Ever His Bride (39 page)

“Because I wanted to see you.”

“Why today, when you knew I was meeting with
Meath? When I heard your voice in the front office, I thought I was
imagining it. I guess I’d stupidly hoped that you had come to see
me out of some wifely interest. That you had made time for me in
the midst of your charity work—”

“I am interested in you, Hunter. In your
hopes and dreams, in—”

“In digging where you shouldn’t!”

“If I must dig, Hunter, it’s because you’ve
buried yourself so that no one can find you! And yes, I was digging
today, as I do every day. Looking for you.”

That frightened the hell out of him. “I am
not missing, madam, so you can quit your—”

“I had been at the school . . .”

Hunter had heard enough, and stalked toward
the door. “I don’t want to hear another word about your
school—”

“Hunter, I discovered something while I was
there today.”

He stopped and turned back to her.
“Something?” A coal fire flared in the pit of his stomach, lining
his lungs with a billowing stench.

“It was just . . .” She looked like a rabbit
caught in a rifle site.

“Damn it woman, what did you find that was so
important you needed to interrupt my meeting?” He heard the fury in
his voice and hoped it scared the hell out of her.

“I found, Hunter, that—that . . .” She
stammered and swallowed, and glanced out the window. When she
looked back at him again, she had taken a breath, had straightened
her shoulders. “I was roundly grateful for all the help you’ve
given the school . . . against your better judgment, I know.”

“You dug around and found your gratitude
today? How charming.”

“That’s not what I mean, Hunter. I looked
around and saw the effects of the money and the food, and the
leavings from the house—your generosity. And so, I came to your
office today to thank you for it.”

“To thank me?”

“Yes, to thank you in the name of the
children. So, so, you can stand there and curse me all you want,
Hunter, but it won’t stop me from admiring you or the success
you’ve made. Or thanking you.”

God, how he wanted to believe her. But she
was lying again, and he couldn’t fathom the reason. If she knew
something of his past, she would have thrown it at him in an
instant and slipped herself out of their marriage with a simple bit
of blackmail. But she stood there, bare to her underclothes,
looking guilty of a crime he couldn’t describe but which ate away
at the core of him.

“I don’t need your admiration, Felicity.”

“I think you do.”

Stubborn little chit. “Nor do I require your
interest, or your gratitude, or any other petty emotion you wish to
bestow upon me.”

“Petty emotion?” She caught her breath and
her cheeks flushed crimson. “I’ll have you know, Hunter Claybourne,
that none of my emotions are petty. And right now, I’m suffering
through an acute bout of monumental anger.”

Good. Perhaps she would keep her distance
tonight, and forever afterward. He’d gone soft, and he was paying
for it. As he turned his back on her, one of her shoes hit the door
with a hollow thunk just above his head, and landed at his
feet.

“You’re a coldhearted charlatan, Mr.
Claybourne!”

“Be ready in fifteen minutes, wife. I’ll be
waiting in the carriage.”

Their carriage rocked sideways and slammed
Felicity against the granite cliff-side that was her husband.
Neither had spoken more than a word since the ride toward the
Meaths’ began. In that time, she had decided that Hunter Claybourne
was stubborn, arrogant, and fiercely prideful, and there wasn’t
much she could do to change him. He was probably born that way—slum
or no slum. Let him have his past. The secret belonged to him, not
to her. It was a matter of trust. And she would earn his, even if
it meant they went to their graves long years from now having never
shared this single secret. It didn’t matter; not to her.

The carriage was close and warm. Hunter threw
off heat like a forge. When she lifted her wool shawl off her
shoulders and laid it on the seat beside her, her hand met the
familiar rectangle in her pocket and her heart sank.

The book! She had forgotten it was there in
the pocket. It would have been safer in her chamber. She would take
it home tonight and burn it. That would be the end of the
questions, and Hunter would never have to know.

Hunter himself was another matter. She didn’t
need a sullen husband as an escort, and he wouldn’t be helping
himself any if she left him in this state.

“Who will I be meeting tonight, Hunter?”

He grunted and shifted in his seat, then went
still again.

“If I know a little about your associates, I
can make a better impression. Will there be other wives in
attendance besides Lady Meath?”

“No doubt.”

“Anything I should know about any of them?
Quirks, quarrels, quandaries?” She tried to sound breezy, but the
man’s mood tonight might require extraordinary means.

“Lady Spurling drinks.”

“Hmmm. To excess?”

“At times.”

“And how will I know if she is drunk? Does
she get loud, or sleepy, or overly friendly with the men?”

“That’s been known to happen.”

“Well, if she gets overly friendly with you,
Hunter Claybourne, I shall pop her one on the nose.”

He gave a grudgingly small morsel of
laughter. “Please don’t.”

Felicity turned to him and frowned grandly.
“Then, you prefer her kisses to mine.”

He shrugged. “I’ve never kissed the
woman.”

“I suggest you keep it that way.” Felicity
felt exceedingly bold, and suddenly very possessive of her husband.
She stood up and faced Hunter, hiked her elegant, green velvet
skirt and all her petticoats to her thighs, then climbed onto his
lap to straddle his hips with her knees.

He looked startled. “What do you think you
are you doing, wife?”

She scooted forward and wrapped her hands
around his neck. “I’m staking my claim—if I might employ one of my
scheming uncle’s favorite phrases.”

“Dear God.” Hunter should have cared that she
was crinkling his shirtfront, but he was just roundly relieved that
she was still speaking to him, and burning with pleasure. His
blustering hadn’t scared her away, and now she seemed to be making
a claim on his attention for the evening. He laughed out loud.

“What’s so funny, husband?”

