Bound by Love

by Edith Layton

  She might have some fears about making love for the first time, because she’d been well brought up and they weren’t really married. But the thought of him gently, patiently, and calmly telling her to go back to her own bed was what really frightened her.

  She slipped from her room and ran lightly down the hall, but she paused at his door. Her robe was made for warmth, not style, and her nightshift was plain and covered her from ankles to wrists. He was used to seeing desirable women in low-cut gowns and with their hair carefully curled and powdered—her hair! It was drawn back into one long plait for the night and fell to her waist like an inky rope, instead of rioting in masses of curls. She wondered whether she ought to loose it; he did seem to like her hair. Yes, and why not put on powder and paint while you’re at it? she asked herself scornfully. If you want to discover his real feelings toward you, get on with it.

  She raised her hand—and then stood worrying about whether she should tap or knock or scratch at the door. He mightn’t even hear her with his bed hangings closed around him. Maybe he was sleeping, and she should just go in—but that would be very bold. She grew cold, in heart, mind, and body as she stood there, dithering. It wasn’t until she thought she heard a noise that she acted.

  *

  This was the bad one.

  *

  It was very hot; he was sweating. The water in the pond looked cool. Best of all, he could hear that there were only other boys splashing and playing. They were around a bend, behind a bush. He had slipped away from his master—he could avoid them, too. He wanted just one moment in the cool, cool water.

  It was wonderful. He lay on his back and looked up at the sky, and for a while as he lay drifting in the water—in his sleep—none of it mattered, not the loss, not the hardships. The water washed it all away and he stared into the sky as the earth turned beneath him. But then the cool water was gone and he found himself standing, looking for his clothes at the edge of the pond. He heard the sudden silence as though it were an explosion, and he looked up to see all the boys staring at him. Their faces shifted, magnified, becoming larger than life, caricatures of what they’d been, but just as true in their expressions of horror and fear.

  He turned to see what they were staring at. He stared over at himself as if he were one of the gawking group. He gasped, shamed and frightened, because he saw the snakes on his back, too: twisting, writhing, thick white and red snakes, stinging almost as much as they had when they were lash strokes instead of the hideous scars they were now.

  He ran—all the way into another dream.

  There was to be no peace for him this night.

  “I’ll work long hours, and very hard, too,” he said.

  The woman looked doubtful.

  “I promise; I give you my word on it,” he vowed.

  He stood twisting his hat in his hands, because he knew old Higgins could wake any minute and find him missing. But he was only down the street, at the baker’s. She needed a boy. If he could just convince her—she had the money to buy his bond. He was big now, and strong. She seemed to be a kind person; her last boy had always been well fed and clean. He’d bathe, too, if she’d allow him time and opportunity. He stole a glance around; it was a neat shop, swept and orderly—not like the pigsty old Higgins lived in.

  “Ah. Your word. There’s the problem,” she said with a sigh. “You’re the lad who says he’s a nobleman born, ain’t you? An earl, no less. ’Tis a mad start, and makes me terrible nervous, I can tell you. Still, you’re a hard worker with no harm in you, they all say. I tell you, lad…”

  She looked at him. She was an ample woman with a smiling mouth. He could be happy here for a while. He could rest here, he could grow here, he thought, gain strength and pride. It smelled like food and warmth and comfort here. It looked like heaven. He waited.

  “If you can tell me you’ll give up that foolishness, and never say you’re a nobleman stole from the cradle or whatnot again, why then, I’d be willin’ to give you a try. You speak well and work hard. I’m a fair woman, and I think we’ll suit. What do you say, lad? Tell the born truth, and you’ve a position here.”

  “I won’t mention it again,” he said promptly.

  “Ah, ah,” she said, wagging a fat finger in front of his face. “Not good enough. Not mentioning’s not denyin’ it, and well you know it, you young scamp. Just tell me it’s all fudge so I don’t have to worry about you being cracked, and we’ll talk to Higgins. Well?”

