Ryan's Bride

by James, Maggie

  “Tell me you want me, Angele.”

  “I…” She could not say it.

  “Beg me, damn it, or I’ll leave you this way, so help me.”

  He mounted her, spreading her legs wider and probed against her so she could feel his hardness, feel him pulsating against her, ready to enter.

  Her whispered plea was barely audible, but it was enough.

  “Please…take me…please…”

  And he did so, driving inside her. Deep. Hard. She wrapped her legs around him and dug her heels into his buttocks to spin him onward.

  She pushed against him, lifting from the bed, wanting all he had to give.

  He felt her shudders become tremors.

  Her nails dug into his back, but it was a delicious pain, and he welcomed it.

  She gasped and moaned and cried out, and he felt her explode into a million pieces around him as he drove himself home, deep…deep…deeper.

  They lay very still, and their flesh was wet and slick. He knew he was too heavy on her and, after kissing her one more time, raised himself and moved away.

  “Why did you do that?” she asked in a thin voice that rang with humiliation.

  “I meant for you to enjoy it, too, and the only way was to make you admit to yourself that you did.”

  “It…it wasn’t necessary.”

  “I think it was.”

  She was silent for a moment, and he could feel her eyes on him as he put his clothes back on. Then she said, “It isn’t necessary, you know.”

  He quirked a brow at her as he fastened his trousers. “What are you talking about?”

  “To…to make a baby, you don’t have to make me want you.”

  He burst into laughter, but seeing the hurt look on her face was instantly sorry he had. He quickly sat down on the bed beside her and tried to take her in his arms, but she shrank away from him. She had the sheet wrapped tightly around her again, but he wasn’t about to take it. “I’m sorry, Angele, but I don’t think you understand.”

  She shook her head that she didn’t.

  “We don’t do this just to make a baby.” He was trying to keep from laughing again. She was so incredibly naive that he knew losing her virginity couldn’t have been by anything other than force, and he’d like to strangle the bastard responsible. “We do it,” he went on to explain, “because we enjoy it. Not just me, but you, as well. I want you to. And I’ll teach you. Now, I know it’s new to you, and you’re shy about it, but you’re my wife and you’ll learn.”

  She seemed to relax a little, and he decided to give her time to think about it. He patted her cheek. “Get some sleep. I’ll be back in a little while. I only came to check on you because Annette Marceau told her husband about your coming back to the dining room to get a needle and thread. She said she thought you wanted it to sew up your gown, because it looked as though you had ripped it. When he told me, I wanted to find out how you did it. I was afraid you might have fallen somehow and hurt yourself.” He glanced about the cabin. “Where is the dress, anyway?”

  “Uh, it’s nothing. I’ve already mended it and put it away.”

  “Good. Then maybe you’ll catch on quickly when you start your sewing lessons tomorrow. Now go to sleep. I’ll try not to wake you when I come back. We’re about to dock in Cherbourg, and Corbett and I are going to stroll around a bit.”

  “What time is it?”

  He took out his pocket watch. “Almost midnight. Sweet dreams.”

  After he left, Angele sat up and hugged her knees against her chest.

  She was still shaken by what he had just done…how glorious he made her feel. Even more so than before. But what he’d said about doing it even when they weren’t trying to make a baby bothered her. It provoked fears she’d hoped never to have to face when she married. Miss Appleton had said some men were like that, though, and to pray she never got one for her husband. Then she recalled again how some of the girls laughed about it. So maybe it was Miss Appleton who was wrong. After all, she’d never been married, so how could she know?

  With a deep sigh, Angele lay back on the pillow, arms propped behind her head as she stared dreamily up at the ceiling. Maybe she didn’t know much about things like that, but whatever Ryan had done was wonderful, and though she dared not let him know it, she had enjoyed every minute. Just thinking about it made her feel a warm rush between her legs.

  She touched her nipples, still hard from his velvet tongue. She had liked that, too.

