Ever His Bride

by Linda Needham

  “Within reason.”

  He wondered what rare vistas she saw when her eyes grew so bright. Was she painting the foyer staircase a brilliant, canary yellow, or burning the drapes in a courtyard bonfire? It didn’t matter to him. What damage could she do? There wasn’t a stick of furniture or brass bowl he couldn’t do without. And if redecorating kept her at home and occupied, and out of trouble, then he would try not to complain.

  “By the way, your name is in the Times, Mr. Claybourne.”

  He’d been in the middle of skimming a story about the cotton crop in New Delhi, but snapped the paper down to stare at his wife. “My name is where?”

  She finished writing a word and looked up at him. “I’m surprised you didn’t see it there on the front page.”

  “My name? On the front page?”

  “I had nothing at all to do with it, sir. It was the accident.”

  He heard himself mumbling as he sped through the narrow columns on the front page, unable to see his name for the black spot of fear that blotted his vision.

  “It’s right here.” She came around the table and tapped her finger on his name. “Someone reported the accident by telegraph last night. The article explains how you took command of the rescue… .” She cleared her throat before reading, “‘Displaying the same efficiency and success with which he commands the peerless Claybourne Exchange.’“

  He stared at his name, relieved, but on edge. What would his clients think of the publicity? They might be concerned over his health, his reckless deeds, wondering how long an injured man could remain a shrewd investment director. “I didn’t take command. And I don’t like having my name in the paper.”

  “That’s the lot of a hero, Mr. Claybourne. And you were very heroic last night.”

  “We are lucky to be alive.” He read ahead to see if his name appeared among the injured. It didn’t.

  “If you look closely, you’ll find my name there, too. And don’t bother to look for Mayfield, Mr. Claybourne.”

  Her soft breath brushed against his neck as she leaned over his shoulder to read, “‘Claybourne and his wife were miraculously unharmed.’ See, there I am: ‘his wife.’“

  His wife.

  Now Lord Vincent and the Chancellor and all the rest of the men who mattered would know that he had married. He could see the sly winks and the knowing nods, as they assumed his marriage to be of the usual sort. It was not usual in any way. How could they know he had married a restless zephyr, a woman who would only graze his life, then pass him by like a dandelion seed in search of a more agreeable meadow?

  She was still pressed up against his shoulder, her breasts a sublime impression against his arm, a sensation that diminished the importance of the Claybourne Exchange to nothing. Her hair caressed his cheek with its soft scent of lavender, a fragrance that filled his lungs and coursed like fine Scotch through his belly.

  “The Blenwick Line is one of Hudson’s older enterprises,” she said.

  “Hudson?” He wasn’t sure what she was talking about and turned his head, only to find her green eyes focused boldly on his mouth. “What’s this about Hudson?” he asked lamely.

  He ought to listen more carefully, but he could hardly remember his own name at the moment. She lifted her gaze and it skimmed his cheek and his nose; and then she brushed her cool, damp mouth against his temple where the throbbing bruise had suddenly become pain-free, his swiftly coursing fluids diverted now to other regions.

  “I knew you weren’t listening,” she whispered, as if she knew the range of his thoughts.

  But she couldn’t know; she couldn’t. She had proclaimed her chastity quite boldly in their negotiations, had proclaimed her intention of gifting her “real” husband with her virtue.

  Damnation, but that was the predicament as he sat here in this quaint inn, awash in her scent, sharing a meal with his legal wife who wore his ring and shared his bed: he’d begun to feel altogether … married.

  He would have stood up and taken himself outside for a bellyful of cool air, but he was roundly aroused and he’d have embarrassed himself and her, and anyone else who happened by if he had tried.

  “I was saying, Mr. Claybourne, that George Hudson has owned the Blenwick Line since its beginnings. As it says there in the Times.”

  It was a bit easier to center his thoughts now that she was walking back to her chair, though her hips played enticingly against the sway of her skirt.

  “I’ll have to read the full article before I comment,” he said, his jaw aching with the grinding of his teeth.

