Authors: Eileen Charbonneau

The Randolph Legacy (34 page)

BOOK: The Randolph Legacy

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As the wind howled, Judith could still hear waves pounding as her sweet, unburdened husband moved close in that stealthfizl, tantalizing way she loved.

“Business, is it, Judith Mercer? My love for you?” As she opened her mouth to his kiss, she felt his fingers do what they had never dared before: They pulled a pin from her hair. She heard the tiny, sifting sound of it reaching the hearthstone. Others followed, more and more quickly. It was as if he’d spent their courtship memorizing where each was placed. When her braids descended, he stopped.

“Still, if God does not favor us—”

“We’ll do what we’ve always planned. We’ll steal one of Sally’s,” she assured him, before fisting his shirt in her hands and stopping any further speech with a kiss of her own.

Ethan unbraided his new wife’s hair slowly, dusting her face and neck with kisses as he worked. The sound of her breathing was ever-changing: now a low hum, then a catch, then a soft, giggling purr. Finally, he was free to glory in her strands unbound. He parted the moon-colored waterfall and bared the shoulder beneath, nuzzling deep.
He loved the feel of her strong fingers coursing through his scalp as he brought her down under him.

Suddenly, the fire flamed high in the hearth and an insistent voice began badgering him in clipped French.

—Get off her, you brute! You think a woman wants her back crushed into a stone floor her first time?

He lifted her into his arms. She kissed behind his ear. Gratefully? Were they her thoughts he’d heard? Did she think him a brute? He tripped on his discarded vest, then lurched forward, unbalanced.

The voice again. Laughing. Judith Mercer did not speak French. Or have so wicked a laugh.

He felt his face grow crimson.
Get out. Go away,
he told the voice as he placed his wife on the bed. Judith clutched at her shawl’s folds. Her eyes went wide. “Are you angry with me, Ethan?”

He climbed onto the bed beside her. “No. Oh, love, no.” He began a trail of kisses down her wonderfully salty arm, nuzzling aside the shawl, grateful to her shift’s loose, thin weave.

Judith released the shawl. As it drifted to rest around her hips, her chameleon eyes lost their traces of blue and flashed silver. Like his veins igniting. He pulled down the covers behind her. Cold. That was good. He needed that cold as she pulled the ties between her breasts. He traced their contours slowly with his shaven cheek, then with soft pulls of his tongue, mouth. Her fingers danced along his back. Her voice pealed like a bell before she fell back into the pillows.

Ethan could barely stand to look at her in the languorous glow of her
petit mort. Sacre-bleu
, his beautiful wife lying like that, and he still had his boots on.

The left came off easily. With the right, he was too impatient. He emitted a small cry of frustration.

Judith sat up like a shot. “Ethan, are you hurt?”

“No.”

—
Oui! Imbécile!

Ethan sighed. “Yes,” he amended.

Judith smoothed the hair back from his forehead with shaking fingers. “I have been so demanding, not thinking of you, your leg.” Her voice became suddenly low, dusky, as he pulled one of her ministering fingers into his mouth. “It is very difficult to think at all when you do these things, husband.”

He kissed the tip of her smallest finger. “Shall I stop?”

“Only long enough for me to complete ridding you of my rivals, your boots.”

He laughed, which seemed to raise her breasts even higher beneath the thin muslin. Judith went to her task as he tried to calm his breathing. But her hips were very fine, too. As was the curve of her backside. There was no part of her not beautiful. She turned.

“Better?” she asked.

“Worse.”

“Your leg?”

“My hunger. My delight in you.”

She smiled shyly. Her hand touched his damaged leg, exquisitely caressing through the trousers. “You’ve been bearing all the rigors of the journey to this place, this wondrous place you’ve found for us.” She stroked higher, his thigh. “Ethan, I am so ignorant. Tell me what I might—”

“That is excellent fine, Judith,” he gasped.

She looked down. “Oh. Oh, I see.”

—
Yes,
the voice approved.—
You know this woman. Her need to feel useful. And she is untouched. She is giving you this gift of her, untouched. Be worthy, and clever. This first time, above you. But do not shock her.

Ethan lifted his wife’s caressing hand, kissed into the palm. “I fear my leg’s not strong enough, as you say, Judith, with the rigors of the journey, for me to … to lord over you as your husband tonight.”

“It’s not?”

No. Wrong. Tears. Where’s the damned voice now? Ethan wanted to cry out in his frustration. “Judith, don’t cry. There is another way.”

