Ever His Bride (27 page)

“By the way, Mr. Claybourne, I took the
liberty of hiring a vintner to sort your stock of wines for you,
and to store it correctly.”

Hunter set the glass down. “You did
what?”

“Wine goes bad if it isn’t cared for
properly. And that would be a sad waste of good money, wouldn’t
it?”

“That doesn’t give you leave to hire people
without my permission.”

“It’s for your own good. Mr. Claybourne, your
house is not a home. It’s a huge, cold-storage building.”

“I’m a very busy man. I can’t worry about
which lamp goes where—”

“That’s a wife’s job.”

“So is warming a husband’s bed.” Damnation,
why the devil did he say something like that? The very last thing
he should have said—given their cozy isolation, and the fact that
she had been tangled in his bedclothes so very recently, and that
she now wore that bloody gold band on her finger! The only thing he
could see anymore, besides a tiny cut on her cheek. Those green,
green eyes. And her mouth. A vexing warmth slid up his neck from
his chest.

She fiddled with her pencil and looked out at
him through feathery lashes. “You confuse me, Mr. Claybourne.”

“Please ignore my outburst.” He was beginning
to sweat.

“With pleasure. Your living conditions are
deplorable. I have been attempting to make your house more
homelike, with your express permission, I remind you. But if you’re
going to fight me, or forbid me, say so now and I’ll stop trying.
I’ll keep to my chamber and tend a small corner of the garden, and
I’ll try to spend more time on my travels.”

More time away? He hadn’t liked the silence
she’d left behind. And he’d come to expect the scent of the
wildflowers she brought into the house, and the perfumed breezes
skipping through the open windows, and all that blasted sunlight.
“Fine. Hire anyone you like to do whatever you think needs doing
around the house.”

She smiled broadly. “Outside and in?”

“Within reason.”

He wondered what rare vistas she saw when her
eyes grew so bright. Was she painting the foyer staircase a
brilliant, canary yellow, or burning the drapes in a courtyard
bonfire? It didn’t matter to him. What damage could she do? There
wasn’t a stick of furniture or brass bowl he couldn’t do without.
And if redecorating kept her at home and occupied, and out of
trouble, then he would try not to complain.

“By the way, your name is in the
Times,
Mr. Claybourne.”

He’d been in the middle of skimming a story
about the cotton crop in New Delhi, but snapped the paper down to
stare at his wife. “My name is where?”

She finished writing a word and looked up at
him. “I’m surprised you didn’t see it there on the front page.”

“
My
name? On the front page?”

“I had nothing at all to do with it, sir. It
was the accident.”

He heard himself mumbling as he sped through
the narrow columns on the front page, unable to see his name for
the black spot of fear that blotted his vision.

“It’s right here.” She came around the table
and tapped her finger on his name. “Someone reported the accident
by telegraph last night. The article explains how you took command
of the rescue. . . .” She cleared her throat before reading,
“‘Displaying the same efficiency and success with which he commands
the peerless Claybourne Exchange.’“

He stared at his name, relieved, but on edge.
What would his clients think of the publicity? They might be
concerned over his health, his reckless deeds, wondering how long
an injured man could remain a shrewd investment director. “I didn’t
take command. And I don’t like having my name in the paper.”

“That’s the lot of a hero, Mr. Claybourne.
And you were very heroic last night.”

“We are lucky to be alive.” He read ahead to
see if his name appeared among the injured. It didn’t.

“If you look closely, you’ll find my name
there, too. And don’t bother to look for
Mayfield,
Mr.
Claybourne.”

Her soft breath brushed against his neck as
she leaned over his shoulder to read, “‘Claybourne and his wife
were miraculously unharmed.’ See, there I am: ‘his wife.’“

His wife.

Now Lord Vincent and the Chancellor and all
the rest of the men who mattered would know that he had married. He
could see the sly winks and the knowing nods, as they assumed his
marriage to be of the usual sort. It was not usual in any way. How
could they know he had married a restless zephyr, a woman who would
only graze his life, then pass him by like a dandelion seed in
search of a more agreeable meadow?

