Ever His Bride (22 page)

“I plan to make certain that my readers know
the dangers to be avoided, along with the sights to be seen. I’ll
recommend the post road that runs through the valley.”

“I see. So, your father illuminated the
shortcomings of the Blenwick Line?”

“No. I can tell by the pull and the speed—and
that occasional shudder.”

“Which?”

She held her hand up and listened for a
moment to the steady clatter of the rails. “There, did you feel
that?”

He had, and was amazed.

“Thank you,” he said, pulling a notepad and
pencil from his coat pocket. The problem was at least worth
investigating.

“Thank you? What for, Mr. Claybourne?”

He jotted a reminder to himself, then looked
up at his inquisitive wife. “Because I have been offered a quarter
interest in the Blenwick Line and I hadn’t decided if I should
invest or not.”

She gasped. “Don’t.”

“I won’t.” He allowed himself to smile at her
earnestness, oddly pleased that she would care to advise him
against ruin. When she smiled back, his heart took a capricious
leap.

“Well, that’s a relief, Mr. Claybourne. You
see, the Blenwick is one of Hudson’s lines.”

“Yes, I know. And at the moment, some of his
railways can be bought for a song.”

“Far less expensive than a marriage, Mr.
Claybourne.”

He caught himself smiling again. “Touché,
madam.”

“So you’ve come here on business, after all?”
She seemed charmingly humble all of a sudden. She buffed her toes
back and forth against the leather upholstery, putting him in mind
of a cat having found the most comfortable place in the house and
claiming it for herself.

He would make the most of this windfall
peace. Better to keep the cat’s claws retracted. He settled back
against the seat, trying to maneuver the conversation around to the
gold band in his pocket, and the meaning it might convey between
them: business only, yet a symbol to others.

“I’ll admit, Miss Mayfield, that my timing is
somewhat tied to your venture. Your mention of Northumberland
reminded me of the Blenwick prospectus, and—”

“And so you found yourself with a ready
excuse to follow me, to see that I stayed out of trouble?”

He’d landed right in her trap, and yet found
it surprisingly comfortable. He could escape at any time, and he
decided to relax into it. “In truth, Miss Mayfield, when you
declared that you were bound for four weeks of rail travel, I
thought you a novice at this sort of thing.”

“Me, a novice?” Her laughter warmed the whole
of the car. “I’d hate to calculate the miles I’ve traveled on the
rails. I sleep best on a rocking train. Though I must admit I’ve
never, ever traveled in this kind luxury—a whole bench seat to
myself, paraffin lamps. Second-class is the best I’ve ever been
able to afford. When I’m tired, I usually lean forward and fall
asleep with my head against the back of the seat in front of me.
Makes a terrible dent in my forehead.”

She laughed again, and he laughed along with
her, a disquietingly comfortable feeling that shed the tension from
his shoulders, yet stung the corners of his eyes.

He envied her ease, her ability to bend to
the pressure of the moment. Train travel always meant more time for
him to work without interruptions. He sat as he always did, in the
center of the seat—usually surrounded with charts and graphs and
proposals, but enveloped now in the scent of lavender, and the lure
of her voice. And he hadn’t given a thought to a single
investment.

The car had become exceedingly warm, the ring
seeming to produce a strange heat of its own. He stood and shrugged
out of his coat, leaving himself in his waistcoat and shirtsleeves.
He loosened his stock, then sat down and leaned against the same
wall his wife had claimed.

“When I was fifteen,” she said, pulling a
magazine out of her portmanteau, “I made a list of all the places I
had lived. There were forty-three. But that was nearly five years
ago. I’m afraid to add the rest to the figure.” She rolled her head
to smile at him as he stuck his legs out across the bench opposite.
They could have been sharing some strange, upright bed.

She drew in a deep breath and pulled the
blanket around her legs. “I confess that I love the look of trains,
and the sound of trains, and the smell of trains. Is your mother
still alive, Mr. Claybourne?”

The question hit him like a punch to his gut.
He felt her steady gaze on him, but could only look at the back of
his hands, past the scars on his knuckles.

“No, she’s not.”

“I’m truly sorry, Mr. Claybourne. Did she
pass on recently?”

He had recovered enough from the first blow
to shake his head and return her steady gaze. “No.”