“Another way?”

“Astride, we could accomplish our duty.”

Judith wiped her tears with the back of her hand. “Astride? As on Two Hearts?”

“Yes! … Well,” he reconsidered, “not exactly.” He snorted almost like her horse did, making her eyes widen, then soften in amusement. “Only if it pleases you, of course,” he assured her.

She pushed him back gently against the bolster. “The sight, the touch, the scent of you pleases me, Ethan Blair,” she murmured, slipping astride him as easily as she’d come to mount Two Hearts over their days of running. “They have, always.”

He grinned. “Scent? Even the clove oil?”

She giggled softly, her hair sifting across his shoulder. “The clove oil, especially.”

Her shift’s hem reared back, revealing the creamy smoothness of her legs to midthigh. He spread his hands over the planes, feeling the contours, pushing her linen’s billows higher.

Her nervous fingers slipped under his shirt, found the buttons of his bulging trousers.

“Miss Mercer,” he contended, kicking them free there, under the warming sheets, the quilt, “I’m shocked.”

“You will become my husband this night,” she promised.

—There, good. Now. Be patient. Allow her to take you.

Ethan sat higher in the pillows, and brought down her shift’s right sleeve slowly. She whimpered when the action freed a breast. He stroked the clothed nipple with his finger, gently suckled the other.

“Yes,” Judith gasped, her perfect thighs dancing against his sides. Harder. She sang out a clear, haunting note and collapsed on his chest, languid again. Women’s rushes. Where do they find all that strength? he wondered, laughing, kissing her drooping eyelids.

She smiled wide. Ethan reached under her shift, brought her thighs closer to where the impatient part of him waited.

“Ethan?” she whispered against his ear. “I feel this wild ache, this longing.”

“Here?” His fingers found the mound of hair between her legs.

“Oh, yes,” she sighed.

He explored further. Wet. That was good, it meant she wanted him, did it not? “Tell me,” he whispered, suddenly feeling his own inexperience, even as his hardness strained beneath her. It had been five years since the night with Clarisse. What did he know about anything? He had only spent three hours with the woman, isn’t that what Fayette himself had—

—It was enough.

Judith took part of him in her hands. Her hold increased his ardor. “Ethan, you’re so …”

“Desirous of you,” he tried to help.

“Yes, that. But your skin here, it’s so soft, like a newborn’s,” she said with wonder, caressing him there, innocently, without realizing her touch was driving him to distraction. No, not yet. Not there, in her hand.

“Judith, please. When you’re ready—” He tried to talk further, but his voice became guttural surges. He thought he would die from the intensity of his need. But he stayed there, below her, and waited.

Judith rose to her knees, then eased herself, with exquisite slowness, down. Slippery, delicious, glorious. Her blood trickled between his thighs. Bride blood. It pooled in the folds of his nightshirt beneath them. Had he hurt her? Ethan reached his hands to her face, cupped it between them.

“Are you well, Judith?” he whispered.

“Very well, husband.”

She never lied. Ethan smiled. His hands wove through the folds of her shirt, took her hips. He lifted her, then gently set her down on him again. Once, twice. “Does that please you?”

“Oh, yes,” she said, bowing her head, splaying his chest with her moonlit hair as the wind of the storm joined the waves’ music outside.

She came forward, anchoring her hands at his shoulders, and began to move all on her own. He groaned deeply, delighted by her ability to give him pulsing squeezes as he lay buried there between her thighs. More notes rose from that beautiful white throat. What had he ever done to be granted these gifts from this woman?

The pulses came faster, more insistent. He answered them with thrusts of his own; what did she call them—wild longings? Soon he only had the power to hold her waist between his hands and hope for the best, which, he thought later when his wife lay collapsed in his arms, might have been good enough for this, their first completion of intimacy.

The rain’s relentless beat was dying.—
Vigilance. Protect her,
the voice advised gently.

“Vigilance,” he repeated, remembering from that night long ago how soundly he would sleep now. They could steal Judith if he slept that well. Steal her away forever, those relentless horsemen. Their Quaker pursuers, Eli’s assassin, and his own brothers merged into a single force in Ethan’s mind. He felt sweat line his brow. They would not be content, none of them. Not while Eli’s blood beat through Judith Mercer’s veins. They would always be following, until he killed them. Was this a vision of truth or the effects of his own exhaustion? he wondered, even as he sat up, ripped the fabric from the hem of his long shirt.

