Linda Needham (22 page)

“I’m not going to let you take them anywhere.”

“It won’t work to lock us all in the cellar.”

“Don’t think I haven’t considered it. But I couldn’t stand the caterwauling. So, I have an idea. It occurred to me today.”

“Ah, you mean to toss us all into the sea during the next storm?”

“I thought of that too, but you’d only be tossed back to me, wife. Like happened last night on the cliff.”

The rat. Kate crossed her arms over her chest. “Then what is your grand idea?”

He studied every part of her face, as though trying to judge her reaction in advance. “What do you think of Badger’s Run?”

“I’m very proud of it.”

“I mean the lodge itself. The building. Comfortable, in excellent repair, plenty of bedrooms, a large dining room, a first-rate library. God knows there’s plenty of room to play outdoors—”

“You mean to turn Badger’s Run into an orphanage?”

“Exactly.” Jared expected the woman to have run toward him by now and thrown herself into his arms. But her feet were planted hard against the carpet, her fists balled against her hips.

And those were brilliant blue lightning bolts shooting out of her eyes.

“How dare you!” She stomped her foot, whirled on a heel and started for the door.

He arrived before she did, barring the way, locking it behind him. “Christ, Kate! Isn’t that what you wanted? The children nearby.”

“Nearby, indeed. Now move, sir, before I use my knee against your wedding tackle.”

“My what?”

“I’m warning you.” She pointed at his crotch. “Move out of my way.”

“My God, Kate. What do you want from me? How much closer do the children need to be?”

She crossed her arms again. “Tell me, Jared, how much sense does it make having the children eat and sleep and bathe and attend school at Badger’s Run, when we live more than a mile away in the hall.”

“Perfect sense?” He flinched as he said it, because he knew that wasn’t the answer she was looking for, had known the right one for some time.

“What if Mera awakes from a nightmare at two in the morning? What if the baby misses you? Or one of them has a fever, or a loses a tooth? Or needs a story read to them.”

“Then you can just…” He shook his head, because he didn’t know what else to think.

“They’ll think we deserted them.” She touched his arm. “Can you imagine having supper without them, Jared? And all their chatter, their laughter. Or living in that big house that’s so quiet we can’t sleep.”

“What are you getting at, Kate?” Though he understood perfectly.

“We’ve become a family. Can’t you feel that? I love
the children—every one of them. I need them with me as much as they need me. As much as you need all of us, Jared.”

The back of his eyes began to burn. He’d known the truth, her ultimate expectation for some time now. He’d just hadn’t wanted to face it, the choice he had to make.

Kate and a houseful of castaway children or his independence.

As much as you need all of us.

He felt her watching his every move, reading him, seeing into his heart and holding her breath in the hopes that he would find the right answer.

“There are twelve of them, Kate.”

Tears welled in her eyes, a smile lifting the corners of her mouth. “Isn’t that a miracle, husband?”

It was. It must be, because as their gamin faces blinked past him he couldn’t imagine choosing from among them. This one stays, this one goes. Parish farm, boarding school, Bethnel Green, a squalid ditch.

“It means adoption, Kate.”

“A lot of paperwork.”

“And lawyers’ fees.” He felt the glow of a huge smile building inside his chest. “But cheaper, I expect, than an annulment.”

Tears were streaming down her cheeks, catching up in her dimples before continuing their trip over the edge of her chin and down her throat.

Filled to the brink with love for this amazing woman, Jared lifted her hand to his lips and dropped onto one knee. “Will you marry me, Kate?”

“Oh, Jared, with all my heart, yes.” She slipped her fingers between his and kissed where they joined.

And stole his breath away. Soft, pliable lips, deeply sabled lashes, her blue eyes looking back at him, her heart laid open to him.

“Then, my dear wife,” he said, rising off his knee, wrapping his arms fully around her to gather her as close as he could, until her breasts were dancing points against his chest, her belly a welcoming cradle for his arousal, “you and I have a marriage to begin.”

“A scandalous good thing, husband, because we’ve already got a passel of children.”

And he had a lifetime’s worth of courting still to do.

