The Winter Bride (A Chance Sisters Romance) (25 page)

Fools rush in and all that, and she was as wary a creature as any female he’d met.

She shifted a little in her sleep and he felt it; through a toga and a patchwork blasted quilt he felt it. He shifted uncomfortably. Cocoon of blasted chastity? More like an iron maiden of inconvenience.

Such an irony that he, who’d sworn loud and long that he never wanted to marry, was now certain that the only woman he could stand to wed was a sweet, stubborn girl who herself had vowed not to marry.

It was a mystery to him why a girl like Damaris would be so averse to marriage. He could understand that she might not wish to marry him—though there was a future title and a fortune to sweeten the deal. But not to wish to marry at all, when she didn’t even have tuppence to her name . . .

It was all academic now. It didn’t matter what either of them wanted. After this night together they were well and truly compromised. Marriage was no longer a choice for either of them; it was an obligation.

He wondered how she’d take it when she realized.

The quilt was rucked up and uncomfortable. Carefully he wriggled out of it and kicked it out of the bed. The toga would have to stay, he decided regretfully. After he’d promised not to seduce her, she wouldn’t take kindly to waking up in bed with a naked man.

The wind rattled the windows and sighed around the eaves. He held her in his arms and waited for sleep to come.

“Elinor . . . told herself likewise not to hope. But it was too late. Hope had already entered.”

—
JANE AUSTEN,
SENSE AND SENSIBILITY

D
amaris awoke slowly to a sense of warmth and comfort and . . . rightness. She lay without moving, savoring the sensation, aware of her breathing . . . and his. Abandoned in sleep he claimed her, one heavy arm holding her against the curve of his body, his chest pressed to her back, her bottom cuddled into . . . his groin.

He was hard. She could feel him pressing against her. Her eyes flew open and she tensed a moment, waiting. But the rhythm of his breathing didn’t change and she slowly relaxed.

If only it could stay like this between them, peaceful, trusting, with no expectations. But she knew better. Those dreams were long gone.

Carefully she lifted his arm and turned to face him, drinking in the sight of him in a way she usually couldn’t. When he was awake, those vivid blue eyes of his danced and dueled and offered endless lighthearted invitations to sin. People said eyes were a window to the soul, but his weren’t. They were a barrier, his inner thoughts hidden behind the laughing gaze of the lighthearted rake.

On only a few occasions had she glimpsed another side of him, a more serious, thoughtful side. When he’d talked about his brother. A brief glimpse of something darker and more painful. And again when the lash of his parents’ dismissal caught him unawares.

Now that brilliant blue gaze was hidden beneath the twin crescents of his lashes, thick and brown and tipped with gold.

In sleep he looked younger, less . . . guarded. Without his usual expression of faint cynicism. More . . . vulnerable.

His dark gold hair was tousled, and not by the expert attentions of his valet. His jaw was roughened with bristle, darker than his hair but with faint glints of gold. Her fingers itched to rub against his jaw, to feel the delicious abrasion and the hard bone beneath.

His lips were parted slightly. She looked at his mouth, his beautiful, mobile, masculine mouth, and remembered that kiss by his brother’s grave.

Her first kiss, though no one, knowing what she’d done before reaching England, would believe that. She had difficulty believing it herself. And having done what she’d done, knowing what she knew, how had that kiss been so . . . sweet? So unexpected?

Tender, yet carnal, and deeply arousing. She ached now with the memory of it, wondering how it might feel to lie with this man. If his kiss—one single kiss—could move her so, how much more might there be if they were to lie together? If she opened herself to him and took inside her that part of him now pressing so insistently against her belly?

She ached to do it, to know . . . to feel again what she had felt that day by the lake. Only more.

She’d believed she knew everything about congress between a man and a woman, but that kiss had shown her how little she understood.

It was a mystery. He was a mystery.

And lying with him like this, gazing on his sleeping face and breathing in the scent of him and feeling what she was feeling, she was a mystery to herself.

She ached for him. But she knew it couldn’t be. The cost would be too great.

 • • • 

F
reddy knew before he’d even opened his eyes that she was watching him. He could feel her gaze on his face, feel the softness of her breath on his skin. The scent of her was intoxicating, her softness pressed gently, trustfully against him and—Lord help him—he was hard and rampant, pressing against her like a randy dog.

Did she know it? More to the point, did she understand it? She was an innocent, he reminded himself, despite the soft breasts pressed against his arm, hard tipped and begging for attention.

