A Pirate for Christmas: A Regency Novella (14 page)

Bess slipped out of the crowded, noisy hall onto Penton Abbey’s dark front step. Her heart raced with such excitement, it was like having a hundred Christmas candles burning bright inside her.

Carefully she closed the door. She didn’t want anyone to follow. Earlier there had been a moon, but now the sky clouded over for more snow. Behind her, she heard the scratch of fiddles and the villagers’ whoops and stamping feet as they danced to celebrate Christmas Day. Although by now, it was well into Christmas night. Everyone was having far too much fun to go home after the new earl’s magnificent feast.

“Just where are you off to so late, my bonnie lassie?” Rory drawled, emerging from the shadows beside the door and catching her hand.

Bess laughed, as much from happiness as amusement, and let him draw her down to stand in the snow in front of the house. “I can’t delay. I’m off to meet a pirate, good sir.”

“The scurvy rascal will have to wait,” Rory said. “I’ve got plans for you first.”

He swooped down for a kiss. Immediate, now familiar passion ignited. She curved into his tall, strong body, at last free to express her aching longing. It felt like an eon since he’d kissed her, and she sank blissfully into the heated demand of his lips. This was the first chance they’d had to be alone since yesterday’s proposal.

The play had proven a great success, and while she and Rory hadn’t said a whisper about their engagement, pointed looks from her neighbors hinted that the village’s gossip mill whirred away as usual. Even Daisy seemed to understand that this was a special day and she’d been a perfect angel. Unfortunately the human angels hadn’t been quite so exemplary. Sally Potts had forgotten her lines when she announced her good tidings to the shepherds, and a brawl between Mrs. Hallam’s twin boys had disrupted the heavenly host’s chorus of hallelujahs.

“I missed you so much,” she whispered, twining her arms around him.

“Oh, my darling—” He dragged her up for more kisses. “Damn it, we can’t stay long.”

“I know,” she said breathlessly. “I’m beginning to loathe propriety. When will you talk to my father?”

“Tomorrow.” They’d reluctantly decided that Christmas Day wasn’t the best time to approach the vicar about his daughter’s engagement.

“Early?”

“I’ll be there at the crack of dawn if you think it will hasten the wedding.”

When she rested her head on his chest, his gallant heart beat steadily beneath her ear. “Oh, Rory, I’m so very happy. I can’t tell you how much.”

His arms tightened and he propped his chin on her hair. “I’m the luckiest man in England.”

“And Scotland.”

“And Scotland. And the rest of the world.” He kissed the top of her head. “Merry Christmas, my bonnie countess.”

She buried her nose in his chest, loving the rich, musky smell of his skin. He was so marvelously warm. “Merry Christmas, my dashing earl.”

“I’ve got the present I want.”

Bess raised her head. The light from the house illuminated his strong features—and the roguish glitter in his green eyes. “Perhaps, but you’ll have to wait to unwrap it.”

Rory gave a long-suffering sigh. “Och, and isn’t that just like a blasted Englishwoman?”

Something cold and soft brushed her cheek. With wondering eyes, she stared up at the sky. “It’s snowing. It was snowing the first time you kissed me.”

He smiled down at her. “Aye, and clearly it’s a sign from above that I need to kiss you again.”

“Clearly,” she said drily, stretching up on her toes to brush her lips across his. Then some instinct made her pull away and glance back at the house. “Oh, dear.”

He turned his head to follow the direction of her gaze. The great hall’s tall windows were lined with smiling people, craning their necks to take in as much of the view as they could. Bess saw Dr. Simpson, and Ned White, and her father—looking puzzled—and Mrs. Hallam, and Will and Sally Potts, and all the other local people who had worked so hard to ready the Abbey for Christmas.

Rory burst out laughing and flung his arm around Bess’s shoulders, hugging her into his side. “I think, my bonnie, that our wee secret is out.”

R
ory knocked softly on the dressing room door before he entered the candlelit bedchamber. It was late, nearly midnight, and he was naked beneath his heavy velvet dressing gown.

He and Bess began their honeymoon at a naval friend’s manor on the North Sea near Craster. They’d completed the last hours of the forty-mile journey to this spectacular piece of coastline in the dark. The waves crashing against the shore vied with the thunder in his blood at the sight that greeted him in the flickering golden light.

