DARE THE WILD WIND (32 page)

New humiliation knifed through Brenna.  Eleanore had played the matchmaker, and enlisted Geoffrey's help. 

"It was perfectly obvious the Earl had more than a casual interest in you," Eleanore went on without a trace of guilt.  "If he chose, he could act on what Geoffrey told him.  If not..."

She smiled again, the brilliant smile that lit and transformed her face.  "The Earl lost no time in taking his leave of Geoffrey and the club.  Neither of us were too startled when the Earl and your brother arrived on our doorstep that night."

                 
*****

Ensconced in veiled splendor in the coach that bore her toward Saint Paul's Cathedral, Brenna tried to quell the growing dread that squeezed at her chest.

The sky was a cystalline cloudless blue, and the sun rode high overhead.  The satin and lace of her wedding gown billowed across the width of the seat, the train spilling in a froth over Eleanore's skirt of melon silk.  But Brenna wasn't conscious of the exquisite stitching or the glove
perfect fit of the stomacher and bodice to her narrow waist.

On the night Drake offered for her hand, Brenna had seized on any escape from Charles.  Now the promise she had made weighed like a stone inside her, heavier with every swaying turn of the coach on the
London streets. 

To a part of her,
Cam would always be alive.  It was a lie to pledge herself to any other man.  And Drake hadn't been in nearly the haste to claim her Eleanore thought.

Malcolm had been quick to tell Brenna the Earl had known of his plan to wed her to Charles for days.  He had boasted about it to Drake in a public house well before he saw fit to announce the match to Brenna or the Wittworths.  All Malcolm had failed to reveal to Drake was the date. 

Drake had delayed until the eve of her marriage to Charles to act.  In the end, he had been prodded by Geoffrey's news.  But his hesitation testified to qualms nearly as overwhelming as hers.

Brenna understood him even less than she had the first night they clashed at Lochmarnoch.  She had every reason then to fear him, yet he had dealt far less harshly with her than she expected.  And the day he pulled her from Gypsy on the moor, he had laid hands on her and insulted her, but he hadn't taken advantage of her as many anot
her man might have done.       

Reluctant as she was to admit it, Drake had his own peculiar sense of honor.  He had been ready to run
Cam through at Lochmarnoch Castle.  But he had been moved to save him from a bayonet on the field of battle.  Because Cam had been helpless?  As she was, when she stumbled in front of the pursuing rabble that terrifying morning in the street? 

He had given
Cam a chance, however small.  Somewhere inside her, Brenna knew that made it possible for her to marry him.  Much as she regretted the vows she would take, for that one act Brenna owed Drake an effort to be an honest and dutiful wife.  Love might be beyond either of them, but they would have to try to find a civil way to deal with one another. 

And as the coach climbed Ludgate Hill, Brenna told herself much as she would miss
Scotland, it would be better never to see the moors again.  The sight would wrench her beyond bearing.  Better to wed an Englishman than return to the Highlands and the aching reminder of all she had lost.

The four
in hand drew up in Saint Paul's Churchyard.  Eleanore was handed down from the coach to enter the church.  Brenna would ascend the steps of the cathedral in solitary grandeur, rewarding the gathered crowd of the lowborn and uninvited with a brief glimpse of a luxury and pageantry reserved for the privileged and powerful within. 

The domed cathedral loomed above all of
London.  Since Brenna lacked any properly 

connected family in the city to make arrangements, Drake had persuaded Malcolm to put Eleanore in charge.  Drake had declared he preferred his private chapel at Wellingbroke, but he also had been adamant that nothing about their marriage appear furtive.  And his grandmother, the dowager countess, insisted on no less than
St. Paul's for the ceremony.

Brenna knew so soon after the Rising, there could well be resentment of a Scottish bride, even if by some miracle no talk of her unchaperoned journey from
Inverness circulated in London.  And a wedding in Saint Paul's Cathedral was the most grandiose gesture imaginable. 

Built after the Great Fire by Christopher Wren, it was a masterwork, a magnificent blend of the Gothic, the Classical, and the Baroque.  Two days ago, Eleanore had given Brenna a tour of the cathedral, from the choir stalls carved by Grinling Gibbons to the Whispering Gallery.

But now, as she reached the top of the steps and passed through the heavy ornate doors, Brenna saw nothing but the long corridor past the nave.  She sensed faces turning toward her and felt Malcolm move beside her to offer her his arm.  Brenna took a shallow breath.  The aisle yawned before her, Drake at its end. 

Despite Malcolm's grudging and impatient support, she swayed for a second.  The distance seemed unbridgeable.  It was too far to walk, too final a journey. 

For a second, she was seized by the impulse to shake free of Malcolm's arm, to catch up her skirts and simply run
, back down the steps, out into the street, anywhere away from a life of bondage to a man she barely knew.  But she had given her word.

Somehow she moved forward to music that was a jumbled cacophony in her ears.  Drake's face swam closer to her, and his gaze connected with hers.  A light flared in his eyes, and an unexpected sensation arrowed through her.  For a heartbeat, the glow of the cathedral's candles brightened and flickered dim. 

Brenna blinked, forcing feet that no longer seemed to belong to her on toward the altar.  Drake stepped forward a pace to meet her, a
nd she placed her hand in his. 

The fingers that closed around hers were hard and warm.  And as the bishop read the words of the ceremony, the strength of his hand formed an odd anchor to reality, bone and sinew and flesh an all
too earthly reminder that the vows they took were binding and irrevocable.

Then the ring circled her finger, and Drake turned her toward him to seal their bargain.  Lifting her veil, he drew her to him, his mouth taking possession of hers.  Before the assembled guests, he kissed her slowly and thoroughly, gathering her closer before he released her.