He opened his eyes and found her gazing intently at him, so sweetly earnest, as if he were a source of endless fascination. All his good intentions crumbled. “Morning, beautiful.” With his free hand he cupped the nape of her neck and pulled her down to his mouth.

She tasted of sleep and surprised, aroused woman. She accepted him softly, with shy eagerness, her tongue touching, then tangling with his.

Desire, already kindled, sprang to a raging blaze in an instant.

He tried to resist, but a small voice inside him reminded him their fate had been tied the moment they’d been alone together and stranded in the cottage overnight. She was going to be his wife, and, strangely, for once he didn’t seem to mind the idea of being married.

He particularly didn’t mind it at this minute.

He rolled her over, kissing, tasting, glorying in her. He dragged at the tangled folds of the blasted toga affair he was still wearing, trying to free his body. He abandoned that for more urgent needs and swept the hem of her nightgown up along her long, slender legs, finding the satiny skin of her thighs and seeking the heated, damp place between them.

“No.” She clamped her thighs together and pushed his hands away. “We can’t.”

“We can,” he muttered and pulled her mouth back to his, one hand seeking the soft nest of damp curls between her thighs.

“No, we mustn’t.” Something in her voice alerted him. She pushed him away and sat up, wide-eyed and distressed. A flash of something he thought might be shame crossed her features. It was like a dash of cold water, bringing him to his senses.

Dammit, she was an innocent. And he’d pounced on her with a complete lack of finesse. Where had his much-vaunted skills as a lover gone? Evaporated in a burst of white heat.

He pulled back, breathing deeply, willing the rampant desire to pass. He felt like a ravening wolf, but he gave her a smile that he hoped was reassuring. “Sorry, I’m not usually such an animal in the morning.” He would be, if he woke every morning with her in his bed.

The thought cheered him. “When we’re married it will be different.” He would make love to her at night, as well as in the morning.

She stiffened. “Married? We’re not getting married.”

He smiled. “My dear girl, you must realize that spending the night together means we’re thoroughly compromised. We have no choice but to marry now.”

All the warmth and color drained from her face. “No. I can’t. I won’t.”

“We must, don’t you see?”

“No.”

“But—”

“I don’t want to talk about it. Just leave me, please. I beg you.” She turned away and pulled the covers over her head.

“Very well,” he said a little stiffly. He knew she wasn’t keen on marriage, but her reaction was stronger than he’d expected. “Give me a moment to dress, and I’ll leave you. You need time to get used to the idea.”

“I don’t need time to get used to anything. We’re not getting married.” She sounded completely certain. Her refusal even to entertain the thought for a moment annoyed him.

He would have to make her understand; their fate was sealed. It didn’t matter whether she liked it or not—they
had
to get married.

If he could accept it with good grace, so could she.

He slipped from the bed and padded across the icy floor to where his clothes had been left to dry in front of the fire. His linen shirt and drawers were dry, as were his breeches. He pulled them on. His coat was still damp. He glanced outside. It was a clear, dry morning, no sign of rain, for which he was heartily grateful.

The fire had gone out in the night, and he cleared the ashes away and lit a new fire. “I’ll see to the horses,” he said when it was burning well.

He moved toward the door, then paused. “Should I do anything with the hens?”

“There’s a bowl of scraps in the scullery,” came a muffled voice from the bed. “Give them that and let them out.”

“Won’t they run away?”

“No, they’ll come back when it’s getting dark.”

He fetched the bowl and left. His calmness in the face of her unreasonable obduracy was, he thought, quite impressive. He would see to the animals and come up with a sober, well-reasoned argument that would convince her that they had no option except marriage.

Below, the floodwaters swirled all around them for miles. It was as if they were on an island in the middle of a muddy sea. The rain had stopped and the clouds had passed away, leaving a washed-out wintry blue sky.

Pity. He could do with forty days and forty nights. It might take that long to convince her. . . .

 • • • 

D
amaris shook out her dress. It was crumpled but dry. Keeping one eye on the door, she dressed in front of the fire, slipping into her underclothes first. She laced up her corset from the front, tying it as tight as she could, then twisted it around, hoping it would stay up all right. She would rather die than ask Freddy to tie it for her. His words echoed in her mind.

Spending the night together means we’re thoroughly compromised. We have no choice but to marry.

If there was one thing everyone agreed on about Freddy Monkton-Coombes it was that he didn’t want to be married.

