Harlequin Historical September 2014 - Bundle 2 of 2: Lord Havelock's ListSaved by the Viking WarriorThe Pirate Hunter

by Annie Burrows

  He came to stand very close behind her.

  ‘I shall be knocking on this door later on,’ he said, his breath rushing over the back of her neck and giving her goosebumps in the most remarkable places. ‘I hope very much you will let me in, but if you really don’t want me...bothering you in that way, tonight, then of course you only have to say so.’

  Well, that was very considerate of him. And perhaps she ought to feel reluctant to welcome him into that bed when she scarcely knew him. Except that the heat of his kisses would keep searing into her mind at the most unlikely moments, making her squirm and melt inside. And she wasn’t ever likely to get any less shy of him than she felt now. And they were married. Making a baby was one of the reasons he’d given for marrying her. And it was his right...

  ‘I won’t demand my husbandly rights, if that is what is making you blush,’ he murmured into her ear. ‘Not until you are ready. Though I do want you. Badly.’ He leaned down and brushed a tantalisingly barely there kiss on her neck, just below her ear. ‘And I really do think,’ he growled, ‘it would be better to jump this hurdle before too long.’

  Was she blushing? She pressed her hands to her cheeks, which did indeed feel as if they were on fire. Because she was ready right now. And rather ashamed that what he was taking for maidenly modesty was a complete inability to know what to do with her reaction to the nearness of his body. The seductive pull of his mouth on her skin...

  ‘Beg pardon,’ he said, stepping away just as she was on the point of turning and flinging her arms round his neck. ‘I’m being a bit too blunt for you. But, look, you may as well know that I’m not a man given to fancy speeches and wrapping things up in metaphors. I hope you will soon get used to me and learn not to take offence, because I won’t change.’

  There was a touch of belligerence to his voice that made her turn to look warily up into his face. Was he angry with her? He probably thought he had a right to be, having spent so much money, only to have her appear to...shy at the first fence.

  He was frowning, but before she could stammer out the confession that he’d got it all wrong, that not only did she agree that it was better to get on with the physical side of their marriage, but was actually rather looking forward to it, he’d turned away, and was striding across the room to a door on the other side of the fireplace.

  ‘This is my chamber,’ he said gruffly, ‘where all my things are stowed.’ He whirled round, his frown deepening.

  ‘Was that luggage I saw, next to your bed, all you have with you?’

  She nodded. ‘It’s all I have.’

  ‘All you have?’ The frown altered in tone. He came to her and took her hands. ‘We really ought to be spending a few days in town putting that right, but... Look, I’m sorry, I’ve already made arrangements to travel down to Mayfield and get the place ready for Julia to come. Still, there’s bound to be a dressmaker in Corleywood—that’s the nearest sizeable town—who can fit you out with some new gear.’

  ‘I don’t mind about clothes,’ she said. ‘I know it is more important to ensure Julia’s safety.’

  His handsome face broke into a grin. ‘I don’t know another woman who’d look at it like that.’ He lifted her hands to his mouth and kissed them. ‘But you must have some decent things to wear, before the local gentry all turn out to have a look at you. Once word gets out in the neighbourhood that I’ve married and brought my bride to Mayfield, they’ll all be coming to call. And you will want to be able to look ’em in the eye.’

  Meaning, she wasn’t able to now? In the outfit she’d been so proud of that very morning?

  ‘Well, that’s another thing to add to my list.’ He gave her a rueful smile. ‘Every time I think I’ve got everything organised, something else crops up that I’ve entirely overlooked.’

  ‘I’m quite capable of buying my own clothes,’ she began indignantly, only to founder on the rock of her completely penniless state.

  ‘You just get whatever you want and have the dressmakers send the bills to me,’ he said. ‘You’ll have an allowance, too. That’s one of the things... Damn!’ He let go of her hands and thrust his fingers through his hair. ‘I’ve an appointment with my lawyers in...’ he glanced at the clock on the mantelshelf ‘...about half an hour’s time. I’ve a deal of stuff to discuss with them, documents to sign and so forth, which couldn’t be done until I’d got the marriage lines. I know it’s not the thing to leave a bride alone, so soon after the ceremony, but...’

  ‘I understand.’ He’d married her for necessity, not inclination. And if she took offence every time he reminded her of that fact, she was going to end up being badly hurt a dozen times a day. ‘Go. Do what you have to do. I shall be quite content here, in this beautiful room.’

  In a way it would be good practice for her. She was going to have to get used to spending large amounts of time on her own while he went off doing whatever it was he spent his days doing.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, his look of relief being the only indication that, up till that point, he had been concerned about her reaction.

  ‘I will return as soon as possible, I promise you.’ With a heartbreakingly compelling smile, he leaned forward and gave her a peck on the cheek. Then he turned and left her, and she pressed one palm to her face as though to cling on to it, on to him, as long as she could.

  For a few moments after the door closed behind him, Mary just stood there, in the stately isolation of the sitting room, marooned on her desert island of Axminster.

  But there was no point in moping. Better to keep herself busy. She might as well use the spare time to unpack. Only...they would be setting off for his country estate the next morning, so it hardly seemed worthwhile. She’d only have to pack all over again.

