The Perfect Stranger (16 page)

An hour passed. Nick was getting chilly. He wished he’d built up the fire, but it was out now. He peered behind the bed-curtains.

“Are you awake?” he asked the mound in the bed.

There was no answer.

Nick pulled off his boots, shrugged off his jacket, took one of the extra eiderdowns, and sat on the bed, his legs stretched out. He could at least be warm and comfortable while he outwaited the merrymakers.

Another hour passed with no abatement of the noise on the stairs or the storm outside. He’d have to stay the night. He removed his breeches and shirt and slipped into bed, taking care not to touch her. He’d promised a
mariage blanc
and, even if it killed him, he would deliver it, for this night at least. And tomorrow, they would be on their separate ways.

He could smell the elusive fragrance of roses that seemed always to hover around her. He felt anything but chaste.

She lay there, unnaturally still. Her breathing seemed to have stopped. She was awake. Had she been awake all this time?

The sheets were cold and thin. The coverings were heavy. There was no pillow, not even one of the long thin tubes the French used as a pillow. He was sure he’d seen one on the bed earlier. Long and round, like a bolster. He felt around in the bed. And then he found it, the long French pillow. Not placed across the top of the bed for two heads to sleep on. Placed down the center of the bed, to separate two bodies.

She went even stiller than before, if that were possible. She knew what he’d found. She was no doubt braced for his reaction. Did she expect him to explode with rage? Rip the bolster off and seize his husbandly rights? Probably. She didn’t know him very well.

“Go to sleep, Mrs. Blacklock,” he said softly. “I may be trapped here by our well-wishers outside, but I am a man of my word. Your virtue is safe.”

She lay as quiet as a mouse, but somehow, he felt her slowly relax. Nicholas laid his head back down and closed his eyes. Sleeping with no pillow would be no hardship.

Sleeping next to a silken-skinned girl who smelled of woman and roses was quite another thing.

They lay in bed, side by side, separated by the bolster, listening to the storm and the rise and fall of voices on the stairs, punctuated by bursts of occasional laughter. Most men got little sleep on their wedding night, Nicholas reflected ironically, only not quite for the same reason…

He finally got to sleep, but was awoken before dawn by the feel of a soft, feminine body burrowing against him.

“Changed your mind, have you?” he murmured, and turned over to take her in his arms. As he did, a flash of lightning illuminated her face, and he froze. She was still asleep. Her face was crumpled with some emotion, the flash was too quick for him to read it, but her eyes were tight shut.

“Faith?” he asked softly.

Thunder followed the lightning, crashing down so close around them that the building shook. She gave a start and burrowed hard against him like a small animal seeking safety, or warmth, or comfort.

Nicholas gritted his teeth even as he drew her into his arms. His new bride was no coy seductress. She was scared of the thunder. Sound asleep and scared of the thunder. His promise to her still held, dammit. Even though his body was afire to take her.

Her cheek was silken soft against him, and he could feel her breath through the fabric of his shirt. Her hair smelled of roses. Her night rail had ridden up, and her lower limbs twined around one of his legs. Her feet were cold, and he felt them slowly warm from the contact with his skin. Her scent surrounded him. He was hard with wanting, and his reckless promise of chastity racked him.

But a promise was a promise. Just one night to get through. Less than a night, and she’d be gone from this place, gone from him. He’d return to living with men and dogs, creatures who troubled his sleep not at all.

She snuggled against him, and her breathing evened and relaxed. Her head was pillowed on his chest, tucked under his chin. Where was the damned bolster now? he wondered.

Faith woke to a wonderful feeling of warmth and safety. She lay for a moment, savoring it. The world seemed peaceful and quiet, and it took her a moment to realize that the storm must be over. There was no sound of wind or thunder or pelting rain. She was wonderfully warm and comfortable, and she had no desire to move, but then it all came flooding back to her. She’d married a man called Nicholas Blacklock yesterday. And today she was going back to England, to her sisters and Great Uncle Oswald. She had better get up and get ready. Ready to go home and face the consequences of her actions. Still with her eyes closed, she stretched.

