Ever His Bride (18 page)

Hunter shuttered the carriage windows and
pressed his head between his palms to contain the pounding. He
would have this headache until sleep scrubbed it away, until he
cleansed the stench from his nostrils and his lungs. He needed
cool, unadulterated air, but he dared not open a window for the
piercing sunlight and the stench.

The stench. He thought he had escaped it.

He rode in sweltering darkness the rest of
the way home, roused from the reeling blackness by the carriage
wheels grating against the gravel drive of Claybourne Manor. He was
home.

She met him as he descended the cab, this
wife of his who now stunk of the gutter, who stood ramrod straight
in her outrage against him.

“I won’t be treated like a child, Mr.
Claybourne!”

His throat clogged and he couldn’t breathe
for the smell of her. He fought off the blackness that throbbed
against his temples.

“Take her around back, Branson,” he managed
through airless lungs. “To the plow shed.”

“Do you plan to imprison me again, sir?”

He wanted to throttle her, but he balled his
hands and left the courtyard for the clean, cold air of the foyer,
closing off his ears to his wife’s colorful tirade as it weakened
to a single strand and then disappeared around the rear of the
house.

Bile rose in his throat as he threw open his
chamber door. He ripped his coat lining as he wrenched out of the
clinging wool. Sweat soaked through to its buttons.

She
had done this to him. She’d
dragged him to that vile place with her insubordination. He’d
warned her to leave the boy alone, not to get involved with his
kind of corrupt filth. But disobeying his commands was what his
wife seemed to do best.

His hands shook as he tore off his damp
shirt, scattering pearly buttons into the air as they fell victim
to his fumbling struggle. He swabbed his face and chest with cold
water from the pitcher.

Damn the woman! He would make his demands
crystal clear to her this time. She would remember this warning,
this moment till the end of her days.

Voices from below his window drew him to
finger the curtains apart. Branson was leading Miss Mayfield along
the overgrown path toward the plow shed hidden amongst the brambles
in the ravine. She was giving the man an earful, shaking her fist
at the house, slapping at his hands.

Hunter’s head still pounded, but he’d passed
through the worst of it. He couldn’t let this woman, this transient
wife, unstructure his days. He dressed in clean trousers and shirt,
grabbed a blanket, then made his way to the rear of the house.

He could hear the rumble of his wife’s angry
fists thrumming against wooden walls even as he made his way
through the undergrowth.

Branson was standing guard at the closed door
and solemnly shook his head as Hunter approached. “She’s angry,
sir.”

“So am I,” he said flatly. The thumping from
inside the shed echoed the pounding of his headache with remarkable
precision.

“Frankly, sir,” Branson said with a sniff,
looking down at the blanket Hunter carried, but unwilling to look
him in the eye, “I’m not too happy myself. At the moment.”

He had never seen Branson with his lower lip
thrust out in such a sulk. The man had taken the wrong side in this
war. “Don’t forget who pays your salary, Branson. Leave now. And
keep the staff away until I return to the house.”

Branson gave him a suspicious glare and
seemed to consider asking why, but nodded stiffly then disappeared
through the tangle of brush.

“I can hear you out there Claybourne, you
bastard!” She emphasized his name and the epithet with another
thunk against the wall. “I can smell you!”

Hunter gathered his anger into a manageable
knot and yanked open the shed door. “I’m surprised you can smell
anything but yourself!”

Her fist was raised to strike the wall again.
Instead, she leaned against the doorframe and slanted him a
belligerent smile. “Ah, you’ve brought me a blanket, I see. Is this
lovely shed to be my new chamber?”

“You seem to favor the slums, Miss Mayfield.
This is far better lodging than you’d find anywhere in Bethnal
Green.”

“As if you’d know or care!”

The woman had grown fierce in her ignorant
defense of London’s refuse. Filth sought its own kind— he’d learned
that truth early in his life. It was time that his wife learned the
lesson as well.

Even in the soft afternoon breeze, the stench
on her clothes nearly felled him, threatened to send him reeling
again. Couldn’t she smell it? His stomach stood on end.

“Come with me, Miss Mayfield.”

