Patricia Rice (27 page)

Bea glanced down. Her robe had loosened, revealing
the filmy lace of her gown. She didn’t think the lace revealed more than
her morning gown would, but she hastily tightened the sash. She refused
to let him distract her that way. “Stop that,” she said irritably.

He grinned and swept an appreciative look up and down her length. “Why?”

Insulted, she stood and held out her hand for the letters still in his grasp. “Those are mine. You have no business with them.”

He immediately held them behind his back. “What will you give me for them?”

She stomped her foot and blew a stray hair off her cheek. “Nothing. I will simply write them again.”

“And what will you say to them, Bea? That you have a
dastardly husband who has usurped your estate and will run away with
your inheritance as soon as he finds it? Is that what you think of me?”

“Usurped?” Bea clutched her robe closed as she tried
to understand this impossible man that she’d married. “You think I’m
telling them to hide my accounts?” If it wasn’t so awful, it would be
laughable.

“I cannot think of any other reason why you would
correspond with a bank behind my back. I thought we were partners.
Pardon me if I misunderstood my place in the scheme of things.” He
thrust the letters at her. “It doesn’t matter to me what you do with
them. I have my own interests and don’t need yours.”

She wrapped her fingers in the satin folds of her
robe and pulled the lapels up to hide her neck. She didn’t want the
letters. They would scald her fingers if she touched them. She had
hurt
him with her reticence. She would hurt him worse when he discovered the truth: that he married a bankrupt coward.

“I didn’t want to scare you away,” she whispered. “I
thought maybe I could fix it myself. You’ll be gone in a few weeks, and
I wanted you to come back.” There, she’d said it. She didn’t want him
to sail out of her life.

He looked poleaxed. He glanced at the letters in his hand, then back at her. “You thought
I wouldn’t come back?”

Hesitantly, she nodded, searching his expression. He looked at her as if she were crazed. That wasn’t a good sign.

He threw the letters at the vanity and didn’t notice
when they slid off. He ran his hands through his already rumpled hair
and looked as if he would strangle on the words caught in his throat.

“Let me get this clear,” he finally said. “You
thought I’d sail away and never come back if I knew what was in those
letters? That I’d forget my vows, forget I had a wife, forget any child
we might make, and go on merrily without you?”

Put that way... Reluctantly, she nodded again. “I’m
not much of a prize,” she murmured. “I know my limitations. But I
thought... if I knew you would come back...”

“I think, my dear wife, it’s time we came to an understanding.”

Without warning, he hauled her up against his chest,
and while Bea was still gasping, he tumbled them both onto the bed,
rolled her on her back, and trapped her between his arms, with the wide
expanse of his shirt filling her vision.

Bea thought her heart surely stopped beating as she slowly absorbed the full size and strength of her husband. He’d
lifted
her from the floor! He wasn’t even breathing hard. His expression
looked very determined, and her heart instantly pounded as the weight of
his hips pressed into hers.

“You are my
wife
,” he said
before she could think of a plea of protest. “The only wife I mean to
have. I may be a rotten excuse for a husband. I may be gone six months
out of the year. I may not do as you wish or even as I’m told. Sometimes
I’m impulsive. But I always,
always
”—Mac leaned on his forearms and brushed the whisper of a kiss across her cheek—”keep my promises.”

Bea searched his face uncertainly. He looked more grim than loving.

Certain he held her attention, he finished his declaration. “I
promise
that I will act in all ways as your husband, that you need never question my devotion to our vows. I
will
return, Bea. I may not always be here to see our children born, and I
regret that heartily. I’d never meant to have a wife and haven’t planned
wisely for one, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want you. You may not
like the idea, but you’d best get used to it.”

Bea stared up into the determined face of the man
she’d married, the man she’d promised to share the rest of her life
with, a man who could kidnap children and sail the seas without qualm,
and her heart turned over inside her chest. She didn’t doubt him in the
least. He would come back.

“My father owed the bank money,” Bea whispered. “I wrote to ask them to search again for any other accounts besides the loan.”

