by Julie Kenner
“What’s the damned idiot doing? Where would he be going at this hour?” Bertie growled in frustration. “I’m going to bloody well find out!” Seizing the impulse of the moment, he stuck his head out the window and ordered his driver, “Follow that cab!”
INSIDE THE Hansom, they were so crowded they could hardly breathe until Jack pulled Mariah onto his lap and wrapped both arms around her. Mercy gave several “tsk’s” at the liberty he took with her mistress, but she was too grateful for the room and too busy holding her cloak closed against the cold air coming through the open cab front to complain.
“It won’t take long, I promise,” he said, running his eyes and hands frantically over Mariah. “Are you all right? Bertie didn’t—”
“He was a gentleman.” She steadied herself against the back of the cab seat, turning her shoulder to the wind. “Jack, what happened back there with the baron and your brother?”
“Apparently Marchant saw us in the lobby last night and decided something was going on between us. He fetched my brother to knock some sense into me.” His voice hardened. “Never been a successful tactic with me, the frontal assault.”
“Jack, I have to tell you—” His fingers to her lips stopped her.
“No, Butterfly, I have to tell you—” he tossed Mercy a close-your-ears look “—what I should have said days ago.” His throat tightened. “I love you. With everything in me. With all that I’ve got.” He stroked her cheek and pulled her dark, luminous gaze into his. “Which may not be much after tonight, but it’s all yours. I love you. I can’t say it any better.” He felt the softening in her frame and pulled her tight against him, holding her fiercely. “I nearly lost my mind when Bertie spirited you away. I was damned close to striking the future king of Britain.”
“Ye were with the prince?” Mercy gaped at her, then scowled at him. “Ye might ’ave told a body.”
“I wasn’t exactly thinking straight,” he said to both women. “Then I realized, watching him walk away with you, that I don’t ever want to lose you. Not even just for a stroll. Not even to my future king.”
Mariah’s eyes shimmered in the flashes of streetlight.
“Stop there, Jack,” she said, taking his face between trembling hands. “It’s enough to have you say that you love me.” Tears filled her eyes and voice. “I’ll cherish that always. But your brother is right. I never fully realized what it might do—you can’t ruin yourself on my account.”
“A little late to worry about that, isn’t it? You’ve knocked my life arse over teakettle, seven different ways. But the thought of not seeing you, not touching you, not hearing your laugh or breathing your scent is unbearable. I want you in my life, my bed, my heart. I want to laugh with you and celebrate Christmases with you and pick out new hats with you. God willing, I want to have children with you and grow old with you…and read every book in old Mason’s scandalous library with you.”
Tears rolled down her cheeks at the hope, the love in his eyes. She laid her forehead against his and closed her eyes, wanting nothing more than to embrace the joy battering the “sensible” barriers in her heart.
“Marry me, Mariah, and make me the happiest crazy man in Britain.”
She lifted her head to look at him.
“If I marry you, the prince will—”
“Have to look for another mistress? Absolutely. Discover that not even princes get their way all the time? He could use a reminder now and again.” He ran his hands up her shoulders to cradle her face. “There are a thousand reasons against it, Butterfly, and only one for it. But that one—the love we feel for each other—outweighs every damned objection you and I and the rest of the world could ever come up with against it.
“Marry me, Mariah. Make me yours.”
Make him hers? Take him into her life as she had into her heart? The fact that he thought he had to ask said volumes about his respect for her.
“Yes. Oh, yes!” She flung her arms around his neck and sank into his hungry kiss with all the joy and passion she possessed. From across the coach came a whimper and a sniffle.
“Good work, sarr.” Mercy’s voice was choked with emotion. “It were touch an’ go there for a bit, but ye got ’er done.”
The cab stopped outside the vicarage of St. Thea the Divine Church in the south of Knightsbridge. A single gas lamp provided light for the steps and front doors. Jack put his arm around Mariah as they waited for someone to answer their knock. A bluff, hale-looking blond fellow in a cassock and Anglican split collar opened the door and stood squinting at them in surprise.