“I’ll stay here in my new chamber, thank you.
It’s more airy than that depressing crypt you call home.”

His patience at an end, he grabbed her by the
elbow and led her like a recalcitrant child into the leafy bracken,
away from the house.

“Where the devil are you taking me?” Felicity
panicked and made a grab for a stand of willow. She missed, and
clung for a moment to Claybourne’s shirt sleeve to keep from
strangling herself. His broad strides never changed. “If you kill
me out here in the woods, Mr. Claybourne, someone will miss me and
come looking.”

“Who, Miss Mayfield? The ever faithful Mr.
Biddle? Now there’s a man to trust.”

“Well, I certainly don’t trust you, Mr.
Claybourne! Let me go.”

He hurried her down an embankment, catching
her arm when she slid, but otherwise keeping her at a stiff-arm’s
distance as he trounced her through the nettles. He stopped
abruptly at the edge of a wide stream.

“Get in,” he said.

“Get in where?”

She was standing on the brink of a crystal
pool that had been created from a natural dam of rock and fallen
trees. On any other day this would be a rare place of sylvan
contentment, with its canopy of maple and beech, but on this
particular day, her unhinged husband was holding her by the scruff
of the neck and was threatening her life.

“What do you mean, Mr. Claybourne? You want
me to get into the water?”

“Get in and clean yourself up.” He let go of
her but left no escape, except across the water.

“Clean up? Do you mean bathe? In here?”

“That’s what I mean. Now, into the
water.”

The man was truly mad! She laughed and stood
her ground. “Sir, I have a perfectly good bathtub in my chamber.
Warm water, a screen, a new lock—”

“You’re not going back into my house until
you’ve cleansed yourself of Bethnal Green.” Claybourne’s breath
came and went in short bursts, out of proportion with the energy
he’d expended in his uncaring strides. He swabbed sweat from his
face with the blanket he had dragged along.

“You can’t be serious, Mr. Claybourne.” Sure,
the front of her dress was caked in muck and looked like she’d used
it for a doormat, and she smelled like a cesspit. Where was the
man’s sense of the absurd? “It’s just a little mud. I’ll launder it
myself—”

“Get in,” he repeated, growling as he took a
sharp step toward her. “Now.”

He was deranged. She had married a madman!
Better to humor him and his blazing temper for the moment. She was
an excellent swimmer; once in the water she could cross the pool,
put the stream between them, and then add the rest of the county as
well.

“And don’t even consider running from me,
Miss Mayfield. My hounds will find you.”

Wonderful—a madman who read minds. Very well,
wet or dry, she would find a way out of this. She bent to unlace
her shoes.

“Leave the shoes,” he said, dropping the
blanket onto the mossy bank at his feet. He took another deliberate
step in her direction, and Felicity stumbled a few yards into the
stream until the icy water reached her knees.

“There, Mr. Claybourne,” she said, swishing
the hem of her skirt across the surface to lift out the worst of
the grime. The water clouded as it eddied away from her. “Are you
happy now?”

He must not have been. He yanked off his
coat, and stalked into the stream toward her.

“What are you doing, sir? Don’t you come near
me!” She backed away from the flaming determination in his eyes,
but he kept coming. She was chest-deep in the middle of the stream
when he put his hands on her shoulders, and shoved her down.

Dear God, he was going to drown her! She
grabbed a breath as she went under, clutched at the madman’s
trouser legs and plucked at his hands, kicking out at him to get
away. But then he grabbed a fistful of sleeve and yanked her to the
surface.

She came up splashing violently and
sputtering. “Why not just use a washboard on me, Claybourne?”

“Too bad I didn’t think of it, woman!” He
caught her arms, and held her in front of him. His hair hung in
midnight rivulets, and he was soaked to the skin. He looked like a
village boy who’d gotten dressed up for Sunday, only to find the
creek too inviting to resist.

“Now, Miss Mayfield, you’ll take off your
clothes.”

“I’ll do nothing of the sort!” She stumbled
backward a step, but he followed and caught her by the skirts.