When he let her go, his hazel
  gold gaze held hers. 

"The deed is done," he said in a low soft voice.  A brief, unexpected glint of amusement flickered in his eyes.  "And I promise, you'll find the arrangement less of a burden than you think."

Chapter 19

Dodging a rain of rice on the steps of the cathedral, Drake told her they would leave his house on the
Strand behind in favor of the seclusion of Wellingbroke, his estate in Surrey.

"You'll be f
êted at a dozen balls once we're back in London," he said as he swung up into the coach beside her.   "We've spent very little time together.  I've always been happiest in the country, and we may have the opportunity to do something besides quarrel."

Brenna flushed, aware they had rarely done anything else.  He raised a questioning brow at her reaction.

"
You're not disappointed?" he asked, shooting her a searching glance as he settled back against the coach's velvet  covered seat.

Brenna bit back a retort that she had never sought the title of a countess or the diversions of the
London season. 

"Not in the least."  All she felt was a giddy relief.  She had expected to be spirited directly to their marriage bed.  Now that fate would be postponed for a few hours.

But when the footman shut the door behind Drake, her breath rose suddenly and shallowly in her throat.  In the intimate confines of the coach, they were finally and completely alone.  Drake's powerful frame seemed to fill the small enclosed space, and Brenna was acutely conscious of the drawn curtains and the wheels rolling forward, isolating them from the world.

Drake caught her expression, and his face tightened.  "If you're afraid I'll exercise my marital rights on the journey," he said in a brusque voice, "put your mind at ease.  I don't care to tell our firstborn and heir he was conceived on the
Surrey road."

Brenna recoiled.  His mood had changed from accommodation to acrimony in the flicker of an eye. 

"Are you serving notice my first duty is to produce an heir?" Brenna asked
in as cold a tone as she could muster. 

For a second, Drake had looked as if he regretted how bluntly he had lashed out at her.  A muscle in his jaw twitched. 

"Not your first duty," he corrected caustically.  "Be assured, I'll instruct you on exactly what I require of you when we
are
finally alone." 

Brenna's hand itched to slap him.  A few words said in a church didn't free him to hurl this sort of insult at her.  But deep inside, some part of her quailed.  In the eyes of the world, the vows they exchanged had made her his property.  Did he mean to treat her as no more than that? 

She would never submit to it. She would never let him rule her. 

Their marriage had started as disastrously as all their other encounters.  They jounced through the streets of
London and into the countryside wrapped in a brittle and icy silence.  And as the coach rattled down the sunbaked, rutted pike, Brenna couldn't delude herself that they would find peace together at Wellingbroke or anywhere else in England.

They arrived just at dusk.  Wellingbroke stood on the crown of a gently sloping hill, a sprawling three
story Jacobean house of cream  colored stone, pavilions in the Palladian style jutting from the original block.  Below twin pediments and Ionic columns, a green sweep of lawn fell away from the wide winged house, and scattered trees and a closely  barbered landscape garden flanked the curving drive to the main portico.  It was breathtaking, and as foreign to Brenna as the hedges that bordered the tamely ordered fields they had passed on the Surrey road.  This was Drake's family seat, the place he considered his home.  But Brenna had no confidence she would ever think of it as hers.

When the coach pulled to a halt before the great entryway, candles had been lit.  The ent
ire staff lined in the echoing stone hall to greet the Earl and their new mistress.  Brenna was daunted by their number.  The majordomo made a speech of welcome, and one by one the servants stepped forward to bob a curtsy or sketch a small bow.  Quickly Drake cut more pleasantries short. 

"My bride has had a long trip from
London.  We'll require a light supper in our private suite upstairs."

The butler inclined his head.  "Everything you ordered is in readiness, my lord."

Drake turned to Brenna and held out his hand.  "Then I suggest we repair to a cold collation and a bottle of Canary wine."

His voice was even but commanding, and Brenna had no choice but to place her hand on his, and allow him to lead her up the great marble staircase.

The sitting room of the suite was appointed in a mixture of French Régence furnishings and the Rococo.  In one corner, between twin shepherd's crook chairs, shells and flowers twined on the bowed legs of an amaranth backgammon table.  A ribband
  backed settee delicately worked in gold leaf sat along the wall opposite.

The gaming chairs and lattice
backed settee were upholstered in pale lemon velvet, and matching overstuffed armchairs sat in front of the hearth, close enough for a quiet
tête a tête
before the fire.  The deep soft chairs hinted at a male taste for comfort, and for a fleeting instant Brenna saw Drake again as he had looked when he intruded on her that night in London, waistcoat discarded and cuffs shot, shirt half open to bare his chest.  

She squeezed her eyes shut to ward away the memory.  And opened them to see a door left pointedly ajar to the bedchamber.  Drake caught her reaction, but if he intended a scathing remark, the arrival of their meal silenced it. 

A procession of servants began to file in to pour the wine and lay out their cold supper, and he gestured toward the door. 

"You'll find a maid waiting to attend you."  His tone was civil, but Brenna knew it was her cue to retire to change.

A small dark
haired woman greeted Brenna when she entered the bedchamber, thin nervous hands fluttering to gather the foaming lace of Brenna's train before it snagged on a splinter or the curving leg of a table.

"How beautiful,
madame
," she said, intent on the work in Brenna's gown.  "I am Martine.  Your husband the Earl sent for me from London to serve as your personal maid."

Brenna could say nothing for a moment.  Shell
shaped, supported by gilded mermaids and dolphins, the bed in the center of the room was vast, and hung with floating draperies of sheer apricot silk.

"Ah," Martine breathed.  "The bed. 
Magnifique
.  I am told that it's Italian.  The Earl himself was born in it."