  He wanted the job, the home, the chance to escape. Higgins didn’t use the lash, but he had a cruel mouth and a heavy hand. The words were on his tongue; he wanted to say them. But he didn’t want to lose himself entirely, and he knew that if he said them, he would.…

  “I…” he said. “I…”

  *

  Jared sat up in bed, his eyes wide. Something had awakened him from his nightmare before his own despair did, because it usually went on until he fought his way out of the sack and up into the air again. Someone was in the room with him; he realized he’d heard a gasp of shock. He moved fast for a big man newly woken—he’d had to wake in the midst of terror before.

  “Ah! Got you!” he cried, reaching into the darkness and wrapping his arms around the darker patch of black he saw outlined in the dim glow of his opened window.

  He released her a second later—and stood staring. “Della?” he asked with shock. “By God, it is—Della! What are you doing here, now? Something’s the matter!” he said in sudden horror when she didn’t answer but only stood shaking and staring back at him. “Tell me. God, Della, please say something. I’ll help; I just have to know what to do!”

  “Well,” she finally said in a tiny, quavering voice, “you could start by putting some clothes on.”

  He glanced down at himself, then swung around and made a grab at something near the bed. She heard the heavy rustle of silk as he drew on his robe. “Now, tell me; what’s wrong?” he asked, gripping her shoulders.

  She couldn’t answer right away. She was overwhelmed at the nearness of him, the solid masculinity, the sight of that warm, hard, naked body just inches away from her. She swallowed. “Nothing,” she said. “Oh everything,” she wailed, remembering that this was Jared, her Jared. “I couldn’t sleep. I was thinking—you can’t give it all up for me; you can’t. You’ve worked so hard—you belong here. What if I disappoint you? What if I already have?”

  He was about to try to calm her fears, but her last question brought him up short. “What?” he asked.

  “Well, but I—you—you don’t seem to want… Jared, I know you said you love me. I do. But—do you find me desirable, too? Really?”

  He wanted to hug her close, but he didn’t trust his body tonight after the way it had reacted when he’d first held her. “How can you ask?” was all he could say.

  “Because—because you keep turning me away after we kiss. That’s supposed to be so hard for a man to do, but you do it so easily. You thought I was your sister for so long, I thought maybe the trouble was that you still do—and so you couldn’t…you know.”

  “I know, and I could—oh, before God, I could,” he said, and exhaled a long breath. “That’s just it. Della, when you came in tonight, I was dreaming about shame and worthlessness; I’m plagued by those kind of dreams, because of what I was and what happened to me. It was hard to let you leave my arms—believe me, you can’t know how hard—as hard as not touching you now. But we’re not married, and I don’t trust myself. Before God and man and Alfred, and especially myself, I have to prove I’m a worthy man. The bond-boy must be decent and repay Alfred’s trust. I can’t take your love while you’re alone, under my protection. Can’t you see that? I want you—but with honor. As my wife, and nothing less. I know that doesn’t sound loverlike, but believe it or not, it means I love you more than myself or my desires.”

  She sniffed. It was eloquent. He lowered his head and feathered a kiss across her lips. The kiss was so light, so sweet, so extraordinarily sweet, that he leaned
in toward her, and she toward him. This time, after a long time, when he raised his head, he held her close instead of away from him. But he didn’t do more, and she felt his body shivering against hers. That wasn’t all she felt against her before he let her go—which was precisely why he suddenly did.

  “We have to be married soon,” he said. “Now do you see? But for now, please, go to bed. Your own bed. And quickly.”

  She reached up on her toes and kissed his lips quickly, and then smiling, scampered back to her room. As she’d feared, he had told her to go back to her own bed. But she was very happy.

  He took off his robe and settled back into bed—not to sleep, but to plan. Soon, he wouldn’t have to sleep alone anymore. He frowned, realizing that meant that he wouldn’t be able to sleep naked anymore, either. No woman had ever seen his back, and he certainly would never subject Della to such a sight. He decided nightshirts were a sacrifice he would just have to get used to—and it couldn’t be soon enough for him.