  She yawned and gathered her papers and pencils. “I know it’s barely eight o’clock, but I can’t hold my eyes open any longer. Good night, Mr. Claybourne.”

  He waited downstairs, wanting to be certain that his wife would be deeply asleep when he entered their room. The inspectors joined him after their night at the tavern. They stayed for a while, exchanging ghoulish stories about other horrific accidents they’d investigated, managing to find a great deal of humor in their gruesome work. The distraction didn’t last. His thoughts drifted up the stairs.

  Sitting across from her and her unorthodox opinions on the train had been a seductive torture; kissing her had sent him reeling; watching her stubborn courage in the face of the tragedy had been breathtaking. And his ring had fit her so rightly.

  Now she was upstairs in bed—in his bed.

  He entered the room quietly, undressed himself down to his shirtsleeves and trousers, flipped off his shoes, and settled for the night into the small, lumpy chair near the window.

  He found wire springs where there ought to be padding, and the chair arms creaked and sagged under his leaning, but he adjusted his position a few times and finally drifted into a twilight sleep.

  “What are you doing here, Mr. Claybourne?”

  He thought she had kissed him, but it was her voice breaking close against his ear.

  “Wake up, Mr. Claybourne.” She was kneeling beside him in her serviceable nightgown.

  He shifted away from her inquest and sagged against the broken chair arm. Wondered why she’d become so interested in him all of a sudden. “Go back to sleep, Miss Mayfield.”

  “Mrs. Claybourne, remember?”

  He remembered.

  “You can’t sleep the night in this chair.”

  “I can.”

  “You’ll have a sprained neck in the morning, and you’ll be crabby and even more miserable to live with tomorrow.” She stood up and tugged at his hand. “Come sleep in the bed.”

  “No. Leave me alone.”

  Her gentle laughter fell on him like warm rain across a desert. She knelt down between his spread legs, using his bent knees as armrests. He sat bolt upright. There was a layer of wool gabardine between her palms and his skin, but it might as well have been nothing at all. Her fire leapt along his thighs like a fever.

  “Then you take the bed, Mr. Claybourne, and I’ll sleep in the chair. I’m smaller than you.” When she patted his knees, he pinned her hands down with his own to stop their movement.

  “I’m the man, Mrs. Claybourne.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I make the sacrifices.”

  She laughed and sat back on her heels. “That’ll be the day: when a man out-sacrifices a woman. And why don’t you want to share the bed? We’re married, as you pointed out so well on our wedding night.”

  He released her hands and settled back against the chair to keep an eye on her. “I’ll stay here in the chair.” Now she was fiddling with his foot. “What are you doing?”

  But she had pulled his sock off by the time he’d finished the question. “I’m making you comfortable, Mr. Claybourne.”

  “I don’t want to be comfortable.”

  “And I don’t want to suffer your crabbiness tomorrow.”

  When she lifted his foot into her lap and dug her thumbs into his arch, he grabbed the arms of the chair and let go an ungainly groan. “What are you doing, woman?”


  “Just relax. I’m not going to hurt you.”

  He heard himself making other, more protracted sounds, low in his throat, suffering bearable pain and ecstasy as she twisted his toes and ground her knuckles against the ball of his foot.

  “Mr. Claybourne?”

  “Yes?” It was difficult to say more.

  “You have a terrible scar here on your foot.”

  Shit, he’d forgotten. He yanked his foot away. Old scars given new meaning, and abounding in new threats. She would find more than one if he let her stay. “An accident in childhood. Playing where I shouldn’t have been.”

  “Looking for profits even then?”

  He froze, scowled at her and she left him. Relieved, he leaned back and closed his eyes to find his focus. But her thumbs found the knotted muscles in his shoulders, and he moaned lurched upward into her hands and let her have her way.

  “Now,” she said after a time, “come over to the bed, Mr. Claybourne. You’ll feel much better.”

  “God help me.” He stood and let her lead him witlessly to the bed. She had bewitched him, laced his wine or the air with her enchantment…

  “On your stomach, Mr. Claybourne.”

