The Irish Bride (17 page)

“Of what church are you?” he asked.

She turned her head to stare at him. Of all the things he might have said ... “If you are asking me where I will go for absolution ...”

“No. I want to know where we will be married.”

Bliss filled her heart. She looked into his eyes, a smile dawning on her lips, but it died, frozen to death, for there was nothing in his eyes to warm it save the brief, wasted heat of lust.

“We’re not going to be married. I have already refused you once, Sir Nicholas. Don’t make me do it again.” She ducked under his arm but hadn’t gone a step before he’d taken her elbows and pulled her back against him. She knew then without a doubt how much he desired her, but also knew that desire alone wasn’t enough.

“I have your father’s consent, you know.”

“Then marry him.”

He crossed his arms about her waist, locking their bodies together. She felt his lips against her temple. His hands were perilously close to her bosom. Rietta tried not to think about how she could drag his hand there again. How quickly she had learned to crave his touch.

She’d spent five passionate minutes locked in the arms of the man she loved. But those minutes had not changed the brutal truth. She loved; he did not. To marry under such circumstances was an even more appalling prospect than to be married for her father’s money.

“Let me go,” she said. “The house is stirring. I don’t want you found here. Certainly not like this. We’re going to be the subject of quite enough gossip as it is.”

“I don’t mind gossip. It can be very useful.”

“Let me go.” She heard a door slam up above. “In the name of heaven, will you let me go!”

He hesitated, only to release her at the same moment she tried her best to break free. Rietta stumbled forward. The instant she had her footing, she rounded on him. “Get out,” she said, her tone no less peremptory for being whispered. “I will never marry you. If your sister were not here, I should have Mr. Garrity bar the door to you.”

“As it is ... when may I see Emma?”

“Come back at two. Don’t expect to see me. Don’t even try.”

On the landing above, Blanche, her voice sleepily dove-like, called out, “Arabella? Where’s my hot water?”

“Will you go?” Rietta said, pushing him toward the door.

He began to laugh, all the harder for Rietta’s efforts to hush him. Suddenly, he sobered. “Yes. I’ll go. But you haven’t heard the last of this.”

“Yes I have, for it’s no more I’ll listen.”

Rietta closed the door behind him, purposefully turning the key so the brass lock snapped audibly. If only keeping him out of her heart was as easy.

Her body felt strangely heavy as she bent to pick up her fallen shawl. Swirling it around her shoulders, she snuggled into it, suddenly cold without Nick’s body covering hers. Why had he laughed at the end? Was it at the feebleness of her strength as she pushed him toward the door? Or was it directed at some joke she could not see?

Half under the shawl was a piece of white paper. She looked at it idly and saw a crimson crest at the top and read just enough to realize that the letter belonged to Nick. It must have fallen out his pocket during those wild moments when he’d seized her. She remembered his hands had been in his pockets just one instant before he’d reached out to pull her off balance. She laid it on the table that received visitor’s cards, so he could collect it when he returned to see Emma.

If she married him ... She felt a wild thrill run through her body to all the places he’d touched. He would attend diligently to the duties of a husband, of that she had no doubt She’d always heard that a man came to despise a woman who permitted him liberties, but surely that emotion did not intrude upon the marriage bed? Perhaps passion growing into tenderness brought forth love, given time.

Rietta was tempted to give him that time. If she married him—she tamped down hard on that thrill—he might come to love her sooner or later. It was a gamble, a risk, for his feelings might never deepen. Against that chance, she would be slaking her happiness for the rest of her life. To be married to a man who merely tolerated her would bring only years of heart-hungry misery. She’d be unable to show her feelings for fear of disgusting him, until they devoured her inwardly.

Also, she had to think of her father and of Blanche. How would they manage without her? Blanche could no more run a household than she could fly. She always put the servants’ backs up with her arbitrary ways and her carelessness, her favoritism and her waywardness.

As for her father, he would have Mrs. Vernon to wife as soon as Rietta left the house. The thought of that woman in her mother’s place was enough to terrify Rietta.

Any other woman would have made a preferable stepmother. Not a woman whose first husband had been a notorious rogue and whose second husband had been suspected of the first one’s murder. Not a woman who had run madly through two respectable fortunes until not a tradesman in town would give her another penny worth of credit.

