Ever His Bride

by Linda Needham

  And she’d known it since driving away from him in Blenwick. She loved him for all his flaws and failings, for his heroic courage, and for the goodness he hid even from himself. Loved him for all the things he didn’t say, and couldn’t understand. She loved him because he thought he didn’t want her to.

  Because he didn’t know how to love in return. She looked down at her wedding band, and decided that it was time he learned. To the devil with the contract. She was married inexorably to Hunter Claybourne, until death parted them, and it was about time she did something about it.

  But how and what? He was looking at her from the doorway and her limbs had gone warmly liquid, her fingers unsure as she raised a fire in the grate.

  “There,” she said, finally finding her voice. “A kettle heating for your bath, clean water in the bath closet. Welcome home, Mr. Claybourne.”

  “My name is Hunter,” he said, striding into the room and closing the door.

  “Yes, I know.”

  “Then use it, please, when we are in private company. A year is a very long time—”

  “Ten months, one week and six days.”

  Hunter despised the fact that she brought up the remaining time on her sentence every time he mentioned the length of their contract. And he wondered how to reconcile her eagerness to leave him with the fact that she was so perfectly acting the role of a dutiful wife: fluffing his pillows, turning down his bed. “Madam, even one day is a very long time to spend with you.”

  She gave an incensed little sniff. “Am I that much of a nuisance?”

  “That much, and more, my dear.”

  Yet he felt more at home, more welcomed home, than he had in all his life. It pleased him a great deal to think that she might have been waiting up for him; had she possibly forgiven him for his maniacal outburst in Blenwick. He pulled off his coat and tossed it into the dressing-room laundry.

  “I don’t mean to be a nuisance to you…Hunter. But that seems to be the nature of our affiliation.”

  “Indeed.” He allowed a smile and set his traveling case across the arms of the chair. Matters were proceeding well. Their words calm; she was about to pour him a glass of brandy. “An invitation from Lord and Lady Meath came to my office today—”

  “To the Exchange?” She put the glass down abruptly and took two scolding steps in his direction. “You were in London today?”

  He frowned at her attack, at the wrathful angle of her delicate brow. “Most of the day—”

  “And you sent no word?”

  He was puzzled by her sudden annoyance and decided to tread the next few steps very lightly. “I hadn’t thought to. I never have before.”

  “You haven’t been married before!”

  He ventured a smile. “No, that’s true. No one has ever cared to know where I am.”

  “Well, I do.”

  Her indignation warmed him to the marrow. She had been worried. He tried not to grin. “Ah. Then I should have sent word that I had returned to the City?” he asked, fortifying his voice with honest concern.

  She sniffed sharply again and a strand of hair fell from its moorings at her temple. “That’s the proper courtesy between a husband and wife.”

  “Interesting.” He wanted to tuck the strand behind her ear, to test the silkiness of both against his memory. “Then I shall send word to you directly should another occasion arise in the next ten months, one week and six days. Though, I will be far more constant in my communication than you were in your promise to telegraph me of your whereabouts.”

  “As I told you then, Mr … Hunter, I would have sent word that night from Blenwick.”

  “Not likely—given the circumstances.” He could taste his fear again, metallic and oily, felt it licking at his heart. “You would have been in that other railcar, Felicity. I wouldn’t have liked that.”

  “And we never would have found Giles, or Andy and Betts.”

  Hunter had purposely forgotten about the extra baggage; he looked toward the door. “Ah, yes, the children—”

  “No. They are not here, Mr. Claybourne. Though they sleep in Bethnal Green beneath warm blankets in a room heated with wood from your stores. Fresh food is delivered daily and feeds fifty or more. I’ve given them four washtubs, a crate of soap and linens, clothing and shoes, writing slates and chalk. I have ordered new schoolbooks, which should arrive very soon. I see Andy and Betts every day. And Giles is learning arithmetic. I’ve kept a detailed list of my debts to you. You’ll find it on your desk, near the ledger where you’ve listed my other expenses. This, too, is a loan, and I will pay back every penny when my uncle returns from the gold country—

  “Felicity—”

  “Please don’t start an argument, Hunter, not when you’ve only just arrived and there is this peace between—”

  “Felicity—I meant only to ask how they were.”

