The Chaperon Bride (Harlequin Historical)

by Nicola Cornick

  ‘I am no chemist,’ Adam said, frowning, ‘but I assume that the gunpowder and the sulphur water combined in some way to tarnish the silver—’

  ‘Except for the coins at the very top of the bag,’ Edward finished, ‘which were undamaged.’

  ‘Poor Mr Ingram,’ Annis said. ‘His whole ill-gotten fortune mouse-eaten and tarnished. He may be a ruthless businessman, but he is a hopeless criminal.’

  There was a pause whilst they all tried to look suitably sober, then everyone burst out laughing.

  ‘Are you certain that he got away?’ Della asked. ‘For all that I detest the man, I could not bear him to be torn to pieces by the mob.’

  Adam’s smile faded. ‘He is safe,’ he said shortly. ‘We chose the men carefully tonight and they had their instructions.’

  ‘What will happen to Ingram now?’ Annis asked. ‘Will he be prosecuted?’

  Charles nodded. ‘I believe so. There is sufficient evidence from the bank note and the gold for a number of difficult questions to be asked. The insurance companies will be very interested. And the Admiralty will probably put a watch out for a ship answering the description of the Northern Prince. Even if Ingram escapes prosecution he is ruined. I imagine he may well run away abroad.’

  ‘I am sure he will,’ Edward said quietly. ‘He is a laughing-stock. The whole of Harrogate society will dine out on this for weeks.’

  Annis shivered. ‘It was very humiliating for him, was it not? I confess to feeling not quite comfortable seeing a man brought so low.’

  Adam’s face was hard. ‘Annis, even when the man was at his lowest ebb he was scrabbling in the grass for his money! That was all that mattered to him.’

  ‘You are too forgiving, coz,’ Charles agreed. ‘Remember how he threatened to take Starbeck from you.’ His voice was bleak. ‘Think, if you will, of the people who were thrown off their land by him, the men who could no longer scrape a living, the tolls that were too high…People have almost starved and died through Ingram’s greed and cruelty.’ He laughed shortly. ‘I thought you were remarkably measured tonight, Ashwick.’

  There was a little silence.

  ‘What of the rioting?’ Annis asked. ‘Do you think that that will be at an end now, Charles?’

  ‘I imagine so. Ellis Benson stirred much of that up; now that Ingram is brought down, Ellis will be much more at peace. Besides, without Ingram to impose his harsh rents and tolls, I imagine that the unrest in the countryside will die away.’

  Charles looked at Adam. ‘I am sorry that you are the loser from this case, Ashwick, having paid Lord Tilney’s debt to Mr Ingram. If he has embezzled money from the sinking of the Northern Prince, all debts must be null and void, but I doubt if you will see your money again. We will have to see what we can do.’

  Adam held out his hand. ‘It is enough to know that Ingram is brought down, Lafoy.’ He grinned. ‘Although the money would come in handy as well!’

  After Mrs Hardcastle had taken Charles and Della and Edward up to their improvised bedchambers, Annis turned to Adam.

  ‘I must go up in a minute, for I am sharing a chamber with Della and would not wish her to imagine that I am staying down here with you, Adam.’ She looked dubiously at the hard couch. ‘Will you be quite comfortable? I seem to remember that this sofa was lumpy even in my father’s day!’

  Adam sighed, rubbing his cheek against her hair. ‘I have no doubt that I shall be very uncomfortable, my sweet, not least because I shall be imagining you sleeping so close by! As for Della, I hope that you find she is in your chamber! I should hate to have to call Lafoy out when I am starting to like him so much!’

  Annis smiled. She rested her head briefly against his shoulder. ‘I am so glad, Adam. And I do believe they shall be very happy.’ She yawned and stood up. ‘I am for my bed. As for the proprieties, we should not worry. What could be more respectable than having a vicar in the house?’

  ‘The rabble-rousing vicar of Eynhallow!’ Adam laughed. ‘Sometimes I think that Ned was born in the wrong century!’