“You.” But he caught his breath between his
teeth as she tightened her knees around his hips. He thought of
those drawers of hers, trimmed in delicate ribbon, primly opaque,
and yet split right up the center, where his hand could find her
dampness if he dared, where she squirmed naked against the
lustfully rising wool of his trousers.

“You taste very good tonight, Hunter. Lime
aftershave.”

Her kiss seemed too worldly and sent a
shudder through him as he imagined her hot mouth on him. “God,
woman!”

And was it any wonder where his thoughts had
strayed? She had unbuttoned the front of his trousers and was
fondling him through his drawers and squirming against him.

“Hunter?”

“Yes, love.” He groaned as her fingers came
around him.

“I have a very strange urge to kiss you
here—as you’ve so often kissed me.”

She tightened her hold, and he went still for
fear of spilling himself between her fingers. “Not now, Felicity,”
he hissed. He grabbed her hand and stilled it when she began to
move it again. “Please.”

She sat up, looking prim and seductively
innocent. “You mean it’s a reasonable thought, Hunter? To take you
into my mouth, right here in the brougham, with Branson sitting on
the driver’s bench?”

“Dear woman, it’s such a reasonable thought
that I will be thinking it unceasingly as I watch you sip your
turtle soup.”

“Truly?” She looked far too eager.

“God help us if Lady Meath seats me beside
you.”

She smiled and drew a finger across the ridge
of his upper lip. “If she doesn’t, then we shall just have to meet
under the table, shan’t we?”

H
unter watched his
wife from across the ostentatious expanse of china and crystal and
linen. Her face was gilded by the light from two candelabra. Her
smile was radiant, taunting the stars in the heavens, taunting him
when she cast it in his direction. The gown’s velvet was the green
of her eyes, and draped across her breasts as boldly as it fit her
to the waist. Her shoulders were bare and honey-pale, and his need
for her had become a solid throbbing.

He had been so sure it was all over, that she
had found him out and was about to expose his fraudulent past.
Pauper turned pirate turned prophet of finance. But he must have
been imagining things. He would learn to keep his temper in check,
and redirect her thoughts to more pleasurable pursuits. She had
certainly redirected his during the ride over. Another few minutes
alone in the carriage and they would have been beyond hope, and
arrived at the Meaths’ drive-up in the fragrant flush of passion
fulfilled.

Now his wife was sitting across from him,
flanked by Lord Oswin, a most influential member of the Board of
Trade, and by the Comte de Auriville, one of Hunter’s most grateful
and high-placed investors. He heard snippets of conversation and
stored them away to digest later. His concentration was on his
wife, and he was jealous of the time she spent without him. He
spoke with Oswin’s wife and Lord Spurling’s widowed daughter, but
found them pale and uninteresting in the presence of Felicity, who
seemed to hold every male eye at the table. She had even managed to
charm the ladies with her genuine interest in the antics of their
children.

Children. He’d purposely let the matter of
fertility cycles drop, had put the book back in his library the
morning after he’d made Felicity his wife in truth. He couldn’t
have kept himself from her, couldn’t have checked his passion and
still shared the house with her. He was falling like a fool. And he
had stopped fighting it.

And now he had discovered a swaggering pride
in the fact that she would be leaving with him tonight, hopefully
assaulting him in their carriage, and sharing his bed and his
breakfast. She had made a game of touring him through each newly
turned room in his once-dark house. She would lock the door behind
them, show him leggy sofas and brass pots, and then she would
seduce him there on the floor, or in a chair, until he could stand
it no longer and he would lose himself in her exquisite passion.
Not even the new herb garden, with its heady scent of thyme and
rosemary, had escaped her attention.

She slipped a teasing smile to him across the
linen and over the cutlery, a smile that reminded him of her wish
to meet him under the table. It was a ridiculous notion, but one
that made him burn to the roots of his hair, and roused him when he
should be most in check.

“Dear ladies,” Lady Meath said, as she rose
and clapped her hands together, “let us leave the gentlemen to
their pipes and port, while all of you follow me outside to the
glasshouse to see my new stand of bamboo. It’s come straight from
China. There’s nothing quite like an excursion to the garden after
dinner rather than a stuffy old drawing room.”

Hunter rose with the other men, but excused
himself to tend his wife. He had an insatiable need to kiss her,
and thought he could manage a moment as the other women donned
their cloaks.

Felicity was the last into the butler’s
cloakroom. Her shawl had fallen to the floor and was now a jumble
of folds. Hunter took it from the housemaid and turned toward his
wife, tumbling the shawl in his hands to find the hood.

“Did you enjoy your meal, Hunter?”

She was smiling at him, a palpable and
provocative greeting that made him decide to have Branson take the
long way back to Claybourne Manor.

“The company was lacking, my dear, but I did
enjoy the view.” He covered her lush mouth with his own and stayed
overlong, till her breath and his were heated. The others had left
the cloakroom, and the chambermaid had tactfully padded away.

They were quite alone in this house full of
people.

He felt her hand in the middle of his chest;
her fingers slipped through the buttons of his waistcoat and
through his shirt. Her eyes glinted in the sultry light spilling in
from the hallway.

“Now, how am I to leave you here,
Hunter?”

“Perhaps we’ll just close this door . .
.”

Instead, she pulled him down to her by his
buttons and browsed his mouth with her lips and with her lavender
scented fingers, until he was sucking them and she was melting hard
against his arousal.

“Hmm. And how will you leave now, Hunter?
They’ll certainly know what we’ve been doing in here.”

He kissed her palm and then turned her away
from him. “If you’ll stand here and protect my reputation, and . .
. Mrs. Claybourne, mind your manners.” He lifted her hand from the
front of his trousers, when he would have rather moved against
it.