  She looked sideways at him, righteously skeptical. “They are doing very well, thank you.”

  “Then, I’m pleased.”

  Felicity didn’t believe him, but she lifted his neatly folded shirts from his traveling case. They carried his scent of lime and spices, and she resisted the urge to bury her nose in the linen.

  “I’m not a monster, you know.” He pulled off his neckcloth and unbuttoned his collar. It sprang back from his throat like the wings of an angelic beetle. She fought back a highly inappropriate giggle.

  “Nor am I, whatever you believe..”

  “I’m quite sure of that, Felicity.” His voice had a habit of rolling down her spine and lodging very low in her belly. She had missed that, too.

  She carried the shirts to the laundry hamper in his dressing room, feeling a great deal of heat at the back of her neck. He was leaning against the doorway, unbuttoning the back of his collar, when she turned to leave the small room.

  His eyes had gone very soft, and her muscles felt like plum jelly as she crossed beneath his gaze.

  “The world can be a horrible place. But I don’t mean to hurt anyone, Hunter.” She pulled out his folded trousers and his extra coat, and draped them across the back of the chair. “Least of all innocent children.”

  “I’m sure of that, too.”

  He was being quite understanding, and she wondered how far his goodwill would travel. “That’s not what you said at Blenwick. You were not very complimentary.”

  He grew quiet for a moment and seemed to consider his answer carefully. “I was … angry. Angry at you and at the likes of Rundull.”

  She felt the sting again, unjustly condemned. “Lumping us together? You are unfair—”

  “And you are not at all like Rundull. That isn’t my point, at all.” He lifted his hands as if the right words were out there to be grabbed. “It’s just that, in my circle…” He glanced at her, and then away, idly lifting the cover of a book. “In my life … I see the competitive aspects of charity, and it has always galled me. Lady Jerganson making the rounds in the boxes at the Opera House, begging donations for distressed hatmakers; and when Lady Tuckworth gets wind of her rival’s new charity, she starts one of her own for distressed, lame hatmakers. And neither woman has a clue what these hardworking hatmakers really need.”

  It seemed odd to her that he’d given this much thought to charity, when he was so very uncharitable.

  “But, Hunter, wouldn’t you think that the hatmaker would rather grumble about his lot on a half-filled stomach than on a completely empty one?”

  He looked up at Felicity, and she was heartened to see a calmness about his eyes. “I don’t know, madam. Perhaps Lady Jerganson ought to ask the hatmakers directly. But she never will.”

  “Is that where I went wrong, Hunter?”

  “You haven’t gone wrong, exactly. It’s just that I’ve met so many of these dewlapped, moist-eyed, philanthropic matrons and their—”

  “Dewlapped!” Felicity grabbed a pillow off the bed and hurled it at Hunter. The lout ducked and it missed him. She launched a second pillow and caught him smack in th
e face as he turned back to her. “Moist-eyed? Is that how you see me?”

  “Felicity—”

  “I am no matron, Mr. Claybourne! Dewlapped or otherwise.”

  He grunted as he grabbed the next pillow out of the air, and then she recognized true mayhem in her husband’s eyes. He started toward her, and she let out a scream. She swung around the bed post, and he followed in his steady stride, a self-possessed smile on his lips.

  “And I’m no easy target to be buffeted by pillows, my dear.” He came effortlessly around the corner of the bed and reached for her. She hit him in the head with another pillow, then dived across the mattress on her hands and knees.

  “Not so fast, woman.” He caught her by the ankle and she screeched, flipped her onto her back, baring her legs to his gaze. He hauled her ever closer to him across the mattress.

  “Mind my nightclothes, sir!” But then her thighs were bare, and then her hips, and then so was the patch of her womanhood—and he was looking!

  At everything!

  “Mr. Claybourne!”