  The wedding guests arrived from London the following day and despite Annis’s qualms about meeting Adam’s friends, she had to admit that for the most part they seemed harmless. The Duke of Fleet was indeed so thoroughly charming that Annis could quite see why Miss Mardyn had chosen him as her protector. The Earl of Tallant, despite being one of the most handsome man that Annis had ever met, was pleasantly self-deprecating and so utterly in love with his sweet little wife that it brought an ache to Annis’s throat to see them together. Only Lady Juliana Myfleet, the Earl’s sister, was a different matter. She kissed Adam far too lingeringly for Annis’s taste, purred that Annis had caught the man she had always wanted to marry, then went on to entertain the company with malicious observations about various mutual friends. Since Annis had never met any of these people she felt pointedly excluded and certain that Juliana was doing it on purpose. She felt herself becoming quieter as dinner wore on that night, answering only briefly the questions put to her, her insecurities threatening to come back and swamp her. After the scene with Adam in the kitchen at Starbeck she had not had the opportunity to speak with him, for first there had been the matter of trapping Ingram and then all the wedding guests had arrived, taking all Adam’s time and his attention. Consequently there had been no moment for private discussion and there was still one matter left unspoken between them.

  ‘You must not mind Juliana,’ Amy Tallant said shyly that night as she accompanied Annis upstairs after dinner. ‘She is not happy and so she sharpens her claws on other people. She is particularly sharp with those who have what she does not—love.’

  Annis grimaced. ‘Adam has intimated that she has had an unhappy past.’

  Amy nodded. ‘In the same way that Adam loved Mary, Juliana was sincerely in love with her first husband, but whereas Adam has found love again, we despair of Juliana ever being happy.’

  When Amy had left her, Annis felt too wakeful to go to her room. Tomorrow was her wedding day and she knew that she should try to sleep, but she felt too restless. She took up her cloak, intending to go for a walk in the gardens. She knew that Adam would be busy entertaining his male guests, but she needed some reassurance, some element of him to hold to her. She went out of her bedroom and, on impulse, pushed open the door of Adam’s dressing room. After a moment’s hesitation, she slipped in. The clothes that Adam had been wearing before dinner had not yet been put away and, succumbing to temptation, Annis went over to the bed and picked up his jacket, slipping her arms into the sleeves. It was far too big for her. She wrapped it about her and turned her face against the collar, rubbing her cheek against the rough twill, inhaling the scent of him. It smelled of smoke and sandalwood and Adam. It turned her knees to water.

  Annis closed her eyes. She loved Adam so much and she knew she did not have to be afraid of anything. This was no marriage trap and with the right man she was as free as she chose to be. She could fly but she would never fly away, for she did not want to. Adam had taken her on trust, not forcing her to tell him what had happened to her but giving her all of the time she needed to reach the point where she would choose to trust him too.

  There was a step in the doorway. Annis opened her eyes. Adam was standing there, watching her. His face was in shadow, his expression hidden. Annis suddenly realised that she was still wearing his coat. She slipped it from her shoulders and dropped it on the bed.

  ‘I was coming to look for you,’ Adam said. ‘You were so quiet at dinner that I was worried about you.’ His voice was a little rough. His gaze went from her to the discarded jacket and back again. ‘Annis?’

  ‘I would like to talk to you, Adam,’ Annis said softly. ‘May we? Not here.’ She gestured around the candlelit room. ‘It is a pleasant night. I should like to talk outside.’

  Adam stood back wordlessly to allow her to precede him through the door. They went down the stairs in silence and out into the night. The lighted windows of Eynhallow Hall faded into the dark b
ehind them. The stones of the carriage sweep were sharp through Annis’s slippers. She crossed on to the soft grass and made for the edge of the wood, slipping under the arch of the trees and into the heart of the forest. She could hear Adam’s footsteps behind her, the crack of the twigs beneath their feet, the sound of his breathing. Neither of them spoke.

  Annis reached a small clearing where the moon spun patterns through the trees and turned to face him.

  ‘That night when we were in the kitchen at Starbeck…I was going to tell you then what I had been afraid of, Adam—the reasons that I held back from marriage. I am sorry that I could not tell you before.’

  ‘Do not be. It was not the right time.’

  ‘And now it is? You have been very patient with me, Adam.’

  She saw the shadow of his smile. ‘I told you before that I was prepared to wait for what I wanted. You have not kept me waiting very long at all, Annis.’