  Maybe it wasn’t wrong to enjoy it. Ryan certainly didn’t think so. And it was just between them. No one would ever know. As long as he was pleased, satisfied, nothing else mattered.

  She felt secure and comfortable for the first time in a long while.

  The evening had gone well.

  She had taken care of the mare’s wound and managed to get rid of the spoiled gown.

  Her secret was still safe.

  Snuggling down, she wickedly didn’t get up and put on her nightdress.

  Perhaps Ryan would be pleased to find her still naked when he returned.

  With a smile on her lips, she fell asleep.

  Ryan was worried about the mare and decided to check on her before meeting Corbett at the gangplank. When he got home, by damn, he was going to have Jasper teach him about such things. He might be the best in the valley at breaking a colt and training a horse, but he’d always left doctoring to Jasper. That had to change. It was all part of his new life, and it was called responsibility for everything at BelleRose. Before, he hadn’t really worried about anything except having fun. But now, with a wife, he was ready to settle down.

  He just felt good about everything all of a sudden. He had worried Angele couldn’t be trusted after Corbett told him what she had done in Paris. And making it worse was how she had so calmly lied when he confronted her. But now that he understood, he would not worry about her being deceitful.

  Like Simone.

  It still made him feel like a fool to remember the green-eyed beauty he had fancied himself in love with when he was several years from twenty. She was the daughter of old friends of his parents’ who had settled way south in Atlanta. She had come with her mother to spend the summer, and Ryan fell for her on sight.

  They made love in the gazebo, and her passion had rocked him to his very soul. She was not a virgin and didn’t apologize. She told him she loved him, too, and wanted to marry him, and that’s all that mattered to him.

  Till he caught her with somebody else.

  It had been by accident, but looking back, Ryan knew it was blessed fate that showed him what a treacherous little bitch she really was.

  He’d had to go with his father to Philadelphia on business. They were supposed to be gone two weeks but finished early. His father pretended to be annoyed over how Ryan was in such a hurry to get home but was secretly pleased. Nothing would have made him happier than for Ryan to marry Simone. She was French. Her family was close to theirs. It was the ideal match.

  They had arrived at BelleRose just after dark. Ryan had raced into the house to look for Simone, but she was nowhere to be found. Her mother said she had gone for a walk.

  Thinking she would be at the gazebo, missing him and dreaming about the wonderful times they’d shared there, he decided to sneak up and surprise her.

  But he had been the one surprised.

  They were hidden by the thick honeysuckle vines that almost covered the gazebo.

  He could hear the sounds of their frenzied lovemaking as he approached.

  At first, he couldn’t believe it. But then he heard her cry out the name of the man taking her to glory—Lehman Trotter, son of the man who owned a neighboring plantation. Lehman had a reputation as a womanizer, and Ryan had seen him flirting with Simone at a barbecue his father had hosted before they left for Philadelphia.

  His first instinct had been to tear through the vines and rip the lovers apart, beat Lehman senseless, and then shame Simone before both their families.

  But prid
e kept him from doing it. In the foolishness of his youth, he had bragged to everyone that he and Simone were going to be married, and he couldn’t bear the thought of being humiliated.

  He had gone back to the house and went to bed, heartsick. And the next morning when Simone danced into the breakfast room to shower his face with kisses and chide him for not waiting up for her to return from her walk the night before, he was glad they were alone.

  He had leaped from his chair to grab her wrists and squeeze so hard she cried that he was hurting her.

  “As you hurt me last night.” He had flung her away from him and told her he knew what she’d done with Lehman, and he wanted nothing more to do with her.

  That very day, Simone pretended homesickness, and she and her mother left for Atlanta. He never heard from her again.

  As for Lehman, Ryan reasoned that he must have known he and Simone were found out, because ever since that fateful summer, he had carefully kept his distance from BelleRose.

  So Ryan was glad he had married a woman he felt he could trust, even if she didn’t want to talk about her life before they’d met. It was the future that was important, which seemed to be looking brighter all the time.

