“Mr. Dallas’s granddaughter stays here on occasion,” Knollys volunteered. “There is a most pleasant view, as you’ll discover in the morning. I have brought fresh water for washing, and Mr. Dallas begs you will make use as you wish of the nightgowns and so on in the chest of drawers. Is there anything else you might require?”
“No. No, thank you, Knollys,” Tristram said.
The servant bowed and left them where they stood side-by-side just inside the door.
“Where was I?” Tristram murmured.
“Here.” She lifted her face and kissed him.
But now, in the privacy of their borrowed bedchamber, it was not enough.
With a gasp, she all but threw herself against him. They stumbled back against the wall, their mouths locked together. With wild triumph, she felt the hardness against her abdomen growing with shocking speed. She smiled against his lips and swayed against him, caressing him with her whole body.
He groaned, his back braced against the wall, deepening the kiss, his hands stroking her face, her neck, shoulders, and down to her waist. Dragging his mouth down her jaw, he fastened it to the pulse at the base off her throat. She reached between them for the flap of his breeches.
His breath hitched. He let her unbutton him, and then, slowly, lifted his head, his eyes, blazing.
“Come,” she whispered. “Come to bed.”
A smile flickered across his face, half voracious, half mischievous. Languidly, he shook his head. “Not yet.”
And with dizzying speed, their positions were reversed. Now her back was against the wall and his hips pinned her there while he shrugged off his coat and tore off his necktie. Then, with agonizing slowness, he drew the pins and the diamond string from her hair, and returned to kissing her mouth while his fingers made short work of the fastenings of her gown.
“You do that too easily for a clergyman,” she said breathlessly.
“I wasn’t always a clergyman.”
“Were you a rake?” she asked with interest as her gown and undergown dropped around her elbows. His eyes devoured her, dissolving her anxiety into heat and pleasure.
“I liked women,” he admitted, though distractedly. His hands slid upward from her waist, until his thumbs caressed her naked breasts, pressing sweetly on her nipples.
She swallowed. “Liked? Past tense?”
He smiled and bent his head to take one nipple into his mouth. “Now, there is only you.”
Her eyes closed in bliss. She wanted him inside her with ever-increasing urgency, but whenever she tried to push him toward the bed, he held her where she was, continuing to worship her body with unhurried hands and lips.
Her clothes lay puddled around their feet. She wore nothing more than her dainty ruby necklace and earrings. He shifted position, kissing her mouth while his caressing hand swept downward and settled between her thighs.
She gasped. Her hands, which had been clutching at his shirt in frustrated desire, opened wide in shock. But his caress was soft and exquisite, and the sweetness intensified impossibly, spilling through her in a rushing wave of delight she couldn’t control.
Only his hands held her up. Her dazed eyes opened into his blazing ones.
“What was that?” she whispered in wonder.
“Oh, my darling,” he said huskily, and there was pity, surely as well as lust in his eyes. “Let me show you.” He swept her up in his arms at last and carried her to the bed.
She cried out with sheer bliss when he entered her. She hadn’t known that could feel so good either. Crowmore’s assaults had given her no idea except that there had to be more. But she’d never dreamed of pleasure like this, of tenderness like this. The candle cast flickering light and shadow across his handsome face as he rocked above her, within her, his every movement a caress, bringing her nearer and nearer to something tremendous.
For herself, she moved from sheer instinct, sheer desire, coupled with a profound need to make him happy. And she could not doubt that she did please him. He let her see and hear just how much. His breathing was wild and short and sometimes his whole body trembled with his effort to control his passion.
She bit his shoulder, caressing it with her teeth. “Let go, my love,” she whispered. “Let go.”
And suddenly he did, plunging deep and hard within her until she fell headlong once more into joy. Only then, at last, did he collapse upon her, groaning into her mouth as he found his own, massive release.
