Ever His Bride

by Linda Needham

  “You’re a lunatic.”

  “I probably am, but, Hunter, you must do this. Destroy the book and that will be the end of it. I promise never to ask another question. I’ll wait patiently for you to tell me your secrets.”

  “No.” He watched as she audaciously stole two pieces of wood from his pile and took them back to her own fire.

  “You trusted me tonight,” she said.

  “I had no choice.” She would always be a thief.

  “And did I fail you? Did I parade around the parlor holding aloft Hunter Claybourne’s mildewed reading book from his days as a student at the Beggar’s Academy? Did I whisper to Lord Meath that you were raised up in a slum? Have I blackmailed you for money, or power, or for an end to our marriage?”

  When he refused to say anything, she glared that insolent glare of hers and then answered for him.

  “No. No. No. And no. I did none of those things to you. Nor was I ever tempted. I don’t want to see you fail; I don’t want your money, or power; I want… I’m sorry, Hunter.”

  “Sorry for what, exactly? Sorry that you didn’t find my journal, too? Well, don’t go looking for it, madam. I never kept one. Far too dangerous.” Hunter tossed another chunk of wood into the cart, careless of his aim. “Wouldn’t want anyone to find out who I am, would I? Wouldn’t want anyone to know that my mother was a dockside whore.”

  “It doesn’t matter, Hunter.”

  He rounded on her and her charitable absolutions. “Well, it does to me, madam. My mother brought men to her bed to put food on our table.”

  He had hoped to mortify her, to send her running back into the house. But her face softened and a light wind caught up her hair, drifting it across her chest.

  “Then she must have loved you very much, Hunter.”

  “Loved me?” Tears prickled at the edge of his vision. “That’s difficult to say. I don’t even recall what she looks like.”

  His wife said nothing in reply, only stood there beside her fire, watching and listening, her eyes misting. He scrubbed his hand across his face and turned away, started gathering wood into his arms again.

  “I was a mudlark, madam, from the time before my memory. I made my living plucking flotsam from the Thames. Glass, metal, coal, the occasional corpse—”

  “Hunter, you needn’t tell me this—”

  “Oh, but isn’t that why you ask all your questions? Not a stone unturned? Well, you’ll listen now. Sit!”

  He pointed to the tree stump he’d been using as a chopping block. When she hesitated, he took a step toward her and she sat down. She would hear it all tonight, every bloody truth.

  “At the ripe old age of eight, I gave up mudlarking for stealing coal right off the barge, bold as brass: hired myself out as a laborer and then would ‘accidently’ shovel a portion over the side as the tides of the Thames allowed, day after day, would then collect my bounty in the dark of night, haul it away to then sell in small lots. And I was making good money—bought myself shoes and ate a meal every day, till I was caught by the collier and sent to a workhouse. Where, my dear, I learned the craft of making shoes for ladies.”

  “Dear God …” Her shocked little gasp gave him mild satisfaction. “I didn’t know.”

  “And for that reason I made quite a fool of myself at the Blenwick School for Apprentices, didn’t I?”

  “No, Hunter. You were very brave.”

  “Ballocks! I was that boy again, fighting for my life, for one last breath.” He went back to stacking wood, and the memories pushed at him, loosed by his wife’s hell-bent curiosity. He would sate her tonight and then he would be done with her, done with everything. It was just a matter of time.

  “I escaped the workhouse when I was nine, and went to sea. I invested my salary in the ship’s cargo and made three guineas at the close of the voyage. A sizeable sum to a boy of nine. Damn, I liked the weight of three guineas in my hand.”

  He could feel the money even now; shook his fist next to his ear, and heard the echo of his jangling fortune. Raw memories, tainted by anger, hardened by time.

  “I learned the pickpocket trade next, and added to my treasure whenever my ship was in port, investing all my ill-gotten funds in the cargo’s profits. After two years I had earned myself the tidy sum of five hundred pounds—which was exactly the amount snatched from me by a man who said he had shares to sell in a canalway. Showed me an official looking piece of paper full of words I didn’t understand, and promised me I’d be rich in a matter of weeks. My God, I was gullible.”

