The White Hart stood in the middle of the small marketing town of Chipping Norton, comfortably set in the Cotswolds. It was a fine, very picturesque Tudor inn, so old and rustic Sinjun felt charmed at the same time she was praying for it not to fall down around their ears. So this was where many of the young men came for their trysts. It did look rather romantic, she thought, and sighed again.
There wasn’t a soul to be seen, for it was three o’clock in the morning. Still, Sinjun was far too excited to be tired. She’d managed to escape her brother, and that was no mean feat. Sinjun was out of the carriage in a trice, giving orders to the driver, a man of few words, bless him, and big pockets to hold more guineas than she’d planned to pay him. But she wasn’t at all worried. If she ran out of money, she’d simply sell her pearl necklace. Nothing was more important than Colin and getting herself safely wedded to him. She turned to help him down from the carriage.
“You’ll be in bed in a trice. I’ll go in if you’d like to wait here, Colin, and—”
“Hush,” he said. “I will deal with our ostler. He’s a dirty old lecher, and I don’t want him getting the wrong idea. Damn, I wish you had a wedding ring. Keep your gloves on. You are my wife and I will see to things.”
“All right.” She beamed at him, then frowned. “Oh dear, do you need money?”
“I have money.”
Nevertheless, Sinjun dug into her reticule and pulled out a sheaf of pound notes. “Here. I would feel better if you keep it.” She gave him a sunny smile.
“Let’s get this over with before I fall on my face. Oh yes, keep your mouth shut.”
It was as they walked across the quiet, dark courtyard that Sinjun noticed how badly he was limping. She opened her mouth and then closed it again.
Ten minutes later Sinjun opened the door to a small bedchamber set under the dark eaves and stepped back for Colin to enter first. “I think the ostler believes we lied,” she said, not at all concerned. “But you did very well with him. I think he’s afraid of you. You’re a nobleman, and thus quite unpredictable.”
“Aye, he probably did think I lied, the fat old carp.” Colin looked toward the bed and nearly moaned with the pleasure that awaited him. He felt her hands on his cloak and stilled. “I doubt he’d recognize a husband and wife if he attended their wedding.”
“Let me help you.” She did, efficient as a nanny, and it irritated him, but he held still, just looking at that bed. He wanted to sleep for a week.
“If you will sit down I’ll pull off your boots.”
That was soon done. She’d had enough practice with her brothers. Sinjun stepped back. “Shall I do more?”
“No,” he said. “Just turn your back.”
She obligingly did as he bade, removing her own shoes and stockings, hanging up her cloak and his in the small armoire provided. She turned back when she heard the bed creak. He was lying on his back, his eyes closed, the covers drawn up to his bare chest. His arms were at his sides, on top of the blanket.
“This is all very odd,” she said, chagrined that her voice sounded so much like a maiden’s, all skinny and scared.
He didn’t answer her and she was emboldened to continue. “You see,” she said slowly, “it’s true that I am rather outspoken, I guess you’d say, but my brothers have always encouraged me to speak my mind. So it was the same with you. But now, well, it feels strange, being in this room with you, and I know you don’t have your clothes on and I’m supposed to climb in on the other side of that bed and—”
Her monologue was interrupted by a low rumbling snore.
Sinjun had to laugh at herself. All her soulful meanderings, only for her and the armoire and a sleeping man. She walked quietly to the bedside and looked down at him. He was hers, she thought, all hers, and no one would take him away from her, not even Douglas, no one. Murdered his wife! What arrant nonsense. Lightly, she stroked her fingertips over his brow. He was cool to the touch. The fever was long gone but he was still so very weak. She frowned, then leaned over and kissed his cheek.
Sinjun had never slept with anyone before in her nineteen years, particularly a man who was large and snoring, a man who was so perfect to her that she wanted to spend the rest of the night looking at him and kissing him and touching him. Still, it was strange. Well, she would get used to it. Douglas and Alex always slept in the same bed, as did Ryder and Sophie. It was the way married people did things. Well, except perhaps for her parents; and truth be told, she wouldn’t have wanted to sleep in the same bed with her mother, either. She crawled in next to him, and even from nearly a foot away, she could feel the heat from his body.
