The Winter Wife

by Anna Campbell

  if he had some darker purpose. Some plan to take the wife who so profligately offered herself to another man. To teach her who was her master.

  But his actions now proved her wrong.

  What did she expect? That he’d suddenly want her after all this time? She was a fool. She’d always been a fool where Sebastian Sinclair was concerned.

  The constriction returned to her throat, the constriction that felt alarmingly like tears. She lay back and forced herself to speak. “Goodnight, then.”

  “Goodnight, Alicia.”

  He blew out the candles, leaving only the glow of the fire. On edge and preternaturally aware of his every move, she listened to him settle. He tugged off his boots and drew his greatcoat over him for warmth. There was an odd, familiar intimacy in hearing the creak of the chair and his soft sigh as he extended his legs toward the flames.

  She stretched out. The bed was warm and soft and the sheets

  smelled fresh. She was weary to the bone, but no matter how she

  wriggled, she couldn’t find that one comfortable spot.

  Recollections of the day tormented her. Harold’s craven desertion, which should have been a considerably sharper blow than it was. If her original plans had eventuated, she’d now be lying in his arms.

  She should resent his weakness, his absence, but all she felt was vast relief. Her mind dwelled instead on Kinvarra’s unexpected gallantry. The fleeting moments of affinity in this room. The powerful memories of their life together, memories that tonight stirred poignant sadness instead of turbulent resentment.

  Kinvarra had turned the chair toward the hearth and all she could see of him was a gold-limned black shape. He was so still, he could be asleep. But something told her he was as wide awake as she.

  “My lord?” she whispered.

  “Yes, Alicia?” he responded immediately. “Can’t you sleep?” “No.”

  Their voices were hushed, which was absurd as there was nobody to hear. The wind rattled the windowpanes and a log cracked in the fireplace. He was right, the weather had worsened.

  “Are you cold?” “No.” “Hungry?” “No.”

  “What is it, then, lass?” He sounded tender and his Scottish burr was more marked than usual. When his emotions were engaged, traces of

  his Highland childhood softened his speech. She remembered that from their year together.

  That hint of vulnerability made her brave. “Come and lie down beside me. You can’t be comfortable in that chair.”

  He didn’t shift. “No.” “Oh.”

  She huddled into the bed and drew the blankets about her neck as if they could fend off the brutal truth. Hurt seared her like a branding iron. Of course he wouldn’t share the bed. He hated her. How could she forget? Tonight he just played the gentleman to a lady in distress. He’d do the same for anyone. Just because Alicia was his wife didn’t make

  her special. Nothing between them had changed.

  When they’d first married, she’d attempted to establish a rapport between them in the daylight hours, some trust that she could carry with her into the nights. But when she’d rebuffed him in bed, he’d rebuffed her during the day. He’d made it blatantly clear that he didn’t

  want her childish adoration. He wanted a woman who could satisfy him between the sheets, not a silly little girl who froze into a block of ice

  the instant her husband touched her.

  She blinked back more of the tears that had verged close so often tonight. She’d wept enough over the Earl of Kinvarra. She’d wept enough tears to fill the deep, dark waters of Loch Varra that extended down the glen from Balmuir House, his ancestral home.

  “Hell, Alicia, I’m sorry. Don’t cry.”

  She opened her eyes and through the mist of tears saw he’d risen to watch her. The fire lent enough light to reveal that he appeared tormented and unsure. Nothing like the all-powerful earl.

  “I’m not crying,” she said in a thick voice. “I’m just tired.”

  His mouth lengthened at her unconvincing assertion. He reached out with one hand to clutch the back of the chair. “Go to sleep.”

  “I can’t.” She wondered why she didn’t let him be instead of courting further misery.

  “Damn it, Alicia…” He drew in a shuddering breath and the hand on the chair tightened until his knuckles shone white in the flickering firelight.

  “I’m not…I’m not attempting to seduce you,” she said, and suddenly wondered whether that was the truth.

