“Faith, you will inscribe your maiden name. Justin, sign below it. Notice that Lord and Lady Ponsonby signed as witnesses. When I explained the need for secrecy, they agreed to witness with me as proxy. They sponsored me at the school where we met, Justin, which is why they sought my help in getting your nurse, Justin.” He gave Faith the quill. “The biggest problem was permission for Faith to wed. Age twenty one is the age of consent. Ponsonby reluctantly accepted my favour, but if your parents oppose the union later, they will be within their rights to petition for annulment.”
Justin frowned. “But an annulment would mean—”
“He believes you at death’s door, Justin.” The Vicar donned his coat. “God be with you in your struggle against evil, and guide your path to justice, and forgiveness.”
The men shook hands, their friendship and respect evident. “You have given me a great gift.”
That, oddly enough, nicked at the granite of Faith’s resolve to delay their physical intimacy. She stepped into the vicar’s open arms. “God speed,” he whispered, and then he was gone.
She felt adrift, the forces around her strong and unknown.
She turned back to the room and Justin’s arms offered shelter. “My turn to kiss the bride,” he whispered against her temple. In her dream, he told her now that he loved her. Silently, she begged for the words.
His dark eyes smouldered with arousal.
Say it. Please say it.
His lips touched hers, teased them apart, unrestrained, passionate. “I’ll never get enough of you.” The words were wrong, yet she returned the sentiment. Never enough.
When she was in dire peril of allowing her determination to drown in kisses, he stepped away, his grin decidedly wicked. “Do you know what I would like right now?”
Contrasting urges to laugh and scream warred, but Faith smiled. “I cannot imagine … neither am I certain that I wish to know.”
“I would like to bathe in a tub.” He crooked his finger but she stepped back. He bore the eyes of a sorcerer, compelling and dangerous. “As my wife, you can no longer refuse.”
Was he speaking of baths? It was conceivable he would be so relaxed afterwards, that he would have no strength for his conjugal rights … and pigs might fly. She sighed. At least the bath would postpone the inevitable.
Difficult to deny what one most craved. She faced a hard battle tonight—oh, horrid word choice. She shook her head. “Go to your room and shut the door. I’ll ring for Jenny. You shall have your bath, and soon.” He kissed her with great fervour, tried for another, but she evaded him. With a laugh, he finally allowed himself to be pushed into his room and shut in.
It took nearly an hour before Faith could open his door once again. “Your bath awaits, lord and master.”
“You changed from your wedding dress,” he said, disappointed.
“What would Jenny think to find me dressed like that?”
“She would, of course, have assumed you married the dying man in the next room.”
Did his behaviour, or her guilt, make her uncomfortable? “Justin. What’s wrong with you?”
“From the moment I saw you in that dress, I imagined myself removing it.”
“You were supposed to be listening to the vicar’s words.” She wasn’t certain how to deal with Justin as a husband. “Get into the tub.”
Eyes dancing, he stripped with shameless abandon.
Faith wanted to vanish at the evidence of his arousal. Guilt grew. And why should it? Theirs was a business arrangement. It wasn’t as if he loved her. And a relationship built on lust was a house built on sand … precarious. Easily toppled.
Rather than guilt, her determination gained strength. She raised her chin. She was right; they needed to begin with the proper foundation … or relinquish themselves to a sad future.
Justin took her hand. It was evident her silence worried him. “Help me, wife, into that wonderfully hot, steamy water.”
She was disappointed he chose playful banter, for it was time to come to a pact about how to begin this “till-death-do-us-part” arrangement. But their discussion would come in due course, and she couldn’t blame him for craving a real bath, so she humoured him. He found it awkward, needing more agility than he’d regained, to step into the copper tub, and nearly lost his balance.
When, at last, he sat, he sighed, eyes closing in near-ecstasy. “Next time, I shall invite you to join me, Lady Faith.”
Faith looked up, soap in hand. “What did you call me?”
“The title will be yours when we recover it. But, Faith, you are now an obstacle to Vincent’s inheriting. Should something happen to me, he would get the title, but little else. All goes to my wife and children … which is why he wanted Catherine.”
Faith faltered in her resolve. Justin’s fear of marriage, his mistrust of love, sat upon a foundation so much stronger than sand, but solid as marble. It was called experience. With such festering scars, how could she fault his fear of new wounds? If only he would trust that she would never inflict them. She sighed. “I’m happy to thwart Vincent. The money is trifling, the title, less important. Wife is title enough.” She was married to the man she loved. And if she told him, would he believe her?
“And the property?” he asked.
“We need somewhere to live, but my parents would take us in.”
His bark of laughter grated. “God protect us from that.”
“Justin Devereux. My parents are good people.”
