The Irish Bride

by Cynthia Bailey Pratt

  The curtains of his room stood open, allowing what little light there was outside to come in. “Nick?”

  His voice died to a mutter. He lay flat on his back, his arms spread wide. She saw that his chest was gleaming with sweat and that his breath came pantingly, as if he were running hard. His head tossed as his face twitched, lost in the reality inside his mind.

  “Come back,” he said, pleading throbbing in his voice.

  “Nick, wake up,” Rietta said, frightened. “Wake up.”

  She touched him on the shoulder, a gentle push intended to wake him. Too quick for her eye to follow, his arm came up and straightened.

  Rietta found herself sitting on the floor, one hip aching from the impact with the wood. “Well, really ...”

  She stood up, rubbing the injured part. Nick lay more quietly, on his side with his knees draw up. The sheets were twisted around him, exposing the mattress.

  Cautiously, Rietta sat down beside him. “Nick? Wake up. Please, Nick?”

  Without warning, he sat bolt upright, pushing her once again to the floor. “Cashman!” he shouted. “God ...”

  Rietta sighed and clambered to her feet. “If you’re going to beat me, kindly do it when you’re awake.”

  “Rietta?” He rubbed his face vigorously, but she noticed that his hands trembled. “I’m not brave enough to beat you.”

  “Not when you are awake, perhaps, but you have no difficulty tossing me about while you sleep. I tried to wake you just now and you hurled me to the floor.”

  “Did I? Sorry.” His chuckle sounded thin. “My batman used to prod me with a stick from a safe distance. I struck him a knockdown blow the first time he tried to shake me awake.”

  “I shall obtain a suitable walking stick first thing in the morning.”

  “A parasol, perhaps. Nothing with a spike on the end, if you’d be so kind. I want to wake up, and, in the wrong hands, a steel-tipped parasol could send me off to a permanent slumber.”

  She eyed him worriedly. Though he strove to keep his lone light, the bed shook to the rhythm of his hard breathing. He kept looking toward the windows, as if to reassure himself that the curtains were still flung wide.

  Without being asked, Rietta poured him a glass of brandy from a tantalus on the dressing table. The snifter lapped against his teeth as he tried to drink. Rietta steadied his hand and guided it. “Sorry to be so stupid,” he said.

  After a moment, he threw off the tangled bedclothes and stretched out his arms and legs to the accompaniment of an enormous yawn. “That’s better.”

  Naked, he strode to the dressing table to pour water from a plain porcelain ewer into a basin. He scooped up water and liberally anointed his head, rubbing it through his hair to cool his brain. Some beads of water trailed down his back into the deeps of his shadowed body. Rietta tried to school her eyes not to look at him, but she couldn’t help her curiosity- She’d touched his body but had never really taken the opportunity to see all of him. He was marvelous ... strong and lean.

  “I hate dreams,” he said, toweling his hair.

  “What do you dream?” Rietta only dared asked because he had his face buried in a towel. “They sound horrible from the outside; I can’t imagine what it might sound like on the inside.”

  “Worse.” His face emerged and he turned on her his most earnest expression. “It’s not worth troubling over, Rietta. The dreams don’t come often anymore.”

  “They used to?”

  “Every night without fail. Since I married you, I haven’t had any to speak of.”

  “What was that just now, then? It hardly sounded like a serenade far a young wife.”

  “I’ll try again later. All I need do is learn the violin and I’ll be ready. Give me three or four years, won’t you?”

  He went on jesting until Rietta gave up her attempts to worm the truth out of him. “I’ll go back to my own chamber now.”

  “Why must you? Stay with me.”

  “I have too much respect for my neck, husband.”

  “Did I say I was sorry? If I didn’t, I apologize again. I suppose I should have warned you that I am difficult to awaken.”

  “In some ways; not in others.”

  He laughed, though without his usual delight. “I’ve heard it doesn’t take long for a virgin bride to become a hussy for her husband.” He came to her side and tilted up her face. “Have you changed so much already?”

  “Once the innocence is gone, it cannot be revived,” she said with the lightest of intentions, but remembering the times when she’d been more than verbally shameless.