And froze as she encountered a big, warm, masculine body, lying practically beneath her.

She hadn’t only married a man called Nicholas Blacklock yesterday, she’d shared a bed with him last night. And she distinctly remembered putting a bolster between them in the bed.

The heavy weight of his arm curved around her back, keeping her pressed against the full length of his body. She could feel something pressing into her thigh, and it certainly wasn’t a bolster.

“What do you think you are doing?”

He groaned and stirred beneath her. Faith hurriedly shifted position.

“Stop that at once! You promised!”

He stretched and opened his eyes. “Looks like I got some sleep, after all,” he murmured.

His skin was rough with stubble, his hair was rumpled, and his skin a bit crinkly with sleep, but his eyes were as gray as a misty morning. Windows to the sky, though never a sunny sky.

She belatedly realized he was watching her with an intense gaze. Her heart started thudding. She felt herself flushing, and the look sharpened. There was a gleam in his eye she didn’t trust, and she suddenly recalled exactly what was pressing most insistently against her thighs.

She tried to scramble off him, but his arm tightened around her.

“What are you doing?” her voice squeaked.

“Good morning, Mrs. Blacklock.”

“Good morning,” she babbled and tried to move off him again.

His arm didn’t budge.

“I trust you slept well.” His voice was deep and a little raspy. Not unlike his raspy, dark chin.

“Yes, thank you,” she said politely, willing him to let her go. “I would like to—” She pushed against him with her hand on his chest. He seemed unaware of it.

“Storm didn’t bother you?”

She shook her head stiffly, feeling uncomfortably aware of the intimacy of their relative positions. “No. Not at all.” As she shook her head, the tips of her hair brushed against his skin. She strained her head back away from him. But his arm didn’t budge, and the action arched her body, pressing her lower half more closely against him. She immediately stopped pushing.

“Not afraid of storms, are you?”

“N-no. Not since I was a little girl,” she said firmly. It wasn’t quite true; they still made her nervous. But she had managed to conquer her childish terror of them.

“Thunder doesn’t bother you at all then?”

“I am no longer a child, to be frightened of such things.” He was wearing a shirt, but the front had come unbuttoned and fell open to the waist. It was very hard not to be distracted by the muscular planes that rose and fell under her hand. And not to notice that the center of his broad, firm chest was covered by dark hair that looked appealingly soft. She forced her fingers to remain still.

“No, you are no longer a child. You’re a married woman.”

Faith swallowed. “Yes. And now I would like to get up, please.”

“Not yet. There’s a small matter of your wifely duty.”

“W-wifely duty?” Faith squeaked. “But you promised—”

“Every wife has a morning duty to her husband. I’m sure you know what it is.”

Faith had a very good idea of what it was. Something to do with the part of him pressing so insistently against her thigh. His arm remained locked around her waist, loose, yet immovable.

“Surely you don’t mean…” She licked her lips anxiously. She barely knew him.

“Surely I do.” The gleam in his eyes intensified. She pushed against his chest, but his other hand came up and gently, implacably brought her head down. His lips came up to meet hers.

His lips were cool and firm, and the taste of him was hot and dark and spicy. The taste of him spiraled through her in a heated shiver, shuddering through her bones in a dizzying wave and curling her toes up tight. She opened her eyes, and the room dipped and wavered around her, exactly as it had in the church, and she quickly closed them again. She heard a soft chuckle, then he kissed her again, quickly.

And suddenly Faith found herself freed. She blinked, still a little dazed.

“Good morning, Mrs. Blacklock,” he said softly and surged out from under her. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and reached for his boots.

A kiss.
That’s what he meant by her wifely duty. Just a kiss. She felt shaky laughter well up in her. She was relieved. Of course she was. He hadn’t meant her to…break his promise. Yet, even as relief swamped her, she had an odd feeling of…disappointment. Of being let down. It baffled her.

His back to her, he pulled on his boots and his jacket but left his shirt hanging loose. “I’ll get myself shaved and presentable and have some hot water sent up to you. Would you like your breakfast brought up—Stevens can fetch it—or would you prefer to come down?”