“I’m sure, but I won’t live with them to prove it.” He trailed his finger down her neck, across her collarbone, lower, slower. “Kiss me, wife.” His expression held promise.
Aching to respond, unable to summon the strength to stop, or remember why she should, Faith got singed by the fire in his eyes. Her resolve turned to dust as she stepped into a miasma of desire. But her determination to make of this marriage more than an arrangement nagged at her. Justin’s lips were a breath away. Another sip. Just one more.
She fought the pull.
Sanity returned on the wings of a satisfied chuckle. And she dropped the soap and slapped her hand against the water, the backlash raining sober reality.
“God’s teeth!” Justin swore.
Shaken by thwarted desire, Faith sat back on her heels.
Water dripped from Justin’s hair and the tip of his nose, his bony knees peeked through the surface of the water, his indignance comical. The picture tickled her so, Faith laughed herself senseless, his surprise making it funnier.
Losing the struggle between consternation and mirth, Justin laughed too. “Wash me, woman, I have plans for this evening.”
Warmth purled through her. She supposed there were worse destinies than losing this battle … and if she allowed it to happen, she would have the rest of her life to learn what the worst was.
Justin closed his eyes, content. A surprising peace filled him. Faith skimmed his body in a slow, sensual massage. Her lathered hands kneaded his shoulders and back, made soapy swirls in his chest hair and skimmed his nipples, arousing, branding. Then she slid her hands lower … and stopped.
He opened his eyes when she started on his legs and chuckled at her blush. He couldn’t wait to discover where it began.
He was hard as a pikestaff and near ready to spend when she began to work toward that part of his anatomy she had neglected, the part that anticipated her touch with almost painful need.
Unable to bear it another moment, he brought her hand to his flesh and closed her fingers around him. “Ah.” She explored his length, surprising him, and looked as heated as him. Passion had come alive between them. Soon, he would make her sing with it.
Faith was afire, but she had to stop. How had she gotten into this? How could she tell the man sleek and throbbing beneath her fingers that she would be his wife in name only, when she wanted him in every way? She absently traced his nipple with the tip of a finger as she considered her dilemma.
It wasn’t just respect and love their marriage n
eeded. As his second wife, she needed to be a dear friend, a cherished partner, a trusted confidant, a beloved mother to his child, an exciting, passionate lover—everything his first wife was not.
Justin tried to bring her hand back to where it had been, but she resisted and placed both hands in her lap instead.
His look questioned; she turned away. More than anything, she wanted to heal the wounds Catherine had inflicted, the ones left to fester. She was more determined than ever to heal this man with love, if he would allow it. But how to show her love while refusing to take him to her bed? A dilemma.
Justin stroked her face. “Why, my darling, has anguish replaced the passion in her eyes?”
Faith sighed and stood. Time to be honest; he deserved nothing less. “Our marriage is an arrangement. Your words.”
He opened his mouth to protest. She shook her head to stop him. “I know to you, that also means intimacy, but to me, a marriage is more. It’s love, Justin. I realize you don’t grasp, much less believe in the word, neither the feelings that go with it. But I vowed I wouldn’t—we wouldn’t lie together unless there was more than a bargain between us.”
“Faith, I—”
“Wait, let me finish.” She fetched the bucket by the door. “I’ve been furious since you asked me to marry you in that cold way. I need to show you how it left me, how I felt the day you proposed the arrangement. This, I believe, will bring you the chill I felt that day.” She emptied the bucket of ice over him.
“Damnation!” He rose with a speed she didn’t think he could, his look hard, stinging like a slap, and she stepped back.
He struggled from the tub, but did not want her help. Her guilt palpable, her determination went the way of his arousal. His step was ungainly; he nearly fell. It made him angrier. He snapped his dressing gown off the chair, shrugged into it and tied it at the waist with a yank. “I see how cold my offer must have left you,” he said through clenched teeth.
Faith stilled. Of anything he might have said, that was the least expected. Did he understand? Or did anger drive him?
“Love is a myth, Faith, invented by the likes of Mrs. Radcliff,” he snapped, stepped away from her, and faltered. She reached to steady him, but his look froze her.
Fatigued, he sat on the settee, his weariness rooted deeper than the physical, which frightened her. He was bone-weary of playing fox to his brother’s hound, which was understandable, and she just added to his burden by making him doubt the wisdom of their marriage. “Justin, I—”
He held a staying hand. “In light of these feelings you have just revealed, exactly where does this marriage of ours stand?”
She shrugged in sadness. “I don’t know, but I need more than an arrangement, Justin. A marriage needs more than passion.”
“Yet a lack of passion can be fatal to a marriage. I’ve had that kind. And it was not good. I want better for us.” Shoulders set, he raised his chin and looked straight at her.
