so he could look into her face. "And what did you do, Emily Rose?"

  "I knew she was right. I could never make a life in England. The hatred I felt for Alexander's parents was too deep, even after his father died. So I decided to come to the colonies."

  "Somewhere new. Unsullied by men like the bastard duke who turned you out onto the streets."

  Unsullied. It was an odd word to use, hinting that somewhere in those reckless eyes Ian Blackheath saw something beautiful in this raw new land, something he kept hidden inside him.