  What in heaven’s name was wrong with her? Surely she couldn’t want to revisit the messy humiliations of her married life. Memories of those fumbling, painful encounters had tormented her since she’d left him.

  Kinvarra’s long, lean body was as taut as a violin string. Tension vibrated in the air.

  He closed his eyes as if he was in agony. “I know. Dear God, I know.” His chest rose as he sucked in a shuddering breath. He opened his eyes again and stared at her, his gaze blazing across the distance between them. “But if I get into that bed, there’s no way I’ll keep my

  hands to myself. And I don’t want to hurt you again. I couldn’t bear to hurt you again.”

  She was appalled to hear the naked pain in his voice. This wasn’t the man she remembered. That man hadn’t cared that his passion had frightened and bewildered his inexperienced bride.

  This man sent excitement skittering through her veins and made her burn for his touch. She’d never felt like this. It was like balancing on the edge of a cliff over a wild sea. Dear God, was she likely to end up smashed on the rocks below? The answer didn’t matter. It was too late for caution.

  On unsteady arms, she raised herself against the headboard and

  drew in a breath to calm her rioting heartbeat. Another breath. She took

  the last rash step into infinity.

  Her voice was quiet but steady. “Then be gentle, Sebastian.”

  Chapter Three

  KINVARRA’S GRIP ON the chair turned punishing. Good God, he must be mistaken in what he’d heard. Alicia couldn’t be offering herself. In all these many years, she’d never offered herself. Even in

  the beginning, he’d always had to take. He’d grown to hate it, whatever physical pleasure he found in her arms, so that when she’d finally begged for a separation after those wretched months together, he’d almost been relieved.

  Of course, he hadn’t realized then that his agreement would lead to ten excruciating years without his wife.

  She sat up against the bedhead, pale against the dark wood, and watched him with a glow in her blue eyes that in any other woman he’d read as blatant sexual interest. She’d taken her beautiful golden hair down and it flowed around her shoulders, catching the firelight. She’d become his fantasy Alicia. The unforgettable woman who had haunted every empty day he’d endured without her. The woman she’d never been for him, even when they’d lived together.

  “Sebastian?” A faint frown drew her fine eyebrows together.

  He should say something. His continuing silence must make her nervous.

  “You don’t know what you’re asking,” he said in a constricted voice, wondering why the hell he tried to talk her out of fulfilling his dearest hopes.

  He’d missed Alicia since the day she left him. Now she was near enough to touch. And for once she didn’t seem to loathe him. All

  his dearest, most outlandish hopes came to fruition. He’d always been blackguard enough to want more from their meeting tonight than mere conversation. One bed and a cold night and Alicia in an

  uncharacteristically amiable mood all seemed to augur at the very least a physical respite from his damnable longing.

  Then he’d remembered those fraught encounters at Balmuir House. However much he wanted her, he couldn’t bring himself to inflict himself upon her again. So he’d consigned himself to an excruciating night in the chair. That was less excruciating than seeing her now and knowing that she’d accept him into her bed—and realizing that in his des
peration, he was only too likely to disgust and frighten her again.

  She raised her chin, an act of bravado familiar in the young Alicia. The memory made his gut clench with poignant yearning. He’d hurt her before. He couldn’t bear to hurt her again. He must stay away from her, for both their sakes.

  An uncertain smile curved her lips as the silence extended into awkwardness. “Tonight you chased my lover away. Honor compels you to offer recompense.” Then in a low voice, “Sebastian, once long ago, you wanted me. I know you did.”

  He swallowed and forced his response from a tight throat. “I still do.”

  She raised trembling hands to the buttons on her mannish ensemble. An ensemble that looked anything but mannish on her lush figure. She’d filled out from the girl he’d married. Delightfully so.

  Her traveling garb was cut like a riding habit and the white shirt under the dark jacket was suitably modest, buttoned high at the throat. Even so, when her fumbling fingers loosened that top button to reveal a couple of inches of skin, every drop of moisture dried from his mouth and his heart flung itself against his ribs.

