“Shall I send for Sir Wallace?” Her mother bustled in and took Delilah’s hands.
“I will never wed Sir Wallace, and if I accept banishment, how can I be sure you and Father will not force a match with someone equally odious in the future?” As if she knew how much her decision would hurt her parents, she said gently, “I have accepted Marcus.”
Bancroft’s face turned stony. “You’ll not get a farthing from me, Wyndam.”
“Delilah is prize enough.” Marcus turned to her. “How long will it take you to pack? I have a special license and a rector ready to marry us.”
“Now?” The reality of her decision was writ as trepidation across her face.
“Now. Pack a valise with only the necessities. Your parents can send your trunk on to the estate.” He didn’t want to give the killer time to track her to her town house or give the Bancrofts time to lock her away from him. Their gazes held, and he wished he could interpret the myriad of emotions.
“I’ll be but a few moments.” She left him to face the lions alone.
The silence was dark and distrustful. If a sword had been at hand, Mrs. Bancroft would have attempted to run him through. Mr. Bancroft regarded him with only slightly less violence in his eyes.
He took a step backward, putting himself closer to the door and farther from the Bancrofts. “I realize this situation isn’t ideal, but I’ll care for Delilah. I’ll protect her.”
“With what?” Mr. Bancroft leaned over his desk, his fists driving into the wood. “Your father left you with nothing. Not even a scrap of honor.”
“That is a lie.” Was it though? Through the lens of Society, he had nothing, and by taking his name, Delilah would have nothing as well. Had he done the right thing in offering her marriage?
The time to wrestle with his scruples had passed. Delilah returned clutching the handles of a fine leather valise. A matching blue spencer covered her blue dress—her wedding dress—and a reticule hung from her wrist.
“I’m ready.” Her shoulders were back and her chin up, but the waver in her voice betrayed her nerves.
Marcus forgot about her parents and went to her, taking the valise. “I may not be the richest of husbands, but I promise to do my best for you, Delilah. Do you trust me?”
“I followed you out a window, didn’t I?” she whispered only for him. One corner of her mouth turned up in the meagerest of smiles. “How hard can it be to follow you out a door?”
Kirby opened the door and watched Marcus leave as if he were a rodent. Delilah hesitated with one foot on the stoop and one in her home—her former home. Her parents stood in the entry, her mother sobbing on her father’s shoulder as if they were grieving for a child lost to them forever.
“Goodbye.” Her soft voice echoed against the marble as she turned and held her hand out to him.
Delilah had chosen him, and he promised himself he would keep her safe.
Chapter 10
With tears blurring her vision, she allowed Marcus to lead her to the black hackney waiting in front of the town house and hand her inside. O’Connell tipped his hat to her from the opposite squab and smiled, his eyes scrunching under his fuzzy eyebrows. “M’lady.”
“Not yet, but I suppose I will be soon enough. How are you this morning, O’Connell?” She did her best to beat back the threatening tears. This was her wedding day, after all.
“Right enough. I wasn’t sure the laddie would talk you away from your family.” The man’s smile didn’t disappear, but worry stole his twinkle.
The parting with her parents had been more painful than she’d imagined. The finality of it had been funereal. “You’re my family now.”
O’Connell patted her knee in a paternal fashion. His hand was large and worn with deep grooves and calluses. She grabbed hold and gave it a squeeze. It was a small comfort, but a comfort nonetheless.
Marcus swung inside, sitting close to her, his thigh touching hers. The hack jolted forward. Dust motes danced in the early morning light.
“Where are we going?” Her life had shifted course, and she was blind to the coming twists and turns.
“Chelsea Old Church. A childhood friend took the orders and will marry us.”
The speed with which everything was happening disoriented her. She would be a married woman by teatime, and no longer a maiden by morning. Stealing a glance at Marcus, she let her gaze linger on his bare, broad hands. A flutter of excitement broke free from her nerves like a butterfly from a cocoon.