  *

  The earl of Alveston stood at the window, looking out. The earl of Alveston stood by the vicar’s desk, looking at him. They looked very alike, and the old minister was very confused—and not just by their request.

  “But a special license is no easy thing to obtain,” the old man said. “A quick wedding hasn’t been possible since before fifty-two, when the marriage law went into effect. Now there are banns to be posted and a waiting period—a very good thing in all, my lords, do you see?”

  “But there are special licenses,” Justin said silkily, “obtainable in special circumstances. These are such. An earl, after all,” he said in a confidential voice, looking at his brother, “and a young girl unchaperoned in his house, under his protection, and her absent father a baron. Let me see: that’s an earl, an earl, and a baron involved, isn’t it? Such a lot of highly placed persons to be inconvenienced by delay. And on our side, an additional marquis and a bishop as well who will be glad to hasten matters, I am sure.”

  “But why such haste, my lord?” the old man asked nervously.

  “Aside from the fact that the lady in question is presently unchaperoned, through no fault of her own, in a house with two unwed men? My dear reverend sir,” Justin said, lowering his voice to a whisper and indicating his brother, who was pacing now, “the earl, as you know, was raised in America.”

  The old man looked blank. Then comprehension dawned. “Oh, I see. A very savage land, is it not?”

  “Yes, extremely. But settled by pilgrims…Puritans,” Justin whispered.

  “Ah!” the old vicar said. “Oh dear.”

  “Just so,” Justin said smugly. “You perceive the tensions. A robust Englishman raised among Puritans in such a wild place—the conflicts, dear sir, the possibilities. Would you want that on your conscience?”

  *

  It was a quiet wedding. The bride carried the last roses of the autumn from the garden as one of the uncles of the groom escorted her down the aisle of the ancient church his ancestors had built for the people of their village. The groom’s man stood at his side, looking so much like him that some villagers who had started celebrating early thought they were seeing double. But a closer look showed one man wore a smile of dazzled, disbelieving bliss, and the other, a sadder one.

  They held the wedding dinner in the hall, but had arranged for feasts at the local inn and every cottager’s humble home as well, because the earl had been generous, wanting everyone to share in this joyous occasion.

  “And besides,” Jared told Della as the two of them dined alone at the hall, “this way they’ll all be too drunk to bother us with singing and such on the lawns tonight. Or so Justin said. That’s why he and the uncles are dining at the inn right now instead of with us.” Or so he said, Jared thought with the only trace of sadness he’d felt all day.

  “Are you done?” he asked, looking at her still-full dinner plate with what he hoped was a casual smile.

  “Absolutely,” she said, looking at his dish, and seeing everything still on it. “Oh, isn’t this silly?” She giggled. “As if we have to be nervous with each other just because we’re finally married! We’ve had dinner a million times together before, I’d bet. How silly. Go on, finish.”

  “I am,” he said, looking into her eyes.

  “So am I,” she said in a small voice.

  They both felt foolish as they went up the stairs together, all alone in the vast hall except for servants, who were celebrating in the kitchens, way out of sight. It was awkward, certainly, when he led her into his chamber and closed the door behind them. There was no doubt it was a blush that rose in her cheeks when she saw her nightgown laid out on his high bed. He hesitated for a moment before he turned to her.

  And then they touched.

  “Before God!” Jared swore, his face in her hair, as he held her so close she could feel the heavy beat of his heart against hers through all their clothing. “I don’t know what it is. I touch you and I fall apart.”

  “With no one else?” she whispered when she could. “No one—never,” he vowed, because it was true.

  It took a while to remove their clothes. She was drugged by his kisses, clumsy with her buttons, and shy when at last her gown was to come off. He was slower getting his breeches off because he was so intent on helping her. And the kisses kept getting in the way, firing him and yet slowing his progress because they were incredibly delicious.

