Lord of Ice (37 page)

Then, at last, Monday dawned, the twenty-seventh of March—the day that Damien was to leave for the port of Ramsgate to sail across the Channel to Ostend.

Miranda rose at three-thirty in the morning to ensure that she would be awake and ready to go before he could even protest. Too nervous to eat breakfast, she had the carriage brought out in the predawn darkness. By lamplight, she oversaw the grooms who loaded the vehicle with her luggage.

All of a sudden, she heard Damien yelling for her from inside the house. “Miranda! Miranda! Damn that woman, where has she gone?” He suddenly flung into the doorway. “Miranda!”

She stiffened at his bewildered call and slowly turned around, braced to defy him. “Yes, my lord?”

He looked at little shocked to find her up and dressed. He glanced warily at the carriage. “What are you doing?”

“None of your business.”

“You were trying to slip away to Winterhaven before I awoke,” he accused her, his tone raw with hurt.

“No, I was not. Did you really think I would leave without saying good-bye?” she asked in reproach.

He stared at her. “Where are you going, then?”

She set her hands on her waist and lifted her chin a notch. “To Brussels. With you,” she replied, her eyes ablaze, daring him to naysay her.

His jaw dropped. “With me?”

“Oh, yes, I am, sir, and if you have one word of protest, tell it to the wind.” She turned her back on him and continued hurrying the grooms along at their task.

After a long moment, when there was still no sound from her husband, she chanced a look over her shoulder. He was still standing in the doorway, looking utterly routed.

“Is there a problem?” she asked haughtily.

He snapped his jaw shut. “No.”

“Good.”

“Well, then,” he said to himself. Shaking his head a bit as if to clear it, he stepped back into the house and closed the door.

Miranda stood there gazing at the closed door, shocked by his lack of argument. He hadn’t even put up a fight! she thought, her heart lifting to realize that she had gotten her way. She was going to the Continent; she would stay by his side!

The first battle was won.

They set out from London as the sun rose: Damien and she, her maid, his manservant, one of his regimental aides, and two grooms astride the riding horses—Fancy and a large, powerful bay gelding that Damien had bought from Newmarket. Robert, Lucien, and Alec escorted them to Ramsgate to see them off. The brothers chatted in hearty tones along the way, but Damien and Miranda kept stealing furtive, uncertain glances at each other. She could not tell what he was thinking and was too busy in any case trying to hide her nervousness.

After a ride of several hours, they reached the port, from which innumerable ships were leaving, conveying members of the army to the Continent. They hastened to the pier to board the sloop on which Damien had secured their passage. The captain escorted him on board to ensure that the packet was large enough for their party. The ship looked seaworthy and the crew most able, but Miranda blanched when her husband came back with the revelation that the voyage to Ostend would take twenty-four hours. The captain was anxious to get under way, for the winds were ideal.

After loading the horses and baggage onto the boat, there was barely room for them, their five servants, and Damien’s eager young aide. While he oversaw the horses being taken up the gangplank, Miranda hung back on solid ground, holding on anxiously to the arms of her brothers-in-law. She had not been on a boat since the day her parents had drowned and was terrified of what love now compelled her to do.

She exchanged heartfelt good-byes with his brothers, giving Lucien, her coconspirator, an especially long hug.

“Be brave,” he murmured, giving her a kiss on her forehead.

She nodded, then marched down the dock with slow, dirgelike steps, trying not to look down at the water, though she could hear it slapping the mossy, barnacled posts. Damien was already on deck when she boarded the sloop with sweating palms and pounding heart. Her stomach was in knots and sweat broke out on her face as she walked up the gangplank. She went down to the hold at once with her maid, but Damien stayed at the rails, watching his brothers and England drifting out of sight.

When he came into the teakwood cabin, she was sitting balled up on the berth. Her grip was white-knuckled as she held onto a wooden shelf beside her to steady herself against the boat’s uneasy rocking. Her maid sat beside her with smelling salts at the ready in a little round vinaigrette. Miranda glanced rather desperately at him as he entered the hold.

She knew that he could see in a glance that her defiance had dissolved; her face had the greenish pale cast of one suffering from mal de mer, but he knew full well that it was fear, not motion, that ailed her. Moving in time with the boat’s gentle rocking, he crossed the tiny cabin to her and nodded her maid’s dismissal, taking the smelling salts from the woman. He sat down on the berth and gathered Miranda onto his lap, stilling her feeble protest with a soft, “Hush, wife.”

Though still uneasy after the bitterness that had held them apart for the past ten days, she gave in to the generous strength that he offered. Holding her against his chest, he stroked her hair and her back, calming her by degrees.

“God, it feels so good to hold you again,” he whispered at length. He stopped petting her, closed his eyes, and rested his forehead against her temple. He shook his head with a sigh. “When I looked in your room this morning and you weren’t in your bed, I thought you’d left me.”

She gazed at him wordlessly, linking her fingers through his.

“I never want to fight with you again. It hurts too much.” He lifted her hands, winding her arms around his neck as he pulled her more snugly into his embrace.

“I’m sorry for saying I would never forgive you,” she whispered anxiously.

“It’s all right—”

“No, it’s not—”

“Miranda, I love you, and I know you love me. Your lips may claim that you hate me, but I know you. I know that your love for me is the only thing that could have possibly induced you to drag yourself out onto this boat.”

Tears rushed into her eyes as she nodded, hugging him. “I thought you wouldn’t allow me to come if I gave you any warning.”

“Probably right,” he agreed with a nod. “I can always send you home if the fighting gets too hot.”