Judith murmured in sleepy protest as he anchored her to his wrist. He placed feathery kisses on her fingers as he finished his work, then eased back in the pillows. She settled herself against his heart, content.

—
Good,
the voice finally approved.
Now, you may sleep.

The voice was attached to someone walking away from him, there, on the backs of his eyelids. He called. The figure continued, faster. He ran, lunged, fell on his face in the briny water of the
Standard
’s hold. His hand had only managed to grasp the edge of Clarisse’s gold tapestry shawl.

J
udith stretched, luxuriating in the featherbed and her husband’s heat against her back. The wind still howled outside the shuttered windows of the cabin, but the rain had stopped. Ethan shifted, murmuring. “
Toujours. Allons danser.”

She turned.
Danser.
Dance? Was he dancing there behind the audaciously lashed lids? She decided she must study French, if her singularly handsome husband insisted on dreaming in the language.

In the distance, the waves of the Atlantic crashed against the rocky breakwall—the water over stone her husband had promised her at their first joining. How had he known?

Judith felt tears welling behind her eyes as his peaceful, even breathing wafted against her neck. She must stop this or it would wake him, and he needed his sleep. They must look after each other, they were a family now. Judith grabbed a fold of her shirt to press against her running nose. His hand followed behind the motion, like a marionette’s. What had caused that?

Judith lifted the quilt. Ethan shifted, growling. He was naked under the covers. But the last she’d remembered he’d left his shirt on. Why had he removed it? The blood, of course. His shirt had caught her bride blood. It was now set out on the bench, facing the newly banked fire. Washed gleaming white again. She must have slept very soundly not to have heard him do all that. Judith shook her head.

“Night owl,” she chided.

“Hmmmn?” He tucked her closer.

Now her hand was the marionette’s, pulled to him. Judith saw the soft muslin bond linking their wrists. She stared at the fabric’s initials, then at his drying shirt’s ripped hem. “Ethan,” she called softly, “my dearest love, why have you tied us together?”

“Joined,” he murmured. “None asunder.”

“I see,” she whispered, kissing his cheek. She heard the sound of heavy boots on the porch outside. Her breath caught, panicked, in her throat.

Ethan’s eyes shot open. He leaned over the bedside and lifted the
knife from inside his boot. He cut their bond with one upward stroke. Judith stopped her mouth when his fierce eyes told her to keep still. He
sank silently beneath the covers and emerged with his trousers on and reaching for his boots.

Judith watched her husband’s long strides to the door. He lifted the latch and disappeared onto the porch.

No sound came but that of the relentless ocean. Then voices, laughter. Ethan’s voice, and that of Del Burnett, the lighthouse keeper. Relief made Judith melt into the contours of the featherbed.

“Judith,” Ethan summoned, standing above her. There was no sign of the knife, only a large steaming soup tureen between his hands. The remnant of their muslin link dangled from his wrist. “You’ll have to eat this chowder, or I’ll catch all hell from Queen Ida.”

Judith laughed. “You must have frightened Del half to death.”

He shrugged and placed the soup on the table. “I think he was more shocked by the two of us sleeping until noon.”

“I have never slept until noon in my life!” she proclaimed.

Ethan grinned. “Behold,” he announced, before opening the window’s shutter. The sun was high, even through the dense mist outside. The sight of her husband’s back covered with a gnarl of scars suddenly made Judith wish to weep, before he yanked his shirt over his head, then distracted her by climbing on the bed and showering her shoulders and neck with kisses. His shirt smelled wonderfully fresh and tinged with—What was that scent?

“The chowder’s hot,” he urged softly. “Let’s eat.”

She traced a line from his cheekbone to his chin. “And then?”

“Dessert. We go back to bed.”

“Mr. Blair! In the afternoon?”

“And I get to yank the shift off
you
this time, wife.”

“I did no such thing to you!”

He looked down his nose at her. “After your bridal modesty, I’d hardly expect you to admit it,” he teased, rising, tucking his shirt into his trousers.

“Ethan, I did not take thy shirt in the night.”

“Of course not.” He sniffed like a haughty Frenchman. “Nor wash it nor set it out to dry by the fire? Why, your very basin betrays …
sacrebleu,”
he whispered suddenly, his stance crippling a little as he stood before her nightstand.

“What is it?”

“A piece of weaving, that’s all,” he said softly, the humor gone from his voice.

“Let me see?”

