Scandalous Brides

by Annette Blair

  With a grin of triumph, heart singing, head tucked beneath his chin, top to tail against various and sundry parts of his firm torso, Alexandra reveled in her unforgettable rogue’s possessive embrace.

  Tears filled her eyes for all her years of missing him and for having him back, beyond all imagining. And when she calmed and emotion turned to joy, Alex realized a little something about seduction. It must have to do with figuring out what those various and interesting parts were for and why one of them seemed actually to be pulsing.

  Hawk woke to the light of bright morning, shocked and erect, and clutching a handful of titillating breast. Alexandra’s knee was positioned against his naked and vulnerable groin, her hand riding dangerously low inside his dressing gown.

  More than anything, he wanted to explore the possibilities, but he had not the right, if he planned to let her go, which he must. Besides, since his bride was unused to having a man in her bed—please, God—he was afraid that if he took to exploring, he might surprise her into moving her knee a little too hard and a bit too fast, which could injure him the worse.

  While he pondered his precarious situation, Hawk noticed, between the hanks of hair in her face, that Alex was watching him. “Do not move your knee,” he said, softly, so as not to startle her. But she must have realized just where it rested, because she jumped and did exactly what he tried to avoid.

  “Oomph. Ouch! Alex, be careful.”

  Like a spring-wound toy, she shot up and knelt over him. “Bryce, I am sorry.” She tugged on the bedcovers to pull them down. “Did I hurt your leg? Let me see.”

  Hawk fought for his modesty, and won, barely. “My leg is fine.”

  “Are you certain? Because if it is festering, and I bumped it…”

  “It is not festering, but fully healed and pain-free at the moment.”

  Alex released her breath and lay back down beside him. “Thank God.”

  Hawk shuddered at the throbbing soreness in his nether regions. “They should have put you in the bible—pestilence, flood, famine, and Alexandra Huntington.”

  With a proud, man-slaying smile, his bride turned to face him across the pillow. “Make that, pestilence, flood, famine, and Alexandra Wakefield, thank you very much.”

  “Sorry, I forgot.”

  “You forgot?” Again, she shot up… and shoved him from the bed.

  Caught off guard, Hawk grasped the blankets and landed with a curse.

  Alex rose and stepped right over him. “I am determined to cure you of that.”

  “Of what?” he snapped, closing his dressing gown beneath the blankets, and trying not to stare at her in that appallingly diaphanous night rail.

  “Of forgetting that I am your wife.”

  “Oh.” Giving up the fight, Hawk pillowed his head in his hands and crossed his ankles, while his unrepentant bride fluffed her hair into a billowy curtain of cinnamon silk and stretched like a svelte and contented feline.

  Like a practiced coquette, mischief in her glance, she watched him as she untied her bodice ribbons, not entirely unaware that the light of morning, behind her, turned her gown to air, and revealed every scintillating freckle on her lush and feminine form.

  Hawk became aroused just watching, another very good sign, indeed.

  He used to worry that the London doctor he visited when he returned to England was offering hope where only despair existed, but the medical man had been right after all. Time and rest did help. Last night had been his best night’s sleep in ages, entangled with Alex, as it were, and this morning, he felt new again. Not that he should be making a practice of such entanglements in the future, but the novelty of his sexual awakening was worth the risk.

  Alex arched a wry brow. “With no more than the hint of a smile lighting your eyes, you still remind me of the proverbial cat that ate the cream,” she said. “But you should be hanging your head in shame for forgetting that I am your wife and a woman grown.”

  Hawk quirked a brow. “You may safely assume that your womanhood has been made abundantly clear to me at this juncture.”

  She tried to kick off his covers, but Hawk caught her foot and stroked her shapely ankle, until she closed her eyes and sighed.

  When he made to slide his hand higher, she squeaked in surprise and Hawk let her go, knowing it was best, but before he realized what she was about, she succeeded in uncovering him.