“I will do whatever you say, but I couldn’t bear to be left behind. I would go mad without you, Damien. Lucien helped me get everything ready.”

“I figured as much,” he said wryly.

“You see? This way, if anything happens to you—if you are hurt—I will be there to take care of you. And whatever happens, I won’t let you get lost in the darkness again.”

“That couldn’t happen with you by my side.” He captured her face between his hands and kissed her with fierce, wild longing, easing her back onto the narrow, cushioned berth. “I need you,” he breathed. “You’ve deprived me too long.”

“Oh, Damien, I can’t. I’m too scared and ill,” she whispered, closing her eyes in helpless attraction as he caressed her breast through her clothing.

“This will help you,” he promised in a dark, satiny whisper.

She caught her breath sharply as he kissed her earlobe, awakening her senses. “We mustn’t. The whole crew will hear.”

“No, we’ll be very quiet,” he breathed, slowly pinning her wrists above her head on the cushioned berth. “If you’re going to join my regiment, I think it’s best you learn your duties,” he purred.

“Oh, you are a wicked man,” she murmured, feeling her body’s instantaneous response to his taunting, a wet surge of warmth.

“How many times do you think I can make you come before we reach Ostend?”

“Twenty-four hours?” she asked breathlessly as he reached under her skirts, enthralling her with his slow, insistent touch.

He never answered the question, for his mouth came down on hers in ravishing hunger. His lusty eagerness excited her to fever pitch, melting away her fear in her need of him. She felt him unfastening his black trousers with jerky haste; then he was inside her, big and throbbing, driving in to the hilt. He let out a whispered groan near her ear; she trembled under him in needy bliss. He took her roughly, just the way he liked it, staking his claim on her anew.

She devoured his passionate kisses and yielded utterly. Primal vigor fueled his every thrust as he pleasured her relentlessly, lest she forget to whom she belonged. All restraint shattered as they neared climax, panting and writhing frantically together as though they could not merge their bodies completely enough. She wrapped her legs around his sleek hips; he gripped her bared buttocks, dizzying her with wild, forbidden pleasure as he pressed his fingertip deeply in the cleft of her backside. He bit her earlobe just short of pain and ordered her in a harsh, rasping whisper to come for him.

She submitted, powerless to resist. A wave of release rushed through her, so complete and overwhelming that she was unconscious of the near screams of pleasure wrenching from her lips, rising up quite audibly to the entire crew and echoing out across the placid water of the Channel. In that moment, her whole universe was contained in blinding pleasure and passion, and at its center was her fierce warrior. His chiseled features were taut, his long-lashed eyes closed, his head tipped back. His splendid manhood, hot and hard, pulsated within her, sliding in her satiny wetness again and again until he collapsed on her, spent, his muscled body sweaty and quivering, leaden-heavy.

“Ohhh,
Damien,
” she murmured after several minutes, draping her arms around his shoulders in indolent affection, a light sheen of sweat on her skin.

He smiled drowsily and rested his head on her chest. “I think,” he said in a lazy purr, “that you and I ought to fight more often.”

When the sloop finally reached the shallow approaches to Ostend the next day, the horses were let down into the water by a huge sling and had to swim to shore. The passengers climbed down into a longboat, which a couple of crewmen then rowed to the beach. Damien picked her up and carried her to shore so she would not have to set foot in the deep, sucking sand. The country was very flat in all directions. Miranda thought the fort a rather dull, dreary place. It stank of too many horses, for the sandy beaches made it a useful disembarking point for cavalry.

They did not linger long, but packed their luggage onto some mules that Damien’s aide located for them in the town, mounted up on their horses, and set out on the excellent paved road that ran alongside a canal for the entire two-hour ride. The bare, watery landscape was so flat that they could see the tall windmills and church spires of the town from ten miles away. When they arrived at the neat, picturesque town, they had an early supper at the Hotel de Commerce. The concierge told them that it was about seven hours by horseback to Ghent, where King Louis had arrived with his court, having fled Paris at Napoleon’s return. Heartened by their repast, they pressed on.

If Miranda was not enjoying her adventure tremendously already, she experienced the thrill of her husband’s high regard in the army when the British infantry troops guarding the large, fine town sent up a cheer, recognizing Damien as he rode past the sentries. When he stopped to greet them, they told him that many of his friends were already there. They proceeded on into the fine, spacious town, took rooms for the night at the elegant Hotel de Flandre, and attended a formal reception that evening for the king. Miranda had never been in the presence of royalty before, but poor, gouty Louis XVIII did not quite match her expectations, wheezing and leaning his great bulk on his royal cane as though his heart might give out on him at any moment.

Though she had been married for two whole months now, it still awed her to hear the stately courtier beside the king present Damien and her formally to His Majesty as the earl and countess of Winterley.

Am I actually a countess?
she wondered, holding back a laugh to think that it was true—she, the rebel of Yardley School!—but she behaved herself, executing a quite perfect, low curtsy while, beside her, Damien bowed to the overweight royal. They were lifted from their courtesies, thanked, and dismissed to go off and chat with Damien’s highborn officer friends. He presented them to her one by one, and each of them praised him for his excellent taste. Miranda beamed at their gallant flatteries and hung on her husband’s arm.

After a few pleasant hours at the reception, and a far more enjoyable interlude of Damien’s athletic lovemaking in the luxurious hotel room, they slept soundly in each other’s arms, woke at a leisurely hour, met up again with the other officers, and all set out merrily together for Brussels, where the duke of Wellington was amassing his army.