  He suffered her provoking massage and her gentle humming as he would a visit from an angel bent on killing him with inconceivable kindness. He moaned and wheezed like a shameless old accordion, aching from her touch, for it. Drifted across the sea, lifted by the sun-warmed waves to a beach with diamond sands… .

  And awoke sometime later, unconvinced that he had actually fallen asleep. But the sky was pinkening, and his wife was beside him, tangled in his pillow, his hand wrapped in her hair.

  Christ, she was beautiful. And she would be his for the coming year—for less than a year, as she kept reminding him as the days and weeks ticked—flew—by.

  What kind of madness had he brought upon them? He wasn’t the husbandly type, and she certainly wasn’t the wifely type. When, and if, he ever decided to search out a wife, he would scrutinize carefully for docility and reverent obedience to his word, deference to his good name. He’d never willingly take a wife like this one, who had stolen from him, upset his household, embroiled him in a railway disaster, and now claimed more than her share of his bed.

  And yet, he couldn’t imagine a different kind of wife than Felicity. He brushed her tumbled hair away from her cheek and she followed the course of his fingers, seeking his touch, frowning when he lifted his hand away, and dampening her lips in a sleepy pout. She’d stolen the blanket and had wrapped herself in it completely, all except one of her legs, which dangled over the far side, bare and enticing from knee to sole.

  And all this disarming magic so very few inches from him, quickening his heart as well as his flesh. That was the real danger: beyond the blatant lust she roused in him, the woman had drawn him out of London on a damnably risky venture. He had convinced himself their separate travels were a coincidence, but he knew better, and would admit it to himself now.

  He’d come to bring her a wedding ring—his ring. But she didn’t need to know that he harbored such a simple weakness.

  Like the weakness he had for her kiss.

  Chapter 14

  Felicity awoke to the sweetest pressure against her mouth and a splendid tightness low in her belly. She thought her husband was touching her most private place, but when she groaned and opened her eyes, he was standing near the bed table, working furiously to button the front of his shirt.

  “Good morning, wife,” he said briskly, looking very businesslike, sounding even more so.

  Must have been shamelessly dreaming of his kiss. Yet her lips felt damp and tasted of him. She certainly felt kissed. She sat up and gathered the blankets around her feet.

  “Are you dressing for the day, Mr. Claybourne?”

  “Yes.”

  “But it’s not yet seven.”

  “I meet with the investigators at nine.” He fought with his stock and the clip at the back of his neck.

  “Allow me.” She stood in the bed, took the neckcloth, and motioned him to turn around. He seemed transfixed for a moment on the front of her gown, then on her mouth, but he finally caught his lip with his teeth and turned away.

  “Your meeting is fully two hours from now, Mr. Claybourne. What will you do till then?”

  Hunter nearly jumped as she brushed his hair away from his collar. The graze of her finger against his nape made him tilt his head toward her hand. Yet her simple touch was the very thing he ought to deny: that subtlety of the morning, the sheltered intimacy of dressing. Domesticity.

  “I plan to dine downstairs, Mrs. Claybourne; attend to the work I brought with me; visit the site of the accident…”

  “Did you sleep well?” She lifted herself closer to her work, and Hunter held his breath as the tips of her breasts scripted her movements across his back. He shuddered in the wake of the warm tracings, fancifully certain that she had written her name there or some other testament that would someday prove his downfall.

  “I did sleep well,” he said when he’d caught his breath again. He reassembled his scattered efforts at threading his rebellious cufflink through his shirt and tried again. “Yes, yes. I slept very well.”

  “Good. I did too—after you came to bed.”

  The memory of her intoxicating massage struck him down again, gave challenge to his dexterity. He excused his desire to bed her; what man wouldn’t be stirred to insanity by her beauty, by the luscious curves that broke against her skirts and the boldness in her stare?

  When she had fastened the stock at the back of his collar, she leaned over his shoulder to whisper at the back of his ear. “Excuse me for asking, Mr. Claybourne, but were you kissing me just now?”