  Her turn to quirk a brow as she regarded the evidence of his manhood, as stark as her womanhood, though better covered. “Care to explain that?” she asked, with feminine satisfaction, of the arousal raising his dressing gown. “It used to happen to Judson all the time. Oh, but… where did it go?”

  Shot with possessive fury, Hawk sat up. “You distracted me with your nonsensical chatter about your beef-witted suitor. I would have expected him to teach you what you wanted to know; though I am pleased I overestimated him.” His harsh tone surprised even Hawk, but before he could apologize, he saw that Alex’s eyes were no longer bright with mischief, but glistening with tears.

  Even as she stepped away, Hawk wanted to call his words back. “Devil take it!” Hurting her had not been his intention. “Alex, I did not mean—”

  A stifled sob escaped her as she ran.

  “Wait, come back.” Hawk could not stand quick enough to stop her, before her dressing room door shut with finality.

  Alex paced, attempting, at the same time, to catch her breath. What had just happened? What did Hawksworth mean, touching her ankle, her leg, in the way she would allow only a husband, only him to do, then insinuating that she might have permitted Chesterfield such liberties before their marriage.

  She leaned against the door separating them and closed her eyes, tears slipping beneath her lashes, despite her attempt to stem the flow, despite her fury at herself for allowing them.

  Her breasts ached and that place between her legs pulsed. There, she wanted Hawksworth, with a need, nay a desperation, the likes of which she had not experienced with Chesterfield, or anyone.

  Had Bryce continued touching her, she suspected what might have happened had been the something wonderful Chesterfield enigmatically promised, but she sensed only Bryce could deliver.

  After what he had just implied, however, how could she get close enough again to find out?

  Alex turned and touched her brow to the door. “Why did you say such a horrid thing,” she asked, smacking her palm against the shuddering portal as if it were her stubborn husband’s chest. “Why?”

  “Because I am a weak, jealous bastard,” Hawk said as faintly as her words had come to him. He closed his eyes, regret lancing him for causing her pain once more.

  Why had he said it? Hawk wondered. Anger? Jealousy? Because he could not make love to her. Because if he consummated their marriage, he would bind her to him, without hope for her future, damn it to bloody hell.

  She also deserved better than his abuse, which he had not intended.

  He should grant her an immediate annulment and leave Huntington Lodge without looking back. He was too jaded for such an innocent. And still, he wanted to go to her, now, this minute, apologize until she granted him forgiveness, except that he must stand before he could take a step to do anything more.

  Bracing himself against the agony of rising, Hawk realized that he deserved all the wretchedness God saw fit to give him, so he closed his eyes and pulled himself upright, be damned to the pain.

  After anguish, at length, passed, he released his breath and opened his eyes… only to find Alexandra on the opposite side of the bed, horror etching her features and paling her skin to flour paste. “Lexy, forgive me. I can be a blackguard, sometimes.”

  “You said you were free of pain, but in pushing you down, I hurt you by making you rise again.”

  “Not as badly as I hurt you.”

  “You move always with some difficulty; I noticed that. But rising from so far must be—”

  “Getting easier by the day. Alex, listen. About my unforgivable insinuation—”r />
  “I am sorry I pushed you. I meant only to be playful.” Alex lowered herself to sit on the bed, keeping her back to him.

  “I wish I could say the same.” Hawk came around to sit beside her. He tried to take her hand, though it turned out that he ended up fighting her for it and lost. “Damn it, will you not hear me out?”

  She looked him full in the face. “Not now. Please, I do not wish to speak of it, right now.”

  “So be it, then. But later, you will hear what I have to say, if I have to tie you to the bed.”

  With the image his promise engendered, life shot through Hawk once more, and he cursed his fickle body as he rose.

  “Breakfast in half an hour, your grace,” Myerson called from the dressing room.

  “Just a minute, man.” Hawk handed Alex a more modest dressing gown, and once she donned it, he called his valet into the room. “Since I no longer have bachelor quarters, or even a separate bedchamber, I will not require your services as valet for the nonce, but I do believe if it is agreeable to you that her grace has tasks you might perform about the house.” He looked to Alex for confirmation.