Yet she dressed fine as fivepence and never seemed to suffer any lack. No doubt word of her keeping a cup warm for Mr. Ferris nearly every night had reached everyone’s ear by now. If Rietta married, leaving the way clear for Mrs. Vernon, Mr. Ferris would acquire both her debts and her extravagant ways in one fell swoop. The mills were doing very well, as were the family investments, but how long would that state of affairs continue if all were left in her father’s hands? He’d never had much of a head for business and he’d have less yet after Mrs. Vernon was through turning it.

“Leprechaun schemes,” she said aloud. “Good gad. What next?”

Later on, she would wonder whether she would have been wiser to listen to her father’s warning. Perhaps the little giants had been listening to her scoffing at their existence and had chosen to punish her by way of proof.

* * * *

That afternoon, Nick was admitted to his sister’s bedroom. Emma sat up in bed. She unmistakably quailed when the pert maid introduced him. “Oh, Nick, I’m so, so sorry.”

He bent to kiss her forehead. Her hair had been swept back in a bandeau, revealing a bruise on her forehead to match the one by her mouth. Both had been dusted over with powder in an attempt to conceal them, but it was useless. The purple marks under her eyes testified to how little she’d slept last night, and perhaps for days before that. Nick didn’t know which made him angrier, the bruises or the signs that she’d been weeping for the man who’d beat her.

He tried to keep his voice gentle, but it came out like the growl of a bear. “Robbie Staines’s father sends his regards and his congratulations at escaping from his son.”

“Was Lord Bellamy very angry with Robbie? It wasn’t his fault. I—I thought he wanted me to come with him, so I ran away. Robbie didn’t know I meant to do it.” She grasped at Nick’s sleeve. “You didn’t see Robbie, did you?”

“No, I came here early this morning but Rie—Miss Ferris didn’t think it would be wise to disturb you.”

“She’s very good. She was so kind to me. Kinder than I deserve.” She spoke mechanically. Only when speaking of Robbie did she seem to come alive. “I’m glad you didn’t see him, Nick. I don’t blame you for being angry, but hurting him wouldn’t change this.”

“I have hopes of seeing Mr. Staines later in the day,” Nick said with a tight jaw. “He wasn’t at home when I sent up my card earlier.” He thought of how he’d thrown aside the greasy landlord at the boarding house and had gone upstairs, his riding crop in his fist. To his surprise, Robbie Staines was not cowering under the bed. He really was out. Remembering his promise to return and the bribe he’d given the landlord not to tell of his intention, he grinned. Emma, reading his look, gave a faint shriek.

“Oh, no, Nick. You mustn’t. It wasn’t his fault. He told me to go home, but I wouldn’t. That’s when ...” She tenderly touched the side of her mouth.

“And the other?”

“What other?”

He found a hand mirror on the dressing table and gave it to her. She touched the lead-colored mark and winced. “I don’t know. When I fell down?”

“When he knocked you down, you mean.”

“He was angry.”

“So am I. Now listen to me, Emma. Nobody knows what you did except the four of us.”

“The four of us,” she echoed.

“You and I, Lord Bellamy, and Mother.”

“And Miss Ferris.”

“And Miss Ferris. How much did you tell her?”

“I don’t remember precisely. I was so agitated. I walked for mites, it seemed, and she was so kind.”

“Well, Miss Ferris’s knowledge or lack of it doesn’t signify. It won’t be long before she has as much interest in protecting my sisters’ reputations as I have myself.”

‘‘What do you mean, Nick?”

Nick didn’t satisfy her curiosity. “We will none of us speak of this again. Lord Bellamy will put his loathsome son on a boat for America and wipe his name out of the family Bible.” Emma began to weep for him. “You and I will not speak of it, either, and as for Mother, you will tell her you are sorry to have caused her so much pain. Undoubtedly she will forgive you.”

“Will you?”

He put his arm about her shoulders and gave her an abrupt squeeze. “Of course, you silly goose. Just don’t do it again.”

‘‘Never. I promise.” She sniffed and tried to force a smile. Nick thought he’d never seen one so badly feigned, not even on the face of some seventeen-year-old subaltern about to lead his troops under fire for the first time.

“Good girl. You’ll spend one more night here just to add color to our story about your being invited by Miss Ferris. I’ll come tomorrow to take you home.”

