An Unsuitable Bride

by Jane Feather

  She was still some way from forgiveness, Alex reflected ruefully. She stood up in a shower of drops and wrapped herself in the towel hanging over the fire screen. “Did you say you had something for me to wear, Perry?”

  He pushed back on his heels and stood up again. “Yes.” He went to his portmanteau on the chest at the foot of the bed. “It was intended as a wedding present, but you had other plans.” He took out an exquisite garment of white lawn edged with the finest alençon point lace and tossed it lightly onto the bed.

  Alexandra picked it up and held it against the candlelight. The lawn was so fine it was almost transparent, and the lace was almost too delicate to imagine that it could have been spun by human hands. “Oh, Perry, ’tis exquisite.” She held it against her cheek, relishing its delicacy. Her eyes filled with tears. “Will you ever forgive me?”

  “Oh, yes,” he said, and now a tiny smile appeared at the corner of his mouth. “I appear to have done so already. But listen to me, and listen well, madam. We will be married as soon as we get back to London. You will become my wife, Mistress Sullivan, and Alexandra Hathaway will no longer exist. And . . .” He came over to her, taking her damp, bare shoulders in a firm clasp. “Understand this. If you ever fail to trust me again, I will lock you in an attic and feed you bread and water until your dying day. Is that understood?” He gave her a little shake.

  “Oh, yes,” Alexandra said. “Quite understood, but unnecessary, my love. I will never make that mistake again.”

  He looked into her eyes and then said softly, “See that you don’t.”

  He kissed her, a hard, affirming kiss. She leaned into him, losing herself for the moment in the familiar reassurance of his body, in the ineffable joy of his love. And much later, when supper was done and the fire banked for the night, she reached for him, pressing her body, clad in the thin nightgown, against his.

  She ran a hand over his back, caressing the muscular, taut backside through his tight-fitting knee breeches. “I love the feel of you,” she murmured, sliding her hand around to the bulge of his penis, which stirred into life at the merest brush of her fingers.

  With a swift movement, Peregrine lifted her bodily from the floor and took the two steps necessary to the bed, where he dropped her onto the coverlet. His eyes glowed with the pure light of lust, and something else, she thought . . . triumph. The triumph of a warrior, a victor of the field. And Alexandra found that she gloried in it. He bent over her, pushing the delicate nightgown up to her waist. He straightened and looked down at the long pale length of her bared legs, the dark curly nest at the apex of her thighs, the smooth white belly framed in the white lawn.

  Alexandra felt her nakedness as an exquisite vulnerability, even though a mere movement of her hand would cover her, shield her from the burning intensity of his hungry gaze. The essential core of her body was revealed for him, delineated in a way more pointed than complete nakedness. Her skin grew hot; her blood seemed to be racing through her veins. She wanted to cover herself, and yet she didn’t. She simply lay there, feeling absurdly like a virgin laid bare upon a sacrificial altar.

  Slowly, Peregrine unlaced his breeches, and his engorged penis sprang free. His eyes met hers as he swung himself over her, straddling her, the tip of his penis brushing her belly. “I want you now.” His voice sounded strange, almost harsh, pulsing with desire. He lifted her legs onto his shoulders, opening her wider for the first thrust of penetration. She heard herself give a little cry that could have been of surprise, and again she had the sensation of time running ahead of her while she desperately tried to catch up. But he was growing within her, filling her with his presence, possessing her with each hard thrust, his eyes never leaving hers as he asserted some primal need for ownership. She was his, she belonged to him, only to him, and he played on her body until she could no longer deny it herself. She was his, and with a cry of surrender, she let him take her with him in a free fall down below the dark waters of a need as ancient as man himself.

  He sprawled on the bed beside her, his breathing fast and uneven. He moved a hand to cup the damp mound of her sex, his fingers moving through the tight black curls. His free arm was flung above his head, and they lay with tangled limbs, unspeaking for a long while. Finally, Alexandra said, “What was that?”

  He turned his head to look at her, his hand still clasping her center. “I have no idea, sweetheart. But it was wonderful. I didn’t hurt you?”

  She shook her head with a weak laugh. “No, quite the opposite. But you did take me by surprise.”

  “And long may I continue to do so,” he responded, finally moving sufficiently to hitch himself onto one elbow to look at her. “You do look adorably wanton like that.”

  “I feel wanton . . . like a lady of the night behind one of the pillars in the Piazza,” she said.

  “What do you know of such things?” Perry demanded, only half in jest.

  She wriggled beneath the bedcovers, drawing the sheet up to her chin. “I read, my love. And I have always read anything that catches my attention. I know a lot more than you might imagine about the seamier sides of life. There are many ancient texts discoursing on the lives of courtesans, even common whores. Not much of a life they had, either,” she added with a grimace.

  “No, I don’t suppose they did,” he agreed drily, standing up and throwing off his clothes. “But you, my sweet, are intended for the utterly conventional life of Mistress Alexandra Sullivan. And you had best accept it with all good grace.” He climbed back into bed and rolled her into his embrace. “It is clear, is it not?”

  “Crystal,” she said, nestling into his shoulder. “I love you, Peregrine Sullivan.”

  “And I love you, Mistress Douglas.”