*
As men did, he fell asleep. She didn’t mind, for he did so with his arms around her, cradling her head on his chest. She soaked up his hard warmth, inhaled his scent, and smiled, just because she was happy. And fulfilled. She’d never understood what that meant before. She’d known desire, just not what could come of it. Life with her curate, it seemed, was exciting from the outset.
Raising her head, she gazed down at him in the guttering candle light. In sleep, his face was still, as it never was at any other time. He looked younger, without care or responsibility. Which he wasn’t. He cared for the world, and yet he had a special place for her. His wife. His lover.
With the tip of her finger, she traced a crease on his chest, caused by her lying on him. She got distracted by the scattering of hair on his chest, narrowing into a distinct line on his stomach. For the first time, she noticed a jagged scar on his side, a souvenir, no doubt of a battle he never mentioned. He would, in time. She had a lifetime to learn what had come before. In the meantime, she followed the creased line until it vanished into the sheet.
“Does it disgust you?” he said quietly. “Because I’m afraid there are more of them.”
She shook her head, embarrassed to have been caught, and yet pleased he was awake. “I love all of you.”
A slow smile broke over his face. “Do you really?”
“You know I do.”
“But you never said so before. I just wanted to hear it again.” He reached up to her neck and drew her mouth down to his.
“How has this happened to us so quickly?” she whispered.
“I don’t know. But I think we should thank God and gracefully accept it.” He rolled her beneath him. “Would you mind, madam, if I availed myself once more?”
She stretched provocatively, loving every inch of his arousal and her own. “Sir,” she drawled. “I insist upon it.”
*
Kate could have cheerfully stayed in bed all the next day, wrapped in the warmth of this new intimacy, to say nothing of the pleasure of Tristram’s loving. But in the end, after a mere couple of hours of sleep, Tristram rose and dressed as though trying not to wake her. She watched him, unseen, until he began to walk back toward the bed and saw her open eyes.
“Good morning,” she said, suddenly shy.
He sat down on the bed and kissed her. “It’s Sunday,” he said ruefully. “And I have to be at church.”
She sat up. “It’s time to face Blackhaven.”
“Are you up to it?”
“If you are.”
In the end, they drove into town with Mr. Dallas, who had decided his presence at church would be advisable, since he had performed the marriage ceremony.
“The bishop will not approve,” he warned with unexpected worldliness, “so it’s important to win the congregation over and see that things run on as well as they did before.”
They stopped briefly at Henrit so that Kate could leave a note of apology for Mrs. Winslow, explaining her sudden departure and that she had married the curate by special license the night before. At least it would provide warning before the general announcement at church.
When they dropped Tristram at the vicarage, he insisted she wait for Cornelius to go back to the hotel with her. “In case Winslow hasn’t arrested Dickie,” he said grimly.
Cornelius and Tristram emerged together only moments later.
“Dickie’s dead,” Tristram said flatly.
“Blew his own brains out all over his hired carriage,” Cornelius added.
; Kate stared at them. She felt numb.
“Who’s the heir now, then? Does the title die?” Cornelius asked.
“No, there’s a baby somewhere in Ireland.” Kate’s words were mechanical. “I never thought he would do that, however insane he appeared.”
*
Perhaps the shock of the previous night’s events and the gruesome discovery of Dickie’s body helped dissipate the worst of Blackhaven’s disapproval over the curate’s hurried marriage to the scandalous widow. That, and the august if frail presence of Mr. Dallas, who had seen fit to perform the ceremony.
There were certainly a few sniffs when Tristram announced his own marriage from the pulpit, and a few raised eyebrows, but final judgement, it seemed, was to be reserved. Once more, Blackhaven would give Kate a chance.
Gillie, whose own marriage to Lord Wickenden had been similarly speedy, was delighted for her.
“Will you have a party at the vicarage?” Gillie suggested, her eyes shining with mischief.
The idea appealed to Kate. “Do you know, I think I will? It’s likely to be the only chance I get to play hostess before Mrs. Hoag returns. After all, it is her home.”