  “The name is Hunter,” he said, as he knelt down on the floor and pulled her over the edge of the bed to a kneeling position between his legs. He was smiling, and his eyes were a dense and smoky gray. “If I’m to see that much of you, my dear wife, you’ll have to call me Hunter.”

  “I’ll call you a libertine!” But she felt wonderful, even as she tried to tug down her hem to cover her nakedness. But his eyes were lit with brimstone. He caught her hands and pinned them back against the bedside. “Let me straighten my nightgown, sir!”

  She was naked from the underside of her breasts downward, and forced against the silk of his waistcoat. Her knees were spread between his thighs and pressed into the carpet. She must be blushed crimson all the way to the soles of her feet.

  “Fear not, wife,” he said in a voice that had gone marvelously husky, “I can’t see much from here.”

  “But you did see, sir!”

  His sigh was light and roguish. “I cannot deny it.”

  A delicious, lime-scented heat poured off him, seeping into her skin from his clothing. “A gentleman would allow me to right my clothing.”

  “I am not a gentleman, as you well know.” He caught her completely naked hips with his overwarm, overlarge hands, and fit her even deeper between his thighs. “But I am your husband.”

  “Yes, but you’re not a regular kind of a husband.” Her embarrassment was too quickly deserting her efforts to regain a measure of control, even while her belly was pressed scandalously, deliciously, against his trousers.

  “I may not be a regular husband. But I’m not made of flint.” He teased her ear with his lips, leaving traces of his breath to tickle at her neck. “But you are made of sunlight, my dear. And I want you.”

  “Want me?” She found herself plagued by a huge curiosity. Strangely open-minded toward the way he played his mouth along her jawline, she bent her head and lent him access. He was her husband, after all, regular or not. This was entirely legal and moral. And wonderful.

  “God, yes, I want to drink your sunlight.”

  Hunter fought to keep his voice even and his hands still of wanderlust. Dear God, if he had been able to explore at leisure the poetry that had sailed past his eyes, he might have drowned in bliss! Pink, pristine flesh, lean thighs, a triangle of golden curls, and a softly cleaving shadow that had begged his hand as well as his mouth. He couldn’t let go of her just yet. Not yet.

  “My dear, you have me thinking things I oughtn’t be,” he whispered, as he coursed his tongue along the ridges of her ear.

  “What sort of things, Hunter?”

  His answer was interrupted by the sound of footsteps clattering down the hallway. A sharp rap sounded on the door.

  “Mr. Claybourne, sir! We heard a scream!”

  Hunter didn’t move, and took heart that his wife hadn’t either.

  “Sir, are you there?”

  “Yes, Branson,” Hunter said, feeling remarkably at peace, as if he were sitting in his chair perusing the Times, not squatting on his chamber floor with his wide-eyed, half-naked wife caught with her knees spread apart between his thighs. “I’m here.”

  “Sir, I went to Mrs. Claybourne’s room, thinking she needed our assistance, and … she’s not there.”

  He felt every beat of her heart as it thundered against his chest. “She’s here with me, Branson.”

  There was a pause on the other side of the door, then a voice of deep concern. “Are you all right, Mrs. Claybourne?”

  Felicity looked up into her husband’s smoldering eyes and decided she was quite all right. She had missed him while he was away. And the very idea was significant, made her want to kiss him, made her want to squirm beneath his hands. He had the manners of a mule, and ideas that needed changing, but she knew above everything that he had no intention of hurting her tonight or any other night, and that thought sent her heart and her hopes soaring.

  “Yes, Branson,” Felicity said plainly and loudly. “I’m … in very good hands, thank you.”

  Her husband’s eyebrows rose quite charmingly.

  A throat cleared politely in the corridor. “Very well. A good night, then, to you both. And welcome home, sir.” Branson’s footsteps receded.

  She hadn’t taken her eyes off Hunter. He canted his head and asked, “In very good hands, madam?” He grinned and splayed his fingers across her bare bottom, laying down prints of heat like a brand. “I’m glad you think so.”