Silence settled over the three of them. The journey seemed to take forever, yet at the same time, she wasn’t ready when the hack pulled to a stop in front of the redbrick church. It wasn’t as large or intimidating as the grander cathedrals around London.
Marcus helped her out of the carriage and tucked her hand in the crook of his arm. O’Connell followed with her satchel. When Delilah cast her gaze toward the old man, then up at Marcus, he answered her unasked question. “O’Connell will act as witness and stand as my friend. I hope you don’t mind.”
“Not at all.” Delilah turned away to hide a sudden spate of emotion. She had no one to stand with her.
Marcus sent O’Connell ahead of them and pulled her to a stop before entering. She looked at their feet, but he tilted her face up with a gentle finger under her chin. She blinked until he came into focus through her stinging eyes.
“I realize this is not ideal. I would have liked to have properly courted you, but outside forces forced my hand. Do you want me to take you back home?” he asked in a low rumble.
“I have no home.” Her voice was thick.
“Of course, you do. Your home is with me, but only if that’s what you truly want.”
He looked so worried. She leaned into him and laid her forehead against his neck, not sure if she was seeking or giving comfort. A deep breath calmed her. She had no idea if she would come to regret her choice, but hope broke ground. Life with Marcus would be an adventure.
“This is what I want.” Weak sunlight shimmered through the gray sky, illuminating spring’s new growth before being swallowed by a cloud. A brief shining moment of clarity. “I want you.”
The kiss he gave her wasn’t marked with passion, but a promise. One she returned in equal measure.
After being introduced to Vicar Allenby, the ceremony was over before the quarter hour chimed. She and Marcus signed the registry. A steady drizzle greeted them outside, and O’Connell trotted off on his bandy legs to hail a hackney.
“What now?” she asked.
“I’ll secure us a room at an inn. Gilmore’s assignation at Fieldstones is this evening. Depending on what I discover, we will retreat to the country as soon as we can.”
While Delilah didn’t miss his use of the singular pronoun, her thoughts took a more practical bent. “Can’t we stay in your rooms?”
“While it’s not as exclusive and strict as the Albany, women are not allowed.” Even Delilah had heard of the Albany’s ban of the female sex. “I’ll need to gather my personal items and direct O’Connell to begin packing for our move to the castle.”
The castle. It sounded like something out of one of her novels.
A hackney being pulled by a swaybacked chestnut horse rolled toward them. O’Connell pushed the door open, and she and Marcus joined the old Irishman. Exhaustion crept up and weighed on Delilah. A sleepless night hadn’t prepared her to face the upheaval of her entire life. She listened with half an ear to Marcus and O’Connell discussing their immediate plans.
Once they reached his building, the three of them climbed the staircase. Marcus stopped three feet short of his door, dropping into a slight crouch. He glanced over his shoulder and held a finger to his lips.
The wood frame was cracked, and the door stood ajar. Marcus toed the door open. The creak of the hinges was the only sound. No knife-wielding intruder came bounding out.
Marcus peeked inside, straightened, and cursed. “We’ve been tossed.”
Delilah covered her mouth at th
e sight of the carnage. Cushions were ripped open, and books were strewn about. The contents of his wardrobe lay crumpled on the floor. The bed was upturned, a gash cutting through the mattress.
She picked through the debris to pluck a splayed leather-bound book with a cracked spine off a ripped cushion.
“It doesn’t appear anything of value is missing. Not that I have much worth stealing,” he added with a twist of sarcasm. “My guess is whoever did this either thought I had the book or simply meant to intimidate me. Salvage what you can, O’Connell. My concern now is for Delilah. And Starlight.”
“I’ll bed down in the stables tonight with Starlight, lad,” O’Connell said.
“I can’t ask you to—”
“Ye’re not asking. I’m telling. You take your new wife and find an out-of-the-way inn. Somewhere safe. It is your wedding night, after all.” O’Connell didn’t know how to speak quietly, and his words rushed heat to her face.
