by Gayle Wilson
“My apologies for my brother’s rudeness,” he said as she approached. “He fancies himself the family patriarch. And I, as you may have guessed, have been cast in the role of the willful, prodigal son.”
“I imagine yours is no different than most families.”
She wasn’t sure on what basis she had made that judgment, never having had siblings of her own. With Anne’s eager friendship, however, for a little while it had almost seemed as if she had.
“It isn’t that I haven’t provided them with ample justification for assigning me the role,” he admitted. “And if one didn’t understand the situation we were in, then what I did in Spain might very well seem the same kind of reckless behavior in which I’ve indulged in the past.”
“What choice did you have?” she said, offering the question as condolence.
“I suppose I could have left you in France along with the other women.”
Despite his previous anger, it was obvious from his tone that he was teasing her. Or perhaps…
He was flirting again, she realized. And at the thought, her heart began to beat a little faster.
“I find that I’m very grateful you didn’t.”
“In spite of tonight?”
“Are they always like that?”
“Like what?” And when she didn’t answer, afraid of giving offense, he added, “I would really be interested in your impressions. I don’t know if it’s the time I’ve been away or the fact that I’ve become accustomed to not being treated as anyone’s little brother, but I feel almost a stranger among my own family.”
That was undoubtedly her fault. They couldn’t have been pleased to have been presented with this questionable marriage as a fait accompli.
“The earl seems…a trifle controlling.”
Sebastian laughed. “To say the least.”
“I’m sure it’s natural that they would want some say in the choice of your bride.”
Malford had suggested that the Sinclairs were both extremely wealthy and extremely influential at court. Still, even successful families welcomed the influx of money that came with marriage settlements. That was one way they remained wealthy and influential.
The Sinclairs were doubtless disappointed that the youngest brother’s wife had brought them nothing. And that was probably why Dare was so set on investigating the legality of the marriage himself, she realized belatedly.
“Perhaps they had hopes that you would marry someone who could…add to the family’s prestige.”
She had amended that thought at the last moment. It would be better not to mention the financial aspects of what she had been thinking. After all, these were his brothers. While he might feel free to criticize them, he would resent anyone else painting such an unflattering, money-grubbing portrait of them.
“You think they’re regretting your lack of dowry,” he said accurately, his voice mocking.
“My lack of a dowry. My lack of title. My lack of everything, I should think.”
“I know it must seem like that to you, but despite Dare’s performance tonight—” He stopped, the crease forming again.
“What is it?”
“My brother never does anything without having thought through all the consequences. That’s probably why he believes me to be impulsive—because he never is. And I’ve been trying to imagine why he would bring this subject up at what was supposed to be a celebratory dinner.”
“And have you?”
His lips pursed and then tightened. She waited, knowing he was trying to decide about his brother’s motives, something she obviously couldn’t help him with.
“Not yet,” he said finally, “but the more I think about it, the more sure I am that that was a performance. Dare may occasionally be rude, as he was to you tonight, but it’s always deliberate.”
“Deliberate?”
“I assume you confided in him privately that you wished to leave. Making that information public wasn’t, I assure you, a slip of the tongue.”
“I asked for his help in securing a position.”
“Doing what?”
She knew, even before she told him, what his reaction would be. “I asked him if he knew of anyone who had need of a governess.”
His shout of laughter was less subtle than Dare’s mockery, but the import of both was the same. It seemed neither believed that to be suitable employment for her.
“A governess?” Sebastian repeated disbelievingly when his laughter had died away. “And what did Dare say to that?”
“His initial reaction was the same as yours, I’m afraid. And then he offered me a position in his own nursery.”
There was a great deal of satisfaction in telling him that, at least until he laughed again.
“Now that I should like to see,” he said.
“Indeed?” she said stiffly.
It seemed he couldn’t imagine her caring for children. The truth of it was she never had. Except for Magdalena’s baby, she remembered.
As she had held that solid little body cradled in her arms, his rosebud mouth had made suckling noises as he had nuzzled fruitlessly against her breast. And it had felt wonderful.
“What is it?” Sebastian asked. Like his voice, his eyes had softened.
Embarrassed, she shook her head, knowing she could never confess what she had been thinking.
“You were thinking about something just then. Something that seemed to transform your face.”
Again she shook her head. “It doesn’t matter,” she denied, her voice unexpectedly husky. “You’re right, of course. I suppose it’s amusing to think of someone like me presiding over the earl’s nursery. I’ve never cared for a child, but I couldn’t think of any other position for which I might be even remotely qualified. It seems there aren’t many things a woman can do to support herself. Not even in England.”
A woman such as herself attempting to seek employment in Spain would be far more unthinkable. Women of her class went from being daughters to being wives. There was nothing else.
