Authors: Annette Blair
By her hearth, the Vicar spoke the words that bound her to Justin for eternity, while the blustery breath of winter rattled the battlements in protest. December the 15th, 1819.
The vicar cleared his throat. “I can’t remember when a wedding meant so much. Take care of her, my friend, or you may find yourself the object of my wrath.”
“I can take you and we both know it.” Justin’s smile gave her a glimpse of the lad he might have been.
“Maybe when we were boys.” The vicar, too, for that matter. “Be good to her. Be good to each other.”
“We will,” Faith said. “Imagine me, with a husband of noble character.”
“You deserve nothing less,” the vicar said. “Neither you.” He slapped Justin on the back once more.
“Thank you, Gabe. I wanted only you to perform the ceremony.”
“I only wish Faith’s parents could share our joy. I pray they forgive me for keeping this from them.”
“They will be happy you were here for me.”
The vicar nodded solemnly, doubtfully, and opened his bag. “I pray so.” He took out a familiar tome, the parish register, in which was inscribed her birth. She touched it. Home.
“Faith, you will inscribe your maiden name. Justin, sign below it. Notice that Lord and Lady Ponsonby signed as witnesses. When I explained the need for secrecy, they agreed to witness with me as proxy. They sponsored me at the school where we met, Justin, which is why they sought my help in getting your nurse, Justin.” He gave Faith the quill. “The biggest problem was permission for Faith to wed. Age twenty one is the age of consent. Ponsonby reluctantly accepted my favour, but if your parents oppose the union later, they will be within their rights to petition for annulment.”
Justin frowned. “But an annulment would mean—”
“He believes you at death’s door, Justin.” The Vicar donned his coat. “God be with you in your struggle against evil, and guide your path to justice, and forgiveness.”
The men shook hands, their friendship and respect evident. “You have given me a great gift.”
That, oddly enough, nicked at the granite of Faith’s resolve to delay their physical intimacy. She stepped into the vicar’s open arms. “God speed,” he whispered, and then he was gone.
She felt adrift, the forces around her strong and unknown.
She turned back to the room and Justin’s arms offered shelter. “My turn to kiss the bride,” he whispered against her temple. In her dream, he told her now that he loved her. Silently, she begged for the words.
His dark eyes smouldered with arousal.
Say it. Please say it.
His lips touched hers, teased them apart, unrestrained, passionate. “I’ll never get enough of you.” The words were wrong, yet she returned the sentiment. Never enough.
When she was in dire peril of allowing her determination to drown in kisses, he stepped away, his grin decidedly wicked. “Do you know what I would like right now?”
Contrasting urges to laugh and scream warred, but Faith smiled. “I cannot imagine … neither am I certain that I wish to know.”
“I would like to bathe in a tub.” He crooked his finger but she stepped back. He bore the eyes of a sorcerer, compelling and dangerous. “As my wife, you can no longer refuse.”
Was he speaking of baths? It was conceivable he would be so relaxed afterwards, that he would have no strength for his conjugal rights … and pigs might fly. She sighed. At least the bath would postpone the inevitable.
Difficult to deny what one most craved. She faced a hard battle tonight—oh, horrid word choice. She shook her head. “Go to your room and shut the door. I’ll ring for Jenny. You shall have your bath, and soon.” He kissed her with great fervour, tried for another, but she evaded him. With a laugh, he finally allowed himself to be pushed into his room and shut in.
It took nearly an hour before Faith could open his door once again. “Your bath awaits, lord and master.”
“You changed from your wedding dress,” he said, disappointed.
“What would Jenny think to find me dressed like that?”
“She would, of course, have assumed you married the dying man in the next room.”
Did his behaviour, or her guilt, make her uncomfortable? “Justin. What’s wrong with you?”
“From the moment I saw you in that dress, I imagined myself removing it.”
“You were supposed to be listening to the vicar’s words.” She wasn’t certain how to deal with Justin as a husband. “Get into the tub.”
Eyes dancing, he stripped with shameless abandon.
Faith wanted to vanish at the evidence of his arousal. Guilt grew. And why should it? Theirs was a business arrangement. It wasn’t as if he loved her. And a relationship built on lust was a house built on sand … precarious. Easily toppled.
Rather than guilt, her determination gained strength. She raised her chin. She was right; they needed to begin with the proper foundation … or relinquish themselves to a sad future.
Justin took her hand. It was evident her silence worried him. “Help me, wife, into that wonderfully hot, steamy water.”
She was disappointed he chose playful banter, for it was time to come to a pact about how to begin this “till-death-do-us-part” arrangement. But their discussion would come in due course, and she couldn’t blame him for craving a real bath, so she humoured him. He found it awkward, needing more agility than he’d regained, to step into the copper tub, and nearly lost his balance.
When, at last, he sat, he sighed, eyes closing in near-ecstasy. “Next time, I shall invite you to join me, Lady Faith.”
Faith looked up, soap in hand. “What did you call me?”
“The title will be yours when we recover it. But, Faith, you are now an obstacle to Vincent’s inheriting. Should something happen to me, he would get the title, but little else. All goes to my wife and children … which is why he wanted Catherine.”