She opened the book she was holding and pretended to read. Marcus plucked the book from her hand. “Are you enjoying learning about breeding habits of sheep?”
Of course it would have to be a book on breeding. “I’m looking for some tips.”
His eyebrows popped up, and a laugh jolted out of him. Laughter was his natural state. She could tell by the way his eyes crinkled and his lips turned up. He winked. “I wager we’ll muddle through without the need of a book.”
Muddle through?
“Let me gather what I require, and we’ll be gone in a trice,” he said.
Still holding the book, she waited next to the door, impatient to leave. Malevolence trailed through the rooms like the vestiges of a slug. O’Connell kicked the stuffing from the settee to a corner. Marcus returned, clasped O’Connell’s arm in farewell, then herded her down the stairs, carrying both their bags.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“I spent my first nights in town at the Dog and Thistle. The innkeeper will keep quiet as long as I sufficiently grease his palm. His wife cooks a hearty stew and keeps a clean house.”
Delilah wasn’t sure how process the description. Marcus hailed a hack and handed Delilah inside. They were alone. Granted, she’d been alone with Marcus before, but now they were married. They would be spending their days—and nights—together.
Had she made the right decision wedding him? She could have retreated to the country, where there would have been walks, reading, and comfort. And loneliness. With Marcus lurked the unknown, but also the potential of adventure and… love.
“I realize this is not ideal,” Marcus said, as if reading her mind. “I’m not what you dreamed of in a suitor or a husband, I imagine.”
What had she imagined when picturing a husband? For some reason, she couldn’t remember. All she could see now was the man sitting across from her.
“Will we be happy, do you think?” It was too late now, of course, but his answer seemed of vital importance in this moment.
“I don’t know.” It was an honest answer, not that it offered much in the way of comfort. “But I do know you are not meant for a disgraced spinsterhood or marriage to a clodpoll like Sir Wallace.”
“What am I meant for?”
“Passion.” Marcus didn’t dodge her gaze. Softer now, he said, “You were meant for passion.”
Her childish thirst for adventure had never truly abated. Living through her novels had only satisfied her for so long. Perhaps it was fitting she was marrying a man she’d met over a dead body.
The carriage pulled to a stop. The Dog and Thistle was located off the main road in a narrow alley with stone underfoot. Paint flecked off the sign, and coarse men gathered outside in a loud group, already drinking when they should have been hard at work. Delilah felt her sheltered country upbringing keenly.
She gripped Marcus’s arm tightly and pulled her bonnet closer to hide her face. Marcus ducked inside the low-timbered door, and she followed him into the darkened maw of the inn. The scent registered first. Ale and smoke and unwashed bodies.
The bottom floor served as a common room, and clumps of working-class men gathered with dark-colored ales. Two women in dresses with low-cut bodices sashayed through the room, serving drinks, exchanging laughter, and occasionally slapping away a wandering hand. Wide-eyed, Delilah wasn’t sure whether she was scandalized or fascinated, and she shuffled closer to the action.
“You’re a pretty thing,” said a bullish man leaning against a wooden pillar. The rough-hewn voice matched the visage of the man, who grinned at her with several missing teeth and a nose that had been squashed flat by misfortune.
“Thank you.” The polite response popped out unthinkingly. It had been the wrong thing to say. She realized it as soon as the opportunistic light came into the man’s expression. Politesse was not a language he understood.
The man stepped forward and made to wrap his arm around her waist. Before his fingers could do more than brush her skirts, she was picked up and deposited an arm’s length away by Marcus. He stepped between her and the brute.
“Hands off, or I’ll plant your nose in the back of your skull.” Marcus’s voice had roughened, his accent thickening with aggression. While Marcus was leaner, he was just as tall as the bullish man and looked fitter by far.
“The bird was giving me the eye. I didn’t know she were yours.”
“Well, now you do. The bird is mine.”