“How is Mother? And Amelia?”

“Mother is well enough,” he said, feeling that now was not the time to tell Emma about Lady Kirwan’s recent heart palpitations. “Amelia was calling you twenty kinds of fool yesterday but no doubt the storm’s over by now. She’ll probably prove your staunchest defender.”

“Yes, that’s like her. Arc you going?”

“I have strict instructions from Miss Ferris not to over-tire you. I don’t dare disobey; she’s even more outrageous than Amelia when she is angry.”

“That doesn’t sound like Miss Ferris. She never raised her voice yesterday and she stayed with me until I fell asleep.”

“You must thank her.”

“I will. Perhaps she’d like a new pair of slippers? I was embroidering a pair for Aunt Kate but they’d fit Miss Ferris, too.”

“I’m certain she needs slippers. It is well thought of.”

He left her to think of her indiscretion and, no doubt, to shed yet more tears over Robbie Staines. The waters he was to sail over must have been made of the tears he’d forced many women to weep. From what Lord Bellamy had said, even Staines’s own mother was ready to put an ocean between herself and her son.

As Nick stepped into the hall, he looked about eagerly for a sight of Rietta. He caught no sign of her, not even a whiff of the clean-scented perfume she wore, a scent like the breeze on a high hill when the wildflowers hung in every hedge. Kissing her, it had filled his head like a drug, and he never would forget it. If he lived to be a hundred, one trace of that scent would, he felt, bring him back to feel her clinging to him as spirited and passionate as she’d been today.

Throughout the day, he’d relived those breathless moments, calling them up like a connoisseur to sample again and again. The memories only made him the hungrier to taste her mouth once more. She’d been inexpert at first, becoming more adept from instant to instant. The excitement of knowing that he’d been the first man ever to kiss her in such an intimate way fluttered under his skin. He’d been right when he’d guessed that her high passions were not confined to anger. How she’d pressed against him!

Nick knew he was no more in love with Rietta than she was with him. But their marriage bed need never be cold. He smiled confidently as he passed along the hall. His wife would never have cause to complain that he was not attentive in the bedchamber, or that he wasted his substance chasing strange women. Give him Rietta and he’d count all the others well lost.

But how to win her consent? He knew she was stubborn. Having once given no for an answer she had too much pride ever to change her mind. She’d persist in that no if the world crumbled and only she and he were left alive.

“Pst! Psssst!”

Nick had paused before a mirror to pass a critical eye over his shirt and coat. Having his sister alternately grip his sleeve and weep all down his lapels did not improve a coat that, at its best, was slightly past the mode. Hearing the summons, he looked around, surprised to hear it when he was apparently quite alone.

“Down here,” the voice called, hoarse in its whispered attempt to be heard by Nick’s ears alone.

Nick looked over the banister. David Mochrie beckoned to him.

David smuggled Nick past the cook, her back turned to haggle with the fishmonger for today’s catch, down into the cellar. “Where are you taking me?” Nick said, whispering like the hero of a gothic novel.

“Secret conference. Just like Wellington would have done it.”

Down in the moldy, dusty depth of the cellar, Mr. Ferris sat on an upturned keg, beating time on his instep with a loosely closed fist. “There you are, Sir Nicholas. We’ve been meaning to talk something over with you.”

“I’m at your service, sir, of course.”

“Well, that’s what I want. Quick service. I’m tired of standing on and off waiting for you to marry my daughter. What’s the difficulty?”

“Yes, old man,” David added. “I’m not famous for the speed of my actions, but it seems to me that two weeks is plenty of time to propose to a girl.”

“It’s hardly been a week,” Nick protested. “These things take a bit of time to do properly.”

“Nonsense,” Mr. Ferris scoffed. “Take a leaf out of David’s book. Three days after he met my sweet Blanche, he shows up on my doorstep like a toadstool sprouting in the rain. Demands me girl with a gun to my head ... near enough.”

“You exaggerate, sir,” David said.

“Near enough to it any road. I told him then, sir, that no younger daughter of mine shall marry while there’s an elder available. But he didn’t fancy my Rietta; too much strength of purpose. She’d have him organized, starch in his shin, and plenty of stiffening in his spine before the poor man knew what he was about.”