Mistletoe Magic (14 page)

‘When I left London the night of the ball I had no notion that anyone had seen us, and I should like to explain just what happened next—’ He stopped as she shook his words away.

‘My ruination was as much my fault as it was yours. More, perhaps, for at least you had the foresight to stop it at a touch.’

‘You wanted me to keep going?’

The very thought of it had the blood rushing to places that he knew would show and he turned. Lord, suddenly he wanted all the promise of a wedding night, all the whispers, soft words and touches, the burning pleasure of release and elation.

‘I do not know…perhaps…?’

Given as a gift of honesty. The squeeze of relief in his heart made him giddy. Not at all like Elizabeth then, he thought, for she had seldom been truthful when it suited her not to be.

A knock at the door allowed the entry of two young maids who efficiently set out steaming dinners on trays at the table. A bottle of water was added to the fare just before they left.

‘You do not drink wine?’ she asked as they sat down to the supper.

‘After the carriage accident I drank too much…’

‘And then you met my cousin, whom you seem to dislike?’

Luc felt himself tense up. Lord, how was he to tell her anything, a woman who had been cocooned by a genteel and refined upbringing? He could see it in her skin, in the softness of her hands, in the worry of her eyes and in the shake of her voice. Tonight was her wedding night, damn it, and she could not wish to hear anything so sordid. Forcing a smile, he raised his glass to her. ‘There is much in my life that has been more difficult than your own, and there are things that I have done that I am now sorry for.’

‘Things?’

He laughed, more out of sheer unease than anything else, and hated the way her smile was dashed from her eyes.

‘Things that I am not proud of now, but were at the time necessary.’

‘To survive?’

He nodded. ‘Survival here is a simpler process. Break the rules in England and you are banished. Break them in Virginia and you are left fighting for your life.’

‘As you have been?’ Her eyes deliberately ran across the scar on his neck. He saw the fear in them and his hand caught hers, his fingers running along the inside of her opened palm, stroking, asking.

For a chance, for a second chance, the softness of her skin against his just a small reminder of all that was different between them.

Lilly closed her eyes and felt. For this one moment in her wedding day she just felt what it was other brides might, the trail of his fingers evoking a thrall in her she had only ever known once before. With him.

Was this an answer?

An easy ending to everything that was different between them. A bride and groom thrown together not by love, but by ruin.

She knew nothing of his life or his beliefs, nothing of his family or his country or the things that he knew as right and wrong. If they made love here and now it would be just that, bodies touching where minds could never follow, a shallow knowledge of desire that had nothing to do with the heart.

When she pulled away he let her go and stood with his hands by his side, watching, a man of honour and
constraint, but one with enough questions in his eyes to make her understand what it was he asked.

If not now, then when?

The fire of his appetite was easy to interpret. Such a masculine simplicity! For a second the very sincerity of it made her pause, no pretence or artifice, no false posturing at something else either.

Not love, but need, his man’s body bristling with something she did not understand yet, but knew enough to be wary about.

‘If you could be patient.’

He nodded stiffly, the bronze in his eyes brittle. All of a sudden the sheer and utter amazement of sharing a meal at night and alone was scintillating. Exhilarating.

No longer single, but married.

The very idea of it seeped through her body in an unexpected warmth, as her memory of the one kiss he had given her began to tug at a power deep inside. It overwhelmed her, this newness of being here, and she could barely take breath as a hot flush of what he might do to her again surfaced. Too raw. Too quick after such a day. A single trail of sweat ran between her breasts and the cream dress was not thick enough to hide what she knew with horror was suddenly on show.

Her nipples stood proud against the silk, pressing and swollen. What was it that a husband did to a wife in a marriage bed beneath the sheets under the cover of darkness?

She did not know. Had never known. Until now. Until
a knowledge that was as old as time itself began to wind itself through an aching anticipation, the thickening throb of her womanhood making her languid, heavy.