She sat on the bed to put on her stockings and shoes.
She couldn’t,
couldn’t
bear to let him be trapped into marrying her. It was her fault they’d ended up in this situation.

She’d been rude to his parents; she was the one who’d wanted to leave Breckenridge then and there; and because she got sick in closed carriages, they’d traveled in the curricle, without her maid in attendance. If Polly had been with them, the question would never have arisen.

On every count it was her fault.

He’d been nothing but kind to her, and this was how she would repay him? By entrapping him into marriage? Because society expected it? Because he was held to be a rake and she an innocent?

What a joke that was, bitter as only she knew.

There was no question of marriage.

The rain had stopped in the night. Outside the sky looked clear. Would the floodwaters have receded enough for them to pass?

She swiftly made the bed, pulling the bedclothes straight, wondering whether they’d sleep there again. Could she trust herself to spend another night in the same bed with him? It had been a close call this morning. She’d almost forgotten herself. If he hadn’t had to stop to disentangle himself from the sheet, if she hadn’t felt a jolt of sensation at his intimate touch . . . what might have happened?

She wasn’t sure whether she was relieved or sorry.

She picked up the patchwork quilt from where he had dumped it on the floor and began to fold it.

The door crashed open. Freddy stood in the doorway, his blue eyes blazing with decision. “God wants us to get married.”

She clutched the quilt to her chest and stared at him in amazement.
“What?”

He stepped inside and closed the door and said calmly, “It’s all quite clear to me: God wants us to get married.”

She didn’t believe a word of it. “You don’t even believe in God.”

He frowned. “How do you know?”

“You said so, back in London when you told me to live in the moment like a Buddhist.”

“Oh. Well, I believe in Him now.”

“Why? What has changed?”

“He sent a Flood. So that we would have to get married.”

“Pfft. You don’t believe that for a moment.” It was a ridiculous argument. Endearing, but ridiculous.

“I do,” he said with an air of virtue that didn’t deceive her in the least. “And since you do believe in God, you need to honor His Flood by marrying me.”

“Well, I won’t.”

“And you a missionary’s daughter! I’m shocked.”

She finished folding the quilt and placed it on the bed. “I wasn’t a missionary; Papa was.”

“I could convert you.”

“I don’t want to be converted. Especially by a heathen, manipulative, devious rake,” she added, hoping it would annoy him enough to stop this foolish nonsense.

“You say the sweetest things. So, where would you like us to get married?”

“Nowhere.”

He considered that for a moment, then nodded. “Oh, yes, I know where that is. I recollect I found myself in the middle of it once. Very well, it is agreed.”

“What is agreed? In the middle of what?”

“The middle of nowhere—it’s in Yorkshire. Odd place for a wedding, but if your heart is set on it—”

“It’s not. And you are ridiculous.”

“But eligible, you must admit. And honorable, which is why we’re going to be married. So, will it be St. George’s, Hanover Square; or the chapel at Davenham, where your sister and Max were married; or—?”

“I’m
not
marrying you.”

“Don’t be silly, of course you are. Now, I’ll go and chop some wood while you try to make up your mind where the wedding will be. I must say I’m surprised. Never thought you’d be so indecisive, Damaris.”

“I’m not indecisive—” she began, but he was gone and the door shut behind him, leaving her in a turmoil of mixed emotions, half laughing and at the same time on the verge of tears. Of course it was all nonsense but it was very sweet nonsense, pretending it was some kind of divine plan. Letting her off the hook and blaming God.

They both knew better.

How she would love to go along with his banter and let herself to be talked into a lighthearted wedding. She longed for a happily-ever-after as much as any other girl. But too much had happened and she was not the blushing virgin he imagined her to be. And when he learned what she had been, and done . . . well, she didn’t want to have to live with that kind of disillusion, let alone be the cause of it.

She just had to stand firm, that was all. It would be better for both of them.

The morning passed busily, with Freddy seeing to the horses and Damaris cleaning the cottage—she wanted to leave it as spick-and-span as it had been when they arrived—and searching through the provisions in the larder to see what she could find to cook.

And trying not to think of how it might be if she married Freddy Monkton-Coombes.

It wasn’t to be thought of. He only persisted because he didn’t understand why it was impossible. And unnecessary.

And because she was too much of a coward to tell him why.

 • • • 

A
round midday, Freddy came in, carrying an armload of wood—he’d never chopped so much wood in his life—and stamping his feet to knock off the mud. Round two, he thought.