“O
h, Jared! I’m looking forward to this English consummation ritual that I’ve heard so much about.” She reached her arms around his neck, squirming languidly against him, measuring his hardness as she smiled up at him.

“Sweet, not half as much as I am.” His pulse suddenly pounding and steaming like a runaway train, Jared scooped her completely off her feet and held her tightly against him, riding a searing wave of temptation, a profound yearning to carry her to the carpet, to lift her skirts, and enter her sweetness. To explore and thrust and possess her.

“Besides, husband…oh, my!” She lifted herself higher into his arms, wrapped her legs around his waist. “Besides, I’d hate to waste all these lovely can
dles and that steaming hot bath and your devious plans to seduce me.”

“To join you, Kate. At long last.” God, if he could keep up with her, his virginal dance-with-me-naked-in-the-moonlight bride.

“You mean to join
with
me, husband.” She caught his earlobe with her teeth and breathed the heady words, “In every way.”

“Yes, that, Kate.” Oh, God! The lovely woman clinging so perfectly to his waist was racing ahead of him, squirming and sighing, measuring the iron-hot stiffness of his penis with the pulsing rhythm of her hips while he was trying desperately to keep a steady, governable pace.

“I’ve been waiting so long for this, Jared.” She sighed his name against his temple, churning up clouds of lust in his groin. “For your kiss.” She touched her mouth lightly to his, again and then again, until she became his pulse and his heartbeat. “Waiting for you.”

“Your witless husband, who hadn’t the sense to come home to you.”

“But you did come home, Jared, and I hope you mean to stay.” She kissed him more fully, pulling him against her, moaning against his mouth.

“And stay and stay until long past forever.” Starving for her, he lifted aside the linen of her gown and kissed her shoulder, filling his lungs with her scent of lilac and lemon until he thought he would burst with the wanting.

The fiery need for her.

An even greater need to make this night hers.

But their wedding night would end right now if he allowed her to continue her assault on his senses, his sense of honor, his self-control.

“Come, wife,” he said, carrying her toward the hearth, “you’ll have to slow down, or I won’t last the night.”

“Too exhausted for making love?” She quirked a look at him, then took a long, delicious time sliding down the front of him, her eyes flickering with fire as she meet his hardness along the way. “I can’t believe that, Jared. You seem wonderfully sturdy to me.”

“Kate, please—” But she’d already slipped her hand between them, was running her palm down his belly until she stopped at the front of his trousers.

“Especially right here.” Her eyes bright with excitement. “Very sturdy.”

Jared gasped and jerked her hand away. “I’m not tired in the least, wife. I’m just too interested…” God, this was going to be a long, amazing night.

“How can you be too inter…oh, I see.” Still she danced her hips against his, blinked at him, primly disheveled, her hair escaped from its lose bindings, now a cascade of gold clouding her shoulders. “You’re too interested in leaving the dance and the fire and taking me off into the shadows to complete our…union?”

“I don’t think you understand at all.” Jared felt a feral growl rising out of his chest, an urge to clutch at her bottom and grind his erection into her belly. But he merely kissed her, madly, held her firmly against him to keep her from moving.

“Thank you, Jared.” She wriggled and moaned against him, taking his kisses deeply, bestowing her own with a sensual ferocity.

“For kissing you?”

“For taking such care tonight. It’s all so perfect.”

He found her earlobe and nibbled, wanted to chew and suck his way across her shoulder and right down into her bodice.

“Truthfully, love, the bath was Drew’s idea.”

She pulled away an inch, smiling, her mouth moist and pouty. “Do you know they’re complete lunatics, and thoroughly charming? And I can only assume that they delivered me to you knowing exactly what you were planning to do to me tonight.”

“That we’d be dancing naked in the moonlight, Kate. I’m afraid so. As a matter of fact, I put them in complete command of Hawkesly Hall while we’re gone.”

“The children will eat them alive. And the three Miss Darbys will feed them till they pop.”

“Probably, but they’ll all have had fun and will sleep till noon.”

“What about the baby?”

He’d even thought of that, though she hadn’t been his daughter then. Not officially.

“I told them to think of a name for her.”

“Jared!”

“Don’t worry about any of them. I’ve never seen a child or a dog who didn’t take a permanent liking to those two right off.”

