Ever His Bride

by Linda Needham

  “There.” She stood up and turned away from him.

  He sat up quickly, draped his arm across his lap as she stuffed the recapped crock and the strawberry-stained napkin into the basket.

  The heat in the car had risen considerably, and made him realize that there were many sensitive matters which ought to be discussed between them if they were to remain married for an entire year. Passion and “miscalculations …”

  And a ring. He didn’t understand why the subject seemed so unbroachable. He prided himself on his forthrightness.

  Madam, you are to wear this ring—

  “Do you know, sir, I very rarely think of myself as Mrs. Claybourne.”

  Hunter nearly swallowed his tongue. He prayed she couldn’t read his mind as well as she seemed to read the rhythm of the rails. He had no idea where she was going with this statement, or even if it had been preceded by a transition from another subject. He hadn’t been listening. He’d been day-dreaming, measuring the fit of his hand against the underswell of her breast.

  “Nevertheless, you are my wife, Miss Mayfield.” Now the subject was at hand. If his own would only stop shaking, he could lift the ring from his pocket—

  “Yes. But, there, you see? You have the same problem as I, Mr. Claybourne: you keep calling me Miss Mayfield. I doubt you even know my given name.”

  “I do.”

  “You’ve never used it.”

  “It’s Felicity. Felicity … Claybourne.”

  She sniffed, obviously unconvinced, then picked up the basket and hoisted it to her shoulder. “It’s no wonder I sometimes act as if I were not married—it’s so hard to believe that I am.”

  Nervous beyond reason, he stood as she struggled to replace the basket in the rack, and secured it for her.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “You’re welcome, Miss … Mrs. Claybourne, but I remind you that we are married.” And they were standing very close again. The slope of the roof brought his head bare inches from hers, his mouth poised at her ear again because she didn’t seem to want to look directly at him.

  “But do you suppose our marriage is truly legal?” She sat down abruptly, flicking her eyes to him twice before she settled her gaze on her hands, clasped tightly in her lap.

  “What makes you think it might not be legal?” He sat down across from her. He couldn’t wait to hear her excuse, felt defensive and raw.

  “Well …” She finally fixed him with a precipitous sea-green stare. “We never kissed after we were married, Mr. Claybourne. Did you notice that?”

  He’d noticed. Was determined wait out her tangled logic if it took the rest of the night.

  Felicity felt that odd flush rise out of her bodice to engulf her face. It always began with a fluttering just above her heart, but spread deeper, especially when he was looking at her with those half-lidded eyes. A kiss! Why the devil had she brought that up?

  “A kiss, Mrs. Claybourne?” His long legs were bent and spread, his knees on either side of hers.

  She had no trouble at all imagining his mouth pressed against her own, especially now, with her knees trapped lightly between his, and his dark gaze feathering her cheek.

  “Well, I just meant that—”

  “Madam, a kiss is the least of the seals we have not set upon this marriage.” His voice was a dark melody that rose above the unrelenting percussion of the wheels.

  He took a small bright object from the pocket of his waistcoat. She saw it flash gold just before he caught her hand in his.

  And then he was slipping a ring onto her finger. It was very warm and a little too large.

  “There,” he said, encasing her hand completely in his. “Now there will be no question of it, Mrs. Claybourne.”

  She suddenly felt astonishingly married. “No question?” Her heart had taken flight.

  “No question that you are married to me.”

  Married!

  She looked down to see the ring, but his hand still held hers trapped inside his. She didn’t know what to say, didn’t quite know what to think.

  Only that he was very close, his wonderful mouth just inches from hers.

  “And should I kiss you, Mrs. Claybourne?”

  That might have been a kiss; the rush of his sweet, spicy breath past her lips. But he hadn’t moved, save for the gentle, insistent rocking of the train.

  “I think you should, Mr. Claybourne. In case anyone asks about … you know.”

  He smiled then, this husband of hers, amused in some way by her concern, and still smelling of strawberries.