  Blinded by his ignorant dreams and slapdash schemes. He remembered the flush of anger and the felling shame as he stood outside the deserted office, rattling the door, the gagging truth plain as the floor beyond the window, littered with documents just like the one he held in his hand. He turned to his wife, and caught her worried frown, raised a palm against her pity.

  “Don’t waste your misplaced compassion on that ragged boy, madam, he was resourceful far beyond his years. But I understood then that I must to learn to read if I was to defend my profits in the future. So I joined myself to that venerable institution, the Beggar’s Academy. You know the place.”

  Her frown had deepened, and now her eyes flashed with the anger of the righteous, still she said nothing, offered none of her trite comforts. He moved away, added another piece of wood to her ritual fire, lifting a wall of sparks between them.

  “Six months later I bought myself a new suit of clothes and started haunting the coffeehouses, studying the shipping news and, having been a sailor, I began to see what others did not. Began taking deep profits on insurance paper, then invested in the cargoes themselves, just like the brokers at Lloyd’s. By the time I was fifteen, I was financing my own cargoes. Far too young to be taken seriously, so I invented a holding company, and I was just the clerk—’placin’ orders for th’ boss, milord’ I used to tell them, if they asked, if they noticed me at all. I hid my profits in the vaults of the Bank of England. And then, one bright day twelve years ago, I ‘arrived’ in London, on a ship from New York, speaking the Queen’s English, dressed like a young lord, my pockets lined with banknotes. And the rest, madam, you can read about in the back issues of the Times. My epilogue will be there too, should you care to follow me to the end.”

  She had said so little that he didn’t know what she was thinking. Appalled, probably. He was, still, after all these years.

  She raised her chin, spoke softly, her eyes glinting. “If you were trying to scare me away with that story, Hunter, it didn’t work. You’ve only caused me to admire you more than I did before.”

  “Because you are a fool, madam.”

  “No, husband. Because I love you.”

  His throat closed off entirely on a breath that had threatened to become a sob. Damn the woman. “You love too easily, Mrs. Claybourne. Stray children, thieving uncles, counterfeit industrialists.”

  “You’re wrong, Hunter, you’re a hard man to love. But I do, madly, as freely as I breathe. I saw through you a long time ago. I know your heart and it’s as good and fine as any I’ve ever known.”

  “Enough, wife…”

  “No! It’s time you listen to me, Hunter.” She stood suddenly, in a great fury. “I came out here tonight to burn this bloody book under your very nose. To put the whole incident behind us, forever. But you’ve made it clear that my heart-felt gesture isn’t enough for you and your fractured pride. Well, fine then. If I must throw myself on your mercy and do a bit of groveling, then I will. But first I will ask you one last question. Because your answer means everything to me.”

  “Christ, woman, have done with it! There is left nothing for me to tell. I have confessed my soul!” He stalked to where she stood beside the tree stump, thinking he’d have to wring this last question from her. “What the hell more do you want?”

  She was biting at her lower lip, looking skyward and then down at her fidgeting fingers. “I was wondering, Hunter, if you would …”

  “Damn it,
woman! If I would what?”

  “Would you…marry me?”

  “What?” Surely he hadn’t heard right.

  “I need to know, Hunter… if we were standing in your office right now, about to be married, and you knew then all that you know now, every angry word, my every fault… would you marry me again?”

  “Marry you?” He struggled for a breath, drowning in a sudden wave of loss and terror. He tore the book out of her hand. It hit the fire with the ungainliness of a slain robin, sending up an explosion of sparks. “Of all the damn fool…!”

  “Hunter, please, I have to know.”

  “You’re mad!” And there was her answer. And his. He didn’t give a damn about the book, or what the morning might bring. He’d confessed his greatest weakness to her, had handed her the power to destroy him, not out of anger or suicidal recklessness, but because he’d known all the while, to the depths of his wretched soul, that she was all the surety he needed. His secrets had always been, would always be, safe with her. She was love and trust and he wanted her to know; wanted to lose himself inside her, in this circle of light. He dragged her into his arms as if he were hauling her up from the edge of a cliff.