“Women aren’t supposed to have to think about supporting themselves,” Sebastian said, his voice still lightened.
“We’re all supposed to marry, of course.”
Dare had said that as well, she remembered. Husbands were supposed to provide for their wives.
“But surely there must be those who, for one reason or another, don’t marry,” she said. “What do they do?”
His answer was so long in coming that she wondered if he had never before considered the question.
“Live with relatives, I suppose. Become companions, hired or otherwise. Or governesses,” he conceded. “Some may even end up as shop girls, depending upon their station.”
“Companions?” she asked, never having heard the term, at least not in any context that made sense of what he seemed to be suggesting.
“Women who provide companionship, mostly to older ladies. They read to them. Fetch their shawls when they feel a draft. Run endless errands. As I said, some are hired and some are simply poor relations forced by their circumstances to assume the position.”
A far more distasteful way of singing for one’s supper, but beggars couldn’t, after all, be choosers.
“Would you find it less amusing if I sought a position as a companion?” she asked.
“I can think of no one less suited to that role.”
“Then—”
“Is that what you really want? To fetch and carry for some irascible old woman? Or to spend your life wiping the noses of someone else’s children?”
“My situation would be worse in Spain,” she admitted.
She wasn’t thinking of Julián. She could never go back to that. It was only with the heady freedom of the past few days, as full of peril as they had been, that she had realized the reality of that.
No matter what happened, she would never again exist in that kind of bondage. And as for making her own way in the world, her chances of doing that were much better here.
“Th
ere are other alternatives,” he said.
The word reverberated. “Alternatives other than finding employment or returning to Spain? If so, what are they? I would like to hear them. After all, I really can’t live with your family indefinitely.”
“As my wife you could.”
“The marriage—”
“The marriage” he interrupted, his voice raised to override hers, “is whatever we choose it to be.”
“I’m not sure what that means.”
“I understand your religious concerns, but you’ve admitted that those vows meant something to you when you made them. They did to me as well. It seems that should be the important part.”
“And if it turns out that those so meaningful vows weren’t legal?”
“Does that really matter? If we both consider them to have been morally binding?”
“It seems to matter to your brother,” she reminded him.
“To hell with my brother.”
“You don’t mean that,” she said. “You’re angry with him because he has questioned your actions, but…he is part of your family. You don’t really wish to be estranged from him.”
“Of course not. But I also don’t intend to let him tell me how to live my life.”
“Somehow I think he’d have a difficult time of that,” she said.
However Sebastian’s family saw him, she had always known him as a man capable of making his own decisions, even if he was forced to make them quickly and under dangerous conditions.
He laughed again, the sound pleasant in the darkness. He drew once more on the cigarillo he held before he dropped it to grind it under his boot.
“That won’t stop Dare from trying.”
“Probably not,” she agreed, smiling at him.
Somehow, in this very different setting, the same kind of ease she had felt aboard ship that night had stolen over her. Despite what Sebastian had suggested about the possibility of maintaining their marriage, she didn’t feel under any pressure to make that decision. At least not under the same kind of pressure as when she had had to make it in France.
This had been an invitation. Or, and the thought was disconcerting, a proposal, perhaps. The word conjured up the kinds of romantic images that had not been part of their hurried marriage on the docks.
“You don’t have to leave,” she said, admitting to herself how reluctant she would be for that to happen. “Not on my account.”
“Nor do you. Not on mine. But if we are going to continue to reside together under one roof, then perhaps it might be wise if we bow to the dictates of society.”
“Are you suggesting we should live as man and wife?”
“I’m suggesting that as far as I’m concerned, we are man and wife.”
Her throat was impossibly tight. She swallowed against the force of the emotion that suggestion had evoked because there was one other question that had to be answered.
“I know you felt you had no other alternative—”
“You said that before,” he said. “At dinner. I meant to tell you then, but something Dare said distracted me.”
“You meant to tell me what?”
“I can’t remember looking very hard for another alternative. The one that presented itself seemed so perfect.”
The one that presented itself…
“Are you saying that…you wanted to marry me?”
“I must have,” he said, smiling at her. “I leapt at the chance, didn’t I. You’re the one who had to be convinced.”
“If you had told me how you felt, perhaps I might not have had to be convinced,” she said, pushing the words past the knot in her throat.
Of all the things she might have expected him to say, this was the last. She had been living with the idea that he had been coerced to marry her both by her circumstances and his notions of honor. It was very difficult to accept that instead it was what he had really wanted.
“I’m not sure I knew how I felt. Not at the time. The situation had to be dealt with immediately. There wasn’t time to consider anything other than staying one step ahead of your guardian. But…I know now that if I had had the luxury of considering what I felt, I wouldn’t have done anything any differently.”
