by Amanda Scott
Olivia had already broken the red wax seal on the message, and a hush fell again as she unfolded it and began to read.
“Merciful heaven,” she exclaimed, “she has run away with the jester! She writes that they have declared themselves married and that the jester says such a marriage is legal. He has duped her!” Turning angrily to Anne, she said, “Did you know about this? Because, by heaven, if you did—”
“I did not,” Anne said, dismayed anew by Fiona’s apparent, newfound powers of deception. “As I told you, she said she would rather enter a nunnery than marry Sir Christopher, but I was certain the nuns would not take her without your permission, madam, and so I told her. She said nothing to me about the jester.”
“But how came you to agree to this ridiculous charade?” Olivia asked.
“I suppose I felt sorry for her and believed she had no other way to make you see that she felt like an object to be given away—to be toyed with or destroyed, she said. If she has truly eloped with the jester, she fooled me completely. I would have wagered anything you like that she would never dare do such a thing.”
As she said that, however, she remembered that her cousin had expressed a fondness for the jester almost from the moment of his arrival. She remembered, too, that the jester had said he was going to seek help for Kit from friends at Dunsithe Castle. If Fiona had lied, then certainly Mad Jake, or Willie, had lied as well, but perhaps that would not matter now that Fiona and Kit clearly would not marry.
Olivia was silent, and in that silence, Anne felt overwhelmed by Kit’s looming presence beside her. He had not said another word, but she sensed his anger and did not look forward to the moment when he would break his silence.
“How do we unravel this coil?” Olivia asked at last, looking at the cardinal.
“Both marriages are legal, madam,” he said grimly. “Your daughter’s declaration, if supported by her jester, is as legal as he said it was, and although this young woman deserves to be flayed, the ceremony I performed is certainly legal. Except for one detail,” he added thoughtfully. “The name was wrong, was it not?”
Olivia shot Anne a dagger look.
“I’m afraid not,” Anne said quietly. “Fiona and I were both named Fiona Anne after our grandmother. I am called Anne only because my father preferred it.”
“But surely you can annul this marriage and my daughter’s as well,” Olivia said to Beaton. “After all, the ceremony includes the words ‘if Holy Kirk it does ordain,’ and Anne is also underage.”
“If your daughter and her jester have declared their marriage, I would be loath to interfere, particularly if she has run off with him. You may, of course, hail him before a magistrate if you do not mind the resulting scandal. As to this marriage, if Sir Christopher demands it, I suppose I shall have to annul it. If he does not, I cannot… unless…” He frowned thoughtfully, then added, “The lass’s legal guardian can demand an annulment, if she has one.”
“She does,” Olivia said. “He is Thomas Ellyson, the new Earl of Armadale, and what is more, he strictly forbade her to marry without his permission.”
Beaton looked around. “Where is he?”
“Alas, sir, he is not here, but I am certain he will demand an annulment.”
“Well, he cannot demand it if he is not here, and if he does not do so before the marriage is consummated, I shall be most reluctant to grant one.”
“Then Sir Christopher must demand it,” Olivia said, turning to him.
Throat-aching tension filled Anne as she waited for Kit to say the words. Without heeding what she was doing, she touched her ring again, rubbing it gently between her thumb and forefinger. The moments before he spoke seemed endless.
“I don’t want an annulment,” he said at last. “At least, not immediately. First, I have a few things to say to my wife whilst she is still my wife, and I won’t be deprived of the opportunity to say them to her privately. I think, however, that we will dispense with the nuptial mass if that is acceptable to you, your eminence.”
“It is,” Beaton said with a stern look at Anne.
Toby, who had remained silent throughout these exchanges, said mildly now, “In that case, we should all adjourn to the hall. At least this time, whatever comes of it, we have had a proper wedding, so our meal will be a proper wedding feast.”
Clearly relieved to have direction, most of the guests turned toward the house. Anne moved to follow them, but the large hand tightened on her arm, reminding her that she was still a prisoner.
“Not yet, my lass,” Kit muttered for her ears alone. “You and I are going to have a talk that you will not enjoy, but we will not have it here or inside the house. That hedged garden where we spoke before will do, I think, but first we’ll let the others move beyond earshot.”
She swallowed hard and looked down at her hands, certain he would not spare her and knowing she deserved to hear every word. Considering his earlier description of what she deserved, she just hoped he would not do anything horrid.
“What the devil are you waiting for?”
Thinking he spoke to her, she jerked her head up, only to discover that although her chief attendant, Janet Beaton, had walked away with the others, Lord Berridge still stood beside Kit in the place he had occupied as best man.
Berridge gave her a searching look as if to judge her emotional state. When she met his gaze steadily, he nodded and said to Kit, “Don’t murder her, lad. I’m persuaded she meant only to aid her cousin.”
Kit did not respond, waiting with exaggerated patience until Berridge made a profound leg to Anne and strolled away toward the house.
“Please, sir,” she said when she and Kit were alone, “I know you must be dreadfully vexed, and I’ll willingly apologize, but—”
“Not another word if you value your skin,” he snapped. “I do not want to create more entertainment for our wedding guests, so you will honor those vows you recited long enough to do as I bid you now. We will walk to the hedge garden, where you will continue to be silent and listen to what I say to you.”