She took a deep breath then settled herself with a long sigh. “Then it must be the company you keep.”

“What do you mean?”

“If I wasn’t in love with you before, and I have been since the day you married me”—
Bloody hell, she loves
me!
—“then I would have fallen for you last night when I saw you with the baby on your stomach.” She smiled at him wistfully, started working on the tiny buttons on the front of her gown.

“What are you doing there?” He watched the first three buttons pop open one by one, was entranced by the curving shadows that slowly revealed themselves between her breasts.

“I’ve been coveting that bath since the moment I walked in here.” She reached down and brushed her fingers through the water then touched her lips.

He watched the drop slide down her throat, separate over the soft rise of her breasts, then reconverge as it disappeared into that sweet valley.

His mouth went dry.

“Will you join me?” She touched the damp trail, her fingers toying in the lacy folds at the top edge of her camisole. Then two more buttons succumbed, the panels falling aside, her gown sagging off one shoulder.

“Wait, love,” he said, wanting to make this luscious moment last into tomorrow, wanting to peel her of every flounce and ribbon all by himself. “Let me.”

“Undo my buttons?”

“Undo everything, remove every sweet scrap.” His heart was thrumming, pumping molten lead through his veins and into his gut.

“As you wish, Lord Hawkesly.”

“You are my wish.” His nerves standing on end, he focused his fumbling way along the remaining half-dozen buttons that ran down to the stiff little point at the front of her bodice.

Though she wasn’t helping his concentration, not
with her delicate fingers playing softly in the hair at his temples. “You grew up in a workhouse?” He looked up into her eyes, at her out-of-place question and found them watery and concerned, searching his face. “I can’t imagine your life there.”

“A long time ago.”

“What a fine man you’ve become.” She slipped her fingers between his, then kissed the underside of his wrist, stopping his progress in stripping her, swelling his heart as thickly as his rock-ridged penis.

A wholly different kind of throbbing, but just as steamy and sensual. That she thought him fine in any way.

Then she kissed him again, long and sweetly, with her tongue and her teeth, her fingers guiding his hand through the labyrinth of all those frustrating little buttons.

At the last, the front sprang open like a pair of heavenly gates, a mouth-watering invitation just for him, revealing a thin chemise, plain of decoration save for the short lacing of ribbon that ran partway down the front.

“God, Kate, you’re beautiful.”

A pallid description of the woman who had changed his life, his dreams. Who thought him wonderful.

“You keep saying that, as though it were true and I was some flower you plan to pluck.” She touched that tasty hollow at the base of her throat.

“Now there’s an idea, wife. To pluck you.” Because she belonged to him and he loved her smile, its brazen tilt, her fingers laced between his as though she couldn’t bear to let go of him.

“Pluck away, then, sir.”

Oh, how he wanted to. To pluck and plunge and taste.

He’d spent half his days in the last two weeks watching her breasts tease against her shirtwaist, wanting them, wanting her to grant him the moral right to kiss and nuzzle them. Now he wanted to see them—in all their glory, to touch them, and suckle and grope in a most carnal way.

Yet, there was still another layer of cotton hiding them, keeping him from them.

A camisole and the formidable waistband of her skirt. He’d undressed more than a few women in his life, but this one stumped him with her scent, with the cool heat pouring off her.

“Shall I lend a hand?” She reached behind her, wrangled for a moment with something, then tugged on the skirts. It hung up for an instant and then slipped over her hips and slid down her petticoats.

Still another garment. Two of them. Like peeling an onion.

“Let me.” He reached behind her this time, placing kisses along her nape as he worked, and they were gone quickly, a mound of cotton and linen pooled around her ankles, leaving her standing there in drawers to just below her knees and her untucked camisole.

“Well, now, Kate, that’s an excellent place to start. Nearly naked.”

“But not nearly enough.” She tugged on the ribbon that was lingering in the cleaving between her breasts, but he caught her hand and the ribbon, kissed her fingers.

“All the time in the world, love.” She watched his every move from under her long, sooty lashes as he hooked his finger into the criss-crossing, and tugged the ribbon through one hole then the next until it had fallen to his touch and the ends were hanging loose, revealing her buttery smooth skin, bathed in lemony shadows.