“Jack St. Lawrence?” The vicar half smiled, looking confused.
“Nathan—thank God you’re still posted here. I need your help.”
“Of course, Jack.” The clergyman stepped back, making room for them. “Whatever I can do.”
Jack’s countenance changed as he broke into a beaming smile.
“We need someone to marry us. Tonight.”
The good vicar took in their glowing faces and close embrace.
“I think you’d better come in.”
He led them into a cozy parlor, where the coals in the grate had already been banked for the night. A petite dark-haired woman wearing a night-braid and a warm robe appeared behind them.
“I heard voices. What is it, Nathan?” she asked, wiping sleep from her luminous brown eyes.
“You caught me up late finishing a sermon,” the vicar said. “This is my wife, Kristine.” He beckoned to her and she went to settle in the crook of his arm. “This is Jack St. Lawrence, dear…the fellow I used to count on to keep me from being hacked mercilessly in football matches at school. He’s…here for a wedding.”
“This is my bride, Mariah Eller,” Jack said. “Mariah, this is Father Nathan Lord. We were at Rugby together as boys.”
“Just Nathan, please…if you don’t mind,” Nathan said.
“Congratulations.” Kristine’s face lighted as she embraced Mariah and wished her many years of happiness and a house filled with healthy children. “I’ll go light the candles.”
“But, Kristine—” Nathan began.
She reached for a shawl and was out the door before he could stop her. He sighed.
“She’s often asked to prepare the church and stand in as a witness. It seems she never tires of weddings.” Then he took Jack aside for a moment. “There is, however, a potential obstacle. I can’t read the vows, Jack, if it is not to be a legal and binding marriage. We must have a license.”
“No problem.” Jack reached into his coat pocket and pulled out the envelope that had seared itself into his consciousness. “A special license. A friend secured it from the Bishop of London for me—” he glanced at Mariah with a speaking look “—thinking I might need it on short notice.”
Father Nathan opened it and looked it over, eyes widening.
“You always did have influential friends, Jack.” He frowned. “Mariah’s name is here but yours is not.”
“That’s easily remedied.” Jack took the paper, smoothed it out on the side table and filled in his own name and signature. Afterward Mariah signed with trembling hands and then asked Mercy to stand up with her. The old servant nodded through a drizzle of tears.
When the paperwork was done, Jack and Mariah followed Nathan through the open walkway into a chilly stone sanctuary warmed by two banks of glowing tapers. After a few instructions, they took their places before the chancel railing in the fragrant glow of beeswax candles, holding hands and feeling their hearts racing.
As Father Nathan directed them, they traded promises of faith and fidelity, agreeing to love, comfort, and support each other in sickness and health, riches and poverty, and through good times and bad. Halfway through the ceremony a toddler in a nightgown came stumbling into the sanctuary, rubbing his eyes. Kristine picked him up in her shawl and patted him to send him back to sleep.
Then came those blessed words: “I pronounce you husband and wife.”
Jack not only kissed Mariah
afterward but picked her up and swung her around as he did so. She wrapped her arms around his neck, absorbing the moment, letting her laughter mingle with his. When he set her back on her feet, she caught both his gaze and his heart with her smile.
“There’s no turning back now,” she said, glowing.
“You’re mine at last.” His voice lowered but still carried all the way to the back of the church. “And no matter what happens tomorrow and the day after, I am yours.”
FATHER NATHAN and Kristine invited them into the rectory for a glass of wine and some cake which they gladly accepted. Soon the church was quiet enough that whispers could be heard at the back, in the darkened narthex.
“Never thought to see such a thing in this life,” Sprat said in a loud whisper, looking at his equally stunned companions.
“Iron Jack as giddy as a schoolgirl,” Dandy added, disillusioned.
