The Patriot Bride (14 page)

“Yes,” Wolf ground out, beginning to pace. “So I couldn’t exercise my – my husbandly rights until I knew.”

Gabe sighed, rubbing his forehead. “I see. But that doesn’t negate the fact that you’ve got to let up on her. Let her have some fun. She’s lost weight – again. You’re going to kill her if you’re not careful – or worse, she’s going to run from you again.”

Wolf didn’t want to hear that. “No. She’s not. I’m going to make damn sure that doesn’t happen again.”

***

It took the rest of the time they were at sea for Hannah to recover. Wolf fattened her up as much as he could; cook helped by making tasty treats for her, which she thanked him for so profusely that the small man nearly blushed himself to death. By the time they docked in Portsmouth, she had regained a few pounds, but was still unbearably frail.

Hannah was determined to get away from her husband, and she set about a plan the moment she knew they were near dry land, playing Gabe against her husband, and letting either think she was with the other when they disembarked. Wolf had had to disembark to secure a carriage and lodging for the evening before they headed out to London to conduct some business. He had entrusted Hannah’s care and feeding to Gabe.

But Hannah had told Gabe that their plans had changed, and she was going to go with her husband to find suitable accommodations. He had seemed a little suspicious, but had taken her at his word.

Trembling with the fear of discovery, she had thrown an old blanket over herself and tried to mingle with the steerage passengers as they trotted down the gangplank. She was amazed that no one seemed to notice her, and blended into the city as soon as she was away from the ship.

She lived just outside Portsmouth, and knew her way around the town. The problem would be in getting the funds necessary for a trip back. She had no intentions of remaining with a man who treated her as this man had – spanking her at will, and then forcing her to do unspeakable things to him, and expecting her to submit to the unspeakable things he did to her body . . .

Hannah staunchly ignored the fact that her body was already beginning to ready itself to accommodate him, just from thinking of those awful things he did. She was not going to have a lifetime of that to look forward to.

She headed to her Aunt’s and was greeted warmly. She and her sisters had a joyous reunion, and Hannah began to dare to believe that things could be different for her, that she could be young and happy again, taking care of her sisters and sewing for Mistress Wentworth again, back in Boston. She boldly asked their aunt for a loan for the funds to bring all three of them back, and was pleasantly surprised to hear that her aunt wanted to accompany them all, and that she and the girls had been saving up from their meager earnings and had nearly enough for their three passages already. Hannah didn’t notice that Aunt Polly didn’t seem to join into the plans, nor did she look particularly happy at the idea, especially not where Hannah was concerned.

She went to sleep that evening in the same room with her sisters, laughing and talking and giggling as they had in the past. Her joy was short lived, however, when there came a loud pounding on the door. Terrified, but not wanting her aunt to face what she knew was happening alone, Hannah came down the steep stairs herself, cautioning her sisters to remain where they were.

The candlelight illuminated the small foyer where Polly was still wrapping a robe around herself, saying, “Just a second, just a second.”

Although she’d only opened the door just a crack, Hannah recognized the black booted foot that wedged its way between the door and the jam. He nearly sent Aunt Polly flying when he barged in the door and stormed over to Hannah.

“You’re coming with me, woman!” he roared, grabbing her wrist.

But Polly wasn’t going to have any of that. “Unhand her!” she said, letting the pistol in her hands do the rest of the talking.

Wolf looked at the older woman in amazement. What was it with these Cooper women holding him at gunpoint? But he could see that – unlike Hannah – this woman’s arms and hands were rock steady. There wasn’t an ounce of hesitation in her tone or her stance, and he had to respect that. He had no interest in dying this evening. He’d only come to claim his property.

Polly kept the pistol well trained on him. “Hannah, do you know this scoundrel?” She backed up to the door and shut it, and Hannah raced to lock it behind her.

She faced her Aunt and swallowed hard. “That scoundrel is Wolfgang Anders Preston III, the Duke of Northumberland, etc, etc.”