  He stopped the futile work on his cuff and felt his face and ears go crimson. Caught! But damnation, she was his wife, and she’d slept in the bed beside him all night.

  “When?” he asked, turning calmly in place to find her still standing on the bed.

  Her nightgown was the plainest imaginable, nothing more than a scaled-down version of the one that Ernest had loaned her. Yet that independent plainness suited her, made her all the more intriguing.

  She’s your wife.

  “When I woke, Mr. Claybourne, I thought I was being kissed, and since you were the only man in the room, I assumed—”

  “Yes, yes, I kissed you. Yes.” And if he didn’t keep close tabs on his desire, he’d do it again. He’d damn well do more than that.

  She stuck her fists into her hips, drawing the linen across her breasts, thrusting the unguarded peaks against the fabric. If she were really his wife, he would lift aside the linen and take her into his mouth.

  “That’s four kisses, Mr. Claybourne. Officially.”

  “What?” He flushed again at the direction of his thoughts, then frowned down at his cuff. “You’re counting?” He tried once more to push the link through, but gave up with a curse.

  “Let me.” She slipped off the bed and led him to the window where the light was better. “You seem to be all thumbs this morning.” As she lifted his wrist, her hair whisked across his fingers and his palm, feathery and welcome. “You also kissed me immediately after the train came to rest after the accident. Do you remember?”

  Was it possible to forget? He fit his finger through a coil of silken hair and brought it to his lips, tamped her scent into his memory.

  “I kissed you then, Mrs. Claybourne, because I was very glad you weren’t hurt.”

  “And then you kissed me again just before you lowered me into the railcar—”

  “That time was for luck.”

  “My luck or yours, Mr. Claybourne?”

  “Ours, to be sure.” He warned himself to walk away from the edge, but he couldn’t keep his fingers from playing along the soft ridge of her ear, and she leaned into his caress.

  “And what was this last kiss for, Mr. Claybourne?”

  Calling himself every kind of a fool, he laced his fingers th
rough her hair, cradled the back of her head.

  “I wanted to wish you a good morning, Mrs. Claybourne,” he said, indulging himself in her nearness, in the perfume of her sunrise. “I understand it’s a practice among some married couples.”

  “I’ve heard that, too.”

  But Felicity hadn’t felt completely married until that moment, when her husband settled his heavenly mouth on hers. A morning kiss, a kiss hello, a sweet beginning that would only mean a more bitter-tasting farewell if she kept indulging her fancies. But that was sometime distant from now; for the moment, she surrendered to this bewildering, coldhearted man, who made her feel so wonderfully alive.

  His eyes glittered darkly as he brought his fingers beside her mouth and ran his scarred thumb across the parting, drawing moisture from her lips. When she stopped his hand to tease the tip of his fingers with her tongue, he took in a half-voiced breath.

  “You shouldn’t do that, my dear.”

  Felicity was in the midst of asking why, when he slanted his mouth across hers again, fiercely and randomly.

  He hadn’t yet touched her, except to caress her face, but now he tipped her chin and slid his searing mouth along the line of her jaw, and down her neck, sliding her nightgown part way off her shoulder as he followed the swell of her breast. His odyssey caused a storm to rumble through every part of her, and made her press her hips against him in a shameless, unthinkable way.

  “Oh, my dear Mr. Claybourne! Next time make sure I’m awake before you kiss me.”

  Hunter groaned and shuddered. He’d meant only to taste her again, one sip of her. But her skin was the air he breathed and her pulse was a mate to his, and her fingers were locked insistently in his hair.

  He pulled her into his arms, fitting her against the length of him, memorizing the slope of her waist as it met her hip. There would never be another kiss like this between them. There couldn’t be. He would let her leave Blenwick on her damnable travels to Northumberland, or to the Arctic, if it pleased her. Hell, he’d finance a safari to darkest Africa if she cared to go. Anything, anywhere that put a great distance between them, to quell this terrifying feeling of contentment.