“She’s bewitched him,” Bertie said, scowling. “Conniving little muff. Don’t know how the hell she did it, but it’s clear she did. He marched right up of his own free will and spoke vows with her. Used the special license I provided for her for himself! I’ve half a mind to make her live up to our agreement. At least once. Just to teach ’em a lesson.”
The three tiptoed back to the shadow-cloaked entrance, where Jack A. Dandy paused while opening the front doors.
“But, what if it’s real?” he said. “I mean, it could be a love match. Such things are known to happen.”
Sprat looked quite horrified. “Good God.”
Bertie gave him a smack on the arm. “You’re in a church, you horse’s arse. And with me.” When Sprat looked mystified, he snarled. “The next head of the Church of England?”
“Deepest pardon, Highness.” Sprat shriveled. Bertie picked the oddest times to insist on ecclesiastical niceties.
“They look happy,” Dandy persisted. “You think perhaps they’ve fallen in love?”
Bertie looked at the pair of them as if unable to believe his ears.
“You’re going dotty in your advancing years, the both of you.” He pushed past them to exit and then paused outside to make certain Jack’s party was still in the rectory. Beckoning for his coach, he muttered, “Love. Humph. You should have heard her talking about him earlier…about how she’d mold him and make him over into…”
An ugly thought struck him as his footman jumped down to open the door and unfold the carriage steps for him.
“She is a clever slip of muslin. It’s possible she purposefully…”
“She what, Highness?” Dandy asked, leaning closer.
“Couldn’t be.” Bertie grabbed the door and hoisted his bulk into the carriage. “No woman in her right mind would turn down the chance to make her fortune in a prince’s bed.”
Sprat and Dandy looked at each other and chorused, “Absolutely not.”
Bertie was clearly out of sorts as he chewed on what to do all the way back to St. James Palace. He sometimes spent nights there so that his manly “recreations” wouldn’t disturb his wife at Marlborough House.
By the time they reached St. James, he had what he fancied to be a clever plan. A pity he couldn’t test its soundness against the wits of one of the few men he could count on to tell him the truth: Jack St. Lawrence.
“Cranmer,” he called Jack A. Dandy to attention as they disembarked within the walls of St. James. “Find me a cartload of roses, some champagne and a diamond brooch the size of a walnut. Wake people up if you have to—we don’t hand out those damned royal warrants for nothing. Have them all delivered to her at Claridge’s, first thing tomorrow morning.” He turned to Sprat. “You, Avery…find me Edgar Marchant. Sober. I don’t care if you have to turn out every card room in club land.”
20
MARIAH SAT on Jack’s lap on the way back to Claridge’s in the two-seater cab he flagged down on the Brompton Road. Mercy, done in by three glasses of wine and two pieces of cake, was dead to the world, so they were virtually alone. Mariah studied the slope of his nose, the strength of his jaw, and the softness of his dark hair. Every aspect of him pleased her, roused her, completed her. How could she be so lucky?
“I can hardly believe we’re married.” She buried her face in the crook of his neck and breathed in his warmth. “Tomorrow we get to wake up together, after sleeping in the same bed.”
“Not before noon, however,” he whispered, kissing her temple, her cheek and her throat as she offered them to him. “Because tonight I intend to keep you up late, ravishing you.”
“Ravishing…what a lovely word,” she whispered, then gasped quietly as his hand slipped beneath her jacket. “Ohhh.” She closed her eyes and sucked in a breath as his fingers skimmed her breast above her corset. “Shall I try on my new dressing gowns for you?”
He chuckled. “I doubt you’ll have time,” he whispered, his hot breath sending trickles of excitement through her. “I’m more in the mood for claiming and devouring.”
“Devouring?” she murmured. The word itself sent heat pouring into her sex. “Like this?” She nibbled his lip.
“Mmm.”
“Or this?” She tongued his ear and sucked his earlobe.
“Just like that,” he said, his voice dropping to a frayed rasp.
