His Forsaken Bride (Vawdrey Brothers Book 2)

by Alice Coldbreath

  Oswald gave him a hard look and the younger man flushed. “How long have you been playing?” he asked, noticing the amount of empty flagons lying around the table.

  “All afternoon they been at it,” said Meldon waspishly, as he rose to his feet from before the fire, dusting his knees.

  “I shall tell my friend Lady Schaeffer about this game,” said Fen. “It far exceeds both A Heap of Fish and Find the Acorn.”

  “I wouldn’t do that, Lady Vawdrey,” said Sir James looking dismayed. “It – er – is not really a lady’s game at all, you know.”

  “You mean because it reverses the social order?” asked Fen in puzzlement.

  “You could teach your brother though,” said Sir Edward. “That’d be alright. No harm in that, eh?”

  “I’d have to get him a deck though,” she pointed out. “Is it a local Aphrany game?”

  “I expect so,” said Sir James nodding. “Leastways, I never heard of it before I came here.”

  Oswald rounded the table and held his hand out to Fen. She took it and he pulled her to her feet. Then he sat in her chair.

  She stared down at him in consternation. “There are plenty of other chairs?” she pointed out.

  He patted his knee. “But I wanted to share yours,” he said, in his most reasonable tone.

  Her brow cleared. “Oh!” she said and obligingly perched herself on his knee. He wondered idly how many cups of ale she’d had that afternoon. When he passed an arm around her, she sighed and settled against him. A fair few, he guessed.

  “We’ll share a hand,” he told Roland, who was looking at him askance.

  His brother shrugged and started shuffling the cards.

  Fen sighed and slid an arm around his shoulders. “This is nice,” she murmured.

  Her breathy words went straight to his groin and he had to take a deep breath to steady himself. He wondered how many rounds of cards he’d have to sit through before he could in all decency hustle her into their bedroom and get her on her back.

  “I had a good day today,” she told him quietly, as he whisked up their cards. He liked the way her attention was focused now on him alone. Liked it too much. Around them his brother and his friends, laughed and joked.

  “Did you? I’m glad,” he responded automatically as he discarded and picked up a card. He fanned them, so she could see their hand, but her gaze was on his face.

  “How was yours?” she sounded, he thought, a little wistful.

  “Frustrating,” he admitted.

  “Oh no, why?” She bent her arm at the elbow and lightly touched his hair. He liked that too. Damn it.

  “It didn’t start the way I wanted.” Between her thighs.

  “Maybe it’ll end that way?” she suggested encouragingly.

  “I certainly hope so.”

  “I hope so too,” she whispered.

  She had definitely had too much ale, thought Oswald flinging down another card.

  “Laborer trumps Lord,” Bevan crowed, snatching up his card.

  “You’re bad at this game,” his wife murmured fondly, as her fingers lightly scratched at his neck.

  “So it seems,” his mouth twisted wryly.

  “Want us to clear out after this hand?” asked his brother casually as Bevan and Attley argued if the fishmonger was carrying a carp or a cod.

  “Yes,” he answered as Fen simultaneously said ‘No.’

  **

  “I like Roland’s friends,” said Fen on a yawn as she pushed away a plate of flour biscuits and cheese. “I’m not really hungry.”

  “You should eat some more,” said Oswald with a frown as slid a bowl of grapes toward her.

  “Aren’t we dining with someone or other tonight?” she asked in surprise.

  “Change of plans.”

  “Oh.” A thought occurred to her. “Then I’ll need to tell Trudy, she’ll be staying on to dress me-”

  “I’ve already sent her home. Have you finished?”

  She nodded. “You think of everything,” she marveled as he rose from his chair. She took his arm when he offered it, and let him lead her into the bedroom.

  “But if we aren’t eating out, why did you order a bath?” she wondered aloud as they entered their bedroom. It was already set up in the far corner of the room and tented around with white sheets. Oswald took the key from his pocket that Meldon had supplied him with and secured the door. He placed it on top of the chest.