  She had composed herself admirably. “Thank you, Hawksworth. Yes, Myerson, we very much need your services, if you do not mind. Meet me in the kitchen in an hour and I will go over your new duties. Until then, and if you have already broken your fast, you may see if Mrs. Parker can use your help.”

  “Very good, your grace.”

  After Myerson left, Alexandra went wordlessly into her dressing room, shutting the door.

  Hawk dressed and made his way downstairs. Alex needed time to compose herself, and he required even more time to dislodge his very big foot from his very big mouth.

  As he entered the breakfast room, conversation came to an abrupt, uncomfortable halt.

  Hawk took the empty chair beside his uncle. “Good morning.” He nodded and took to buttering a piece of toast, aware he was cross as a bear. “Do not stop talking on my account,” he said, assuming that they must have been discussing his disfigurement, or his overlong absence, or any number of subjects for which he was heartily embarrassed.

  “Come now,” he said. “We are family. I am certain you must have questions that have gone unanswered for far too long. Would you not rather ask than conjecture?”

  To Claudia’s exclamation and Hildegarde’s gasp, a hedgehog ran from beneath the table. Then Beatrix crawled out from beneath and popped up between them. “I have a question, Uncle Bryce.”

  “Excuse me,” he interrupted, “but did I just see a hedgehog cross the room?”

  “That’s Nanny.” Beatrix, the unrepentant eavesdropper, came around to climb on his lap. “Do not worry, she will be back.”

  “Nanny?” Hawk asked.

  Giff chuckled. “Bea wanted to give her hedgehog a name with hog in it, but all she could think of was Hogmanay, except that Bea calls it Hogmananny, so that’s what she named her hedgehog.”

  “Nanny, for short,” Hawk said. “Good name, Bumble Bea. I approve. Have you shown Nanny to your cousins?”

  Bea shook her head. “Aunt Bree says Damon and Rafe have a cat and a dog both, so they will not care for her.”

  “Ah, but I think they will. Hedgehogs are such unique pets, after all.”

  “Really?” Beatrix beamed, picked up the toast Hawk had just buttered, and took a bite. “When can we move back to the London house, so I can show them?”

  Hawk accepted a replacement for his toast from Hildegarde. “Thank you, Aunt,” he said, taking a bite to stake his claim. “Why do we not wait, Bumble Bea, until Alexandra joins us before I tell you how things stand with my title and estate.”

  “You mean you have not even told her yet?” the wide-eyed child asked. “Take care or you will make her cry again.”

  “Make her… cry? What are you talking about?” Could Bea have heard them earlier?

  The child of seven-going-on-forty gave a long-suffering sigh. “Before you died—or we thought you did—you wrote to Aunt Sabrina, Damon, and Rafferty’s Mama, remember? They were staying with us then?”

  Why did everyone suppose that he had forgotten the members of his family while he was away? “I remember.”

  “You did not write a letter to Alex when you were dying, or even think of her at the last, and that made her cry.”

  “Devil take it.” Hawk rose, taking Beatrix with him, and in silence he deposited her in his chair and exited the breakfast room.

  Halfway across the hall, he saw Alex coming down the stairs and waited for her at the bottom. “Alexandra, we need to talk.”

  TEN

  ‘NO, BRYCESON, I told you, I am not ready to talk.”

  “This is not about what happened earlier,” Hawk said. “This is something I insist we settle, something I can at least explain.” He took his stubborn wife’s arm and urged her into the library.

  “What is it? What is wrong?”

  Hawk possessed himself of her hand. Surprisingly callused, it was small and pale, as opposed to her spirit, which shone bright and strong. “I am concerned by something Beatrix said.”

  “If you let everything Bea says bother you, you will be disquieted for the rest of your days.”

  “You cried when I wrote to Sabrina, before I supposedly died, because I did not write to you? Is that true?”

  Alexandra turned to gaze out the window, except that she did not see the rolling lawn gone to seed, or the home wood overtaken by bracken, but her own life, as she had viewed it the day that letter came, stretching barren and pointless before her, without Bryceson in it.