Faith faltered in her resolve. Justin’s fear of marriage, his mistrust of love, sat upon a foundation so much stronger than sand, but solid as marble. It was called experience. With such festering scars, how could she fault his fear of new wounds? If only he would trust that she would never inflict them. She sighed. “I’m happy to thwart Vincent. The money is trifling, the title, less important. Wife is title enough.” She was married to the man she loved. And if she told him, would he believe her?
“And the property?” he asked.
“We need somewhere to live, but my parents would take us in.”
His bark of laughter grated. “God protect us from that.”
“Justin Devereux. My parents are good people.”
“I’m sure, but I won’t live with them to prove it.” He trailed his finger down her neck, across her collarbone, lower, slower. “Kiss me, wife.” His expression held promise.
Aching to respond, unable to summon the strength to stop, or remember why she should, Faith got singed by the fire in his eyes. Her resolve turned to dust as she stepped into a miasma of desire. But her determination to make of this marriage more than an arrangement nagged at her. Justin’s lips were a breath away. Another sip. Just one more.
She fought the pull.
Sanity returned on the wings of a satisfied chuckle. And she dropped the soap and slapped her hand against the water, the backlash raining sober reality.
“God’s teeth!” Justin swore.
Shaken by thwarted desire, Faith sat back on her heels.
Water dripped from Justin’s hair and the tip of his nose, his bony knees peeked through the surface of the water, his indignance comical. The picture tickled her so, Faith laughed herself senseless, his surprise making it funnier.
Losing the struggle between consternation and mirth, Justin laughed too. “Wash me, woman, I have plans for this evening.”
Warmth purled through her. She supposed there were worse destinies than losing this battle … and if she allowed it to happen, she would have the rest of her life to learn what the worst was.
Justin closed his eyes, content. A surprising peace filled him. Faith skimmed his body in a slow, sensual massage. Her lathered hands kneaded his shoulders and back, made soapy swirls in his chest hair and skimmed his nipples, arousing, branding. Then she slid her hands lower … and stopped.
He opened his eyes when she started on his legs and chuckled at her blush. He couldn’t wait to discover where it began.
He was hard as a pikestaff and near ready to spend when she began to work toward that part of his anatomy she had neglected, the part that anticipated her touch with almost painful need.
Unable to bear it another moment, he brought her hand to his flesh and closed her fingers around him. “Ah.” She explored his length, surprising him, and looked as heated as him. Passion had come alive between them. Soon, he would make her sing with it.
Faith was afire, but she had to stop. How had she gotten into this? How could she tell the man sleek and throbbing beneath her fingers that she would be his wife in name only, when she wanted him in every way? She absently traced his nipple with the tip of a finger as she considered her dilemma.
It wasn’t just respect and love their marriage needed. As his second wife, she needed to be a dear friend, a cherished partner, a trusted confidant, a beloved mother to his child, an exciting, passionate lover—everything his first wife was not.
Justin tried to bring her hand back to where it had been, but she resisted and placed both hands in her lap instead.
His look questioned; she turned away. More than anything, she wanted to heal the wounds Catherine had inflicted, the ones left to fester. She was more determined than ever to heal this man with love, if he would allow it. But how to show her love while refusing to take him to her bed? A dilemma.
Justin stroked her face. “Why, my darling, has anguish replaced the passion in her eyes?”
Faith sighed and stood. Time to be honest; he deserved nothing less. “Our marriage is an arrangement. Your words.”
He opened his mouth to protest. She shook her head to stop him. “I know to you, that also means intimacy, but to me, a marriage is more. It’s love, Justin. I realize you don’t grasp, much less believe in the word, neither the feelings that go with it. But I vowed I wouldn’t—we wouldn’t lie together unless there was more than a bargain between us.”
“Faith, I—”
“Wait, let me finish.” She fetched the bucket by the door. “I’ve been furious since you asked me to marry you in that cold way. I need to show you how it left me, how I felt the day you proposed the arrangement. This, I believe, will bring you the chill I felt that day.” She emptied the bucket of ice over him.
“Damnation!” He rose with a speed she didn’t think he could, his look hard, stinging like a slap, and she stepped back.
He struggled from the tub, but did not want her help. Her guilt palpable, her determination went the way of his arousal. His step was ungainly; he nearly fell. It made him angrier. He snapped his dressing gown off the chair, shrugged into it and tied it at the waist with a yank. “I see how cold my offer must have left you,” he said through clenched teeth.
Faith stilled. Of anything he might have said, that was the least expected. Did he understand? Or did anger drive him?
“Love is a myth, Faith, invented by the likes of Mrs. Radcliff,” he snapped, stepped away from her, and faltered. She reached to steady him, but his look froze her.
Fatigued, he sat on the settee, his weariness rooted deeper than the physical, which frightened her. He was bone-weary of playing fox to his brother’s hound, which was understandable, and she just added to his burden by making him doubt the wisdom of their marriage. “Justin, I—”
He held a staying hand. “In light of these feelings you have just revealed, exactly where does this marriage of ours stand?”
She shrugged in sadness. “I don’t know, but I need more than an arrangement, Justin. A marriage needs more than passion.”
“Yet a lack of passion can be fatal to a marriage. I’ve had that kind. And it was not good. I want better for us.” Shoulders set, he raised his chin and looked straight at her.
Lord, she had to make him see. So much depended on this. “A marriage needs—I need—respect, understanding, trust. And passion, but it must be built on the rest or we have nothing.” She knelt and reached for his hands but he folded his arms.