  “I’ll marry you again tonight, Felicity.” He caught her face between his hands, couldn’t get enough of her, speaking every word against her mouth and her eyelids and into her hair. “And tomorrow and the next day, if you’ll have me.”

  “Yes and yes and yes again!” Her eyes sparkled and her face was wet with her delicious tears. He took in a breath and lifted her in his arms, then stood her on the tree stump so he could look up into her star-born eyes.

  “It’s a marriage between us, wife, or nothing.”

  “What about the contract? Article One and Two and all the others?” He saw joy poised on her face, as if she awaited word of a great happiness. He lifted her hand and put his lips against her wedding band.

  “We’ll have a regular marriage from this day forward, unending, irrevocable.” He waited, too, for this woman to accept him as he was, common and deeply flawed.

  Her smile trembled before it broke. “An irrevocable marriage, to the man I love? Oh, yes, Hunter. Please.”

  He caught her tear-salted words with his kisses, held them as tightly as he held her. “Promise me, Felicity. Promise me—”

  “Oh, Hunter!” Felicity put her fingers to his lips— she didn’t want him to beg, or to have to ask again. “I’ll not forsake your name, Mr. Claybourne. Not ever. Nor will I ever forsake you.”

  He was smiling, at long last. A singularly magnificent smile that lodged itself inside her heart.

  “Then come to me, love.” He slipped his feverish hands beneath her skirts and slid them slowly up her cool, bare legs.

  “Married!” Her sweet husband had found the slit between her pantalets and was playing his thumbs and his fingers along the opening, teasing as if he couldn’t find his way.

  “You nearly drove me through the roof of my brougham with these drawers of yours tonight.”

  Felicity felt lighter than air standing there on the tree stump, able to fly but unwilling to leave his hands. “We’d never have made it to Lord Meath’s party, and you wouldn’t have found the book. And I—”

  He paused in his magnificent wandering and brought her face down closer to his. “Which book is that, my dear?”

  She followed his glance toward the blaze, but there was nothing left of the bloody book—only a hot, cleansing flame that sharpened the majestic angles of Hunter’s finely chiseled face. Perhaps the blood of a prince or a duke coursed through his veins—it didn’t matter, only that she pitied a father who would never know such a remarkable son.

  “Oh, nothing, Hunter, I was just— Oh, there!”

  Hunter wanted to kiss her where warm fleece and ardent flesh met pristine linen. Then, as if her thoughts were his, the bulk of her skirt dropped onto his arms, and with it, the single petticoat. He let the tangle of fabric fall around her ankles and cover the tree stump at her feet.

  “Will you never cease to amaze me, wife?” He pulled aside a pantalet leg and spread his hand inside across her belly. She was wood smoke and breezes, the damp fragrance of the earth. And she was quaking, digging her fingers into his shoulders and calling his name. He parted her gently with his fingertips, playing softly there to hear her sighs, until she was open to him like a flower. Then he slid his tongue along the sleek ridges and lush folds.

  “Yes, Hunter, do!” She gave a sighing sob, and her knees buckled. He cradled her backside and took her weight in his hands as she pressed her magnificence against his mouth. He made love to her fire, and she lifted her voice to the night wind.

  But he took his time and teased her deeply, and urged her legs apart; then kissed her there.

  “Please, Hunter,” she repeated, a whimper now, a plea.

  He slid his mouth upward, his fingers working at the annoyingly tiny buttons on her bodice. It was a workingwoman’s shirt, built like a man’s but tailored to her shape, and uncorseted. He met her hands halfway up the panel of buttons and the shirt fell open, and her firm, tawny nipples dragged across his lips and tongue, driving his need for her. He cupped her breast and played at its velvet peak, and his hand found its way back to the seductive split in her drawers, to waiting flesh and her gasping sighs.

  “I need you, Hunter!”

  Yet he wondered if she needed him as deeply, or as profoundly, as he needed her. He had almost walked out of her life; he’d offered her freedom, wealth, and she hadn’t taken it.

  “Wrap your arms around my neck, sweet.”