Nor would she, she realized. She had trusted him from the beginning. Considering her experience with the results of her father’s misplaced trust in Julián, that in itself had been remarkable.
“I’m not asking you to decide tonight,” he said.
“It may be that the thought of being at the beck and call of some old lady is a more enticing prospect than really being my wife. Only you can make that decision. And if the other is what you want, I won’t stand in your way. Despite Dare’s antics, he’ll help you to find a position if you are determined to do so. Be warned, however, I will never allow you to go back to Spain.”
She could see no reason not to reassure him about that, at least. Her thinking was unlikely to change, no matter what happened between the two of them.
“I didn’t realize until I was away from it what a terrible prison of guilt Julián had created for me.”
His face changed, the angles and planes hardening before her eyes. Of course, she knew how he felt about her guardian.
“Don’t think about it,” he advised. “Or about him. That’s over. The only thing you must think about now is with what you wish to replace that prison.”
“Marriage or…singing for my supper,” she said, smiling.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Something your brother suggested.”
“Dare? That arrogant bastard.”
“A family failing?”
His laughter was relaxed and unstrained. “Perhaps. Ian, however, really is the best of brothers. Steady and kind and incredibly generous of heart.”
As was his wife. And once again that sense of longing for the embrace of family was so strong as to be a compelling argument by itself for accepting what he had just offered.
Sebastian, however, deserved more than that.
More than someone who had agreed to be his wife in order to be safe or to acquire a family.
“I feel I must warn you about something else.”
Her eyes, questioning, came up to meet his. “Warn me about what?”
“If I’m lucky enough that you decide you prefer this marriage to a nursery full of children not your own or to the incessant demands of some old woman, then…”
For the first time, he seemed to be having difficulty saying what he was thinking. She didn’t prod him, letting the silence expand. The tension built as it did.
“I should probably clarify that I’m not offering you a marriage of convenience,” he said. “I don’t care about settlements or titles or whatever you may believe you lack. I care very much about the rest.”
“The rest?” she repeated, knowing full well what he meant.
Still, after thinking he had married her only because he had no choice, she had very much needed to hear him say those words.
“You,” he said softly.
You. She had nothing else to offer him, but this she could give with a free and open heart. A heart which had, she acknowledged, belonged to him for a very long time. Long before she had known it did. Perhaps even from that first day when she had stolen his sword and pressed it against his throat.
Her eyes fell to the strong brown column of his neck. She wondered if that tiny scar, along with those Julián had so cruelly cut into his face and his chest, would still be visible.
If she agreed to what he was offering, the lean, muscled body she had glimpsed that day would lie beside her every night for the rest of her life. There would be no unanswered questions between them. Nothing about either of them would remain secret or hidden.
“Does that frighten you?” he asked. Again it was almost as if he had read her mind.
“No,” she whispered.
It didn’t. She had been horrified at the thought of Julián touching her. Thank God, he never had. This, however…
Only when his thumb brushed along her cheekbone did she look up. He smiled at her, the fingers of that same hand drifting lightly down the side of her throat.
He waited, as if giving her an opportunity to deny his right to touch her. When she didn’t, he moved his hand to the back of her neck to draw her to him. As his head began to lower, his lips parting, hers opened to him as naturally as if she had kissed him a thousand times.
And when his mouth closed over hers, the sensation was exactly that. As if this were right. Long desired. And too long delayed.
It wasn’t until his lips made contact—the feel of them against hers warm and sensual—that she knew this was what she had longed for since the last time he had kissed her. That night in the king’s garden.
Then, remembering the sensation of his body pressed along the entire length of hers, she took the half step that would bring them back into that same physical contact. His arms closed around her, pulling her into an embrace that was hungry enough to rout any doubts that might have remained in her heart.
She had known the first time he’d held her that he was far more experienced than she. Now his mouth ravaged with an expertise that left her breathless, aching for something more. He kissed her a long time, his hands moving against her back and hips, urging her body closer and closer to his.
Her father had raised the magnificent Spanish Barbs like the one Julián had ridden that day down the slope to the river. Because she was her father’s heir, he had made sure that the process involved in breeding those beautiful animals had been familiar to her since childhood.
She had known that night in the garden what was happening to Sebastian’s body. And she had been made uneasy by the sheer power of his arousal. Tonight the effect that being close to her had on him was anything but frightening.
From the moment she had seen him beside the river, his body naked except for the clinging knit drawers, she had been aware of him as blatantly, undeniably male. That awareness had only increased in the days they had spent together.
Tonight the barricades between them had been breached. He was her husband. And she was his wife. Despite the unconventional ceremony that had joined them, they had both acknowledged the reality of that relationship.