  He was also optimistic that sooner or later she would not be afraid to show she wanted him. He longed for that day, because then he’d have what he’d always hoped for in a wife. He wouldn’t need a mistress like so many other men. He’d find complete and total satisfaction in his own bed.

  The stall area was dark, but a softly burning lantern hung outside the door. Ryan used it to light his way to the small room where the boy who tended the horses slept.

  He was just about to knock on the door when it opened and the boy rushed out. When he saw Ryan, he paled and staggered back a few steps.

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you. I know it’s late, but I’m worried about the mare, and you said you’d ask around and see if any of the crew knew how to make a poultice that might help. I was wondering if you did.”

  As he was talking, Ryan noted that the boy looked scared, and he was stammering. “Uh…no. I…I mean yes. Someone did do something to her that might be helping. But…” he tried to edge by, heading for the ladder the crew used to get to the loading area, “I haven’t had time to see. We’re in port now, and they just signaled for all hands to help load cargo.”

  Ryan was sure the call to report to work had nothing to do with how the boy was acting. “I think you’d better come along with me to see about her.”

  “But I can’t, sir. I’ll be in terrible trouble if I don’t get topside right away. And I promise, as soon as we’re done, I’ll go have a look at your horse.”

  He ducked around Ryan before he could stop him and scrambled up the ladder and disappeared above.

  Mumbling an oath, Ryan went back to the stalls. If anybody had put a poultice on the mare, he needed to make sure it looked like they knew what they were doing. The boy’s behavior bothered him, and if anything had been done to make her leg worse than it was, there’d be hell to pay.

  He stepped up on the lower rung of the stall and held the lantern high so he could see. Sure enough, there was a bandage around the mare’s foreleg.

  He noticed a strange odor. Was it vinegar? Mammy Lou, the old Negro who’d been the cook at BelleRose since before he was born, made the sour liquid from apples and used it to spice up collards and turnip greens. She had also used it on him the few times he recalled being stung by bees. But why was he smelling it now in a horse stall?

  Being very careful with the lantern, he entered the stall. The odor was stronger. The mare seemed calm, not fidgety with pain as the last time he’d seen her.

  Kneeling, he touched the bandage.

  It was wet.

  He put his fingers under his nose and sniffed.

  It was vinegar, all right.

  Then he noticed something else and held the lantern as close as he dared. He didn’t want to scare the mare or she’d start prancing around, which could prove dangerous in such a small place and with him holding a burning light.

  “Well, I will be damned,” he whispered as he saw the bandage was peach colored and made of silk with a bit of lace at the edge. It was the same material as the gown Angele had worn earlier, had torn, and which she claimed to have mended.

  He left and climbed up the ladder and found the boy working with the other deckhands.

  Seeing Ryan, the boy backed away again, his face turning much paler than before.

  Ryan motioned to him. “Come with me. We need to talk, and I think you know why.”

  One of the men, a big, brawny sort with the look of one in authority, called, “Is something wrong, sir?”

  “I just need to talk to this boy for a minute.”

  The man frowned. “Go with him, Gerard. And you’d better not be in trouble over not tending those horses like you’re supposed to. I’ll have you thrown overboard, you little slacker.”

  Doggedly, Gerard followed Ryan. When they reached the mare’s stall, Ryan pointed at the bandage. “I want to know who’s responsible for that.”

  “One of the hands. I’m not sure of his name.”

  Ryan clamped a hand on his shoulder, because he had started to fidget and he was afraid he’d run away again. “I think you do know. Tell me his name so I can find him. I want to know about the vinegar.”

  “Uh…” He was floundering again. “He said it was a bee sting. He got the stinger out and then put the vinegar on it to draw the poison. And see?” he added brightly. “The mare’s a lot better, isn’t she? So now I have to get back.”

  “It wasn’t a man who did it, Gerard. It was a woman. And that bandage was made from the gown she was wearing. Now don’t lie to me.”