  “I didn’t mean—”

  “Oh, yes you did. Every word.” He closed his eyes as he shaped his extraordinary hands over her backside as if he were inspecting a summer melon for its ripeness. “You are very cool here, wife.”

  Feeling altogether wanton, Felicity kissed the underside of his bristly jaw. “There’s a knavish breeze whisking around on the floor, sir. Just above the carpet.”

  His rumbling growl blew across her lashes, and she was suddenly looking up into his eyes, and riding the rise and fall of his chest. “Lucky fellow, that breeze. Wish I were there.”

  His wild words sent a surging rush of outrageous pleasure to clog her veins. He was smiling as he leaned closer, as he glided his tongue along the arc of her lips, and then between them with an agonizing leisure.

  She sighed and leaned against him. From the moment he had dragged her off the edge of the bed and fit her against him, she had noticed a length of hardness just below his waist, a formation which seemed even harder at the moment, and very much larger than earlier. Her hand was eager to discover the source, but there was no room between them, so she moved her hips instead.

  That drew a gasp from him, and he reared up. “Take care, Felicity!”

  He looked dazed, his mouth damp and his smile crooked and flickering. But she liked the roll of his hardness against her belly, her woman’s wool against the wool of his trousers.

  She recalled the Greek statues in the British Museum. Hunter’s apparatus seemed to be doing something completely on its own. And his face had gone enchantingly red.

  “Welcome home, Hunter,” she said, wondering when his eyes had stopped being so darkly opaque, when they’d become bright and clear.

  “Yes, home,” he whispered, in the bare moment before he covered her mouth with his, before he began to tug and nibble and make delicious sounds in his throat. Before his magic roared through her chest and lit the ends of her fingers and caused her to want to ride his hips with her own.

  She welcomed his tongue as if it were the most natural thing in the world to be kissing with her mouth open. He was a devastatingly thorough explorer, discovering her sighs and her soft moaning. She brushed her tongue hesitantly against his. He must have approved; he groaned and ground his hips against hers and met her tongue in a frenzied dance.

  He came up clamoring for air, still kissing her temple. “Madam, you taste more sweet than I remembered.”

  She loved the way his words caught against her hair, moist and textured by the i
nsistent softness of his mouth. “I don’t recall being quite so completely kissed before this.”

  He smiled like a rogue and studied her, his chest steaming like a locomotive. “Never? Not by anyone?” He drew a finger from her chin to the base of her throat. “What about all those other men you liked to kiss?”

  She remembered too late that she had professed to having kissed numerous other men, but found no shame in being forthright with this truth. “Fictional, every one of them.”

  Her confession drew an arrogantly possessive smile from him. “I’m pleased to hear it.”

  She’d expected a chiding remark; instead, he touched her mouth reverently with his fingers and followed with a tender, worshipful kiss that quickly deepened until she had twined her arms around his neck and buried herself in his embrace.

  “Hunter …” Her skin was flushed with some kind of magical energy that made her want to open herself to him. His mouth had become unyieldingly hot and hard, and traveled to the limits of her nightshirt. She had climbed so deeply into his arms that he was forced back onto his heels, and now she sat brazenly astride his lap, her bare legs spread indelicately, her tender, swollen flesh at the junction of her thighs snuggled against the wool of his trousers and all that simmering hardness just below—oh, to have him touch her there.

  “You were saying, wife?”

  She’d had a thought in there somewhere, something important and far-reaching. Yes, she remembered it. “Can a child come from kissing in this way?”

  Hunter heard himself groan. “Not directly.” He let himself be drawn into another of her consuming kisses, until he was toying dangerously with the buttons that fastened the front of her gown, and with the irrational idea of undoing them.

  “Indirectly, then?”

  “There comes a point of no return.”

  “And are we near it?”

  He’d been near it ever since he’d met her. “I don’t know, Felicity.”

  “Would you know where that point was? I mean … if we got too close to it?”

  “I’m sure I would know exactly.” Then the straining at his groin would be freed of its prison and she would be lush and wet. She was near enough just now, and wriggling, only a few buttons between the root of him and her sleekness.