She lay on her back and stretched out her hand to find his. Instead her hand found his side. He was naked, his flesh smooth and warm. She didn’t want to leave that part of him, but she did. It wouldn’t be fair to take advantage of him when he was asleep. She laced her fingers through his. Surprisingly, she was asleep very shortly.
Sinjun awoke with a start. Sunlight was pouring through the narrow diamond-paned window. It certainly wasn’t the crack of dawn. On the other hand, to get strong again, Colin had to sleep, and a bed was preferable to the jostling he got in the carriage. She lay there a moment, aware that he was beside her, still sleeping soundly. He hadn’t moved, but then neither had she. She realized then that the covers weren’t tucked up about his neck, where they were supposed to be. Slowly, knowing she shouldn’t but unable not to, she turned and looked at him. He’d kicked the covers off and they were tangled around his feet. As for the rest of him, he was there in the bright sunlight for her to see. She’d never before seen a naked man, and she found him as beautiful as she thought she would. But too thin. She stared at his belly and his groin, and at his sex nestled in the thick hair. His legs were long and thick and covered with black hair. He was beyond beautiful; he was magnificent, even his feet. When she finally forced her eyes away from his groin—a difficult task, for she was frankly fascinated—she blinked at the white bandage around his right thigh.
Of course the fever alone hadn’t been responsible for his continued illness. She remembered that damned limp of his the previous night. He’d been hurt somehow.
Anger and worry flooded her. She’d been a fool not to suspect that some other injury was at work here. Why the devil hadn’t he told her?
Damnation. She scrambled off the bed and pulled on her dressing gown.
“You wretched man,” she said under her breath, but it wasn’t under enough. “I’m your wife and you should trust me.”
“You’re not my wife yet and why are you bleating at me?”
His jaw was a stubble of black whiskers, his hair was mussed, but his eyes were alert, such a deep blue that she forgot to speak for a moment, content just to stare at him.
Colin realized that he was naked and said calmly, “Please pull the covers over me, Joan.”
“Not until you tell me what happened to you. What is this bandage for?”
“The reason I was so ill was because I was knifed, and like a fool, I didn’t see a physician. I didn’t want you to know because I could just see you tearing London apart with your bare hands to find the villain and bring me his head on a platter. Now we’re out of London so it doesn’t matter. You’re safe from yourself.”
Sinjun simply looked at him. He had a point. She would have been greatly incensed, no doubt about that. She smiled down at him. “Does the bandage need to be changed?”
“Yes, I suppose so. The stitches need to come out tomorrow or the next day.”
“All right,” she said. “I’ll do it. The good Lord knows I’ve had enough practice with all of Ryder’s children.”
“Your brother? How many children does he have?”
“I call them his Beloved Ones. Ryder saves children from dreadful situations and brings them to live in Brandon House. There are about a dozen children there right now, but one never knows when another will arrive, or when one will leave to go to a family Ryder has carefully selected. Sometimes it m
akes you cry, Colin, to see a little one battered by a cruel drunken father or just left in an alley by a gin-soaked mother.”
“I see. Get yourself dressed, but first cover me up.”
She did, reluctantly, and he found he was chuckling. Never in his life had he met any female like her. Her interest in his body was embarrassing it was so blatant.
Sinjun solved the privacy problem with a blanket hung over an open armoire door. She didn’t stop talking to Colin while she dressed. While she was eating her breakfast, she watched him shave. She volunteered to help him bathe, but that treat was denied her. Again, she was ordered to pack their things, her back turned to him. He did, however, allow her to look at his thigh. The wound was healing nicely. Sinjun lightly pressed the flesh around the stitches. “Thank God,” she said, “I was so afraid.”
“I’m fine now. It’s just a matter of building back my strength.”
“This is all very strange.”