  “My dear, they wouldn’t dare ask.” He brushed his splendid fingers lightly, too gently through the curls at her temple, lifting the disarray over her shoulder, straying to her nape, sliding under her collar.

  “Wouldn’t dare, Mr. Claybourne?” She could hardly breathe for the sweetness of his touch.

  “Can you imagine such a question?” He’d laid his soft words against her ear: the barest brush of his mouth, unspoken images of fire and promise, the slight gruffness of his evening bristles scrubbing past her cheek.

  She took a noisy breath, then expel it with an indelicate sigh. He wasn’t quite making sense anymore. “What sort of question would that be, Mr. Claybourne?”

  “An irrational one, certainly.” Now his gaze smoldered and strayed back to her mouth, as palpable as his whisper had been. “What kind of fool would ever doubt that I had kissed my beautiful wife?”

  Beautiful? But he’d hardly ever looked at her, and when he had, he was so often scowling. Oh, but he wasn’t now. A half-smile lifted the corner of his mouth. His touch feather-light and breathtaking. He followed the course of her jaw, drawing his fingers to her chin and tilting it up to him.

  “But if they did ask, Mr. Claybourne, you’d have to tell a lie.”

  His hand trembled, or she did, or maybe it was simply the train’s steady progress along the track.

  “No, I won’t, Mrs. Claybourne.”

  “No?” There was a moment when his exquisitely shaped mouth was poised above hers, when he smiled crookedly, when she wondered if he’d been teasing her. And in the next moment there was nothing else in the world but the bliss of his wonderful mouth on hers.

  She’d have guessed that a man with a soul of granite would have cold, unyielding lips. But his were supple and caressing and welcomed her own with a passion that warmed her from the tips of her fingers to the soles of her feet, and carried a fever to every place else inbetween.

  His eyes where half-closed and his brow furrowed, and she wondered if he felt the same heat and heard the same song. So different than she had expected, his mouth soft and yet firmly seeking. He was making growling noises in his throat, and holding her face steady with both hands, planting his lingering kisses everywhere. Now, if he’d only put his arms around her!

  Hunter endured the gut-knotting intoxication like a man about to be dragged out of paradise. She was honey and steam and lavender, and this kiss would leave him suffering for her when it ended. She pulled away slightly, staggering him when she put her fingers to his mouth, as if she were deaf and mute and searching for some kind of knowledge of him. His ring glistened there on her hand, looking solid and bright.

  “You taste very good, Mr. Claybourne.” Then his enchanting wife smiled and kissed him hard, fiercely, wrapping her fingers in his hair and pulling him even closer.

  Dear God, he wanted her, in all the possible measures of the word. To stand naked with her in a stream, to sup at her breast, to explore this wave of desire to its fullest. She was his wife, bound by his ring and by a contract with an iron-forged escape clause. And so he let the muscles seize up in his arms, left them aching when he bridled the yearning to embrace her.

  “Enough,” he whispered against her mouth, and then against her ear, where his words drew a sweet sound from her that only made him want to taste more of her, to lay with her on the seat and make her his wife in truth, while the train rattled on into Blenwick.

  �
��Is this one long kiss, Mr. Claybourne? Or would this be considered many, piled one atop the other?”

  He was about to answer her with another dozen kisses when he felt the sultry drift of her hand hovering above his knee. If it should touch down— “Stop!”

  “What?” She sat bolt upright in the seat, her eyes wide and wounded. “Did I hurt you?”

  “No, you didn’t hurt me, damn it.”

  He stood abruptly and opened the window, framed it with his forearms, and drew in deep draughts of cinder-tainted air as the dark landscape slid by. Discomfort was his aim. Anything to erase the memory of his wife’s mouth parting to accept more than a simple kiss. The kiss was a mistake.

  “Well, that’s done,” she said, as if she’d just stuck a pie to cooling on the sill.

  “Done?”

  “A ring and the kiss.”