  His brows came together and he seemed to look past her, though he still cupped her chin. “Yes, that’s true. You can’t go back to the way you were, no matter how you try.”

  Rietta put both hands around his wrist. “Is that what you are trying to do?”

  “Once I was so free....”

  “And now I’m another burden to you. I’m sorry.”

  “You didn’t have a choice, Rietta. If you are another responsibility, it is one I’ve taken on gladly. You’ve brought me...”

  She held her breath.

  Then he smiled into her eyes. “I needed distraction. You’ve provided that and more. It wasn’t always what I believed I needed, especially these last weeks when I’ve suffered your displeasure, but I at least have relief from my troubles.”

  “The way a splinter takes one’s mind off a sore tooth.” She tossed her head free. “I will happily supply more splinters, Nick.”

  “Now, Rietta, I didn’t mean it that way.”

  “What, pray, do you mean? You have made love to me on more than one occasion as if I’m the only woman you’ve ever wanted, but you will not share what is troubling you.”

  “Most women would take the lovemaking and let the troubles go,” he said, turning to follow her.

  “I don’t believe that, and even if I did, what makes you so certain I’m like other women?”

  “I’ve never accused you of that. If you’re anything, Rietta, it’s different. That’s why I wanted you from the first. It’s why I want you now.” He stepped in front of her just as she reached the door. “Don’t leave.”

  Her pride bade her refuse him again, but her need demanded a different answer. Softly, she said, “I need to sleep and I couldn’t with you thrashing about like a wild beast with a sore paw.”

  “I’ll lie as still as a bird in its nest.” He smoothed her hair back from her face, his fingers tangling in the long strands. “I’ll stay strictly on my side of the bed; I won’t even touch your pillow.”

  Rietta looked at him with narrowed, distrustful eyes. “I don’t believe a word, not a word.”

  “I certainly won’t kiss you,” he said, bending down to nip lightly at her lips. “And as for touching you ... wouldn’t dream of it.”

  Rietta felt the by-now familiar quickening in her heart. She’d learned already how very difficult it was to say no when he touched her with those seemingly tireless hands. Even now, she couldn’t reconcile her idea of herself as a decent, respectable woman with the memory of the two of them on the dining salon table. It had to be a kind of magic spell that Nick could weave, making her not only amenable to his will, but a fully involved partner in his hot-blooded schemes.

  Nick drew her close with his hands on her hips; close enough to feel that he, at least, was suffering from no conflict between pride and desire. If it was hard to say no before, it was all but impossible when he kissed her.

  “Come to bed,” he said. “It’ll be a new experience. We’ve never made love like married people. Come to me.”

  The need in his voice was a faint echo of what he’d called out in his dreams. Rietta blinked and withdrew her lips when he bent his head again. “No,” she said. “No.”

  “You want to.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “Come on, then.”

  “No.

  “All right. No bed. We’ve done it on the floor before.”

 
; “No, not at all.” Stepping away from him almost hurt her. “I can’t do that again.”

  “Not the floor, then.” He glanced around the room. “I think the bureau will support our weight.”

  “It’s not that,” Rietta said, realizing her departed innocence had nonetheless left her able to blush. “I can’t make love to you again without knowing the truth. Nick, if you can’t trust me then it’s not making love at all, is it?”

  “Did you ever hear of Psyche and Cupid?” Nick asked, his voice rough.

  “All I know is you shot poor Cupid.” Rietta’s joke went unnoticed.

  “Cupid had one rule that his wife had to follow—that she should never try to see his face. Her curiosity drove her to break that rule and it meant misery and unhappiness for everyone. Don’t be Psyche, Rietta. Let well enough alone.”

  “But it isn’t well enough. Something’s tormenting you. What kind of wife would I be if I ignored that?”

  “The kind I want. Someone sweet, obedient—

  “And stupid?” Rietta supplied. “Well, you should have married someone else.”

  “Perhaps. But you’re what I have and there’s nothing that will change it now.”

  “All right, then. Keep your precious secrets and your precious nightmares. But don’t expect me to share your bed if you won’t share yourself.”