She was still pressed up against his
shoulder, her breasts a sublime impression against his arm, a
sensation that diminished the importance of the Claybourne Exchange
to nothing. Her hair caressed his cheek with its soft scent of
lavender, a fragrance that filled his lungs and coursed like fine
Scotch through his belly.

“The Blenwick Line is one of Hudson’s older
enterprises,” she said.

“Hudson?” He wasn’t sure what she was talking
about and turned his head, only to find her green eyes focused
boldly on his mouth. “What’s this about Hudson?” he asked
lamely.

He ought to listen more carefully, but he
could hardly remember his own name at the moment. She lifted her
gaze and it skimmed his cheek and his nose; and then she brushed
her cool, damp mouth against his temple where the throbbing bruise
had suddenly become pain-free, his swiftly coursing fluids diverted
now to other regions.

“I knew you weren’t listening,” she
whispered, as if she knew the range of his thoughts.

But she couldn’t know; she couldn’t. She had
proclaimed her chastity quite boldly in their negotiations, had
proclaimed her intention of gifting her “real” husband with her
virtue.

Damnation, but that was the predicament as he
sat here in this quaint inn, awash in her scent, sharing a meal
with his legal wife who wore his ring and shared his bed: he’d
begun to feel altogether . . . married.

He would have stood up and taken himself
outside for a bellyful of cool air, but he was roundly aroused and
he’d have embarrassed himself and her, and anyone else who happened
by if he had tried.

“I was saying, Mr. Claybourne, that George
Hudson has owned the Blenwick Line since its beginnings. As it says
there in the
Times.”

It was a bit easier to center his thoughts
now that she was walking back to her chair, though her hips played
enticingly against the sway of her skirt.

“I’ll have to read the full article before I
comment,” he said, his jaw aching with the grinding of his
teeth.

She yawned and gathered her papers and
pencils. “I know it’s barely eight o’clock, but I can’t hold my
eyes open any longer. Good night, Mr. Claybourne.”

He waited downstairs, wanting to be certain
that his wife would be deeply asleep when he entered their room.
The inspectors joined him after their night at the tavern. They
stayed for a while, exchanging ghoulish stories about other
horrific accidents they’d investigated, managing to find a great
deal of humor in their gruesome work. The distraction didn’t last.
His thoughts drifted up the stairs.

Sitting across from her and her unorthodox
opinions on the train had been a seductive torture; kissing her had
sent him reeling; watching her stubborn courage in the face of the
tragedy had been breathtaking. And his ring had fit her so
rightly.

Now she was upstairs in bed—in his bed.

He entered the room quietly, undressed
himself down to his shirtsleeves and trousers, flipped off his
shoes, and settled for the night into the small, lumpy chair near
the window.

He found wire springs where there ought to be
padding, and the chair arms creaked and sagged under his leaning,
but he adjusted his position a few times and finally drifted into a
twilight sleep.

“What are you doing here, Mr.
Claybourne?”

He thought she had kissed him, but it was her
voice breaking close against his ear.

“Wake up, Mr. Claybourne.” She was kneeling
beside him in her serviceable nightgown.

He shifted away from her inquest and sagged
against the broken chair arm. Wondered why she’d become so
interested in him all of a sudden. “Go back to sleep, Miss
Mayfield.”

“Mrs.
Claybourne,
remember?”

He remembered.

“You can’t sleep the night in this
chair.”

“I can.”

“You’ll have a sprained neck in the morning,
and you’ll be crabby and even more miserable to live with
tomorrow.” She stood up and tugged at his hand. “Come sleep in the
bed.”

“No. Leave me alone.”

Her gentle laughter fell on him like warm
rain across a desert. She knelt down between his spread legs, using
his bent knees as armrests. He sat bolt upright. There was a layer
of wool gabardine between her palms and his skin, but it might as
well have been nothing at all. Her fire leapt along his thighs like
a fever.