While she wasn’t keen on being referred to as a bird and treated like a possession, she also wasn’t an idiot. Now was not the time to assert her independence. In fact, in the spirit of self-preservation, she scooted farther behind Marcus and tried to look as sparrowlike as possible. Not what one of the heroines in her novels would do, but then again, they were often reckless and rather foolish.
The moment tensed with the expectation of a brawl. The men around them quieted and waited. The bullish man touched his forelock and retreated but only after casting a dress-stripping gaze in her direction.
With a hand branding her back, Marcus maneuvered her to the staircase. The treads were worn, but the banister was polished to a shine. The second-floor hallway smelled of cooked onions and beef, but based on the common room below, it could be worse.
She had never stayed at a public inn. Their trip from their country house had included a short stay with Lady Casterly for refinement lessons. The stately manor had been less a home and more a museum or perhaps mausoleum. She had been afraid to touch anything, and the quiet had been deafening. What was Marcus’s home like? Her home now, although it was difficult to imagine being in charge of a household.
Marcus unlocked the door at the end of the hall and entered their room. She shuffled over the threshold, her wonderings screeching to a halt when she surveyed the clean, cozy room. A bed dominated the space. Piled high with pillows and quilts, it looked inviting after her sleepless night. Delilah glanced in Marcus’s direction.
A convenient bed plus a new husband was a tricky equation. She had no idea what he expected of her. Would he strip her naked and throw her on the quilt for a ravishing? An unladylike thrill zipped through her. She should be horrified, shouldn’t she?
Marcus deposited their bags on the chest at the foot of the bed and collapsed in an armchair in front of an empty grate. As there was the only one chair, Delilah perched on the edge of the bed, her feet dangling off the floor. She removed her bonnet and patted her hair into place self-consciously.
Marcus extended his legs, crossing his booted feet at the ankles, and leaned his head back, his eyes closing. The silence grew taut until she couldn’t stop her words from breaking it. “What are your expectations?”
He opened one bleary eye and twisted his neck to see her. “I expect us to stay alive. Or maybe it’s less an expectation and closer to a hope.”
A huffing nervous laugh escaped her. “Not that. Of course, I hope we remain in the land of the living as well, but I’m talking about this.” She gestured over the breadth of the bed.
“Ah. That.
” The single word had the heft of twenty stones.
She sat mute, even as fears and hopes, pleas and commands battled to escape.
He looked to the empty grate and rubbed his bottom lip. “I’m not a brute. I’ll not force myself on you, if that’s what worries you.”
It wasn’t, actually. He’d had ample opportunity to be cruel, yet he’d done what was in his power to protect her. Ice shot through her. What if he’d only wed her to protect her? Although she was afraid of his answer, she refused to turn into a coward now. “Will we have a real marriage? You need an heir, after all.”
He jerked his head around, his eyes no longer bleary but intense. He rose and moved with an animalistic grace to stand in front of her. She tilted her head back, her gaze holding his as if she could discern his intentions in the dense forest of his eyes.
“Delilah.” He spoke her name with a soft reverence she’d never heard, but then again, she’d never had a husband before. “I will take great pleasure in the consummation of our marriage, and I hope to bring you great pleasure as well.”
Her lips parted to speak, but her words garbled somewhere between her lungs and voice box. He cupped her cheek, his bare fingers sending tendrils of sensation through her scalp and down her neck, as if his reach was far greater than a few inches of skin.
He brushed his lips over hers. Her heart kicked against her ribs. She reached for him, her hands fisting around the lapels of his jacket. His hands covered hers. Then… he ended the kiss.
She blinked her eyes open to find him watching her with an expression that veered closer to worry than arousal.
“What now?” She wasn’t sure what she was asking, but if he stripped her bare, she wouldn’t protest.
“Now we rest. Tonight is Gilmore’s assignation at Fieldstones, and what has become clear is that I can’t leave you here. The danger is too great. The lummox downstairs looked as if he wanted to eat you up.” Marcus chuckled. “Not that I can blame him.”
A SINFUL SURRENDER: Spies and Lovers Page 12