  “Rietta, wait.”

  She paused, one hand on the doorknob.

  “Rietta.” He sighed. “I lived.”

  “You lived?”

  “That’s right. That’s it in two words. I lived. I survived. I saw my dearest friends smashed into a heaving, bleeding mass that was so ...” He shook his head violently.

  “I can’t tell you. These aren’t things women need to know. It’s better for you to think of battle like the paintings that are done of it. Fat, woolly clouds of cannon smoke, patient men with clean bandages lying about in artistically contrived groups, clean-shaven generals with steady horses, and silence.”

  “I’ve seen paintings like that. They’re quite popular.”

  “Of course they are. A painting can’t stun and horrify you with noise so incredible you’d give your soul for a single second’s silence. But all you get is the roar of the cannon fire, the screams of the dying horses and men, and me, begging them not to be dead.”

  He walked to the window, naked and unashamed. “I can’t stand the dark anymore,” he said, apparently idly. “Comes of sleeping so long in a tent, I suppose. When I returned to Brussels, I had a room in an appartement, and slept with the curtains closed as one should. I couldn’t stand it. I’d wake up in the middle of the night and think...”

  Rietta came up behind him. Putting her arm around his waist, she leaned her head on his shoulder. “What would you think?”

  He started to speak, but choked. Something wet fell to her arm, but she didn’t know if it was water, sweat, or a tear.

  “I’d think ... I’d wake up and think I was dead. Buried with the others, as I should have been. I should have been.” He made an effort to shake her off, but Rietta clung.

  “You said some names.”

  “Did I”

  “Fox, Allenby ... something Spanish?”

  “Ribera.” She heard the ghost of a laugh in his chest. “He was Portuguese. Hated the Spaniards like fire but hated the French worse. He had a way with the ladies, second to none. Used to make poor old Cashman half crazy the way he could choose the most starched-up female in a party and have her mooning over him in no time. Ribera would wink with one lazy eye and tell him that one merely needed sympathy.”

  Something of a foreign accent crept into his voice and Rietta could almost hear the voice of the Portuguese officer.

  “Cashman was one of your friends?”

  “My best friend. We joined up at the same time. God, we were young. We both thought it would be a pity to miss the adventure.”

  “The adventure?” she prompted.

  “Yes, and it was, too. You wouldn’t think men could enjoy war but I think we all have a sneaking liking for it. Not the battle, perhaps, though I’ve known a few who did enjoy the whiff of powder. But the rest of it—the travel, the camaraderie, the pitting of your wits against the world. Why, even the conflicts with some of the others had an enjoyable side. There was one captain who seemed to enjoy flogging his troops a little too much. We settled him. We ...” He chuffed a sigh.

  “What did you do?”

  “No. Definitely not for your ears. It was all Allenby’s idea, of course. He was the smartest of us. Foxy was always neat as wax. Didn’t matter where we were or what was going forward; his batman would be ironing his ludship’s neckcloths, or brushing the mud from his boots. Tompkins was just the opposite, yet you rarely saw one of them without the other.”

  She encouraged him to talk about them. She could almost see them in her mind’s eye, young, playful, full of unspoken thoughts about duty and honor and the justice of the work they were doing that would have embarrassed them horribly if anyone guessed. He talked about his first time under fire, arriving in a coastal town to pick up supplies. He’d been cut by chips of rock when a bullet had just missed him.

  “When I felt the blood trickling down, I remember thinking how jealous the others would be that I’d been wounded. They were, too. When I was shot at Vitoria, Fox had just escaped with his life as well when he’d stumbled over a Frenchie hiding in a ditch. There’d been a little back and forth with the Frenchie scraping Foxy’s ribs with his bayonet. I remember him cursing because his coat wouldn’t fit properly over the bandages.”

  “He was a dandy?”

  “Don’t let him hear... that is, no. He aspired to be Corinthian. He would have been, too. Top o’ the Trees.”

  Rietta left Nick’s side to sit down on the tumbled bed. “What happened with Napoleon’s abdication?”