  She wandered over to the window, from where she had a good view over Blackheath, if she’d wanted to look at it. She shook her head reproachfully over her spurt of pique. Lord Havelock had warned her that he didn’t want them to live in each other’s pockets and she’d agreed it sounded much better than having a jealous, vengeful sort of husband who’d be breathing down her neck the whole time. She was going to have to cultivate the habit of finding things to do, when she was on her own. And not dwell on what it had made her feel like when he had been breathing on her neck, brushing that kiss on it...

  She shook herself. What did married ladies do when their husbands were out on business, that was what she should be thinking about. Drank tea, probably. There. That was something she could do. She would definitely feel better for a cup.

  She rang for a servant, and before much longer she had not only tea, but also a selection of cakes and sandwiches brought up. As the waiter set them out on one of the many small tables scattered about the sitting room, she had to suppress a wild urge to giggle. It was like being a little girl, play-acting at being a princess, clapping her hands only to have invisible servants magic up food and drink out of thin air.

  She couldn’t look at him as he bowed himself out of the room, lest she really did burst out laughing. And so, when the door slammed, she was looking in exactly the right direction to see a sheet of paper, lodged under her husband’s bedroom door, flutter in the draught.

  Even from where she was sitting she could see it was some kind of list. And the moment she registered what it was, she recalled him saying how many things he had to remember, how he’d frowningly pulled not just one, but two lists out of his coat pocket the day he’d called to discuss arrangements.

  Oh, dear, she hoped this one wasn’t important. But if it was, perhaps she could summon up one of the hotel genies to whisk it to the meeting he was having. That would prove what a good and useful wife he’d married.

  She bent down and pulled it out from under the door, her eyes snagging on the first item.

  Compliant, it said, in an elegant copperplate script. And then next to it, in heavier, darker letters,
another hand had added, A Mouse.

  What kind of list was this?

  Needn’t have any dowry.

  Oh. Oh! She clapped one hand to her mouth as she read the next item: Won’t demand a society wedding.

  This wasn’t a list of things he needed to remember at all, but a list of what he was looking for in a wife.

  A Mouse, the heavier hand had scrawled next to the bit about the ceremony, and underlined it.

  Not of the upper ten thousand, her shocked eyes discovered next.

  Orphan.

  Her stomach roiled as she recalled the look on Lord Havelock’s face when she’d told him, that fateful night at the Crimmers’, that she’d just lost her mother. She’d thought he couldn’t possibly have looked pleased to hear she was all alone in the world, that surely she must have been mistaken.

  But she hadn’t been.

  She tottered back to the tea table and sank on to the chair the waiter had so helpfully drawn up to it. And carried on reading.

  Not completely hen-witted, the sloppier of the two writers had added. And she suddenly understood that cryptic comment he’d made about finding a wife with brains. Suggested by someone called...Ashe, that was it. How she could remember a name tossed out just the once, in such an offhand way, she could not think.

  Unless it was because she felt as though the beautiful little dainties set out on their fine china plates might as well have been so many piles of ash, for all the desire she had now to put one in her mouth.

  Good with children, Not selfish, the darker hand had scrawled. Then it was back to the neater hand again. It had written, Modest, Honest and Not looking for affection from matrimony. And then the untidier, what she’d come to think of as the more sarcastic, compiler of wifely qualities had written the word Mouse again, and this time underlined it twice.

  But what made a small whimper of distress finally escape her lips was the last item on the list.

  Need not be pretty.

  Need not be pretty. Well, that was her, all right! Plain, dowdy, mouse that she was. No wonder he’d looked at her as though—what was it Aunt Pargetter had said—as though his ship had come in?

  But which of the men who’d compiled that list had harped on about the need to find a mouse, that was the question that now burned in her brain like a fever. Had Havelock’s been the hand to scrawl that word, not once, but three times?

  Getting to her feet, she strode to his bedroom door and flung it open. Somehow she had to find a sample of his handwriting to see if he’d been the one to...to mock her this way, before he’d even met her. And then she would... She came to an abrupt halt by his desk, across the surface of which was scattered a veritable raft of papers. What would she do? She’d already married him.

  With shaking hands she began to sift through what looked like a heap of bills, some of them on the hotel’s headed notepaper. Until she came to what was unmistakably a letter. Dear Lady Peverell, it began. There was another underneath, in the same bold scrawl, which started, Dear Chepstow. She flipped to the bottom of the page. The one to Lady Peverell was signed Havelock. And she couldn’t help noticing, on her way to the end of the sheet, that he was informing her of his marriage. He hadn’t got very far with the other letter, so there was no signature, but it began in the same vein. Except...

  Oh! He’d informed his friend that She meets all the requirements we fixed on, bar one.

  The room seemed to swim as several facts all jostled rudely into her mind at once. This Chepstow person had taken part in compiling the wife list. Ashe was another. Were theirs the two sets of handwriting? And then there was Morgan. She’d wondered why Lord Havelock had come to such an unfashionable place as the Crimmers’, but now she understood perfectly. He had been looking for a wife who didn’t come from the upper ten thousand and Mr Morgan had made it possible to meet one, by taking him there.