  He glanced back at her and found her staring down at the ring, turning it on her finger. The band was plain and wider than it might have been, but it said clearly what he had intended it to say. She was his wife— however briefly. And now she was straightening her bodice as though he’d caressed her there at the rise and fall of her breasts.

  “The ring was a detail that had escaped me until recently. Traveling as you do, unescorted, you will be better protected from discourteous men, Miss Mayfield. As for the other … the kiss—”

  “Yes, Mr. Claybourne?”

  “A simple one would have sufficed. I … overstepped my intentions.”

  “Yes, I suppose we both did.” She shrugged and began lacing up her boot. “I don’t usually kiss men that I don’t like. So, I don’t know why I kissed you.”

  Hunter slammed the window so fiercely it rattled. “Whether you like a man or not, Miss Mayfield, you’ll kiss no one but me while you and I are married.”

  She heaved a dramatic sigh and drew on her other boot. “I see that I’m back to being Miss Mayfield.”

  “Habit.” He watched her sweep her riled hair into a loose knot at the back of her head. His timing had been inopportune. The blame was his; he was the stronger of the pair. But at least he’d managed to deliver the ring to its proper place.

  “Whatever pleases you, Mr. Claybourne. We’ll be divorced in ten months and twenty-three days. Why bother learning a different name?”

  “You’ll always be Mrs. Claybourne.”

  “Not after we’re divorced.”

  “A divorced woman keeps her ex-husband’s name unless and until she marries again.”

  “I won’t be keeping yours, Mr. Claybourne. The last thing I need is a—” She shot to her feet, a fox about to flee a pack of hounds. “God, no! Do you feel it, Mr. Claybourne?”

  “Feel what?” Hunter asked, was standing as she was, trying to sense what she was feeling.

  “The train—”

  He heard it then, the horrible squealing of brakes and the shriek of metal against metal. “What the bloody hell?”

  “Please, God, no!”

  The car suffered a sharp jolt, then rocked to the side, sending the basket and his travel case flying.

  “Christ, Felicity!” He shoved her down between the seats and covered her with his body. “Hang on, sweet!”

  Their car plowed forward, its momentum still caught up in the track, surviving the waves of collisions ahead, one car hitting another, and another, and another.

  He held fast to his wife, hugged her against his chest, every moment ripping past him and lagging like an eternity. It couldn’t end this way! Not now. Not just when …

  Their car shot sideways off the rail, shattering the window glass and dousing the lamps. He felt himself being yanked away from her and sent airborne as the car dropped sharply onto its side and started to skid downward in the darkness.

  He’d lost her. “Felicity!”

  He heard her cry out, but was thrown against the baggage rack. The car kept sliding downward on its side, off an embankment, or off a bridge, not yet rolling. He prayed it wouldn’t, but the dark world had gone mad and he couldn’t tell up from down—only that he kept calling her name, kept hearing her cry from somewhere above him.

  The car came to rest abruptly, almost peacefully.

  “Felicity!” He panicked for the sound of her in the darkness. “Speak to me!”

  Somewhere distant, the downed locomotive shrieked like a dying beast. He reached out across the glass shards and felt no trace of his wife; only the rubble of their belongings thrown around him in a corner of the broken-out ceiling.

  “Please, Felicity—”

  “I’m here! Right here!” Her voice was small and winded, but she grabbed hold of his ankle and was suddenly kneeling in the circle of his arms.

  Chapter 12

  “Hunter!” Felicity had kept her wits because her husband had kept calling her name, the light of hope in the terrible darkness.

  “Thank God, you’re alive, Felicity!” He kissed her cheek and ran his hands quickly down her arms. “Are you all right?”

  “Are you?” She dearly wanted to see his face, but settled for touching his jaw his cheek, landing a kiss on his forehead.

  “Ouch!”

  “Good,” she said, finally able to see a glint from his eyes. “It’s just your head.”

  “Thank you, madam.” His grunt of a laugh calmed her, his gentleness soothed like balm as he scrubbed her hair out of her face. His hands shook. “Your wit survived intact.”