She had no energy left to argue even had she retained the will to do so. Whatever strength had sustained her through the ceremony and its aftermath had abandoned her the moment he spoke sharply to her.
If the few moments she had waited for him to demand an annulment had seemed long, the time it took to walk to the hedge garden seemed appallingly short. He continued to grip her arm, forcing her to hurry along beside him, while with her free hand, she strove to hold the heavy skirts of her wedding dress off the ground. Concern that she might trip passed through her mind only to vanish as he jerked her to a halt and pulled her to face him, grabbing both shoulders and giving her a shake as if he could not restrain his fury for another moment.
“What the devil were you thinking?” he demanded.
Although she opened her mouth to answer him, he gave her no time to do so, giving her another shake as he said, “Not only did you make me look a fool and risk your own good name to play a stupid, hoydenish prank but you helped your idiotic cousin run off with someone she scarcely knows.”
“I think she knows him better than we thought,” Anne said, striving to retain at least a semblance of her normal calm.
It was useless.
“You listen to me, my lass. I warned you that I was no man to trifle with or to defy, and the sooner you learn that I mean what I say, the better it will be for you. You don’t know the first thing about your cousin’s precious jester.”
“But I—”
“Silence! Don’t you see what a chance you took, what a scandal you have brewed? Folks will laugh about this damnable wedding for years. I believed you the most sensible of women, Anne, but had you purposely set out to destroy your reputation and make yourself a figure of fun, you could not have done a better job.”
“But I didn’t think about that. I—”
“You didn’t think at all,” he snapped.
She opened her mouth to refute that, but he forestalled her
by going on without giving her a chance to speak, and shredding her character more thoroughly than anyone had ever done before or had cause to do. He did not raise his voice, but neither did he run out of things to say for so long that she began to fear that he must thoroughly dislike her.
Although she opened her mouth more than once to respond, she got no further, and the longer he went on, the more the pressure inside her built and the more she wanted to lash back, to tell him she had meant no harm, that she had wanted only to help Fiona and to protect him. But she said none of those things, although her silence now stemmed only from her guilt.
She did nod the two times he asked curtly if she was listening. But before long she stopped trying to respond or even to listen, letting his words spill over her in a battering flood. His anger remained palpable, but she could not blame him for it, so she simply endured the storm until at last he fell silent.
The silence lengthened then until she wondered if he were just trying to think of other, more dreadful things to say to her.
“Anne-lassie, the reasons you offered for your actions won’t serve,” he said then with surprising gentleness. “Despite all I have said to you, I don’t believe you agreed to stand in for Fiona just so she could make some witless point in defiance of her mother’s wishes, or even so she could run away with her damnable jester.”
Anne’s throat tightened, and although his furious scolding had not made her cry, her eyes welled again now and a tear spilled down her cheek.
“Ah, sweetheart, I’m a beast,” he said, using his thumb to brush it away.
“No, you are not,” she said, meeting his gaze at last. “You said nothing I did not deserve to hear. It is just that my father sometimes called me Anne-lassie.”
“Tell me the true reason you dared to do all this,” he said, moving both hands back to her shoulders, but gently this time.
“He said Eustace would kill you if you married Fiona, that Eustace wants to kill you.”
“Who said that?”
“Willie.”
He stared at her. “You know who he is?”
“I know his name is Willie Armstrong. He told me so before he left.”
His eyes narrowed. “Then you did know what they intended to do.”
“No,” she assured him hastily. “Only that he was worried about your safety. He said he was going to ride to Dunsithe to tell your friends you might need their help. He said nothing about Fiona, and she said nothing about him. I thought he had already gone. And Fiona was still in her room when I left the house. She knows her worth, too, so I cannot imagine that she eloped with a mere jester!”
Kit smiled, and she was relieved to see it. “He is an Armstrong,” he said. “In fact, although I did not know it until recently, his father was one of their chieftains and cousin to Mangerton of Liddesdale, a close ally of the Carmichaels. Therefore, I doubt Sir Stephen would have forbidden the match, although your aunt may not like it. And while Armstrongs of any ilk take what they want when they want it, Willie would not take that lass against her will.”
“I’m sure he did not,” Anne said. “Mayhap Aunt Olivia will be so relieved to learn that he is no mere jester that she will not scold too fiercely,” Anne said.
“I don’t care if she does,” he retorted. “Clearly, Willie and Fiona are even more to blame for this mess than you are, although—”
“Pray, sir, don’t start again unless you truly want to turn me into a watering pot,” she said. “I have apologized as abjectly as I know how and I was meek and silent whilst you scolded me, although I very much wanted to defend myself. You have made your point, though, so I expect you can go inside now and tell the cardinal that he can grant your annulment.”
“May I, indeed?”
His grim tone caused her to look at him more searchingly. “It is what you want, is it not?”
“No, sweetheart, it is not. When you lifted your veil, I was shocked and my first inclination was to throttle you for your deception, but only because I feared what you might suffer as a result. If I’ve somehow made you believe that I’m disappointed or angry that I married you, you should know that I am not disappointed at all. On the contrary, I have never been so relieved as I was when I realized I had married you and not your simpleton cousin.”