  The Earl of Kinvarra was accounted a brave man. But he immediately recognized the emotion holding him paralyzed as ice-cold fear.

  Tonight provided a miraculous second chance to heal the breach

  in his marriage. A gift of love for Christmas Eve. But if he hurt Alicia again, he’d never have another opportunity to bring her back to him.

  He needed patience, self-command, insight to seduce his wife into pleasure. Yet he burned hotter than a devil in hell. What was he to do? He wanted her too much. And wanting her too much would destroy

  the cobweb of intimacy building between them in this quiet room. An

  intimacy woven from soft conversation and new understanding.

  When his family had presented him with such a beautiful bride just after his twenty-first birthday, he’d been confident that he and Alicia would find happiness. Instead every coupling had been furtive and soured with shame, accomplished in darkness and ending with his

  wife sobbing into the pillow. No wonder he’d lost his taste for forcing himself upon her, although to his endless torment, his desire had never waned.

  Desire still roared inside him.

  Her shirt fell open another fraction to show a delicate line of collarbone and a shadowy hint of her breasts. Her stare unwavering, her hand dropped to the next button.

  “Stop,” he said hoarsely.

  Her hand paused in its downward progress. “Stop?” The self- consciousness that flooded her face carved a rift in his heart. “You said—”

  Shaking his head, he finally released the chair. He flexed his fingers to restore the blood flow. “And I meant it. But let’s do this properly.”

  Her hand fell away from her shirt to lie loose in her lap. “Shouldn’t I

  take my clothes off?”

  Dear God, she was going to kill him before she was done.

  He closed his eyes and prayed for control as recollections of

  touching Alicia’s naked body crammed his mind and turned him as hard as an oak staff. When he opened them, she watched him as if he acted like a madman. She wasn’t far wrong.

  “We’ve got plenty of time.” He stepped toward the bed, his hands opening and closing at his sides as he fought the urge to seize her and tumble her back against the mattress. “Why rush things?”

  “Kinvarra…” she said unsteadily. She might have invited his attentions, but he caught the flash of uncertainty in her eyes. He didn’t underestimate the courage she’d needed to ask him to join her.

  “You called me Sebastian before.”

  “You weren’t staring at me as if you wanted to eat me then.” She clutched at the sheet although she didn’t pull it higher. He was close enough now to notice the wild flutter of her pulse at her delicate throat and the way her erratic breathing made her swelling breasts rise and

  fall.

  “Believe me, I’d love to.” The urge to rush, to grab, to possess before she changed her mind thundered in his veins but he resisted its demands. He had to rein himself in or the promise of joy would disintegrate to dust.

  Her scent washed over him, floral soap and something honeyed

  and enticing that was the essence of Alicia. In all this time, he’d never forgotten. He drew a deep breath, taking that delicious fragrance deep into his lungs.

  Slowly, as if any untoward movement might scare her away, he reached for the hand that crushed the sheet. At the contact, she jerked and released a choked gasp.

  “Don’t be afraid, Alicia,” he murmured, feeling her trembling in his grasp. “I won’t hurt you.”

  He hoped to hell he spoke true. His grip tightened even as he told himself he needed to be careful with her.

  “I’m…I’m not afraid,” she said on a thread of sound.

  He laughed softly and lowered himself to sit on the bed, his hip resting against the blankets over her legs. “Liar.”

  She blushed. As a girl, her blushes had charmed him. They still did, he discovered.

  “I’m nervous. That’s not the same as afraid.”

  He raised her hand to his lips and kissed it. He felt her shiver and her eyes darkened with unmistakable response. Turning her hand over, he kissed her palm. As he heard her breath catch, desire spurred him to take more, satisfy his pounding need. With difficulty he beat back his arousal.

  She remembered him as a selfish lover. He needed to vanquish those bleak memories and replace them with bliss. His voice deepened into sincerity. “Alicia, trust me.”