  “We can take a bath after,” he told her, maneuvering her toward the bed.

  “After?” her voice hitched.

  “After,” he agreed, spinning her round to find the lacings at her back. Her belt slid to the floor and he lifted her gown up and over her head. He hesitated. “Do you want to keep your shift on?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said over her shoulder.

  “Don’t fall asleep,” he cautioned as she bent at the waist to rest her upper body against the mattress.

  “Hmm, I won’t,” she assured him sleepily, as she rested her cheek against the soft bedspread.

  He fell to his knees behind her and slid off her shoes and stockings. Unable to resist, he ran his hands up the back of her legs until he cupped her backside under her shift. “You have a beautiful backside, Lady Vawdrey,” he said thickly.

  He heard her sharply indrawn breath. “Really?” she sounded doubtful.

  “You don’t believe me?”

  “Your compliments are rather unusual,” she pointed out. “You said my toes were charming the other day.”

  “Ah, but I also told you I’m not in the habit of saying things unless I mean them,” he pointed out, as he stepped away and stripped off his clothes, never taking his eyes off her. She didn’t move, but remained bent over the bed. An inclination entered his head which had him breathing hard, nostrils flaring. He stepped back up, flush behind her, pressing his erect manhood against her, letting her feel his hard length. “Open your legs,” he said. He drew up her shift. “Shall I turn you over?” he murmured. “Or enter you like this?”

  She lifted her head off the mattress. “From behind me?” she asked sounding shocked.

  “Yes.”

  “How would that-?” she broke off her words, perhaps realizing exactly how it would work.

  “We could try it this way?” he suggested, rolling his hips to give her a precursory taste.

  She exclaimed as his fingers found their way to her slippery core and started spreading her moisture around her folds.

  “Shall I mount you from behind, Fenella?” he teased. “Should you like that, my love?”

  She sucked in a breath. “Like the beasts do?” she asked uncertainly.

  That surprised a laugh out of him. But then, she was a country girl after all.

  “Shall we try it?” He was already poised at her entrance now and pushing into her wet warmth.

  “Yes,” she exhaled, with a shudder.

  He didn’t need any more of an invitation but instead started the hot, deep slide until he was fully sheathed in her tight welcoming body. Finally. He folded forward to cover her body with his and let out a deep breath between her shoulder blades.

  “Oswald?”

  “Just hold still a moment and give me this,” he groaned. “I need it. I needed it this morning. I’ve waited to be here all the damned day long.”

  “Oh.” She was silent a moment and all he could hear was her breathing. “So, when you said the day did not start right…?”

  He gave a shallow dip of his hips and she broke off her words with a breathy moan. He felt himself break out in a sweat at how good she felt. At this rate he wasn’t going to last long. He lifted off her, bracing his hands against the mattress at her hips and planting his feet square on the floor. “This is going to lack finesse,” he said regretfully, as he surged forward into her with a hard thrust. Fenella exclaimed, and he saw her grip the sheets. He did it again, and her plump body bounced beneath him in a way that made him grit his teeth. From this vantage point, her shapely ba
ckside was on full view, her pale shoulders and the sacral dimples at the base of her spine. And he liked it all. Grasping one hip firmly, he ran the other hand up and down her back as he thrust into her. His heated gaze took in the way she undulated beneath his palm, as though she liked his touch. It made his throat burn. He clenched his muscles and seized both her hips hard as he thrust again and again. All these years of abstinence had probably been a mistake, he thought. A mistake Fenella was going to pay dearly for. The pleasures of the flesh had never been a weakness of his, but you wouldn’t know it from the way he was going at her. He reached around between her legs to find her bud and stroked it. Fen gave a shocked cry and then a wail and he felt her body squeeze tight around him as she exploded in rapture. He pushed into her with his full driving length and stayed planted deep while she shook and trembled around him in the aftershocks, sobbing into the mattress. Only when she was finally still, did he roll her over onto her back. “Stiff?” he asked, rubbing her arms and then her legs, as she winced and inched up the bed. Her eyes were drawn to his still inflamed manhood where it bobbed against his thigh, demanding attention.