“My God, but you’re lovely,” he said reverently, once he’d managed to shift the boulder blocking his throat.

Slowly Bess turned from the window where she’d been watching the starlit sea, and the welcome in her smile made his heart swell with joy. “When you look at me like that, I feel lovely.”

Her golden hair tumbled loose around her straight, slender shoulders. She wore a sheer white nightgown that offered shadowy hints of the curved body beneath.

He swallowed to moisten a suddenly dry mouth. He wanted her so much. “We’ve got the house to ourselves for a couple of days.”

On Rory’s instructions, the manor was provisioned and the staff took a paid holiday. Upon arrival, the housekeeper had greeted them with congratulations, blazing fires, and a bottle of champagne, then left them to look after themselves. At the end of the week, they sailed south for two months in Italy.

“I look forward to seeing everything in daylight.”

“You’ll love it.” He’d kept today’s destination secret, and she’d been thrilled to discover the sea at their doorstep. The wild scenery made a fitting setting for her vivid spirit. “Do you mind doing without a maid?”

A smile tugged at her lips. “I’m rather looking forward to tending my husband like a proper village wife.”

“Och, that’s a pity. I’m rather looking forward to my wife being very improper indeed.”

He crossed the parquet floor and kissed her tenderly. Her lips parted beneath his, but he didn’t deepen the kiss. There would be passion later, but for now, his overwhelming need was to cherish this exquisite creature who gave herself into his keeping.

He drew back and cradled her face between his palms. When they’d stopped for a hurried meal in Alnwick, by unspoken mutual consent they’d kept their conversation to unimportant matters. So in all the ways that mattered, their life together began here in this room overlooking the cliffs.

“I can’t tell you how proud I felt when you walked down the aisle this morning and promised yourself to me.” Proud, yet strangely humble.

Her smile was tremulous, and aching emotion deepened her blue eyes to midnight. “You shouldn’t say such things. Unless you want me sobbing all over you.”

He laughed fondly and kissed her. “That doesn’t sound like my indomitable bride.”

“Your indomitable bride is feeling a little fragile.”

“I’ll have to kiss her back to her stalwart self.”

“I’ve missed our kisses,” she murmured, leaning forward. “Why did you make us wait a whole month?”

“You threatened me with a year.”

“I was only teasing, you know I was.”

He nipped at her full lower lip. “My reasons were good.”

She sent him an unimpressed look. “I think you’re more concerned about propriety than London’s strictest chaperone.”

“I want to do everything right—even if I suffer for it. And believe me, my love, I did.”

Frequently over the last four weeks, he’d cursed this need to show the world how much he honored Bess. With a special license, they could have married within days. But he abhorred the idea of any snide comments about a quick wedding, following that snowy night in the woodcutter’s hut. So the vicar had called the banns and Rory had endured the excruciating delay of a conventional engagement.

“I know.” Bess rose on her toes and kissed him. These weren’t the sizzling, voracious kisses he’d fantasized about through this whole pestilential month. But her unfettered affection warmed the cold, lonely places in his soul, places he’d never known existed until he met her. “And I’ve been dreadfully ungrateful.”

“Aye, dreadfully,” he said with a quirk of his lips. “You’d better make amends tonight.”

“Only tonight?”

“It’s a start. I have a powerful appetite to feed. We haven’t had a minute alone since Christmas.”

Once they were betrothed, they’d hardly exchanged a private word, let alone indulged in any mischief. The free and easy week of courtship became a memory. When he and Bess hadn’t been preparing the Abbey for their life together, she’d been introducing him to the neighbors and the local area. With every day, he’d become more a part of this new life that had felt so alien when he’d arrived in Northumberland. He had Bess to thank for that. He had Bess to thank for so very much.

Having her in his arms now felt like a miracle. Her physical presence beat through him like a great drum. “And then you left me for a week to kick up your heels in Newcastle.”

“You know I needed to buy my bride clothes, and order furniture and curtains. Believe me, staying with you, even under a hundred curious eyes, would be much more fun than staying with my aunt.”

“I’ll wager her nose was out of joint when she discovered you’d captured an earl.” Bess’s aunt and cousins had attended this morning’s wedding in Penton Wyck. They’d been nauseatingly obsequious to him, while barely concealing their jealousy of Bess.