The current tugged at her, and Claybourne
held her against him lest she float away. The water eddied around
him and picked up his warmth, gliding past her legs and across her
chest.

“Your choice, madam. Remove your clothes or
you’ll stand here until you fall unconscious from the cold. You’re
filthy, and I won’t have you in my house.”

“So each time I return from the slums, you’re
going to try to drown me in the stream?”

Heat poured off him in billowing sheets and
she soaked up the warmth greedily. “There won’t be a next
time!”

She opened her mouth to contradict him but
knew there was no point. She would fulfill her promise to the
children of the Beggar’s Academy, with or without Claybourne’s
consent.

“Why did you come after me, Mr. Claybourne?
What does it matter to you if I want to spend a few of my own
pennies to help a child? To repay him for the shirt
you
tore, I might add.”

“I came after you because you’re a fool, Miss
Mayfield.”

“
I’m
a fool? You’re the one who is
standing over his wife, forcing her to bathe in a frigid stream.
Can I get out now?”

He released her. “Not until that dress and
any other piece of clothing that touched the streets of Bethnal
Green are lying right there.” He pointed to the bankside as he
stalked out of the stream. “I’ll give you three minutes to cover
yourself with that blanket.”

His shirt was soaking wet and fascinatingly
transparent against the well-carved back muscles beneath. She
wondered how a man who spent his days holed up in an office like a
mole could boast the brawn of a laborer. He turned back to her, and
she found the same definition in his chest. Well-worked,
well-formed muscle. Planes and angles that begged her hand.

“Undress—now.”

She’d been staring, boldly. Had her mouth
been hanging open, too? “You’ll keep your back turned, Mr.
Claybourne.”

“For as long as I hear movement.”

Her legs were beginning to cramp; she needed
to get out of the stream. She muttered and curse him as she worked
her way out of the wet bodice and skirt, and the first of her two
petticoats. Her camisole and the other petticoat were clean and
unmarked by the mud, but now her drawers threatened to fall off
with the weight of the water. She slogged her way out of the
stream.

Claybourne was staring at her when she raised
her head.

“How long have you been watching, Mr.
Claybourne?”

“Long enough.” He’d been chewing on a shoot
of sedge grass and now spat it into the brush. He took hold of her
shoulders and turned her in a circuit.

“Do I pass inspection, sir?” She followed his
gaze down the front of her and immediately wished she had taken up
wearing a corset and stays. Her camisole might as well have been
window glass, for all the details it exposed. She could plainly see
color and puckering definition at the tips of her breasts.
Claybourne must have noticed, too. His hands blazed hot against her
arms, and his breathing had gone ragged. She ought to run or find
fault with his staring, but that bewildering urge to rise up on her
toes and kiss him rooted her to the spot. His scowl darkened, and
then the blanket came around her, warm from a patch of
sunlight.

“This way,” he said, starting up the
bankside.

Feeling deserted and dismissed, she followed
after him, hobbled by the blanket and the weight of her petticoat.
When she didn’t follow quickly enough, he came back for her,
lifting her easily into his arms.

“I can walk, sir.”

He didn’t reply, but kept his gaze transfixed
on the trail in front of him, and finally on the unkempt garden
path where the entire staff had gathered. He strode with her past
Mrs. Sweeney and Ernest, into the kitchen, past Branson who was
unpacking a crate of dishes, and up the stairs to her chamber.
Someone had lit a fire in the grate.

Claybourne stood her upright in front of the
hearth like one of the Egyptian sarcophagi on display at the
British Museum. Then he left the room without another word. She
heard his chamber door slam across the hall.

At least he hadn’t drowned her. Perhaps she
wouldn’t be so lucky next time. She unwound herself from the
blanket, removed her wet clothes then wrapped herself in her
night-robe and made it to the window just in time to see him step
up into his carriage.

“Pompous, stiff-necked . . . miscreant!” she
shouted against the pane.

But Branson was already pulling away with his
surly, soggy-haired cargo. She hoped she had cost Claybourne a
dozen of his bloody contracts.

But now she had a contract of her own to
fulfill—her promise to the children of the Beggar’s Academy.