  He stopped kissing her only when she was entirely bared to his gaze. She took his breath away. Slender and curved, all shades of rose and white, except for that jet patch she was so shy about, holding her hand over herself, looking like a representation of Venus rising from the waves he’d once seen. But she was his Della, and much more beautiful to him. Her breasts were high; her waist dipped and swelled out again in lithe curves that he reached out to touch so he could believe the perfection of them. He helped loose her hair into a dark, turbulent sea that made her skin glow by contrast. Then he kissed and caressed her until he could take no more and she looked as though she wasn’t afraid of whatever more there would be. But he knew how much more was to come, and he gently bore her to his bed to show her.

  He dazzled her; he was all warm gold and matte velvet to her touch. He smelled like sunshine and salt and soap and Jared, and she couldn’t breathe him in deeply enough. Her hands went under his shirt to his hard chest, tentatively—and then more boldly—stroking the firm contours of a superbly muscled body whose every line showed it had known strenuous labor. Broad chest and lean hips and flat abdomen with ridges of hard muscle—hard, but so sensitive he shivered when she touched them with her fingertips. He tried to keep his arousal from her sight because of her inexperience, but she saw and was wise enough to know that it was a tribute she saw, and she smiled and thought him altogether handsome, and told him so.

  They made love with their eyes open, as if neither could get enough of the sight of the other in the shifting candlelight.

  It was wonderful to make love to someone so beloved, Jared thought with dazed gratitude.

  It was heaven; surely this was heaven; for this was Jared with her, Della thought over and over, really Jared.

  But she was unaccustomed to loving and had been brought up to be innocent. He was wracked with desire, but he paced himself to her needs, and somehow found the grace to consider her expectations. When he touched her intimately and in spite of herself she gasped and closed her legs hard against him, he waited. Then he tried again, and he won her that way, slowly and with such control it almost undid him. She accepted all he gave after that—until he rose up on his elbows and began to position himself over her. Then she frowned. Her hands fell away from his wide shoulders, and she lay still, looking up at him as though she were waking from some dream of pleasure.

  “Della, love, my Della,” he whispered, his pulse racing as he held himself back against natural desire so forcefully he was breathless. “Relax. This will make us one. It won’t hurt for long, and next time there’ll be only pleasu
re.”

  “It’s not that,” she said. “I’m not afraid. But—take off your shirt. I feel strange, all naked, with you dressed for dinner.”

  His arms trembled as he pulled away. He was half out of his mind with desire, and she spoke as though they were in a drawing room. He had no intention of taking off his shirt, and he was surprised she’d asked. He was so frustrated he didn’t see how she shivered when he moved away from her. “Della, my love, I can’t,” he said. “I…you don’t want to… My back—it’s ugly. Don’t let it ruin the moment. Come, let me show you love.”

  “You do show me love,” she said, her eyes brilliant with tears, “but not if you hide from me. Anyway, it’s not fair. Hand me my gown, if you please,” she said, sitting up, one hand covering breasts still damp from his kisses. He stared at her in disbelief. She blushed from her chest to her nose, but she held firm. “If you want to see my front, you have to show your back,” she said as she held out a hand for her gown. “If not, I guess we’ll do it this way. But as I understand, it’s much better without clothes.”

  “I am hideously scarred,” he said, his desire fading, his muscles tensed, and a hard knot in his throat. His stomach grew tight and he felt clammy with nausea. Was degradation a part of her pleasure? Was this really why the master’s daughter had lusted for the bond-boy? If it was true, it would kill him. His hands clenched and his heart grew cold.

  “I am your wife,” she said obstinately.

  He nodded slowly. He took her gown from the bed and flung it away with such force that her hand went to her mouth. Slowly, with set face and white lips, he dragged off his shirt and turned aside so she could see his back in the dancing candlelight. Let her have her money’s worth, he thought numbly, closing his eyes.