  “Dear God …” It wasn’t the moon that lit the hard planes of his face, but a faraway glow of orange-red. “Fire, Mr. Claybourne! Up ahead—the engine, and the coal car.” The very worst thing that could happen at a crash—

  “Damnation.” He struggled to his feet, stumbled over broken glass and pulled her along with him toward the doorway of their car, now a gaping dimly orange glow above them. “Out you go, wife.”

  He shoved her up through the hole to the outside of the railcar, followed her in the next instant and knelt on the canted siding, his hair lifting in the rising night wind, his strong, bare hand clamped around her calf as she clung to the door frame. Their railcar was nose-down in an embankment, resting in a gully that rose again on the other side.

  “The fire is somewhere up ahead on the track,” he said, bracing his balance against the metal ribs of the exterior cladding. “I can’t see a thing beyond our car. Wait here.”

  “Careful—“ But her husband had already slid over the side and landed on his feet below her.

  “It’s stony gravel down here. Come, quickly, wife. I’ll catch you.”

  “Do you hear it, Mr. Claybourne?”

  A great shouting and wailing had begun during the few moments of their struggle, the human sound mixed with the steady shriek of the train whistle and the thundering thrum of the drivers still spinning freely.

  “Quickly!” Trusting him without another thought, Felicity threw her legs over the side and dropped right into arms that circled her waist and pressed her back against his broad chest.

  “You are to stay out of the way, wife,” he said as he handed her to the ground and turned her to face him. “Right here, do you understand, where you’ll be safe …”

  “There’s nowhere safe, Mr. Claybourne.” She turned from him and staggered down the embankment, through the bracken and brambles to the opposite side of the gully, where she could lean over a crooked-limbed man who had been thrown free of a first-class compartment. She heard her husband move up behind her. He’d found and lit a lamp and now held it aloft.

  “You’ll need this,” he said, kneeling beside her.

  “Thank you. But I’m afraid the poor man is gone. His neck seems broken.”

  She righted the dead man’s clothes, closed his eyes, and settled his hands across his chest, taking great comfort in it. She’d done the same for her father when he died, had tucked the collar of his nightshirt neatly against the lapel of his robe. A detail of death.

  She feared there would be so many others before the night was through.

  Hunter reluc
tantly left his stubborn wife and searched the two other cabs of their railcar, but found no sign of anyone. His wife had already scaled the embankment to the tracks in search of wounded passengers. There was no use in trying to change her mind about staying out of the way. When he reached her on the tracks, she had made a hospital between the wheels of a fallen freight car. She offered bandages and words of comfort to a white-faced woman whose arm trailed too loosely across her lap. A man and a child staggered toward them out of the clouds of smoke and steam. She gathered them in and settled their fears as easily as if they had come to tea.

  As for himself, hell beckoned from farther down the tracks, where blinding flames and utter darkness danced wickedly together to the desolating voice of the still-screaming engine.

  He ran toward the locomotive and the flames, past railcars that lay scattered like toys tossed in a tantrum around a playroom. He sent the injured toward his wife, and urged the able-bodied forward toward the worst of the nightmare.

  The shrieking of the whistle began to subside, the useless spinning of the drivers slowing. But the sounds of human anguish had only increased.

  He swore as he reached the embankment. One of the rails had snapped free of its stone block ties and the locomotive had spilled off the track into a ravine, taking the tender, two freight cars, and a third-class car with it. Flames that fed off the oil and the engine fire leaped up the heavily wooded embankment. Another thirty feet and the fire would be licking at the car, heating the metal siding until it roasted the passengers alive.

  “This way, damn it!” he shouted at the stunned group of men and boys, setting some to work battling the flames with anything they could find, then climbed on top of the car itself. It lay on its side, the single door buckled and immovable. The inadequate metal roof had collapsed onto the body like a lid shut down on a tin of biscuits.

  “Find me a crowbar! Or something,” he shouted, stripping off his waistcoat, while behind him on the embankment, the flames of hell tried to peel the shirt from his back.