He eyed her, the flamboyant girl who didn’t seem to have a fear of anything or anyone, who looked at the world as if it were hers to rearrange and reshape just as she wished. Life, in his brief experience, had a way of knocking that out of one. He found himself rather hoping it wouldn’t be knocked out of her for a good long time. She was strong, no fluttering miss, and for that he was grateful. A fluttering English miss would never survive Vere Castle and all its denizens, of that he was sure. Just then he saw a hint of panic in her eyes, and it was that small sign of vulnerability that kept him quiet. She would find out quickly enough.
Then she was laughing and smiling again, even at Mr. Mole, the ostler of the White Hart. When he made a leering comment to her as they were leaving, she merely turned to him and frowned. “It is a pity, sir,” she said, “that you must needs be so disagreeable and show so little breeding. My husband and I stopped here only because he is ill. I assure you that we will never come here again, unless he is ill again, which is unlikely because—”
Colin laughed and took her hand.
He soon became markedly silent, and Sinjun left him to his thoughts. He continued silent through the day and the evening and into the next day. He was preoccupied, frankly absent from her, and she decided to allow him the peace to work out whatever was bothering him. What bothered her most was that he had ordered two bedchambers for them, without explanation. She’d left it alone.
It was late the following afternoon, as the carriage bowled toward Grantham, that he turned to face her in the carriage and dropped the boot. “I have given this a lot of thought, Joan. This is difficult for me, but I must do it, to absolve myself of a veritable little bit of my guilt. I abused your brother’s hospitality by slipping out like a thief in the night with his sister. No, no, keep quiet. Let me finish. In short, I cannot justify what I’ve done, no matter how hard I try to rationalize it. However, there is one thing I can do that will hold some honor, that will help me live with myself. I won’t take your virginity until our wedding night.”
“What? You mean I’ve left you to yourself, been silent as a punch bowl, and over the past day and a half all you’ve come up with is that bit of arrant nonsense? Colin, listen, you don’t know my brothers! We must, that is, you must make me your wife and this very night, else—”
“Enough! You make it seem like I’m going to torture you, for God’s sake, rather than preserve your damned innocence. It isn’t nonsense, arrant or otherwise. I won’t dishonor you in that way; I won’t dishonor your family in that way. I was raised to hold honor dear. It’s in my blood, in my heritage, generation upon generation of it, even through all the killings, the savage battles, there was honor somewhere lurking about. I must marry quickly to save my family and my holdings, you know that well enough, and to protect them from the damned raiding and lying MacPhersons, but one thing I don’t have to do is be a rutting stoat on an innocent girl who isn’t yet my wife.”
“Who are the MacPhersons?”
“Damnation, I didn’t mean to mention them. Forget them.”
“But what if Douglas catches us?”
“I will handle it when and if it happens.”
“I understand about honor, I truly do, Colin, but somehow it’s more than that, isn’t it? Do you dislike me so much? I know I’m too tall and perhaps too skinny for your tastes, but—”
“No, you’re not too tall or too skinny. Just leave it be, Joan. My mind is made up. I won’t take your virginity until we’re wed, and that’s that.”
“I see, my lord. Well, my lord, my mind is also made up. I fully intend for my virginity to be but a memory by the time we reach Scotland. I don’t think it reasonable to think that you can simply handle Douglas if he catches us. You don’t know my brother. I might think I’m clever, all my machinations to evade him, trying alternate routes and all that, but he’s as cunning as a snake. No, my virginity is more than just a marital thing, Colin. It’s necessary that you rid me of it quickly. I feel very strongly about this, so it’s not just that’s that. Now, just whose mind is it that will carry the day?”
She wished he’d yell as Douglas and Ryder did, but he didn’t, saying only, very calmly, very coldly, “Mine, naturally. I’m the man. I will be your husband and you will obey me. You can begin obeying me now. It will doubtless be good for your character.”
“No one has ever spoken to me like that except my mother, and she I could always ignore.”
“You won’t ignore me. Don’t be childish about this. Trust me.”
“You’re as autocratic as Douglas, damn you, even though you haven’t yelled.”
“Then you should realize your only choice is to shut your mouth.”
“Take out your own stitches,” she said, utterly infuriated with him, and turned to look out the window.