  Annis sat down on the stump of a tree.

  ‘I never wanted to marry again. You knew that—I told you from the first. It was not because I was afraid of intimacy, or…or that I had had an unpleasant experience in the past, at least not in any physical sense.’

  Adam took her hand. ‘I never thought that. At least, I wondered if that was the case at first, but then I realised that you were not repulsed by my touch, nor were you afraid.’ He entwined his fingers with hers.

  Annis gave a shaky laugh. ‘I must beg you not to touch me yet, or I shall never finish the story.’

  ‘Very well. I can grant you a few moments at least.’

  ‘It was another sort of intimacy I dreaded.’ Annis hesitated. ‘I married at seventeen, immediately after my parents died.’ She sighed. ‘I suppose that they had spoiled me. The time I spent in Bermuda that summer had been the best of my life. I ran wild in the sand and the sunshine, I was unsuitably tanned, and I knew I was frowned upon by the ladies who had transported English society rules out to the Indies with them, but I did not care.’ She smiled at Adam. ‘I was heedless and a hoyden, and then my father was killed in a naval action and my mother went into a decline and died, and the whole structure of my life came crashing down.’ She looked away. ‘I had not realised until then how gravely I had transgressed. The whole weight of a disapproving society seemed to be resting on me, forcing me to conform. I was left almost penniless and there were rumours…Oh, unfounded ones, of course, but the kind of gossip that circulates when a girl is different and a little wild.’

  She jumped to her feet and took a few paces away.

  ‘Sir John Wycherley offered me security. He was older and comfortably off, and he had the gallantry to offer me the protection of his name. I was in a haze of grief and loneliness; I had no money…I took the offer.’

  ‘That is understandable. Your parents had both died and you were left with nothing.’ Adam’s voice was rough. ‘You cannot blame yourself for such a decision, Annis.’

  ‘Yes, but I had no notion what it would mean!’ Annis turned to him. ‘Oh, Adam, I was seventeen and I was trapped into a domesticity that almost swallowed me alive! I had no time to myself, no money of my own, no identity! I was Annis, Lady Wycherley, not Annis Lafoy any more, and I had to eat, sleep and behave as my husband demanded. Why, John chose my clothes and my friends and if I were to go out alone, he would demand that I account to him for every second that I spent away!’ Annis put both hands up to her head. ‘Worse, he would lock me up if it suited him, and dictate my every move! Before long I thought that my very identity would disappear, utterly submerged beneath the woman that Sir John Wycherley had fashioned. I felt so trapped that it made me ill.’

  There was a silence.

  ‘No wonder that you had no wish to submit yourself to a husband ever again,’ Adam said quietly.

  ‘No.’ Annis swallowed hard. ‘I tried to disregard my fears, but I could not quite do it. But it was marriage that I wished to avoid, Adam, never you yourself.’ Annis hesitated. ‘Deep down I think that I knew it would not be like being married to John. I knew that you and he were completely different people. Yet I was so afraid. I had worked so hard to achieve some freedom. That was why I could not bear to give up Starbeck even when I could not afford to keep it. That was why I found it so difficult to agree to marriage even when I had no way out.’

  Adam put his arm about her and pulled her against him. ‘And now?’

  ‘Now I realise that marriage to you will not be a cage but…’ Annis smiled a little tremulously ‘…an adventure, perhaps?’

  Adam kissed her.

  ‘I swear I shall never bully you, or tyrannise over you, or tell you what to do.’ He spoke into her hair. ‘I love you, Annis. I love you exactly as you are and I would never want to change you.’

  Annis played with one of the buttons of his coat, suddenly shy at what she was about to say. ‘Adam—’

  ‘What is it, sweet?’

  ‘I love you, Adam. Will you make love to me? Here, in the woods, with the smoke on the air and the touch of the breeze on my skin…’

  There was a moment of absolute stillness, then Adam’s grip tightened on her with bruising intensity.

  ‘Annis, are you sure? For once I have done that I shall never let you go.’

  Annis stood on tiptoe to kiss him. ‘I do not want you to let me go. Please…’

  The pent-up feelings between them could no longer be denied. Adam’s kiss was violent in its intent and its effect, seeking, searching, demanding everything. Annis pulled away a little, tilting her head back, a hot triumph racing through her blood. The kick of excitement was like a fever.