“Then she died when you were young?”

Innocently asked questions, an innocent
moment; he would make no more of them than that. “By coincidence,
Miss Mayfield, I, too, was six when I lost my mother.”

A fact that seemed to quiet her for a
time.

Felicity felt a sudden, quite unexpected bond
of sympathy with this keen-edged husband of hers. A softness moved
across his mouth as he watched out the window, and at the fine
lines at the corners of his eyes. She had expected to spend the
trip to Blenwick boiling with anger, pressed under the thumb of his
rude threats. But he’d been almost pleasant, and here he was
offering answers that hadn’t a thing to do with his financial
empire. She decided to press on while he was open to her
questions.

“Did your father ever remarry?”

“No,” he said, his profile carved once again
in granite, his eyes flinty.

“Is your father still alive? And is he very
much like you?”

“My father is gone, as well.”

Claybourne lifted his newspaper abruptly.
Time to quit before his mood darkened.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Claybourne. I’m afraid I
carry around a bucket of questions, and I sometimes forget that
people would rather I not toss it over their heads.’’

The train shuddered and the brakes
squealed.

“Damnation!” He jumped to his feet and threw
open the door to the night air before the train came to a stop.

“Take care, Mr. Claybourne.” She made a grab
for him, and caught a handful of wool at the seat of his
trousers.

He looked over his shoulder at her. His eyes
blazed. “Not now, wife!”

She uncrumpled the fabric as if it were
afire. Not now? What the devil did he mean by that? She tried to
ignore the shape that seemed to have branded itself into her hand:
slopes and vales, hard muscle and heated flesh. The blasted train
had ground to a halt in the middle of its route, yet here she was
staring at her palm, memorizing the contours of her husband’s
backside.

“Traction problems?” she asked, rubbing her
hands together to erase the image.

He popped back inside and closed the door.
“Too dark to see much ahead. Though we’re just above a river.”

“The Wear. Sorry,” she said, shoving her
hands beneath the blanket to hide the phantom imprint.

“You’re sorry?” he asked, his wind-whipped
hair flopped across his brow. “It’s hardly your fault—”

“No, Mr. Claybourne, I’m sorry that I grabbed
your . . .” She made a lame gesture toward his backside. “Your
trousers. I didn’t mean . . . Oh, just drop it.”

An artful smile perched at the corner of his
mouth, ready to pounce upon her discomfort. “Drop my trousers, Miss
Mayfield?”

“That’s not what I—Mr. Claybourne!”

The miserable cad threw his head back and
laughed outright, leaving her with a too-intriguing image of her
husband without his trousers. She’d never seen any man in such a
state of undress, so the best she could manage was bare legs and
shirttails. And that was quite enough to imagine. Enough to singe
her ears!

She threw off the blanket and popped up from
her seat to retrieve the basket above his head. “Well, at least we
won’t starve, Mr. Claybourne. You’ve brought enough food for a
banquet.”

“Mrs. Sweeney’s doing,” he said, unsnagging
the basket from the rack and setting it on the seat in front of
her. “She wanted you to try her new currant cakes.”

Claybourne was throwing off a scorching heat,
his head bent near hers to accommodate the low ceiling and to peer
into the basket. He smelled wonderful, of lime and the cool night
air that still clung to his hair.

His breathing riffled her sleeve, heating
through the weave to her skin. She willed her fingers to stop
shaking, willed herself to think of something besides his mouth and
the calling curve of his upper lip. This was the same contemptuous
man who vilified the wretched, who had threatened to keep her in
prison, and who seemed compelled to repeat both themes on a daily
basis.

She righted her thoughts. “Mrs. Sweeney has
made something other than bread and stew? I’m astounded.”

He planted a boot on the seat and seemed
exceedingly interested in her expedition through the cups and
containers. He must have been interested, or he wouldn’t be
standing so very close. Perhaps he was hungry.

“She mentioned that the recipe is from a
cookbook you gave to her.”

“The menu at Claybourne Manor needed
variety.” She could feel him looking at her, frowning, she was
sure, and near enough to kiss. To kiss?