“A spoiled English twit. I might have known. I’m disappointed but not surprised. You can back out of this, my dear, you surely can, with all your English virtue still intact. You’re not only outspoken, you’re a termagant if you don’t get your way, a hoyden, and perhaps even bordering on an overbearing shrew. I begin to think your groats aren’t worth all the suffering.”
“What suffering, you beetle-brained clod? Just because I disagree with you, it doesn’t make me a termagant or a shrew or anything else horrible you just called me.”
“You want to back out of this? Fine, have the man turn the carriage around.”
“No, damn you, that would be too easy. I will marry you and teach you what it is to trust someone and confide in someone, to compromise with someone.”
“I’m not used to trusting a woman. I already told you that I liked you, but anything else was out of the question. Believe it. Now, I’m so tired my eyes are crossing. You will be my wife. Act like a lady, if you please.”
“As in fold my hands in my lap and twiddle my thumbs?”
“Yes, a good start. And keep your mouth closed.”
She could only stare at him. It was as if he were trying to drive her away, but she knew he couldn’t want her to back out of the marriage. It was male perversity. Besides, she also had no choice but to marry him. She wanted to yell that it was too late for her, far too late. She’d given him her heart. But she wasn’t about to let him become a tyrant, and groveling at his feet with such a confession would surely make him into a veritable Genghis Khan, given his present attitude. Oh yes, she knew all about tyrants, even though Douglas assumed the tyrant mantle now very rarely. Ah, but she remembered those early days when he’d first wed Alexandra. She gave Colin a sideways look but held her peace. She became silent as a stone. Colin slept until they arrived at the Golden Fleece Inn in Grantham late that evening.
Sinjun assumed that Colin did take out his own stitches, for he again procured two bedchambers, bade her a dutiful good night before her door, and left her. The next morning he hired a horse, merely telling her shortly at breakfast that he was bored with riding inside the damned carriage. Ha! He was bored with riding with her. He rode outside the carriage for the entire day. If his leg bothered him, he
gave no sign of it. In York, Sinjun hired a horse, with a look daring him to object, but he only shrugged, as if to say, it’s your money. If you insist upon wasting it, it doesn’t surprise me. She was glad now that he’d decided not to go to the Lake District, though she’d argued vehemently with him at the time. He wanted to get home more quickly, and even her warnings of Douglas with three guns and a sword hadn’t dissuaded him. She thought, as the wind whipped through her hair, that Lake Windermere was too romantic a spot to share with him. This endless gallop north with the silent man riding just ahead of her wasn’t at all the way she’d imagined her elopement to Scotland to be.
The morning they rode ahead of the carriage across the border into Scotland, Colin reined in and called out, “Stop a moment, Joan. I would speak to you.”
They were in the Cheviot Hills, low, rangy mounds that were mostly bare, stretching as far as she could see. It was beautiful and lonely as the devil and not a soul was to be seen, not a single dwelling. The air was warm and soft, the smell of heather strong. She said to him, “I’m pleased you remember how to speak, given how long it’s been.”
“Hold your tongue. It defies belief that you are angry with me just because I wouldn’t bed you, and here you are a young lady of quality.”
“That isn’t the point—”
“Then you’re still holding your sulk that we didn’t go to the Lake District, a ridiculous ploy that wouldn’t fool an idiot.”
“No, I’m not angry about that. All right, what do you want, Colin?”
“First of all, do you still want to marry me?”
“If I refuse, will you force me because you must marry me because you need my money?”
“Probably. I would think about it, perhaps.”
“Excellent. I won’t marry you. I refuse. I will see you in hell first. Now force me.”
He smiled at her, the first time in four days. He actually smiled. “You aren’t boring, I’ll give you that. Your outrageousness even occasionally pleases me. Very well, we’ll marry tomorrow afternoon when we reach Edinburgh. I have a house on Abbotsford Crescent, old and creaky as the devil and needs money poured into it, but not as badly as Vere Castle. We will stop there and I will try to have a preacher wed us. Then we will ride to Vere Castle the following day.”