Mac thought he ought to be paying attention to what
she was saying, but he had a voluptuous woman trapped beneath him, and
his body wanted to do other things. He supposed he ought to yell at her
for not telling him about the debt sooner, but that was obviously what
she expected.

His gaze drifted to the full pout of her pink lips.
She licked them nervously, and he thought his trousers caught fire. She
breathed deeper, and soft ivory curves lifted to push open her robe. If
he froze in this position, maybe the robe would come apart before his
eyes and he could at long last see all of the woman he’d married.

“You should have told me,” he muttered.
Good job, MacTavish,
he chastised himself.
Offend her.
“I could have had my man of business check on it. You needn’t worry your—”
Whoops. Better not go down that road.
“We’ll work it out together.”

That was better. She looked relieved instead of
suspicious. She also tried to pry free from his weight, but he wasn’t
having any of it. They were on a bed together at last. “Is that all you
were worried about? You weren’t writing to Parliament to tell them you
have a monster in the house?”

She smiled, and his blood heated. He loved it when
she smiled at him. She didn’t complain that he crushed her, that he was
an oaf and a lummox. She looked at him as if he were the only man in the
world for her. She was just
shy
.

She had a figure men would go down on their knees
and weep to possess, and she thought she was ungainly and unlovable. He
didn’t know whether to shout his good fortune to the heavens, or keep
the secret to himself.

“You’ll laugh if I tell you,” she murmured in
embarrassment. “Or you’ll yell at me some more. I don’t like it when you
yell at me.”

Mac touched his forehead to hers and tried not to
yell at her any more. “I yell; become accustomed to it,” he muttered
unfeelingly. “I’m not around women much and haven’t learned to curb my
tongue, so let me apologize in advance for all the times I’ll shout and
bellow and behave like a raging bull.”

She wiggled and tried to escape again, but her breasts were brushing against his coat, and he wasn’t about to let her go.

“I don’t like being yelled at,” she protested, giving up the struggle. “Maybe you ought to become accustomed to not yelling.”

Mac grinned and pushed up so he could see her irate
expression. “I adore you, you know.” He grinned wider as she blinked in
surprise. “You don’t twitter and flutter, but tell me just what you’re
thinking, even when you’re scared half to death I’ll take your head off.
I won’t, you know.”

She watched him warily. “Won’t take my head off? How generous.”

“I like your head just where it is.” He still didn’t have the answers he wanted, but he couldn’t resist any longer.

Lowering his head, he kissed her until her lips
parted and she took him deep inside. Here was the stairway to heaven,
the golden rungs to the treasure he craved. She kissed him as if she
meant it, wrapping her arms around his shoulders, running her hands into
his hair, pressing upward as if she craved the feel of him as much as
he did her. Groaning against her mouth, Mac stroked her tongue with his.

She accepted his possessive kiss without protest,
taking as well as giving, and, daringly, he pressed further, cupping the
full weight of her breast. Needing to explore, fearful of her freezing
up again, he nipped at the corner of her lip to keep her occupied while
he invaded her robe. She inhaled sharply as he located the pointed peak
straining against her nightdress, but she didn’t jerk away.

“Are you still afraid of me?” he asked, propping
himself up to better see her face. She watched him cautiously, but he
thought he saw her eyes darken with the same desire that was spilling
through him like hot, thick molasses.

“Yes,” she whispered. “No,” she corrected. Then, “Maybe.”

“Or are you afraid of what happens when I touch you
like this?” He gathered her breast in his hand and tormented the peak
until she squirmed beneath him.

“I’m afraid of where this leads,” she admitted softly.

“Because you don’t know what will happen, and
ignorance leads to fear.” He was beginning to understand her a little
better now. His Bea did things cautiously, without the impulsive haste
he often employed. If he could only learn patience...

She nodded uncertainly, biting the lip Mac wanted to
taste again. He wanted to pull up her gown and have at her and put an
end to her fear right now, but if he wanted her warm and willing when he
returned from Virginia, he’d better play this slowly. This game of
advance and retreat was not without its challenges—it was certainly
teaching him patience.