“Then you take the bed, Mr. Claybourne, and
I’ll sleep in the chair. I’m smaller than you.” When she patted his
knees, he pinned her hands down with his own to stop their
movement.

“I’m the man, Mrs. Claybourne.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“
I
make the sacrifices.”

She laughed and sat back on her heels.
“That’ll be the day: when a man out-sacrifices a woman. And why
don’t you want to share the bed? We’re married, as you pointed out
so well on our wedding night.”

He released her hands and settled back
against the chair to keep an eye on her. “I’ll stay here in the
chair.” Now she was fiddling with his foot. “What are you
doing?”

But she had pulled his sock off by the time
he’d finished the question. “I’m making you comfortable, Mr.
Claybourne.”

“I don’t want to be comfortable.”

“And I don’t want to suffer your crabbiness
tomorrow.”

When she lifted his foot into her lap and dug
her thumbs into his arch, he grabbed the arms of the chair and let
go an ungainly groan. “What are you doing, woman?”

“Just relax. I’m not going to hurt you.”

He heard himself making other, more
protracted sounds, low in his throat, suffering bearable pain and
ecstasy as she twisted his toes and ground her knuckles against the
ball of his foot.

“Mr. Claybourne?”

“Yes?” It was difficult to say more.

“You have a terrible scar here on your
foot.”

Shit, he’d forgotten. He yanked his foot
away. Old scars given new meaning, and abounding in new threats.
She would find more than one if he let her stay. “An accident in
childhood. Playing where I shouldn’t have been.”

“Looking for profits even then?”

He froze, scowled at her and she left him.
Relieved, he leaned back and closed his eyes to find his focus. But
her thumbs found the knotted muscles in his shoulders, and he
moaned lurched upward into her hands and let her have her way.

“Now,” she said after a time, “come over to
the bed, Mr. Claybourne. You’ll feel much better.”

“God help me.” He stood and let her lead him
witlessly to the bed. She had bewitched him, laced his wine or the
air with her enchantment...

“On your stomach, Mr. Claybourne.”

He suffered her provoking massage and her
gentle humming as he would a visit from an angel bent on killing
him with inconceivable kindness. He moaned and wheezed like a
shameless old accordion, aching from her touch, for it. Drifted
across the sea, lifted by the sun-warmed waves to a beach with
diamond sands. . . .

And awoke sometime later, unconvinced that he
had actually fallen asleep. But the sky was pinkening, and his wife
was beside him, tangled in his pillow, his hand wrapped in her
hair.

Christ, she was beautiful. And she would be
his for the coming year—for less than a year, as she kept reminding
him as the days and weeks ticked—flew—by.

What kind of madness had he brought upon
them? He wasn’t the husbandly type, and she certainly wasn’t the
wifely type. When, and if, he ever decided to search out a wife, he
would scrutinize carefully for docility and reverent obedience to
his word, deference to his good name. He’d never willingly take a
wife like this one, who had stolen from him, upset his household,
embroiled him in a railway disaster, and now claimed more than her
share of his bed.

And yet, he couldn’t imagine a different kind
of wife than Felicity. He brushed her tumbled hair away from her
cheek and she followed the course of his fingers, seeking his
touch, frowning when he lifted his hand away, and dampening her
lips in a sleepy pout. She’d stolen the blanket and had wrapped
herself in it completely, all except one of her legs, which dangled
over the far side, bare and enticing from knee to sole.

And all this disarming magic so very few
inches from him, quickening his heart as well as his flesh. That
was the real danger: beyond the blatant lust she roused in him, the
woman had drawn him out of London on a damnably risky venture. He
had convinced himself their separate travels were a coincidence,
but he knew better, and would admit it to himself now.

He’d come to bring her a wedding ring—his
ring. But she didn’t need to know that he harbored such a simple
weakness.

Like the weakness he had for her kiss.