If he saw he did not say anything, a man who had spent the day balancing her unhappiness, her cousins’ anger and her father’s uncertainty like juggling balls as he tried to get through a wedding he could hardly want, either.

Her mind remembered Lord Hawkhurst’s uncle’s words.
A happy and long marriage
? She wished suddenly that she could be brave enough to ask right here and now of his movements across the last weeks and of his hopes for the future, but she did not want to in case the answers were nothing like the ones she needed to hear.

The longing in her body was replaced by a wooden fear of everything. Two strangers sharing a meal without any idea as to who each other was, their wedding clothes and rings only a ludicrous parody.

Just silence.

And then another sound.

‘Mr Lucas. Mr Lucas.’ A child’s voice from afar and as the door was flung open a small dark-haired girl bolted into the room, stopping briefly as her eyes sensed Lillian’s presence, but then regrouping.

‘You are home again. Mrs Poole said that we should wait until the morrow, but—’

‘We?’ He looked around just as she did and there at the door stood a more timid child, hair so blonde it was almost silver and eyes a wide pale blue.

‘Charity wanted me to wait, but she is so much slower I could not.’

The other child came forwards, a shy smile of gladness gathering on her lips.

‘Charity and Hope, this is Lillian Clairmont.’

Hope smiled at her, but the other child looked away.

‘We were married today at her country home of Fairley.’

‘This is your ring?’ Hope’s finger traced the band of gold on the hand that held her.

‘Indeed it is.’

‘Look, Charity. Isn’t it lovely?’ the dark-haired girl exclaimed and the smaller child nodded.

‘And the lady wore that…?’ A thread of something akin to disappointment startled Lillian, although Lucas did not seem to notice any criticism.

‘She did and she looked very beautiful.’

‘I will wear lace and silk and a tiara when I get married and I will have flowers in my hair.’

The appearance of a harried-looking governess at the doorway curtailed the amusements.

‘I am so very sorry, sir. The girls were told to stay in their room and I thought that they were there until I heard footsteps and followed the sound.’

‘Please could you come and tuck us in? Please, Mr Lucas.’

He looked at the time. ‘If you do not mind, Lillian, it is late and the girls…’

‘Indeed,’ she answered back, trying to keep her tone
light. ‘They would obviously like you to settle them and I am very tired.’

He seemed to hesitate at that, as though he might have wanted to say more, but then thought again.

‘Then I shall bid you goodnight.’

‘Goodnight,’ Hope parroted, and they were all gone, just the bustling sound of them receding into silence.

Lillian stared at the closed door with a growing amazement. Goodness, she thought, and turned to lift the lurid purple eiderdown around her shoulders, the quilting on the back of it catching her eye with the very fineness of detail.

A movement to one side of the room made her start as a large grey-and-white cat padded towards her.

‘Shoo,’ she said, but the word did not seem to change the animal’s direction one bit as it lurched itself up on the bed, the sound of purring distinct and deep. Tentatively her hand went out, running across the thick fur, a quiet delight enveloping her.

‘I said shoo,’ she repeated, allowing the cat on to her lap even as she said it, the warmth of its body comforting in the cold of the evening. Soft paws pushed into her thighs, kneading the layers of silk and organza. Almost tickling.

The whole day had been a skelter of emotion. Up and down. This way, that way. Touching and distance. No true direction in any of it. She closed her eyes and breathed in, the ugly ring on her finger winking up at her with its bright deep red.

Damn, damn, damn, Luc thought, after he had tucked in the two children and gone back to his own room. The wilting ache of his body was as out of place here as his desperate attempt at ignoring the hard outline of Lillian’s breasts against silk.

Take it slowly, he thought. Give her the time she wants!

‘If you could be patient.’

But even now he wanted to go back, wanted the promise of what could be, wanted to see the beauty of what lay beneath her dress, her nipples puckered with yearning. But he could not.