Lord, she had to make him see. So much depended on this. “A marriage needs—I need—respect, understanding, trust. And passion, but it must be built on the rest or we have nothing.” She knelt and reached for his hands but he folded his arms.
She lay her cheek against his knees, to steady her trembling and seek wisdom from a higher source. After several clock-ticking minutes, wherein he did not touch her, no matter how she prayed he would, she looked into his eyes and stood. “We are speaking of the rest of our lives, Justin. Did you not listen to the Vicar? “In sickness and in health, until death us to part.””
“I believe we have mastered the sickness and health part.” His levity rang hollow.
“Until death,” she snapped. “A long, lonely business arrangement, and no bloody bargain!”
He sighed. “What do you ask of me, precisely?”
“That you try to understand how I feel.”
“I am trying. How can I prove it?”
“Make no demands on me tonight. I need something solid between us, before we become … intimate again.”
“The vicar said you should obey me.”
“Do you order me to allow you the use of my body then?”
“Damnation, Faith, that’s not what I meant. Fear not, I have no desire to take someone who does not want me.”
She started to speak. He stopped her with a finger to her lips. At least he was touching her. She closed her eyes to cherish the sensation.
“I did not mean that the way it sounded. I am trying to understand. What I ask is this; sleep by my side, let me hold you in my arms. Only that, until you are ready for more. I too want to make this marriage work.” He stood.
Shocked, grateful, certain when he was rested he would want more, Faith put an arm around his waist. “Let’s go to bed.”
A child’s giggle penetrated Faith’s consciousness. She woke to see Beth perched atop the blankets straddling her father’s chest. Nose to nose, she stared into his eyes.
Justin’s chuckle and Beth’s laugh were like music.
Faith sat against her pillows. “I forgot to tell you; since I’ve been sleeping in here again, Beth occasionally joins me before Sally comes for her.”
Justin placed a kiss on his daughter’s nose. “Morning, Muffin.” He looked at Faith, “An unusual way for a man to wake the morning after his wedding. But then the wedding night was out of the ordinary, also.
“I … I’m sorry about the ice.”
He grimaced. “Probably the only thing that could accomplish what it did.” He smoothed Beth’s bronze curls. “Faith, you mean more to me than I can express.” He took a shuddering breath. “Frankly I find even that admission frightening. You’ll never be sorry you married me. My word. But you ask a lot.”
“I begin to understand.” It was all she could do not to beg him to make love to her. But his candour made a good beginning and she did not want to take a step back. “Thank you for that.”
He smiled—more than his doubtful half-smile, but not one open and easy, either. “What time does Sally usually come for Beth?”
“Around seven.”
“Good, we have two hours together.” They tickled and played until Beth yawned. Justin tucked her against him, took Faith’s hand and brought it to his lips. “Shall we three escape and leave Vincent to his wealth, for mine will be with me.”
His words washed gently over her with a soothing touch. Faith placed her arm around him and their daughter. “Shh,” she whispered. “Beth’s asleep. Here, I’ll take her back to her own bed.”
When she returned, Justin had propped himself up in bed, and he watched her. “You’re the mother Beth needs.”
“Would you mind if I taught her to call me Mama?”
“People might wonder why she suddenly began.”
“My God, I’m getting careless. It’s too soon, you’re right.”
He squeezed her hand. “Harris should be back in a few weeks. Perhaps then we can make plans to deal with Vincent.”
“I’m afraid of what Vincent will do next, and his man has been asking questions, checking the food brought up—”
“You didn’t tell me that.”
“I didn’t want to worry you, but Hemsted, his man, is terribly interested in what’s happening with you.”
Justin sat up. “Sometimes I wish I could walk out of here, declare myself alive, and have my life back the way it was.”
“The way it was?”
Justin smiled. “No, not exactly.” He pulled her down beside him. “I would have you by my side with no fear for the future. But we have to find a way to ensnare Vincent.”
“By proving his guilt.”
“If ever we can. I wonder how Harris’s search is going.”
“I received a letter from him yesterday while the Vicar was with you, before I began to dress for the ceremony. He has found nothing. He will spend Christmas in Horsham with his sister and return to London after. One of his contacts is following leads and he hopes answers will be waiting when he returns. He bids us be pat
ient.” She sighed. “It could take months.”
He stood. “Months with the two of us shut up alone together.” He slid his hands around her waist. “I want you for Christmas.”
She touched his face. “Christmas, at the earliest.”
Beside Justin, Faith tossed in her sleep. Celibacy was difficult for them both. Thank God his exercises used up so much energy. He had slept by her side since their wedding, a gruelling test of respect and understanding. Perhaps even trust, for he trusted when her enigmatic needs were satisfied she would be a passionate wife. But how to satisfy those needs?
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