“What will you do when the Hoags come back?” Gillie asked curiously.
“Take a house in the town if we can. In fact, we’re going to look into it with a Mr. Worthing tomorrow.”
“Excellent! Give him my regards. Also, you must have your party quickly, for David and I are leaving for London next week.”
*
Grant, anxious on Kate’s behalf, for he knew she wasn’t half so thick-skinned as she pretended, was pleased, on the whole, with how their marriage was received. Initially, Mrs. Winslow had shown a tendency to bridle, but when Grant began to praise her as the catalyst to their happiness, through being so understanding with Kate and sending him to her at the ball, she softened and wished them both very happy.
Kate’s father, on the other hand, was not so easily mollified. When Kate had informed him at the hotel, he had refused to come to church. Grant called upon him in the afternoon, to find him supervising his valet in the packing of his trunk.
“You are leaving,” Grant observed. “Kate was hoping you would stay for a few days, having come so far.”
Mere cast him a look of acute dislike. “I do not need you to carry messages between my daughter and me,” he barked. “You, sir, are a contemptible fortune hunter, and I will do everything in my power to have your so-called marriage annulled.”
“Then you will make a fool of yourself and drag your daughter’s name through the scandal rags for nothing,” Grant said, as calmly as he could. “There are no possible grounds for annulment.”
“She was coerced! She must have been. You’re not even a gentleman, merely a by-blow of Boulton’s from all I hear!”
“Which makes me half gentleman, at least. A rather higher proportion than you at this moment. Have you any ways left to insult your daughter? Do you credit her with no sense, no humanity or feeling?”
Mere’s complexion inclined toward the purple. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” he blustered.
“Then perhaps you should just listen. I don’t expect you to be happy with me as your daughter’s husband. I’m aware I’m not who you chose, but your choices, sir, have proved faulty in the past, to call them no worse. I’m not a great match. I’m a country curate with no property or expectation beyond what I can earn. But I make your daughter happy.”
“Happy! Katherine? Tied to vicarage tea parties in a dreary little town? Are you insane?”
“No,” Grant said mildly. “It is you who are insane if you imagine that’s all her life will consist of. All that she consists of. You don’t even know she loves to help people, do you? She will do fine work here among the needy and the sick. And she will still laugh and have fun while she does it. Your daughter is a rare, wonderful person. If you can’t see that or wish for her happiness, then I for one will not miss such a father-in-law.”
Grant clapped his hat on his head and tipped the brim. “My wife invites you to tea at four. Good day, sir.”
As he closed the door behind himself, he thought Sir Anthony resembled a fish on a hook, opening and closing his mouth with no sound coming out.
Although, interestingly, he did come to tea at four. And he stayed two more days in Blackhaven, too.
*
The day Sir Anthony left, Grant received a brief letter from Mr. Hoag stating that the vicar would be back in Blackhaven, though without his family, by the end of the week. Spurred on, Grant and Kate looked at several houses for rent in Blackhaven.
“What do you think?” Tristram asked her as they walked back to the vicarage that Thursday afternoon.
“I think I’ll be happy with you wherever we are,” she said. And that was true, although there were degrees of comfort associated with it, too.
Tristram cast her a wry smile. “Now the truth, if you please.”
She smiled. “The cottage in Braithwaite Close is too cramped,” she admitted. “And the house in the square is too large. It will put Mrs. Hoag’s nose out of joint if we live there.”
“Then we shall keep looking,” Tristram said cheerfully.
“Where would you most like to live?” she asked. “If you could choose.”
He shrugged. “I don’t know that I care hugely. It can be a barn, providing I have the peace to make love to you. Constantly.”
She flushed with the desire that never seemed to be far away. “Is that an invitation, Master Curate?”
“Oh yes.”
“Then I accept. At least the vicarage is still ours for now.”
However, when they stepped inside, they found it invaded by both his brothers, quarrelling as usual. Tristram tried to throw them out. Kate shooed them all into the drawing room and asked Mrs. Walsh to bring tea.