  She did as he bid, leaving a moan and then a flickering tongue against his ear. He lifted her backside and fit her dampness against his belly as he sat down with her on his lap. The dying fire gilded her brow, smoothing her skin to golden velvet. She was working at the buttons of his trousers, then his drawers.

  “Aren’t you cold without a shirt?” she asked.

  His “no” was more of a groan as she slipped her cool hands into his trousers and cradled him. Ice and heat, and he was blinded by ecstasy.

  “Do you think, Hunter, that Lord and Lady Meath have ever done this sort of thing?”

  “Another question? Ah, woman!” Her hands seemed to be everywhere at once, an erotic bliss pinning stars to the backs of his eyes.

  “I mean”—she whispered as she nibbled the ridge of his shoulder and fondled him—“have they ever found pleasure in their glasshouse among the bamboo and the orange trees?”

  “That isn’t the— Ahh … !” Hunter dropped his forehead onto her shoulder. He blocked the urge to sheath himself deeply; such an out-of control moment would send him over the edge, and he wasn’t yet ready to leave the circle of her arms, nor hide himself from her fiery fingers. “Not the sort of thing we discuss at the Claybourne Exchange.”

  She rocked forward and fit him against her. “I was just wondering if this was … well, ordinary.”

  “Dear wife,” Hunter said, gazing through a soft haze at the dying fire and the ring of trees and the wild halo of gold that the lamp made of her hair. “I haven’t done anything ordinary since I met you. I doubt I ever will again.”

  Her shirt hung open, exposing a perfect breast made milky in the moonlight. He lifted his hips as she enveloped him, and the pleasure was so great he went still. She sucked in her breath and held him, as motionless as he, her arms as sure as her faith in him.

  “Oh, how I love you, Hunter.” Her laughter caressed his cheek and then his shaft, and his restraint finally fragmented.

  “Wife!” He thrust himself to the hilt, a peaceful and tormenting place to be held. The love in her eyes kept him as tightly bound as her sheath, and he wondered how his dread had turned to such unfamiliar delight. Half an hour ago he had wished her out of his life, and now he couldn’t imagine living without her.

  “Come with me, Hunter. Stay with me forever.” Felicity felt the solid shaft of him quake and shudder inside her, felt the hot spill of his seed, and
followed him into an ecstasy that rolled on and on, until she was spent and drifting. And he was calling her name, calling her wife.

  She began to giggle, try as she might not to.

  “I’ll thank you not to laugh, woman.” He was still gasping for air and looked overly outraged.

  “I’m sorry, Hunter, but I suddenly had a very clear image of Lord Meath chasing after you and his wallet down Threadneedle Street—”

  “I made a point of not looking into faces.”

  She settled her cheek against his shoulder. “Well, if you ever did steal Meath’s wallet, you’ve repaid him a thousand-fold. You have everything to be proud of, Hunter—”

  “It’s not a matter of pride, Felicity.” He was still full and warm inside her, but he stood up with her in his arms, and left her aching when he slipped out of her and set her on her feet. He turned his back while he repaired the front of his trousers.

  “I am proud of my accomplishments. But you must understand that I can’t risk my reputation—I’d be crucified if they ever found out. Trust is the principal commodity of the Claybourne Exchange. My clients want secure and sizeable profits, and that’s what I give them. My honest pledge, my good name—I am made of nothing else. I’m worth nothing if I lose that to a tarnished reputation. I’m a breath away from gaining a position with the Board of Trade, and I won’t risk that for anything in this world. Not anything.”

  He seemed to have placed deliberate emphasis on the word “anything,” as if to remind her of her rank in his life.

  “I see,” she said, cursing the sting of tears for her lack of faith.

  “Felicity …” He turned back to her, looking as embarrassed as he should for making such a statement. “You see, I… it can’t be any other way for me.”

  She wanted to give him a good kick in the shins. “And you still consider me a risk?”

  “The very biggest in my life. Ever.” He seemed roundly serious and Felicity found a superior kind of contentment in the idea. If he thought her such a risk, then she must mean at least as much to him as his name, perhaps more. The poor man just didn’t realize it yet.