  So, Mr Morgan, too, must know about the infamous list.

  And how many others?

  She had a sickening vision of half a dozen drunken bucks sitting round a table in some crowded tavern, suggesting what Lord Havelock should look for in a wife who would be so grateful to receive a proposal at all, that she’d never dare lift her voice in complaint about any treatment he might decide to mete out.

  With an expression of disgust, she dropped the list on to the rest of his papers and hurried from his room.

  Which didn’t look like a palace out of a fairy tale any longer, but a gilded cage.

  A cage she’d walked into with her eyes wide open.

  Or so she’d thought. But that was before she’d discovered he’d made out a list of what he wanted from a wife. Just as though he was going shopping for groceries!

  She stood quite still, eyes closed, head bowed against the tide of humiliation that washed over her.

  She was such a fool.

  He’d been honest with her from the start. He’d told her he was looking for a convenient wife. That he’d been in a hurry to get one, so that he could get on with the far more important business of rescuing Julia.

  At what point had she forgotten that? When had she started hoping there might be a glimmer of truth in what Aunt Pargetter said about him falling for her? Men didn’t need to even like a woman to want to get her naked and in a bed. She knew that. She’d been brought up in a coastal town swarming with lusty sailors, for heaven’s sake!

  She clasped her hands to her waist as her middle lurched almost painfully. How on earth could she possibly have thought that such a handsome, wealthy, titled man would suddenly become enamoured of a penniless, plain little...mouse of a creature like her? She’d mistaken his relief at finding a compliant, orphaned, modest woman to be his convenient wife so quickly for delight in her.

  She shook her head. It had been useless flinging the list back amongst his other papers. The words of it were scored into her brain as though carved with a knife.

  The sound of footsteps striding along the corridor had her opening her eyes and gazing in horror at the door. She couldn’t face him, in all his good humour, not now, not while she felt so...wounded!

  To her relief, the feet kept on walking. It must just have been another guest returning to his room, or one of the hotel staff bustling about their business.

  Still, it had been a warning. With fingers that shook, she poured some tea into her cup, selected a pastry at random and put it on to a plate. If he walked in now, he would simply see a woman taking tea. She would make her face show nothing of what she felt.

  And she would not weep.

  * * *

  When Lord Havelock eventually returned, she was still doggedly dry-eyed. Sitting stock-still at the table with her cup of tea, untouched, in front of her.

  ‘Sitting in the dark?’ He frowned at her as she started, then stared at him as though she wasn’t quite sure who he was.

  ‘You should have rung for candles.’ He strode across and tugged on the bell pull. ‘And the fire has almost gone out, too.’

  She turned, slowly, to look at it.

  ‘At least you’ve had something to eat...’ He frowned as he noted that nothing appeared to have been touched. Even her teacup was full.

  Though her eyes were empty.

  ‘I’ve been a perfect beast, haven’t I,’ he said, pulling up the other chair to the table and grasping her hands. ‘To leave you alone for such a long time.’ He raised each hand in turn, kissing it penitently.

  She looked at him in confusion. No wonder she’d started to think he was developing some real affection for her. But this was just...gallantry. If she’d had any experience of suitors, in the past, she would have known that this was how men behaved with women. That it meant nothing.

  He should have picked either Dotty or Lotty. Either of them would have coped with him far, far better than she was doing.

 
‘Well,’ he said, starting to chafe her hands between his own. ‘I’ve achieved everything I needed to get done today, so now I’m all yours.’ He gave an uneasy laugh. ‘Though from the look you’re giving me that information doesn’t exactly please you. Dash it, where’s that waiter? Your hands are like ice. Your feet, too, I dare say.’

  She thought she’d kept her face impassive, but something must have shown, for he shook his head and said ruefully, ‘Ah, Mary. You don’t have anything to worry about. On my word of honour, I’ll do better from now on. To start with, we’ll have a slap-up meal, and...and talk to each other. Yes? Not downstairs in one of the public rooms, but up here, since you are looking a little...’

  Plain? Mousy? Not smartly dressed enough to be able to look the well-heeled clientele in the eye?

  ‘Uncomfortable,’ he finished.

  ‘I...I don’t feel very hungry,’ she said. ‘Today has been...just a bit...rather...’

  ‘Hasn’t it, though? Not two weeks ago I thought I’d never get married. Now here I am in a hotel room with my bride, on my wedding night. Takes your breath away, don’t it?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Do you know what I think?’

  She shook her head. That was the trouble. She kept imagining he was thinking things he’d told her point-blank he wasn’t going to think.

  ‘I think by leaving you hanging all afternoon, you’ve ended up feeling like a game bird ready for plucking. And that I ought to set about making you feel like a bride, instead.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I think you know very well what I mean,’ he growled, pulling her to her feet.

  She uttered a squeak of surprise when he hefted her into his arms.

  A woman with more pride, she expected, would have put up some form of protest.

  Mary put her arms round his neck, buried her face in his shoulder and clung to his solid warmth as he strode with her over to his bedroom.