Polly’s eyebrow rose. “The man your father married you to by proxy?”

Thoroughly enjoying the fact that her husband was no longer in control of the situation, even if he wasn’t quite squirming, Hannah nonetheless couldn’t keep the surprise out of her voice. “How did you know that?”

“I knew he’d been looking for you. A body hears things, sometimes.” Aunt Polly’s ears were famous for their size. There was little that went on in this town that she didn’t know about. Then she said something that made Hannah disbelieve her own ears. “And if he’s your husband, then why are you here rather than with him, making plans with your sisters to go back to the colonies?”

Wolf’s fierce frown at her words was enough to make even Aunt Polly flinch, just a bit.

“I – I – I don’t want to be married to him, Aunt Polly. He beats me, and he does the most awful things to me . . . ” Her voice trailed off softly as the color rose in her face.

Polly’s jaw set angrily. “He’s taken his fist to you? A man that size?”

Hannah closed her eyes, just momentarily, knowing she couldn’t lie to her aunt about this. “No,” she whispered. “He spanks me. And he’s taken his belt to me - ”

Wolf couldn’t keep himself from interjecting. “Because the little chit held me at gunpoint with my own gun!” he growled.

The irony of the situation wasn’t lost on Polly. She smiled slightly, then became all business again. “Has he ever struck you with his fists?” Hannah had to shake her head “no”. “Has he pulled your hair? Spit on you? Broken your ribs?”

“No,” Hannah answered reluctantly. “But he’s used his belt - ”

“Sounds to me like you deserved it, girl,” Polly announced with not a small amount of satisfaction. “You’ve always been a stubborn girl, and I know that that’s helped you with your father and all. But this man isn’t your father, he’s your husband, and he’s entitled to do with you as he pleases. Has he starved you? You are even skinnier than you’ve always been . . .”

“No, no, he hasn’t.”

Polly lowered the gun to the table next to a wing backed chair. “Well, then, it seems to me that you’ve got yourself a good husband there. He’s obviously physically fit, he treats you well – keeps you in line like you should but he doesn’t beat you, like your father did your mother and you, I know. You should count yourself lucky, girl.” Polly eyed Wolf up and down, as if he was a slave on the auction block, sighing heavily. “If I was a few years younger, dear, I’d give you a run for your money with this one.”

Hannah couldn’t believe that her Aunt was siding with her husband, who was wearing a grin that was broad enough to split his face. He was so happy with the outcome of the situation that he doffed his hat and bowed low to Aunt Polly. “Wolfgang Preston, Duke of Northumberland, at your service, Ma’am.”

This pressed Hannah into remembering her manners, even thought she didn’t want to. She introduced the two of them, very reluctantly, and the Duke seemed very taken with her Aunt. “So she’s always been this stubborn, has she?”

Polly was in her element with a handsome man to charm. She set about making tea and biscuits, even though it was two o’clock in the morning. She may not have been husbanded right now, but she’d buried three of them.

“Hannah? Oh, my, yes. She was three weeks late – too stubborn to come out when someone told her to, that one.”

Wolf turned to his annoying little baggage of a wife and said quietly, “Go upstairs and get dressed, then come back down. We’re leaving once I’ve had some tea. I spent all day and all night looking for you.”

And he wasn’t in the least happy about it, was the unspoken ending to that sentence, Hannah realized as she, for once, did as she was told.

As she trudged upstairs and slunk out of one of Aunt Polly’s old nightgowns, she realized that she had never thought of the idea that she had been lucky to have been married to a man like Wolf. All she’d ever thought was how put upon she was by being forced into a marriage, but few women of her age had any choice in their husbands. Aunt Polly had earned that luxury only by surviving her first husband, who nearly killed her every time he got drunk – which was always – beating her to a pulp each and every night until he finally died of the drink. She had more than earned her right to decide who she wanted to marry.