This time the Fanshawes were arguing over whether or not Cornelius should go home to his father. He’d apparently written to inform his parent he had returned to England, but that was as far as he’d got. Vernon maintained it would be worse the longer he waited.
“Why should he care?” Cornelius demanded. “He told me not to come back if I had anything more to do with Helene.”
“He didn’t mean it.” Tristram said. “Well, he probably did at the time, but he won’t now.”
Cornelius cast him an impatient glance. “Which, I suppose, is why you’re hiding from him!”
“That’s different,” Grant said. “You’re his sons. I’m an obligation—an ungrateful obligation.”
“Which neither of you forgives,” Kate said with sudden understanding.
Grant’s gaze flew to her face. There was pain beneath his rueful smile. “I try. But I am not a great man of God.”
Vernon hooted derisively and hurled a cushion at him.
“You’re barely a man at all,” Cornelius added.
Grant caught the cushion in one hand and hurled it at Cornelius, just as the drawing room door opened and Mr. Hoag walked in. Kate recognized him at once and sprang to her feet.
Behind him strolled a younger gentleman—the Earl of Braithwaite himself—and behind him a tall, older gentleman with a ferocious expression.
Each of them halted in surprise. For an instant, there was total silence in the room. The Fanshawes had never met the vicar, had no idea who he was. But they would know Braithwaite, and were liable to be too comfortable in his company.
Don’t throw the cushion back at Tristram, she willed them silently. Don’t throw any cushions!
Cornelius laid the cushion down beside him. Astonishingly, his impudent face was bright red.
“Mr. Hoag!” Tristram rose with slightly late aplomb, going to shake hands with the vicar. “Welcome back. Let me first introduce my wife.”
“Wife,” Hoag repeated, startled. “Good Lord, I had no idea. How do you do, Mrs. Grant?”
“Very well, sir, and delighted to meet you at last. I must apologize for ensconcing myself in your house—”
“Not at all, my dear, not at all,” the vicar said faintly. “Where else would you ensconce yourself but with your husband? Um—won’t you introduce your guests?”
“There’s no need,” snarled the older gentleman, striding out from behind Mr. Hoag. “I know all these miscreants only too well!” He stopped and glared at Vernon and Cornelius who were on their feet looking more hunted than guilty. With foreboding, Kate realized who he must be. “What the devil are you doing here? With him?”
The Earl of Boulton—for surely it could be no one else—threw his pointing finger at Tristram without even looking at him.
“They’re visiting,” Tristram said mildly. “As are you.”
Generally, pointing out ill manners to an already angry person is not the quickest way to peace. And certainly, Lord Boulton’s furious face took on a worrying purple hue. However, it seemed there were so many things to anger him that he couldn’t hang on to just one for very long.
“Married?” he repeated. “Married?” He swung at last on Tristram, sweeping his contemptuous gaze over Kate as well as his son. “Who gave you permission to be married?”
“I need none,” Tristram replied.
Lord Boulton ignored that and turned on Kate. “And what poor dab of a creature can you have induced to marry you?”
“That would be me, sir,” Kate said pleasantly, squeezing Tristram’s hand to prevent the explosion of rage already tightening his body. “You must be Lord Boulton.”
The old man glared at her in silence, perhaps temporarily stunned by her calm and collected manner. Fortunately, her old friend Lord Braithwaite stepped into the breach.
“Kate,” he said warmly, holding out his hand to her. “How are you? I was so sorry to hear of your troubles, and now you are married? I cannot keep up with you!”
“My husband, Mr. Grant.” It still felt strange and rather wonderful to introduce him this way. “Tristram, this is Lord Braithwaite.”
Tristram shook hands with Lord Braithwaite, too, and Kate was pleased to see the tension gone from his shoulders. He’d been taken by surprise but he would not let his unreasonable father rile him again.
The Wicked Lady (Blackhaven Brides Book 2) Page 22