He brought her the basin, which had been washed clean of her blood. Left at the bottom was a triangular edge of shimmering tapestry
cloth. He sat beside her on the bed, watching as she lifted the remnant. Judith felt its woven gold threads warm her cheek.

“How beautiful it is. And it smells like your shirt.”

“Hyacinth.”

“Yes, exactly, hyacinth!”

He bowed his head, but she could see him biting down hard on his lip. “I’ll be back directly,” he whispered, and then this man who’d bound himself to her all night disappeared into the mist outside.

N
ot far, he mustn’t go far from Judith, he told himself as his legs took longer strides. He wanted to watch for the mist to lift, for herons and egrets. But he couldn’t push the woman from his mind. Or the memory of her brilliant shawl, of her hyacinth scent filling the dank hold of the
Standard
. Clarisse had not lied to him, Fayette had. She had not married a merchant; she had died.

The ground grew wetter. His boot caught in the switchgrass growing at the spring tideline. It brought him down. Fayette caught him, becoming the trunk and low limbs of the wax myrtle tree. Ethan looked past its branches, skyward. The mist was lifting. He closed his eyes and felt the sun warm his eyelids, drying the tracks of his salty tears.

“What are you doing out here, wallowing in the mud?” Ida Burnett demanded, standing over him, her plaid skirts flying, a basket of clams at her ample hip.

Ethan scrambled to his feet. “I—wanted to gather some marsh flowers for my wife, for our table, before we feasted on your chowder, Mrs. Burnett. The sedge is in bloom by now, isn’t it? And the reed still purple?”

She frowned. “Too much salt here, for either.”

“Oh? Well, I suppose I’m lost, then.”

She sighed. “Can you see the cabin through the pine?”

“Yes. Thank you.”

She turned, shaking her head, causing a breeze herself with the straw picture hat tied over her frilly white cap. Ethan had lost all hope of winning this woman over when she turned back to him.

“Mr. Blair!”

He almost saluted.
“Madame?”

“The wax myrtle’s in bloom just above you, if you’ve a mind to climb. Looks pretty bunched with the black needlerush, which you’ll find up toward the cabin. You’ll need something to get back in your wife’s good graces once she sees those clothes.”

“I appreciate your suggestions, Mrs. Burnett,” he said, bowing low.

“Bridegrooms,” she muttered, but hid her face in the shadow of her enormous hat before she turned and continued on her way. Had he amused her, at least?

J
udith took the needlerush and myrtle blossoms from his arms. She searched his eyes. Their suffering was replaced by a vigilant glow.

“Ethan, you look like someone lit a candle inside you.”

He grinned. “There, then. How do you like it?”

“I? Like what?”

“Your own medicine, this Inner Light. It’s daunting, yes?”

She turned, arranging the flowers in a bowl on the table.

“Judith,” he asked her quietly, “what has happened to your
‘thees’
and
‘thous’?
”

“I am a friend of Friends now, I think, my darling.”

He smiled. “That’s what Eli said you might choose.”

Her hands stilled. “Did he? Did he truly?”

“I never lie.” He teased her with her own testimony about him.

“And when he said this … my father did not sound disappointed?”

“In you?” He stood taller. “‘Judith will know what she is,’ he said, exactly like that.”

“Without your accent.”

“What accent?”

She covered her mouth as the giggle escaped.

“No,” he admonished her softly, “don’t hide,
ma chère,
ever.” He descended like a clear-eyed hawk and kissed once, twice. Again, deeper. Tasting.

“You’ve eaten!” he accused her suddenly. “While I was lost in the swamp!”

She backed away. “I’m sorry. I was so hungry. And worried about you, and it smelled so—”

“This is very rude. And must be punished.”

“Punished?” She saw the gleam in his eyes and laughed. “Ethan Blair, I will never get used to thy teasing!”

He swooped her into his arms and headed for the bed, loosening her gowns as he went.

“You must eat—” she protested mildly.

“It’s Judith Mercer’s bounty that interests me now,” he assured her. She sank in the featherbed under his kisses. He started on her bodice ties as she groped for his trousers’ buttons.

Judith reached up, taking in the daylight vision of his torso through
the fine weave of his shirt. She ran her hands over his narrow hips. Between them, the sign of his hunger for her was apparent. And larger than she remembered from deep in the shrouded night.

“Your leg feels better today, does it?” she asked shyly.