  Epilogue

  The door closed behind Viscount Bradley’s visitors, and he rested his head against the cushioned back of his deep armchair, adjusting the rug over his knees. Visitors tired him, and six at once was really overdoing it. A spurt of flame flared in the grate as a log crumbled beneath the fierce heat. He reached sideways to the small table beside his chair and took up his brandy goblet, inhaling the powerful aroma before drinking.

  So, they had done it. All three of his nephews had finagled their way into satisfying his condition for their inheritance. A thin smile played over his lips as he reflected on his just-departed visitors, his three nephews and their wives. Blackwater had found his wife, Clarissa, in Mother Griffith’s nunnery in Covent Garden. An unimpeachable address for a high-class whore. But whatever she’d been doing under that roof, the viscount was convinced that she had not been peddling her flesh. But he couldn’t prove it, and she had certainly entered Jasper’s protection straight from the nunnery, Nan Griffiths had sworn it. So, whatever his suspicions, Bradley had, in honor, no choice but to accept the situation as it was presented to him.

  The smile flickered again. In honor, indeed. Honor was not a quality he possessed in a great measure, but he was a gambler, and if he was outbid, then so be it. And when it came to being outbid . . . Sebastian’s bridal choice, the lovely Lady Serena, had definitely played on the outer fringes of respectable society. A gambler, one of faro’s daughters, the stepdaughter of an out-and-out rogue, who had not thought twice about selling her to the highest bidder. Sebastian had happened to have the correct coin.

  And then there was Peregrine. He had married a sharp-tongued actor with a predilection for deception. There was no knowing who this Alexandra truly was, but Bradley recognized a player when he met one, and the lady was most definitely a player of considerable talents.

  So, he supposed, he had achieved his wish. Three completely unrespectable, unsuitable brides foisted upon the hypocritical, prudish Blackwater clan. Oddly, the vengeance was not nearly as sweet as he had expected it to be. His nephews were all uxorious to the point of nausea, and their wives clearly adored them in turn. Clarissa was radiantly blooming with child, and Bradley rather thought the other two would not be long following suit. Not that he’d actually wished h
is nephews ill; if truth be told, they were the only human beings he could tolerate, but he had rather hoped to see his wretched family squirm. They had thrown into the street the woman he still loved even after all the years that had passed since the destruction of his youthful passion, and he had nursed his bitterness and the prospect of the perfect revenge as if it were his lifeblood.

  But now he didn’t seem to care one way or the other what they thought. His nephews certainly didn’t appear to give a damn about how their relatives viewed their marriages. The whole idea of his vengeance now seemed insipid, a waste of his time and energy.

  He heard a faint rustle behind him, and his eyes sharpened despite his bone-deep fatigue. There was one recipient of his malice whom he could still prick a little. “Cosgrove, you black crow. Where are you going? Come over here.”

  The black-robed priest had been trying to slide from the room while his employer seemed to be sleeping. Now he swallowed a sigh of dismay. The old man loved to torment him, dictating his filthy memoir one vile detail after the other, and the priest’s only recourse was to appear unaffected as he wrote to dictation. He came forward to the fire. “Yes, my lord?”

  Bradley looked up at him, the tall, curved black figure, and suddenly everything seemed pointless, a complete and utter waste of his time. There was no satisfaction in tormenting this man of God with the detailed confession of his sins, both real and imagined. He didn’t repent of them, and he certainly didn’t expect divine forgiveness for an ill-spent life. He’d enjoyed most of it hugely.

  “Bring me the manuscript,” he rasped.

  Father Cosgrove glided silently to the table in the window where he had spent so many wretched hours listening to the dripping poison from the old man’s diseased mind. He picked up the sheaf of papers covered in his own neat script and brought it to the viscount.

  “Burn it,” Bradley instructed curtly. “All of it.”

  Father Cosgrove looked at him in amazement. “Burn it, my lord?” So many hours of labor over the last two years.

  “Yes, every page. Get on with it. I want to see it done.”

  Slowly, the priest fed the pages one by one into the brightly burning fire. Flames flared as the paper caught, curled, and crumbled to gray ash against the logs. The viscount watched, his eyes on every page, and when it was done, he leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes with a little sigh. “Get out now.”

  Father Cosgrove slipped from the chamber. If his work as amanuensis was over, then maybe so, too, was his servitude in the house of the devil. Maybe he could return to the quiet of the Benedictine monastery and resume his life of prayer and meditation.

  Louis, the viscount’s valet and general factotum, appeared on the landing outside the antechamber to the viscount’s bedchamber as the priest emerged. “Is his lordship resting?”

  “I believe so,” the priest said. “He sent me away.”

  Louis nodded and entered the antechamber. He opened the door to the bedchamber and stepped soundlessly into the room. The viscount was immobile in his chair, eyes closed, his head resting against the cushioned back. Louis went to the bed to turn down the coverlet, prop up the pillows, preparatory to helping his lordship to bed. He set a candle on the bedside table and stepped over to the viscount’s chair.

  “My lord, will you go to bed now?” His voice was soft, and he laid a hand on Bradley’s shoulder. Instantly, he knew that his lordship was no longer in the room. The paper-thin, blue-veined eyelids did not flutter. The mouth was slightly open, and when Louis put his hand against it, there was no breath.

  Louis stood for a moment looking down at the dead man. Not many would mourn the old man’s passing, but Louis had been with him for close on forty years, and the two had shared a bond of a kind. Louis would miss him.

  He stepped quietly from the chamber, closing the door behind him. A message must be sent to Lord Blackwater on Upper Brook Street.

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