Of husbands, Hannah finally began to consider that hers wasn’t necessarily all that bad, considering what he could have done to her. He could have had her punished publicly at the stocks, or had her jailed, or worse. He could have demanded his husbandly rights immediately, even though they didn’t know each other. What he did do was bad enough, as far as she was concerned at the time, but then she hadn’t known what true intimacy between a man and a woman was.

All of these thoughts ran through her fertile mind as she descended the stairs again, fully dressed. Wolf rose as she entered the room, coming to grab her wrist as if he worried that she would bolt out the door and into the night.

“Gabriel is looking for you frantically, too, Hannah. You have the whole ship up in arms with your foolishness.”

Hannah had the grace to look sheepish, staring at Aunt Polly’s well worn carpet. “I’m sorry,” she said softly.

Wolf was instantly suspicious of her contrition, although it seemed genuine enough. She’d never said she was sorry for anything she’d done unless he was laying into her with either his belt or his hand – both of which she was probably going to be on the receiving end of when he got them back to the room he’d reserved.

Without releasing her, he turned to the older woman. “Thank you for keeping her safe, Madame.”

The ever shy Polly came forward and kissed him heartily on both cheeks. “Welcome to the family. I hope you can keep a better eye on her in the future.”

Wolf was torn between grinning and frowning, but the frown won out. “I intend to, Madame. I intend to.”

He dragged poor Hannah off, barely giving her time to hug her Aunt. “Tell the girls I said good bye,” she wailed as she nearly stumbled down the stairs after her husband.

After speaking curtly to the corporal who had come with him, sending him to find the Captain and call off the search, Wolf bundled her into the carriage he had waiting, pulling her over to his seat when she tried to sit opposite him instead of beside him. “Who are the girls?” he asked grumpily as soon as they were underway.

“My sisters,” she sobbed, sniffling into a handkerchief she’d liberated from her Aunt’s ample stock.

Wolf nodded. When he’d realized what she’d done, the first place he’d gone was her Father’s, who even at that early hour was drunk beyond the telling of it. It was then that he remembered Hannah’s fear of him and the nightmare she’d had about being hit by him. Once he’d sobered the man up some, and eeked out the possibility that Hannah might have gone to see her Aunt where her sisters now were, much to their Father’s consternation because now there was no one to look after him in his sorry state, he’d dropped the older man with one extremely satisfying punch.

He was fairly certain that he’d find his errant wife there. She’d go to whomever she trusted, and he’d bet if she let her sisters go there that she trusted this Aunt Polly. All the while, certain that he would find her, he made mental notes to bring the girls to Preston Hall, where they would relieve Polly of the burden of raising them, and they could be properly schooled.

Come to think of it, having met the woman, he thought he would offer her rooms at Preston Hall, too. It seemed she was a very good influence on his wife, who was sitting contritely at his side.

Once they’d made it to their rooms, and he’d made a show of locking the door, Hannah stood by their bed, eying it somewhat warily, but then she began to undress, and Wolf’s eyes nearly popped out of his head. When she was completely nude, she came to him and undressed him, then led him to the bed, and bade him lie down on it.

As her face turned several shades of red, she sat down next to him, but couldn’t quite face him as she spoke. “I know I’ve earned yet another punishment, Wolf, but I’d like to say something. Until I heard what Aunt Polly had to say this evening, I never really thought about what I had done. I just knew – childishly, I admit – that I was going to have to do something I didn’t want to, and so I decided to take matters into my own hands. I also have to admit that I really didn’t expect that you’d care enough to come after me, and I assumed I was free to do as I pleased in Boston.

He never expected that she’d come to her senses. He’d foreseen years of battles between them, and he realized that although this was a momentary surrender on her part, she wasn’t likely to be as malleable as most of the women he knew.

And he realized he liked that about her. He didn’t want a door mat. He wanted a woman. A strong woman, one who wouldn’t be bowled over by him, but who also obeyed.

Wolf put his hand on her bottom, covering it completely.

This was his. She was his.

But he’d realized when he’d found her gone and his heart was in his throat throughout the entire search, that he, in turn was his.