Dear God, whatever made her think a thing
like that? Oh, but the idea had been in her head since he’d thrown
her into the coach. She hated to admit it, but she’d actually been
thinking of her husband’s kiss ever since Mr. Denning had
registered their marriage in his book. Unfinished business, she
supposed; a misplaced hope for something better to come of their
union. Now there was a fool notion! Yet Claybourne was her husband,
after all, and he was patently attractive.

And right now his breath was lifting the hair
at her temple . . .

Completely unstrung, she popped open a crock
of strawberry-sharp preserves and dipped her finger into its
coolness. It was a tangy distraction on her tongue, but couldn’t
overtake the rising heat caused by Claybourne’s close study of her
face.

He seemed very interested in watching her
draw her finger from her mouth, even sent his tongue to dampen his
lower lip as if he were tasting the strawberries, too.

“Mrs. Sweeney doesn’t read,” he said, lifting
his dark gaze to hers.

“Then how, Mr. Claybourne, did she know what
to put into the recipe?” She knew her cheeks had gone stark pink
and the rest of her face pale.

He had such fine lips.

“Branson probably helped her.”

She giggled like a schoolgirl and tried to
recap the jar. “I didn’t think they liked each other very
much.”

“Perfect enemies.”

She found her gaze wandering freely to the
crook of his knee, so near her hip, and to the inciting fit of his
trousers. Which reminded her of the shape of his backside against
the flat of her hand, the very hand which was cupped at the moment
around the smoothly rounded underside of a crock of strawberry
preserves, whose lid refused to cooperate—

“Here!” She handed the crock to Claybourne
and fixed her attention on the rest of the basket. Popped open the
tin of cakes and took an impatient bite of one, determined to
admire them no matter the taste. “Mmmm. Not bad at all,” she
mumbled past the crumbs. “Care to try for yourself, Mr.
Claybourne?”

She lifted the cake to his mouth, but the
train jolted forward and he was launched backward like a rocket
into the seat behind them.

“Damnation!” he bellowed.

She had easily kept her feet. But her husband
now slumped low in the seat; his knees were jammed against the
front of the opposite seat. Globs of strawberries speckled his
waistcoat and shirtfront from the crock which he still held
valiantly in his hand.

“How do you do that, Miss Mayfield?” He
righted himself, but didn’t stand.

“Do what?”

He looked altogether bewildered and pointed
to her feet. “The train tossed me like a pebble and yet you never
moved.”

Felicity found a spoon and sat down on the
seat beside him, unsure exactly what she planned to do next. “I
don’t know, Mr. Claybourne. I guess I can read the rails like a
fortune teller can read the future.”

She moved toward him with the spoon, and he
flinched. “What are you doing, Miss Mayfield?”

“You’re covered in preserves. Hold still.”
She held off a sudden fit of giggling. Hunter Claybourne, the
scone.

The man glanced down at his shirtfront and
scowled, then watched dutifully as she ladled the globs of
strawberries into a napkin.

She kept her eyes downcast and businesslike,
hoping he wouldn’t feel the pounding of her heart, that he couldn’t
guess that she was thinking about what it would be like to unbutton
his waistcoat and shirt, and lick the strawberries from his
chest.

Heavens above! Marriage had begun to cloud
her judgment.

Hunter hoped his wife didn’t know that he was
wondering how her tongue-glistened mouth would feel gliding across
his naked chest in a lingering quest for strawberry preserves. Her
gaze was fleeting, but frequent and warm, her breathing as unsteady
as his own.

“Did Mrs. Sweeney make these preserves, Mr.
Claybourne?”

“How the hell would I know?” Good God, he
didn’t know how much more of this he could take. Every scrape of
the spoon was a scrape across his nerves. Then she scraped past the
pocket that held the wedding band, and paused there to wipe across
the opening with her finger.

Hell and damn, he should have left her in the
third-class car. Should have ridden there himself, where the wind
and rain might whip some sense into his head.

But now she was bent over him, scraping the
spoon across his collar bone, her ear exposed and lovely, his
breath riffling the sprung curls at her temple. He was vividly
aware of the pressure of her thigh against the inside of his, the
brush of her skirts against the woolen fabric that shielded his
lust from her tender sensibilities. He hoped to hell she wasn’t as
aware as he. She’d think him a fiend, and throw herself from the
car if she knew.