  He held her gaze with his. Doubt, fear, and something that might have been reluctant hope swirled in her eyes. He felt tension in the

  hand he held. In aching suspense, he waited for her to agree. Surely she couldn’t be so merciless as to deny him now.

  The silence extended. And extended.

  Then finally, finally, she nodded.

  “I trust you, Sebastian.”

  Relief flooded him, made him dizzy. Relief and gratitude. After the mull he’d made of everything, he didn’t deserve her consent, but he was bloody glad she’d given it all the same. Now he had it, he’d make sure she never regretted it.

  “Thank you,” he whispered, wondering if she knew how profoundly he meant those simple words.

  He leaned forward to brush his lips across hers. A deliberately light kiss however much her nearness eviscerated good intentions. A glancing touch that promised more. A salute to the woman who would become his partner in rapture tonight.

  Her lips were impossibly soft under his. Smooth. Satiny. He lingered a second, savoring the exquisite sensation. In nearly eleven years, he hadn’t kissed his wife. He’d kissed her before they’d married, during

  the giddy days of their short engagement. He’d kissed her during

  their first weeks together, but the spiraling unhappiness of their life at

  Balmuir had soon made kissing seem a travesty.

  Kinvarra started to withdraw, the beast inside him straining against gentleness. Then Alicia made a soft sound deep in her throat and her lips parted.

  Her warm breath filled his mouth. She tasted familiar. Yet as fresh and new as a fall of snow. Hot darkness exploded inside his head and reaction ripped through him. He longed to ravish her mouth with all

  the passion locked for so long inside him. He clenched his hands in the blankets, struggling to remember what was at stake.

  God give him strength. His control already shredded and he’d hardly launched his seduction.

  Alicia cradled his head between her hands, holding him close as though afraid he meant to pull away, even now. Foolish woman, as if he was going anywhere. He’d ventured up to the gates of paradise and to his astonishment, they’d opened to allow him inside.

  Her kiss was clumsy, as if she hadn’t kissed anyone in a long time. Shock rocketed through him. On an intellectual level, he’d known that she’d never been unfaithful. But that urgent, unpracticed kiss reass
ured his needy soul that in all the years they’d been apart, she’d belonged only to him.

  Once, when he’d been an arrogant stripling who thought the world was his for the taking, that knowledge might have provoked triumph. Now he was only humbly grateful that she’d waited for him. After

  so long without her, he took nothing for granted. He was under no illusions how lucky he was that Alicia was in his arms right now. The slightest misstep could put them at odds again. This time forever.

  His arms encircled her, curved her into his body. She molded to him with an eagerness that set his heart cartwheeling. His mouth shaped itself to hers as she curled her arms around his neck. Her breasts crushed into his chest until blazing heat threatened to incinerate all will

  beyond his hunger to possess. Even as he kissed her deeply, ravenously, stroking her tongue with his, he struggled to remember that he couldn’t dive headlong into this fire.

  Kinvarra’s resolution faltered when her tongue moved in unmistakable response and she moaned with female pleasure. Restraint became even shakier after she sighed into his mouth and rubbed her body against his.

  His shaking hands clasped her head as he plundered her mouth, stoking her passion. She began to touch him, feverish brushes of her hands as if she needed to learn the shape of his body again after all this time. Her unfettered reactions intoxicated him. Who would have

  guessed his wife contained such delicious wildness? She was glorious, the answer to his every dream. When he finally raised his head, she whimpered in protest and her eyes were dark and slumberous under heavy, drooping eyelids.

  A soft, shaken laugh escaped him as he stroked his hands through the soft hair at her temples. He couldn’t resist touching her—he couldn’t rely on fate being generous enough to let her stay with him past tonight. “I’m struggling to be careful, my darling, but you make it almost impossible.”

  Uneven gasps escaped her moist, parted lips. Her face was flushed with arousal. “I’m not seventeen anymore, Sebastian,” she whispered. “I won’t break.”