The cool, businesslike tone, as if they hadn’t just shared a stunningly intimate kiss, and more—it felt as if she could still feel the imprint of his…his
desire
against her thigh—threw her quite off balance. For after she had said quite calmly that she would come down for breakfast, something caused her to sit up and blurt, “What—why did you remove the bolster?” And to her mortification, it sounded like an accusation. As if she were offended. Or disappointed. Or something.

He paused. “You burrowed under the bolster to get to me in the night.”

Her mouth fell open. “
I
burrowed—?” she began indignantly.

His mouth quirked. “You haven’t conquered your childhood fear of thunder as well as you like to think you have. Last night you came to me in your sleep, and lay shivering up against me with every clap of thunder. I held you to comfort you; that is all.”

She glanced at the rumpled bedclothes, and there was the bolster, behind her, half hanging out of her side of the bed.

He took a couple of steps toward the door, then stopped, turned, and came back. He stared down at her a moment, frowning, and said abruptly, “Do not read anything into what just happened. Nor what happened last night or this morning. I know women are apt to spin fantasies out of moonbeams, but this marriage is a wholly pragmatic arrangement, intended for the eyes of the world and nothing else. There are no—no
feelings
involved here.”

His voice hardened. “You are not an innocent, so I will not beat about the bush. The state in which I awoke this morning is a normal one for any healthy man, particularly a man who has been celibate for some time. Don’t imagine I have any tender feelings for you. I don’t. And don’t imagine you have any for me, because you can’t. We part after breakfast. Do you understand me?”

Faith swallowed and nodded. The transformation of the man was astonishing. From teasing husband to stern and distant martinet, warning her off.

“I’ll see you at breakfast, Mrs. Blacklock. And then I’ll escort you to the docks. I have obtained a passage for you to England.” He closed the door quietly behind him as he left.

Mortified, Faith pulled the bedclothes over her head. She might never come out again.

He’d made it very clear their marriage meant nothing to him. She knew it, but to hear him say the words out loud…it was a shock.

In a few days she’d be in England, explaining to her family that she hadn’t in fact married Felix. That was bad enough. But how could she explain that she’d married a stranger she’d met on the beach, married him to save her reputation, and then left him? She couldn’t even explain it to herself.

And then there was his mother.

How could he expect her to go back to England and take up a life of comfort at his expense? Faith shivered at the thought.

Comfort? Cold comfort, with no man or child to love or care for. For though he’d hinted she would be free to, she would never betray him.

She lay there, in her chaste marriage bed, thinking.

The first time she’d repeated the marriage vows, she’d spoken them from the heart. Yet that marriage had been a lie and a sham, and the love she thought she felt for Felix had evaporated like a puddle in the sun.

Could she bear another sham marriage?

Yesterday she’d married Nicholas Blacklock in a beautiful little stone church, before God and—according to Marthe—in the presence of her mother and father. And she’d worn Marthe’s exquisite handmade lace in the place of the daughter Marthe never had.

Whichever way Faith looked at it, those vows were holy.

There were hidden depths in her new husband that unnerved her. The way his eyes could turn from warmth to cold implacability in a flicker. And the feral light of battle that lit them when he fought was such that…She shivered. His ancestors were probably Vikings.

Yet despite his avowal that he had no feelings for her, he’d protected her, not just from her three brutal attackers but from the public scorn of people like Lady Brinckat. He’d tended her hurts with a gentleness that brought a lump to her throat. He made beautiful music with those hands, too. And he’d held her close in the night because she was frightened. And though his body strained, hard and wanting, against her, he hadn’t taken her, because he’d given his word.

He’d ordered her not to feel anything for him. How could she possibly obey?

She’d vowed to love, honor, and obey. Did he expect her to keep only one of those vows?

What was he planning to do in Spain? It sounded serious—and very gloomy if it involved revisiting the places where hundreds of men he’d known had died. He was very unforthcoming, almost secretive about his intentions. He’d been a soldier. Perhaps he was one still, traveling with his sergeant and another soldier. He might be on some sort of mission.