  Adam found the ribbon that tied her cloak and gave it a tug, so that it unfurled and the velvet slid to the ground in a slippery pool. The night was warm but Annis still noticed the loss. It was as though some part of her had been stripped away, some protection had gone. There was no going back.

  Adam’s hands were hard on her waist, holding her still as he kissed her again, his tongue tangling with hers. One of his hands came up to her breast, pulling apart the bodice of her gown, sending buttons flying. His warm fingers cupped her breast through the thin linen of her chemise and Annis crumpled to the ground. The leaves of a previous autumn and the soft, dry bracken provided a makeshift mattress, but neither of them was really noticing. All Annis was aware of was the cold breeze against her heated skin and the wood smoke in the air…She was naked to the waist and Adam had taken one nipple in his mouth, sucking, biting, teasing until she thought she would dissolve with blind need. She moaned aloud and he covered her mouth with his in a deep, possessive kiss. Her skirts were up around her waist, her legs parted, the cold night air against her skin. And then he was bending over her, his lips again roughly demanding as he spread her arms wide, entangling his fingers with hers on the bed of bracken as he slid hard and fast inside her.

  There was a momentary pause—she felt it, he felt it too. Then he started to move, the sleek friction dragging a whimper from her as she felt the desire shudder through her body. So soon, so quickly. She felt herself tumble over the edge of mindless pleasure, powerless to help herself.

  Some semblance of normal thought returned and she tried to pull away from him, belatedly aware, wanting to cover her nudity. But Adam was desperate too. He held her arms apart, his gaze feasting on her nakedness as she writhed with pleasure, beneath him in the moonlight. Hot and hard, the relentless rhythm would not let her go. Annis thought she would faint from the very sensation of it. Then he gave a shout that would have raised all the birds from the trees, and drove into her with all his urgent need, finally reaching his release. And Annis, astonished and bewitched at the power she had over him, felt the same sensual desire capture her again and send her spiralling down into bliss.

  For a while they lay still, wrapped in the velvet cloak. Adam’s arms were about her. He refused to let go. After a while he said softly, ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  Annis wriggled a little. His body felt warm and hard against hers and she could n
ot remember a time when she had felt so happy and so absolutely free.

  ‘Tell you what? That I had never been with a man before? I did not wish you to make a fuss. You would have insisted that we be all decorous the first time, in bed…’ Annis laughed and moved languidly. ‘This was much better. This was what I wanted.’

  ‘How did it happen?’

  ‘You mean how did it not happen?’ Annis laughed. ‘My husband was not interested in women.’

  ‘You mean—’

  ‘I do not know if he was interested in men instead. Possibly so. At first I thought it was me.’ She paused. ‘Then I observed him with other ladies and realised that they did not interest him at all. In fact, I believe that he held a very low opinion of our sex. There are plenty of men who do.’

  ‘You never wished to take a lover?’

  ‘Never, until now.’ Annis rubbed her hand along the line of his jaw. ‘And now it is too late, for I am about to be married to him.’

  Adam kissed her again, softly. ‘Do you wish to go back inside and make love again?’

  ‘Again?’ Annis smiled, her face dreamy in the starlight, her tone bemused. ‘May we?’

  Adam laughed. ‘Annis, you delight my soul. We may, if you wish it. I swear it will be better next time.’

  ‘It is difficult to imagine, but if you will show me…’ She caressed his cheek. ‘Must we go back inside?’

  ‘Not if you prefer it here.’ Adam’s voice had roughened again. He spread the cloak under them and stripped her of her remaining clothing. The moon had risen. She was edged in silver, tip-tilted breasts, smooth skin and shadows.

  ‘Your clothes too…’ She sounded dreamy.

  ‘Of course.’

  He lay beside her, half-covering her, his hands smoothing, stroking. They kissed, languid and warm where they touched. It was gentle and urgent. Annis, running her hands over the planes of his body with love and wonderment, could not quite believe that it could be true. Or that she could know such ecstasy. Adam bent his head to her breast and his fingers stroked the inside of her thigh. Annis squirmed.