  “I was emotional, devastated, because I thought I—I thought you had died.” She shivered.

  Hawk placed his cane on a nearby chair and slipped his hands down her arms to chafe and warm them. “You should have worn a shawl,” he said. “This place is as drafty as a dovecote.”

  Alex closed her eyes, immersing herself in his nearness, and in his touch.

  “I wrote to you first,” he said, from close behind, absently stroking her arms. “Or I began to, but I… I feared that I would expire at any moment, and I knew that Sabrina’s very life depended upon the arrangements I had made for her. So I put your letter aside, unfinished, to write hers, before it was too late.”

  Hawk gazed into the past, at that smoke-hazed, bloody day, the pain and the horror of the Waterloo battlefield, of dead friends and dying comrades. Of lying atop the heap. He saw the blood in his eyes, tasted it in his mouth, and smelled it clogging his nostrils.

  He remembered well the stench of death, especially his own.

  In many ways, he had died that day, or a part of him had, anyway… until he beheld Alex from the back of that church, and had begun to come back to life, whether he wanted to or not, minute by minute, piece by lost and broken piece.

  “Because I was incapable of writing myself,” he said, “an old woman at the Waterloo Inn wrote my final words for me. When I finished dictating Sabrina’s letter, I had no strength left, nor did I wish to share with a stranger what I could not seem to find the correct words to express to you. The last I remember, I was being excruciatingly loaded onto a dray for a trip to the country. Your letter was never finished, Alex, and I regret that more than I can say.”

  “Where is it?” she asked, not turning from the window, almost as if she did not believe him.

  “I never saw it again,” he admitted. “I lay delirious for weeks, in and out of my mind, despondent for months. Once I returned to London, I looked for your letter among the few meager belongings left to me, but it had disappeared.”

  “I am sorry,” she said. “I would have liked to receive it, even half written. I wish someone had sent it. I would have been comforted to know that you thought of me at all, especially after the way we parted.” Her sorrow broke in a sob for their dreadful parting, for his unfinished letter, and for his hurtful words of that morning.

  Hawk put his arms around her from behind, placing a hand flat against her abdomen, feeling a need
to mark her intimately as his, and pulled her close.

  Her head rested against his coat-front, his cheek against her hair. He must give her this much, at least, he thought. She deserved some truth. “If not for thinking of you, Lexy, I do not believe I would have survived.”

  She turned in his arms then, her wide eyes bright. “That is perhaps the nicest thing you have ever said to me.”

  “In that case, I should be horsewhipped.” The temptation to kiss her was strong, stronger than Hawk could resist.

  “Your grace.”

  They pulled apart.

  “Your pardon,” Myerson said, red-faced, when he saw what he had interrupted. He held forth a silver salver with a visitor’s card upon it.

  “Thank you.” Hawk took the card, read it, cursed inwardly, firmed his lips, and handed it to his wife. “Myerson, is the, ah, gentleman in question still waiting?”

  “Viscount Chesterfield is in the drawing room, your grace, but he is not asking to see you. He wishes to see her grace. He was very specific about that.”

  “I am certain he was. Thank you. You may go. Alexandra,” Hawk said, after the retainer had shut the door. “I shall leave you to greet your lover in private.”

  “No,” Alex said.

  Hawk stopped and turned, releasing his breath, clutching at hope. “Am I to understand that you do not wish to see Chesterfield?”

  “No. Yes. I wish—I must speak with him.” She bit her lip.

  Hawk shuttered his eyes and closed his expression; he knew he was doing it, but he could not seem to stop.

  “I owe Judson a great deal,” Alex said, her explanation more accurate than she would wish.

  “Then see him, you shall.” Hawk bowed. “Good morning to you, Madam.”

  Chesterfield appeared astonished when Alex entered the drawing room, though he did not take a step toward her, for which she was grateful. “I did not think he would let you see me,” he said.

  Alex remained by the door. “I am so very sorry about our wedding.”

  Judson firmed his lips, much as Bryce had just done. “What happened was not your fault.”