He closed his eyes. With a force of his will, Judith thought, he eased his breathing into a more regular pattern. “Last night. Would you like to start that way now, my love?” he whispered tenderly at her ear. “Above me?”

“Yes. Please.”

“Everything you do pleases me, Judith,” he promised as she climbed astride him.

She let the softness of him glide along her inner thigh. With the delight of anticipation born of their night together, she placed him inside her. She moved, whimpered, then cried out until she felt she would die of happiness.

But it was not like the night before, at her fulfillment. He was still hard inside her. What did that mean? she wondered. Had she done something wrong?

He slid his arm around her back and brought her beneath him, reversing their positions. She reached up, touched his face, remembering their time on the quilt at Windover, trusting that he would never hurt her.

“My,” she murmured, “you are quite … well.”

“Nay, Judith. I am a desperate man, fevered with love of this woman, my wife.”

His words, his gentle prodding. What was happening? “Too much,” she murmured.

He stopped, there above her.

“Between us,” she explained. “Too much … cloth,” came out of her like a growl. He grinned, yanking his shirt over his head. The sight of him ignited another spark of desire within her. He was approaching, circling that desire slowly, with craft and assurance, like a thief of souls. She grabbed his shoulders, welcoming him inside her.

“Yes,” he encouraged her at the ear. “Oh, my darling, yes.” He moved more insistently. Judith grabbed wildly for the bed’s bolster so that she would not take flight without him.

“Ethan!”

“Here. I’m here, love.”

“Kiss me!”

He obeyed, giving her a different mooring—his mouth, his tongue, and fine, strong teeth. Her fingers dug into his scalp, his ridged back. It
shocked her, at first, until she saw the sparks in his eyes, heard his guttural urges to continue. Every part of her struggled to stay below his deep, assertive plunges at her core.

Then came the last, the warm wetness before he diminished inside her, and fell gently onto her steaming body. He made a despairing sound of surrender before his head bowed to her shoulder.

His breathing evened. “Too soon?” he asked.

“No, no,” she assured him, stroking back his wet hair. “It was perfect.”

“I love you, Judith,” he whispered gruffly.

Judith felt the twitch beside his eye with the sensitive skin above her bared, still-tingling breast. It made her think of his fever convulsions. What had she done? He must eat. But though she now felt she could move a mountain, he was falling asleep, there beneath her heart. How different men were.

When she tried to slip out of bed, he caught her hand.

“Stay close.”

“I will. Rest, love.”

He did not sleep in a tight, small place, the way she’d trained herself to do after being a guest in half of so many hosting families’ beds, Judith realized. Although Washington had curled himself in his hammock, this man she’d married slept stretched out, his body’s form distinct and powerful.

Judith felt herself grow wet again at the sight of him, shrouded only in the bed’s sheet. She fought the urge to wake him, to ask him if they could start all over again.

She pulled a light blanket to his waist.
Vanity, Judith,
she scolded herself,
and selfish, to have enjoyed this bliss while your husband was yet to break a nightly fast that had stretched past noon
. Well, he’d started it, hadn’t he?

She spun away from the bed. Useful, do something useful. She picked up the haphazard trail of their discarded clothes. She examined his ripped shirt, cast off so fast a button had flown across the room. She found the tin that held sewing supplies, and quickly threaded a needle. Behind her, her young husband shifted, breathed out a wistful sigh. She longed for his touch at her breasts, and between her legs.

The porch, she admonished herself—and fled.

There, Judith shielded her eyes with her hand, taking hold of the post. She waved to her stout landlady, then fingered the long, loose braid that fell to her waist. It was as far as Judith Mercer, of the intricate braids beneath her cap, had gotten dressing her hair on this first morning
of her consummated marriage. No, afternoon. She wore no shifts beneath her indigo gowns. But Queen Ida couldn’t see that, could she?
Burnett
, she reminded herself as the woman’s jaunty step approached. Not Queen Ida. Burnett.

“Mrs. Blair,” the woman announced tersely.

“Good day to you, Mrs. Burnett. My husband and I thank you for the chowder.”

“Sit down, sit down. I wouldn’t have stopped at all if it wasn’t for you looking like one of my own daughters, and maybe thinking me rude if I did not.” She looked over the task in Judith’s lap. “He’s ripped his shirt besides muddying his clothes in the marsh, has he?”

“The hem’s a little frayed,” was all Judith would admit.

The big woman sat on the bench beside her. “A good, strong seam,” she observed.

BOOK: The Randolph Legacy

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