Bess laughed shortly and cuddled closer. Her rich female scent teased his senses. “They made it clear that I didn’t deserve my good fortune. But my aunt is very fashionable, and she warmed up a degree or two when we cleared out the shops.”

“Dear Lord, you didn’t let her bully you into buying a thousand folderols, did you?”

Bess leaned back in his arms, a glint in her eyes. “Frills are all the rage this year.”

“Lord help us.” He knew she was teasing. Again.

“And then you dragged me away after the wedding breakfast on an interminable journey. We could have stayed the night at Penton Abbey and traveled tomorrow.”

He shuddered theatrically. “Good God, we’d never have a moment’s peace. The villagers can’t bear to let you out of their sight. Simpson would stick his head into our bedroom every hour to check I was treating you right. Sally would badger you with improper questions. Your father would wander in at two in the morning to share his latest theory about some Byzantine princess or other.”

She gave a low laugh. “Well, we can’t have that.”

“The avid interest in the consummation of our vows quite put me to the blush.”

“The villagers like you.”

“They
love
you.” He adopted a wounded tone. “Then when I finally get you to myself, all you do is snore.”

Most of the trip, she’d slept curled up beside him in the coach. She’d worked so hard for their perfect wedding. Despite his teasing, he was overjoyed that the day had turned out to be everything a bride could want. Although he doubted the vicar understood that his daughter was now married. John Farrar had stumbled through the service and had needed Bess’s prompting when it came to Rory’s three Christian names.

“I’m saving my strength for tonight.”

He laughed in appreciation and reluctantly abandoned her to cross to a side table where the champagne waited. A couple of deft movements and the cork popped. “Och, you’re a bride in a million, lassie.”

She drifted toward him. “I hope you think so after tonight.”

Surprised, he looked up from filling two glasses with the frothing golden wine. “Of course I will. How can you doubt it?”

She didn’t smile back. “I’m worried about measuring up. You’re a man of the world—literally—and I’ve never done this before.”

Apparently more than wedding preparations lay behind her exhaustion. Poignant tenderness flooded him that she should worry about pleasing him. Didn’t the daft lass know she pleased him just by existing? “Bess, take my word for it, no woman compares to you. You’re a jewel.”

“You make everything sound so easy.”

He shrugged and put down the bottle. “If we don’t get everything right on the first try, we’ve got at least forty years to practice until we’re perfect. Goodwill and friendship will take us a long way. And desire.”

And love.

Was that love he saw in her eyes? They’d never spoken the words, but tonight some profound and precious bond united them.

He passed her a glass and sipped from his own. “I want you quite desperately, in case you haven’t noticed.”

Thoughtfully, she took a sip, then replaced her nearly full glass on the table. “Show me.”

“With pleasure,” he said, smiling back. He drained his glass before setting it next to hers. His friend had been thoughtful leaving them the wine, but right now, Rory felt so drunk on happiness, he needed no other stimulant.

Taking her hand, he drew Bess closer to the fire. He was overwhelmingly aware of the large, heavily carved bed in the center of the room.

He kissed her knuckles with a veneration that turned barely leashed hunger into something nobler and sweeter. He’d never before felt this need to protect and please and cherish.

Bess hadn’t done this before. In the most essential sense, neither had he. They would both emerge from this winter night changed forever.

Her eyes were as blue as the ocean that had been his mistress in boyhood and youth. Now he dedicated himself to a new cause. Silently he promised his love and loyalty, his courage and strength to this woman.

He started gently, almost tentatively. Transfixed with wonder, he stroked her luxuriant hair. He touched her face, her shoulders, her arms, her hands, feeling the vital life beneath her skin. This was a lassie full of fire and vigor. And he thanked God that she was. He wanted an equal on his journey. Bess had matched him from the first.

She was trembling. His caresses, subtle but sinfully purposeful, aroused her. When his hands glanced over those magnificent full breasts, she made a stifled sound in her throat. He returned, caressing her until her nipples stood proud against the cool lawn. He took one beaded peak between his lips, making her cry out. She arched into him, burying her fingers in his hair, urging him on. Dizzy with her scent, smoky lemon and lavender and honey, he moved to the other breast. The nightdress was so fine, it was almost like touching her bare skin.