“She is not a simpleton!”
“Don’t argue with your husband, madam. It is most unbecoming. Moreover, since I am still vexed with you, it is also foolhardy. I think you had better try to placate me instead.”
“Indeed, sir, and how should I do that?”
“Like this,” he said as he drew her close and kissed her.
Chapter 18
Anne responded instantly and willingly to Kit’s kiss. Her body had reacted to his touch from the day they met, and now, knowing that she could give herself freely without feeling guilty about Fiona, she felt no reluctance at all.
His mouth claimed hers hungrily, and the fiery sensations that shot through her as she kissed him back warmed her soul as much as her body.
In that first moment, amidst myriad other emotions, that of relief stood uppermost, relief that he did not, after all, dislike her but shared many of her feelings. Even as her body reacted to the relief, however, melting against his and taking comfort as well as pleasure in his powerful embrace, passion overtook every other emotion, causing her body and mind to merge in a torrent of physical sensations unlike any she had ever known.
He kept one arm around her shoulders, holding her close, as his other hand moved caressingly over her body exploring its planes and curves in search of those secret places most sensitive to his touch. It moved from her shoulder down her arm to her sides and hip, then to the small of her back and slowly but inexorably back up her side to cup her breast. Every nerve ending stirred, tingling to be touched and stroked, and she began to caress him the same way, delighting in the soft texture of his velvet doublet and the hard muscles beneath it, as her imagination toyed with the secret wonders she had not yet seen.
As his thumb caressed the tip of her breast, his tongue thrust into her mouth.
Gasping, she thrust her own daringly back at it.
Suddenly, she felt well and truly married, certainly much more so than she had felt while standing by the altar on the chapel porch, hearing Beaton speak the words that bound them together. Her tongue dueled with his until a bubble of laughter rose in her throat that might have burst had there not been so many other, more overwhelming, less familiar emotions that easily trumped it.
With her body pressed hard against his, she easily recognized his desire as his lower body stirred against hers, and her yearning for him to possess her increased. Muscles tensed that she had not known before even existed.
Kit gripped her shoulders with both hands again, holding her tightly as he ended the kiss, straightened, and looked seriously down into her eyes.
“Well?” he said.
She detected a note of tension in his voice and wondered at it.
“Well, what?” she said softly. “Why did you stop?”
“Because if I hadn’t, in a moment I’d have taken you right here on the path, and I thought perhaps I should find out first if you would object.”
“Why should I?”
His eyes began to dance. “For one thing, I doubt we can count on having much more time alone here before someone comes to see if I’ve murdered you.”
A trill of laughter escaped her. “I doubt that Olivia would come, but oh, if she did, how she would shriek!”
“She would say such behavior shows no respect for her mourning,” he said, grinning, “but more likely, she would send that officious steward of hers to find us.”
Anne chuckled, easily able to imagine Malcolm’s reaction.
“Look, lass,” Kit said, “if you want me to request an annulment—”
“I did expect it,” she admitted.
“Well, then, I shall tell Beat—”
“But I don’t want one if you don’t,” she said quickly, feelin
g unexpected shyness at the knowledge that she was behaving badly again by putting her wishes forward in such a blunt way.
But Kit only grinned. “In that case,” he said, putting his arm around her shoulders again, “let us instantly retire to my bedchamber.”
She laughed again. “We cannot do that. We must attend the wedding feast.”
“Why?”
“Well, just because,” she said. “Everyone expects us, and it is what newly married people do.”
“Do you want to go?”
Involuntarily, she shuddered. “It will be horrid,” she said, “but we must go.”
“On the contrary,” he said. “If it will be horrid, we absolutely must not.”
“But—”
“No, sweetheart,” he said firmly, his eyes still dancing. “You must cease this unnatural habit of arguing with your husband. I command you to accompany me to my bedchamber and let the folks in the hall enjoy our wedding feast without us. Just think of it as being ordered to bed without your dinner. I’ll wager that has happened to you more than once in your life.”
“Aye, it has,” she agreed, “albeit not with the same consequences.”
“So I should hope,” he said, chuckling as he urged her on toward the plank bridge near the stableyard. “We’ll use that handy kitchen door again, I think, and if we are so unfortunate as to meet anyone on the stairs, we’ll just hope it’s a servant who is willing to procure some food for us and deliver it upstairs.”
They met no one on the first flight or afterward, because every servant was busy, if not working in the kitchen then carrying food to the hall or empty trays and platters back to the scullery. They went on past the gallery on which Anne’s room and Fiona’s were located to the floor that connected both sides of the house, and then down again to the gallery on which Kit’s room and Eustace’s faced.
When Kit opened his door with a flourish and Anne stepped inside, she felt suddenly shy again, for she had never entered a man’s bedchamber other than that of her brother or father. Nothing about this one proclaimed its masculinity, however. The servant who had waited on him that morning had tidied it before leaving, the furniture and fireplace were in the same places as Anne’s, so except for the dark red curtains in place of her blue ones, the room looked much as hers did.