  “Not as stiff as you,” she gulped.

  He would have laughed, if he still didn’t have an edge of desperation about him. She held out her arms and he rolled atop of her. “Fen,” he said urgently.

  “All is well,” she assured him, and wrapped her legs around his hips.

  He aligned their bodies and then drove back inside her with a deep groan which he breathed into her neck. He felt her hands settle tentatively against his back. The pace he set was brisk, but he managed to stave off frantic. For now. The bed rocked with his exertions, Fenella’s breath hitched. Her hands slid up and down his back and the sensation of her touch made his pleasure climb even higher, until it was almost unbearable. He ducked his head and kissed first one, and then her other full breast. It was only at this point he realized he had not kissed her lips yet that evening. He set that to rights at once. She returned his kiss with enthusiasm and the feel of her tongue in his mouth triggered his release. He pinned her to the mattress and rocked his hips against hers until the blaze in his chest was quenched and his ardor was spent. He slumped over her, his breathing labored.

  “You set me ablaze,” he told her in a low voice, touching his forehead to hers. Then he rolled off her to give the poor thing room to breathe. “I don’t know how you do it. Until now, I’ve always considered myself a prim, uptight sort.”

  “Prim?” she repeated in a choked voice. “Hardly.” She fell silent a moment, then jumped when she felt him touch her hair. It was tousled and coming down her back, having lost half its pins. She rolled onto her side toward him. “It did look nice, this morning,” she said, patting a hand to her disordered locks.

  “I rather like the way it looks now,” he said. “Well tumbled. Like you.” She was just about the most delectable sight he had ever seen.

  She laughed. “You, Oswald Vawdrey, are about as far from prim, as can be.”

  He grinned at that pronouncement.

  “And where’s my shift?” she asked, rolling to peer over the side of the bed. At some point, he’d divested her of it.

  “You don’t need it.”

  “What?”

  “The bath, remember?”

  “I’m too tired to take a bath.”

  “It’s fine, I’ll do all the work,” he promised and rolled onto his side. To his surprise, he found he hadn’t removed his signet ring or chain in his haste to bed his wife.

  “What’s that?” her voice cracked as he removed the chain from round his neck.

  He looked up in surprise. “This? Just my old seal ring.” He showed her the gold ring that was suspended on the chain. It was an orange carnelian stone carved with the Vawdrey panther. “This one I wear,” he said turning his hand to show a large ruby seal ring which was engraved with a crowned panther, denoting his status as earl. He supposed it was sentimentality that made him keep his father’s old ring around his neck. “I normally take it off when I undress, but on this occasion, I was over-keen.” He gave a rueful smile.

  “Not the ring. The thing next to it. It looks like a locket?” she said in strangled tones.

  He frowned slightly and looked down at the two items on his chain. “This?” he held up a small gold padlock shape. “I suppose. I’ve had it for as long as I can remember. It was my mother’s, I think. I don’t have the key.”

  “Oh.”

  Something in her tone was off, but when he looked up sharply, she dropped her gaze.

  “Is it inscribed?” she asked.

  He turned it over in his fingers. “Yes,” he said and waited, but she did not ask him with what. “Not Forgot,” he read out anyway. “Which is ironic, as I don’t remember her.” Fenella had turned strangely silent. “What’s wrong?” he asked, dropping the chain and reaching for her.

  “Naught,” she assured him, and reached up to lightly touch his face.

  He scooped her off the mattress and headed toward the tub. “I hope the water’s still warm.” He held her suspended over the tub. “Do you want to test it before I drop you in?” he said quirking a brow at her.

  She dipped her fingers into the fragrant water. “It’s fine-,” she said, and he released her with a loud splash.

  He was over the side and in the tub with her before she had emerged, coughing and spluttering.

  “I didn’t think you’d actually drop me!” she said indignantly. His arms had already closed around her, hauling her up against his chest. “Or, actually get in the tub with me,” she admitted breathlessly.