Careful, he thought. Go carefully. The reason for his ordeal at sea still worried him and the truth was not as yet such an easy path to follow.

He had married Lilly to save her reputation and any other feelings that were as yet unresolved lingered in a place he had no wish to explore. Had she had any hand in his disappearance? Had Jean Taylor-Reid acted alone? Did the woman have any true idea of the danger she had placed him in? Perhaps she genuinely thought she had bought passage for him to the Americas, an easy way of dealing with a problem that was becoming more and more complex.

The whole puzzle of it made him swear and he was tempted to open the brandy standing on his desk. But he didn’t.

He needed to trust Lilly and she needed to trust him.

If he took her virginity in the guise of a man who was
not exactly as he promised he was, he knew she would never forgive him.

Damn, he said again as the knowledge of what he could have just missed out on settled in his stomach like a stone.

Taking a drink of Mrs Poole’s freshly made lemonade, he settled down to read the final part of Dickens’s Bleak House, the title appropriate for all that he was feeling tonight.

‘T
his hillock affords the best view of the place,’ Lucas said as they stopped atop a cliff. ‘I think it must have once been a river-bed, for the water has cut through the sandstone etching out the land. See, there is still the remains of a smaller stream.’

Lillian looked at where he was pointing. ‘You have a good knowledge of geography.’

He shook his head. ‘Rivers are the same anywhere. They divide the country with their own particular brand of frivolity and men must simply follow their course.’

‘Like the river near where you live? The James, was it not?’

‘And you have a good memory,’ he returned before spurring his horse on and gesturing her to follow.

They had spent the morning wandering the wide lands of Woodruff Abbey, his attempt, she suspected, at keeping her busy and having enough space between
them to make things…simple. No touching, no deeper conjectures, just the land and the choice of moving on once conversation foundered.

And yet she was enjoying the tour, enjoying the cold winter sun on her face and the exploration of an estate that was magnificent in its diversity. The caves they now stopped beside were mossed with lichen and carvings, sticks wedged as sentinels protecting angular sandstone facings.

This time he dismounted and came over to help her down. Having no other recourse but to accept, she waited as his hands came around her waist, her body sliding down the length of his until her toes met the ground.

Moving away as soon as she was stable, the material in his riding jacket strained across the breadth of his shoulders. Today he was neither the Lucas Clairmont who had kissed her in London nor the dangerous man at Fairley with blood on his face and anger in his eyes. The Lucas Clairmont of yesterday had disappeared, too, with his confidence and certainty. This man was gentler, more considerate, with no hint of demanding more than she would give him. A patient, self-controlled husband who had spent his wedding night alone!

She suddenly missed the man who would tease her and reach out unbidden, his golden reckless glance today well guarded, as if he was trying to be on his best behaviour.

Lillian’s heart began to beat faster. Was that what he was doing? Nurturing patience?

‘If you could be patient.’
She had asked that of him yes
terday. Had he retreated into trying? Warmth began to spread into the cold anger that the wedding had imbued, flushing the possibility of something very different.

‘Jack Poole says these carvings have been here since before any written history.’ His voice was tight, the facts given with a stiff correctness.

‘So they don’t really know who did them?’ Sitting on the nearest rock, she hitched up her skirts to keep them from trailing in the dust.

‘He says Viking travellers, thanes from the early part of the eighth century. People who crossed this part of England to battle the Saxon warriors fiercely defending themselves in the last free land of Wessex.’

His voice petered off as his eyes met her own, the bare facts of history irrelevant now in the growing silence. For the first time since she had met him she felt that she was in charge, the knuckles in his fist pressed white on the hand she could see, his wedding band glinting in the sun.

‘An old history, then.’

He only nodded. A man who had probably reached the end of his patience!

‘In which part of England did you live as a boy?’

‘In the north-east,’ he said obliquely. Telling her nothing.

‘You seldom answer questions about yourself. I have noticed it.’

At that he laughed, but the sound of it was hard. ‘Ask me anything.’