The minute the cab stopped at the hotel doors, he shifted her off his lap and sprang out to collect the doorman for help in delivering Mercy safely to her bed. Mariah went ahead to her room and stood in the dark, watching the dull glow of light from the hearth and realizing the passage that was taking place in her life. From widow to wife. From death and mourning into life and celebration.
The door latch snicked once, then a second time, and she held her breath. But instead of encircling her waist with his arms, he moved around to face her. In the dimness, his features looked taut and hungry; his eyes glowed the way they had that first night in Bertie’s room.
She began to remove her jacket, staring into those hypnotic golden eyes. He gave a deliciously wicked laugh and brushed her hands away to remove her clothes himself. When she stood in corset, knickers and stockings, atop a puddle of skirts and petticoats, he picked her up and swept her back against the wall by the door, pinning her there with his body.
“This—” his voice was ragged and demanding “—is what I wanted to do to you that first night.”
With exquisite deliberation, he planted his hands on the wall on either side of her and began to rub his body against hers. Every movement was a revelation, every angle and position an avenue to fresh, untried pleasure. She planted her hands just beneath his, as she had that first night. Soon her nipples had popped free of her corset and he rubbed every part of him against them…face, lips, tongue, chest, ribs. She was vibrating like a violin string by the time he paused to enjoy her response.
“If you’re going to ravish me,” she said hoarsely, “get on with it.”
With a laugh he began to do just that, kissing, tonguing, nipping…until she was incandescent with desire. By the time she reached for his trousers, he allowed her to guide him and soon supported her with his arms and thighs. When she climaxed, he took release as well and they collapsed together against the wall, waiting for the strength to move to the bed. She kissed his burning ears and rumpled his hair.
“You know, we might have saved a lot of time and trouble if you had done this to me that first night.”
With a teasing growl, he picked her up and carried her to the bed. This time her corset and knickers came completely off. But the stockings, as always, stayed on.
The next morning, the early sunlight turned Jack’s big body to gold as it sprawled over her and the bed. He looked a little civilized and a little barbaric, and a whole lot desirable. He was hers.
She slipped from under his arm and leg and stretched, feeling small, suggestive aches from the night’s exertions. A bath, she wanted a warm bath. Sliding from the bed, she padded into the bathing room, lighted the water heater, and prepared for a bath. Just as she was adjusting the final temperature of
the water, she heard a tapping at their outer door.
Fearing it would wake Jack, she quickly donned her dressing gown and went to answer it. Outside stood every porter in the hotel, the manager, and even a couple of the morning-room attendants, all bearing large baskets of roses…big, gorgeous, extravagant roses in red, pink and white. She admitted them, holding a finger to her lips to insist on quiet. Behind them, on a rolling cart draped with linen, came an exotic display of fresh oranges and raspberries, buttery French madeleines and gâteau and champagne.
She was overwhelmed at the largess. Her heart swelled as she went from one fabulous bouquet to another, growing intoxicated on the heavenly scents. When the room was cleared of extraneous people, she grabbed an orange and peeled it, then carried it to the bed. She waved it under Jack’s nose and he smiled lazily, keeping his eyes shut. With some coaxing he finally opened his mouth and nibbled it.
“Delicious.” Groaning, he pushed up onto his elbow and looked around the room in amazement. “What’s all this?”
“As if you don’t know,” she said, giving him an enormous hug.
“This is marvelous,” he said, sitting up and raking his hands through his hair. He rubbed his eyes and looked again. “Who are they from?”
“What a tease,” she chided. “You’ll have all the thanks you can bear after I’ve had a warm soak and something to eat. I have to keep up my strength for—”
She halted in the midst of carrying a perfect red rose to him on the bed, realizing he truly was confused.
“You didn’t send them?” She felt her stomach sink. “I would have loved surprising you with such a grand gesture, Butterfly. But when would I have had time to arrange it?”
She turned to look at all the flowers and the tea cart. For the first time she noticed an envelope on it addressed to My Lovely Mariah.
Her knees weakened as she picked it up, dreading what she would find inside. The signature of the note confirmed her worst fear.