“I won’t ask why you’re so skilled at undressing women, husband.”

“An old skill. Haven’t used it for years.” God, he want to taste her, to nibble and bite and swallow her whole. He kissed her there in her sultry shadows, touched his lips to her silky skin, felt her breath gusting against his temple.

“Truly, Jared? That you…oh!” She drew in a long, humming little breath as he slipped his hand inside her camisole, cupped his palm around the base of her perfect breast. “That you haven’t had a woman since…yes, that’s very, very ni-nice! Oh!”

Highly encouraged, flattered, his penis thoroughly engorged by her moaning, he drew aside the linen and revealed the lusciously rose nipple.

“Haven’t had a woman since we married, Kate.” He bent his head, would have lightly touched his mouth to the delicious looking peak, but she caught his face with her hands and stared into his face.

“You’ve been celibate?” Her eyebrows winged deeply, curved at their ends, her eyes searching his face. “All this time?”

A splinter of guilt wedged in his rib, because he hadn’t set out to be celibate. “I have.”

“My handsome, pirate captain, celibate?” She kissed him again, one of her softly succulent assults on his mouth which zinged him in the groin and drew a groan from him. “I’m amazed, Jared. All those woman in all those ports.”

“But I had you to come home to.”

She eyed him, unbelieving. “Some other reason.”

Indeed. “I must have just known that you would be worth the wait.”

“You’re full of blarney, Jared. But just so you know that I’m not the sort to share my husband with anyone.”

He smiled from deep inside him. “Not a chance, love.” He kissed her neck and then trailed his mouth downward. “I promise.”

“Good, because I…oh!” She gasped as he pulled aside the drooping camisole, wriggled against his hips as she leaned back in his arms, exposing more of her curves and shadows, making soft little noises as he continued his journey.

“I’ve wanted to taste you right here.” He caught her nipple just between his lips, his teeth, and Kate gasped.

“Oh, my, you shouldn’t have waited so…so looong, husband!”

Wanton to her very soul. He nibbled and tugged and rolled the delicous little delicacy on his tongue and between his teeth, while his marvelous wife mewled and pressed her hips against his erection.

“I’m a damned fool, love.” For not rushing home to her, for not cleaving when he had the chance.

But then she wouldn’t have been there to save the
children; Justin and Dori and Margaret and all the others.

And now that seemed utterly unthinkable.

“You’re just going to have to make up for your inattention.” She caught his gaze, now a bright, fiery blue as she breathed hard and impatiently yanked her camisole off one shoulder and then the other until she was bare and beautiful above her tiny waist. And now she was standing in her drawers, her skin shining gold in the candlelight, sleek and silky.

Drawers that were plain linen and nearly shapeless to her knees, opaque, and yet marvelously split right up the center, begging exploration.

“God, Kate, you’ve got my full attention now.” Two perfect half-orbs, ripe and rosy-tipped, smooth as cream and meadow-scented. “All of it, for all time.”

He was focused on the woman, having trouble thinking, or making sense of her leaving him to circle the bathtub. She cupped her hands into the water, took a sniff of it.

“My favorite scent.”

Then it was his too. And he would have told her that, but she stepped over the edge of the tub and into the water, drawers and all, then disappeared to her collarbone beneath the surface.

“Ahhhhhhh, my bones ache, Jared. Thank you for this.” She leaned back against the edge, closing her eyes, her scraped kneecap making a steamy island in the water.

“The bath was Drew’s idea, remember.” He’d never felt quite so frustrated, standing at the edge of the wa
ter, fully clothed, nearly barking like Mr. McNair. Wanting in. Wanting to play.

“I must thank him, then.” She opened an eye at him, grinning. “I wish there was room for two.”

There’s damn well going to be!
He shucked his neckcloth and his shirt and was about to shuck the rest when her foot peeked out of the water and then her leg, all sleek and shiny and tasty.

“If you’re offering, Kate.” He took hold of her foot and her bare ankle and knelt beside the tub, ran his hands down her leg, massaging his way toward her thigh and her wet drawers.