  “I seldom say something unless I mean it,” he reminded her, enjoying the feeling of her body pressed against his.

  “I expect the floor is quite covered in water.”

  He glanced over the edge. “A few puddles, maybe.”

  She was staring at him.

  “What is it?”

  She blushed. “You look so boyish, when your hair is forward on your face like that,” she said, tucking her wet hair behind her ears. “Like I remember you,” she admitted in a rush. “From those years we were promised.”

  That gave him pause for thought. “I am generally considered to have a good memory,” he admitted. “But that period of time is, I confess, a little foggy in my brain.”

  She screwed her face up. “Is that your tactful way of saying you do not remember me, my lord?” she asked.

  He could tell she was joking, but for some reason he felt the oddest tugging in his chest. He put a hand over hers and placed it there. “I remember you, here,” he said. “Where it counts.”

  Fen swallowed. “Oh,” she said and seemed to struggle for words.

  They both looked at each other a moment.

  “I remember that Solstice feast,” he said slowly. “When you held my hand, under the table.”

  She drew in a breath. “You remember that, yet-”, her words broke off distractedly.

  “Yet what?”

  She recovered herself. “Yet, you do not remember the gift I gave you, of my dreadful tapestries,” she elaborated with a mock grimace. “Thank heavens for small mercies.”

  He reached behind him for some leaves of soap and a washing cloth. “Yes, but that wasn’t what you were going to say,” he objected and squeezed the cloth between her breasts, watching the droplets of water trickle down the generous globes of her breasts.

  Fen dropped down beneath the water, crossing her arms. “I can wash myself,” she protested.

  “But I promised I would do it,” he tutted. “As you’re so worn out from my husbandly attentions.”

  She gave a gurgle of laughter. “I never said that.”

  “Well, then you can stand a few more, if that is the case,” he said maneuvering her round so that her back faced his front. “Let me wash your hair.”

  She sighed as he ran some soap leaves through the length of her wet hair. “Oh, very well, if ‘twill give you pleasure.”

  “It sounds like it
gives you pleasure,” he teased, as she tipped her head back and closed her eyes.

  “It does feel nice,” she admitted so artlessly, it made him ache for her again.

  “Fen,” he started. Then found he had no notion of how to continue.

  Her eyes opened, and she blinked up at him. “Yes?”

  “I plan to apply to have your marriage to Thane legally declared null and void.” Where had that come from? In some dark recess of his brain, he had been turning that over. But he had not intended to raise it at such a time. Sometimes he astonished even himself.

  “Oh?” Her gaze was wary.

  “You’re not divorced,” he persisted, soaping up her hair. “Because you were never married to him in the first place.”

  She frowned over this a moment in intense thought.

  “You were married to me. Understand?” he asked testily.

  “Yes.”

  He breathed out a breath he wasn’t even aware he was holding. “All along. You were mine. Say it.”

  “All along?” said Fen uncertainly.

  He nodded and gathered her soapy hair in one hand like a pony’s tail. Then he wagged her head. “Say the rest.”

  “I was yours?”

  “You were,” he said with conviction. “So, tell me.”

  “All along I was yours.”

  He nodded. “That’s better.”

  Fen stared at him, her amber eyes wide. He felt it again, the strange tug in his chest. It propelled him to turn her to face him and then place a very gentle kiss on her lips. When he drew back, he knew the vulnerable look on her face was reflected on his own. What was he doing? “I’m going to wash out the soap now,” he told her. “And then we’re going back to bed.”

  Afterward, they lay propped up against the pillows with Fen at his side, curled into him. He felt strangely content and rested, as he closed his eyes to savor the sensation. Almost, he imagined he could drift right off to sleep. Then he felt her palm gently rest on his chest. He flicked his eyes open, but she hadn’t moved her head from his shoulder where it rested. His eyelids were just drifting down again when he heard her draw in a breath as if to speak, and then dispel it again, with a frustrated puff of air. “What is it?” he asked. Even to his own ear, his voice sounded sleepy.