She pondered for a moment. ‘Why did you steal the watch at Eton?’

‘Anything but that.’

‘Very well, then! How did you meet Nathaniel St Auburn and Stephen Hawkhurst?’

‘At school. We were in the same year when we were all sent there at eleven and I was there for a good while. Holidays were also generally spent at St Auburn or Hawthorne Castle, Hawk’s family seat in Dorset.’

‘And what of your home? Your parents?’

‘My father and mother were rarely home and when they were I stayed as far away as I could get.’

Lillian glanced up, this answer nothing like the others, a ring of truth and anger so desperately heard within it. But he did not look at her as he gazed across the wide valley, a few wildflowers even at this time of the year, caught in the change of seasons and the onslaught of winter. Brittle and temporary! She knew just exactly how they felt.

‘You were an only child?’

He nodded, but the honesty of a second ago was gone. Regretting his outburst probably, she thought, by the look of the muscle that rippled to one side of his cheek.

‘And they did not follow you to America?’

‘No.’

‘Then who did you live with when you got there?’

‘An uncle. My father’s brother. A fine man by the name of Stuart Clairmont.’ He shook his head as she went to speak again. ‘Are you always this curious?’

‘You are my husband. Spouses ought to be curious about each other.’

‘Very well, then,’ he returned. ‘Tell me something about you that nobody else knows.’

He saw the way her lips tightened, her pale eyes searching his face for what? For the right to see if what she wanted to say would be taken in the spirit that she gave it? He knew that look, had seen it on his own face in the mirror as a child when his mother had warned him not to tell anyone about anything that went on inside their family.

‘I once read the Bible backwards,’ she began. ‘It was after my mother left my father for a lover who killed her.’ She looked up. ‘Not physically, you understand. There are other ways for people to die.’

Other ways? Small ways and large. Hearts that broke bit by bit until there was nothing left of any of it. Confidences that squeezed the very life out of living!

‘Her lover was a man like you…secretive, dark…’ Her voice broke on the confession.

Lord. Just like him! And in so many more ways than she knew.

But she did not let it go. ‘If my father hears that I have told you this…’

‘He won’t.’ The hands at the side of her gown were balled into tight fists.

‘You promise me?’

‘On my very life,’ he returned, an odd expression that Nat and Hawk and him had used as boys when trading secrets.

‘I had not meant to say, it was only…’ She stopped.

‘Only that I had aired my skeletons in the cupboard and you felt obliged to do the same?

He was pleased when she smiled. ‘Only that.’

Far away the shape of Woodruff Abbey stood against a dark line of trees, nestled in a wide and fertile valley. Figures played on the lawn and on the circular sweep of driveway.

‘How long have you been the children’s guardian?’

‘Since I put Woodruff into trust for them and named myself a trustee.’

‘The place is not yours?’

‘It is mine to use, but theirs to keep.’

‘An expensive gift from a man with little in the way of chattels.’

‘Children need a safe home to grow up in.’

‘A home like the one you never had. Whatever happened to your parents’ house? You have not mentioned it at all.’

‘It was sold when they left England. Travel is expensive and my father could never abide the responsibility of chattels.’

‘He sounds a selfish man.’

When he didn’t answer she tried another tack. ‘The little girls seem very fond of you?’

This time when he laughed Lillian felt the warmth of it and she liked the sound, liked the easy way he tipped back his head, liked the creases that marked the skin around his eyes when he did so. Not a dandy or a
fop. No, her husband was a man whom the outdoors had marked in muscle and in tone, the bronze in his eyes startling sometimes against the darkness of his skin. Like now, outlined against the wideness of sky, a man who could have been one of those wild Danish thanes wandering this part of the land all those centuries ago. That was it exactly. He did not really fit into England with its gentle rhythms and thin watery sun.