  The boy swallowed hard, looking everywhere but at Ryan. “I…I think it might’ve been. Yes, sir. But I wasn’t supposed to tell. I was supposed to change it, but I fell asleep, and then I heard the signal to get up top.”

  Ryan chewed on his lip thoughtfully. Angele had diagnosed the problem and dealt with it. She obviously knew how to treat horses, but what puzzled him was why she wanted to keep it a secret. What was she hiding? But, more than that, she had lied. And he didn’t like that. Not one bit.

  “You won’t say anything, will you, sir?” The boy was squirming again and looked as though he wanted to cry. “I could get in real bad trouble. And if they find out while we’re in port, they’ll put me off here. I didn’t mean no harm, and I swear to you I tried to stop her, but she wouldn’t listen.”

  “It appears my wife is a very headstrong young lady,” Ryan remarked, more to himself than the boy.

  “But she certainly has a way with horses. The mare didn’t give her a bit of trouble…just stood still as could be, like she understood she was trying to help her. And see? She puts weight on that leg now. She’s definitely a lot better.”

  Ryan’s hand dropped from his shoulder. It was true. The mare was on the mend. Jasper couldn’t have done better himself. “We won’t say anything about this to anyone, agreed? I don’t want it known that my wife was down here.”

  Gerard nodded furiously. “Oh, no, sir. You don’t have to worry. I won’t tell a soul, and I appreciate your keeping me out of trouble.”

  “It wasn’t your fault. Just be sure you change the bandage as soon as you can.”

  Ryan didn’t want anyone to wonder about silk and lace being used on his horse.

  Corbett would be waiting, but Ryan didn’t want to postpone confrontation with Angele. He was furious and wanted to know how much of anything she had told him was true.

  And, as much as he hated to admit it, it appeared he had stupidly done the one thing he had promised himself he would never do again—get involved with another deceitful woman.

  Only this time it was worse.

  He was married to her.

  He slowed.

  Maybe it would be best, after all, to just go ahead and meet Corbett and go ashore. It would give him time to calm down, because a
lready gratitude was beginning to overshadow his anger. Maybe she was keeping something from him, although so far, he could find no fault with her intentions.

  Besides, blowing up and ranting and raving wouldn’t help the situation. She was probably already asleep, anyway. It could wait till morning.

  He went on up to the main deck. Corbett spotted him and came running, waving his arms and calling, “Wait, Ryan! Stay there. I have to tell you something. Don’t come out here.”

  Puzzled, Ryan looked past him to where a crowd was gathered at the railing. They were staring down and pointing, babbling excitedly.

  “What’s going on?” He started toward them.

  “There’s been an accident. Don’t go over there.”

  “Why not? I want to see.” He tried to sidestep around Corbett but he quickly moved to block him. Ryan scowled, annoyed. “What is wrong with you?”

  Corbett put his hands on Ryan’s shoulders.

  He was having a very hard time not dancing a jig across the deck.

  In fact, he had to speak through clenched teeth to keep from grinning from ear to ear.

  “It’s Angele.” He made his voice quiver. “She’s fallen overboard, Ryan. I’m afraid she’s dead.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Ryan’s legs felt as though they were made of wood as he walked toward the railing.

  Imperiously, Corbett shouted, “Get out of the way! Let him through. That’s his wife down there.”

  A chorus of gasps erupted as people leaped back to watch Ryan in sympathy. They were also curious as to how he would react to seeing his wife floating facedown in the water.

  Ryan froze, thinking it couldn’t be happening. He had left her only a little while ago. It had to be a mistake.

  Corbett touched his arm. “Come on. Let’s go back inside. You don’t need to see her like that.”

  Ryan’s chest was heaving. “How come they haven’t pulled her out? How come they’re leaving her down there for everybody to stare at?”

  “They just found her a few minutes before you came out on deck. One of the hands saw her when he was on the pier, tying up the ship. He started yelling, and everybody waiting to go ashore went running over there. Me, included. Nobody knew who she was, but then I saw the dress she was wearing.”