“I can tell you what will happen,” he offered, “but
it won’t help. It’s better if you let yourself feel it happen.” He
released her breast and slid his hand down to test the curve of her
waist, cupping the splendor of her hip and buttock. Warily, she froze
beneath his touch, and he sighed in defeat.

“Tell me,” she demanded. “I want to know. I don’t understand how babies get there. I don’t want to look like Mrs. White.”

He bit back a desperate chuckle and shook his head.
“Dear heart, there is no chance of that. Is that what you’re worried
about? How you’ll look?”

She shrugged awkwardly and looked away. “I don’t know
anything
.”

Hell, he’d never thought to give a course on where
babies came from, but if that was what it took to get where he wanted to
go...

“All right,” he agreed grudgingly. “If I try to
explain, I don’t want you laughing in my face or weeping or running
away. I’m not good at teaching, and I’d much rather show you, but if
it’s an education you want first, I’ll attempt it.”

The look on her face was priceless—as if he’d offered her all the world’s gold.

Doggedly, he sought a metaphor she’d understand.
“Babies grow from a man’s seed,” he said slowly. At her look of
disbelief, he tried harder. “A man plows and plants his seed and babies
grow inside a woman’s...”

He didn’t know the right words. He covered her
abdomen with his hand to show her. She wiggled and stared down where his
hand rested. His groin swelled until he thought his trousers would cut
off all blood flow.

She wasn’t helping him any. She wiggled her hips
beneath his to see better, and he had visions of spreading those long
legs she kept hidden and plowing her field right now. He was about to
lose control again.

He slid his hand lower, rubbing her where they both
needed his touch. She made a strangled sound as his fingers pressed
there. Even through the linen, he could tell she was wet. “You have a
hole,” he said crudely, rubbing until she shifted her legs apart and
gasped at the discovery he showed her. “And I have a pole.” He caught
her hand and pressed it to the bulge in his pants.

She giggled nervously and tried to jerk away, but he
wouldn’t allow it. If he had to explain, she had to listen. He rolled
onto his side, and rubbed her hand up and down the length of his “pole,”
pleasuring himself as best as he could under the circumstances. She
made funny little sounds and resisted, but at his groans, her gaze
snapped up to his face.

“Does it hurt?” she asked in anguish.

“Does it hurt when I touch you?” he asked more
savagely than he’d intended. He was beginning to feel like a bloody
fool, but she watched him as if he were the answer to her prayers.

“It... it feels... funny,” she admitted.

“It will feel even funnier when I put my pole inside
you,” he grumbled. “And if you’d just let me do it instead of talk
about it, this lesson would go much faster.”

She transferred her hand from him to herself, and he
buried his face in her shoulder and almost moaned rather than watch her
self-discovery.

“We’re made to fit together?” she asked in wonder.

“Want me to show you?” Hopefully, he raised his head. Now she was looking at him in doubt.
Ah, hell.
He began unfastening the buttons of her nightgown. He wanted some reward for this torture.

She didn’t even seem to notice what he was doing.
“And that’s how you plant a baby?” she asked, as if he’d just told her
babies sprang from cabbage leaves.

“Yup.” The last button popped open and, without a
by-your-leave, he slid his hand across the creamy silk of her breast. He
felt her inhale and not exhale again. Figuring she’d remember to
breathe eventually, he leaned over and took her nipple in his mouth.

She screamed—a tinkling, breathless half scream of
awe and protest. Mac was beyond caring. She was all cream with raspberry
and cinnamon on top, and he’d wanted this for so long, he couldn’t stop
if the devil paid him to.

“Mac! Wait, you can’t... We can’t...”

“I damned well can. And so can you.” He spread the
bodice open and cupped both mounds into handfuls of sin and tongued his
way around both until she was writhing and shoving them in his face and
fighting him at the same time. Without a qualm, he rolled onto his back
and carried her on top of him. Now she spilled from the lacy linen so he
could mold her to his hands, suck deeply, and never let her go.