  “We sat down at a taverna somewhere in the Pyrenees and had a carouse that they’re probably still talking about. I hardly remember any of it myself—except for that girl with black eyes and large ...” He gestured roundly.

  “Quite a lot of this tale is not for my ears,” Rietta said, glad that he’d had an opportunity to enjoy life after the tribulation of the long war in the Peninsula. Then she thought, Good heavens, I’m not the slightest bit jealous of that girl he had. I must be more in love than even I knew.

  He laughed and joined her on the bed. “Almost none of it. After that, I came home for a time. So did Tompkins; his father was something in politics and wanted to show off his son. Then we rejoined the regiment in time to go to Holland. From there, we were sent to Belgium when word came that Napoleon had left Elba and was moving north.”

  “Then came Waterloo.” She wondered if it would ever be forgotten. She supposed it might be, one day, if there were more and bigger wars. No one had ever told her before that men could have a sneaking liking for war.

  “Then came it all—Charleroi, Quatre Bras, Chateau de Hougoumont. Amazing how much of what we were fighting over was some respectable farm the day before. By the time we were through, they were roofless shells with holes you could have driven cattle through.”

  “My father read us the reports when they were published in the newspaper. He even sent for a fortnight’s worth of the Times, an organ he ordinarily abominates.”

  “What did he think of it all?”

  “What everyone thinks. A glorious action that threw down the Monster once and for all.”

  “Yes, I suppose it had to be done. Napoleon never should have tried to defeat us. You know, the first time we beat him, he was offered all of France to the borders of 1802, and he wouldn’t accept the terms.”

  “He was a horrid man.”

  He laughed again. “To say the least.”

  “Don’t laugh.” She knocked her shoulder into him. “You can’t deny he was odious. What’s the use of being an emperor anyway?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve done with wanting to make more of my life than God intended. It would take a comm
and from Wellington himself to move me from Greenwood now. If you’re hoping to spend your seasons in London, you’ll go without me.”

  “I have no ambition myself, except one.” She didn’t speak of it, but ever since he’d told her she might be pregnant she had wanted his child. Even when she was furious with him, that yearning still grew in her. She should have refused him in the dining room, but a combination of desire, maternal hopes, and pity had created an inability to refuse him. Thinking of those impassioned moments, the hard and gleaming table under her, Nick above her, his eyes closed in surrender, she pressed her hand to her mouth to stifle a moan.

  Now wasn’t the lime to give in to her feelings again. Not when he’d finally begun to talk to her about the events of June 15, nearly a year and half ago.

  “What part of the battle were you in, Nick?”

  “I beg your pardon?” he spoke against the waves of her hair. He gathered the strands together. He dusted her neck with the thick end, as if he held a huge paintbrush and was painting her with light.

  “Stop it. That tickles.”

  “Does it? I shall have to remember that. You wriggle so delightfully.”

  “Nick...”

  “No more,” he said, smiling. “The sun will be rising soon and I’ve yet to accomplish the thing I promised.”

  “What thing?”

  “Making, love to you in my bed. Call me reactionary, but I want a pillow for your head, a blanket to cover you, and a mattress to protect your soft buttocks.” He grinned. “Don’t be so shocked. They are soft, aren’t they?”

  “I wouldn’t know.” She strove to be prim once more, but how could she when he’d seen her passionate impulses?

  “Then take my word for it. I’ve stroked more than a few and yours is the softest I’ve ever met with.”

  “Hmph. If you’ve had so much experience, you don’t need any more tests. I’ll go along to my room now, Sir Nicholas, if you don’t mind.”

  “I shan’t sleep a wink if you go. I’ve learned my lesson about that.’

  “I shan’t get any sleep if I stay. My lesson is just as new as yours, but mine runs deeper.”

  “How much deeper?” He slid his arm around her waist and began to explore the skin exposed by the open throat of her nightdress. He seemed to have developed a fascination with her shoulder, one she began to share as he trailed his fingertips over the soft skin. He smiled down at her as her head fell back onto his shoulder. She reached up, above and behind her head, determined not to let an opportunity to kiss him slip by.