And he was hers. For a lifetime. This man whom she did not understand, but wanted to, this man whose body called to her own in a way no others ever had before him. She felt humbled by his confession of the Woodruff trust, humble enough to offer him money and condolences for his lack of property

‘Fairley Manor is a large estate. You should want for nothing with my dowry.’

‘I would never challenge your right to Fairley, Lilly. I swear it. If you wanted, I could have my lawyer draw up a document to say just that.’

Lillian was speechless at his sincerity. How often in her life had she been pursued by swains who measured the value of the Davenport lands before the worth of taking her as a bride? Yet here was a man with little who would give it all back?

‘Fairley is your heritage and, just as Hope and Charity need a home, so do you.’

The understanding in his answer was exactly what she needed and the awareness between them heightened.

Touch me! she longed to ask. Reach out first and
touch me, for she could not do it, not after the words she had given him of squandering and patience and anger.

But he only swiped away a winged insect that dived down and laughed as she jumped back.

‘It likes the light in your hair. How long is it when you wear it down?’

‘My hair?’ She blushed beetroot red. ‘Too long, probably. I should cut it, but—’

‘No.’ A frown crossed his forehead, emotion skewered by his need for caution.

In answer she simply undid the net that held her chignon in place, enjoying the feel of curls unravelling down her back, the length reflected by the greed in his eyes.

‘It was patience I asked for,’ she whispered softly, ‘not distance.’

‘Ah, Lilly,’ he replied in return, ‘have caution with what you think a husband might take from such an offer.’

Still he did not move.

‘Perhaps a little?’ Her tongue licked around the sudden dryness of her lips.

‘A little?’ His voice was husky as he reached forwards and brought him to her, not gently either, but moulded along the full front of each other so that she felt the hard angles of his body and the heat of his breath.

‘Is this a little?’ he asked as his lips came down upon her own, opening her mouth and plundering, one hand sliding up from her waist to fist in her hair and the other cupping her chin as though daring her to pull away.

She didn’t, the taste of him exactly how she had remembered it in countless dreams, an invitation for more, his tongue laving against hers, the rocking of his body restless and every breath shared.

Heady delight in the fold of an ancient mountain and the wind playing with her hair, the shards of need swelling want in her belly, in her breasts, in the place between her legs that no man had ever touched.

She could not feel where she ended and he began, could not in truth stop him from doing anything that he wanted, the brutal slam of lust as desperate in her as she could feel it was in him. Just pleasure, on the edge of delight, just the boneless floating relief of what it was to be a woman, and at twenty-five it had been a long time coming.

When he finally broke off the kiss she pressed in, but he held her still, his breathing ragged and his voice hoarse.

‘The rain is near and a little is never enough.’

His heart beat in the same rhythm as hers, matching exactly as her hands bunched at the material in his jacket, trembling with what had just happened, no control and no regrets either, the core of her being alive with the rightness of it.

This had nothing to do with the expectation of others, for no external thing could touch a freeing blazing truth that held all the other more normal concerns at a distance.

What if she had not constrained him with ‘a little’, what if she had just let him do what it was he seemed so very good at, up here on the high mountain with no one around them for miles?

Always a limit, the boundaries of her life reflected even in her loving. The thought made her frown as she tied up her hair, feeling a little like a fairytale princess who had been let out of a story for just a moment.

Princess Lillian.
How often had unkind children called her that as she had grown up? The girl with everything!

Except a mother, and the rigid morals of her father the touchstone to his affection.

She took in a deep breath and moved away, not meeting the gaze of her husband, though his smile she could not fail to miss even from the corner of her eyes.

‘For a woman who has barely been kissed in her life you have made remarkable progress.’

Not a criticism, then. With her confidence bolstered she faced him. ‘I have had a good teacher.’

‘And one with a lot more to show you yet.’

His laughter caught on the wind and the cloak she wore billowed as if even her clothes sought closer contact, both the strength and mystery in him evident in the way he watched her, as if ‘just a little’ would never be enough.