Ever His Bride (26 page)

Good God, now his wife had seconded the
investigators! These very distinguished inspectors were nodding and
preening as if they’d been gifted by a visit from the queen.

“And you were with your husband in the
first-class car when the accident occurred? You must have seen it
all.”

“I feared it was going to happen—”

Hunter listened to his wife explain her
impossible-to-credit gift for gauging the condition of the tracks
by the sensations she felt in her feet, and he wondered how grown
men could stand there gaping at her as if they believed every word.
It was the pink of her cheeks, not her experience, that drew them
as she gamboled along the twisted track like a bit of eiderdown,
pointing out her observations and pronouncing her suspicions, which
ran the gamut from the effects of mud and humidity on iron rails to
the load on the locomotive to George Hudson’s bunions.

Sawyer scribbled earnestly on his notepad,
and stroked his chin, nodded his approval to the others, and
occasionally to Hunter himself, including him in the conversation
without actually having to consult with him.

He was finally dragged away from his wife’s
performance to lead the rescue effort. He hoisted rails and yanked
aside sheets of iron, every movement a labor to evict his wife from
his thoughts.

She stayed anyway.

It was nearly eight o’clock in the morning,
the sun washing over the countryside, when he was finally able to
load the woman into the twice returned passenger car and travel on
toward Blenwick.

She sat beside him in the seat, her posture
upright, but her eyelids drooping.

“Where are we going, Mr. Claybourne? I ought
to see to the injured in the little hospital.” She crossed her arms
over her chest. Her suit jacket was missing, along with her
petticoats, and her white bodice had long ago been blackened and
bloodied. She had the courage and tenacity of a lioness, but she
looked like one of those American raccoons he’d seen at the London
zoo, her eyes scrubbed clean and the rest of her face streaked with
soot and mud.

“You’ve done enough for one disaster, Mrs.
Claybourne. The injured are in good hands at Blenwick Hospital. You
need sleep. The station master recommended a place called the
Brightwater Arms, one of your damnable country inns. With any kind
of luck, we can sleep until sometime tomorrow. I hope that meets
with your approval.”

When she didn’t answer, or offer an argument,
he lifted her curtain of hair from the side of her face. Fast
asleep and listing away from him in rhythm with the rocking
train.

He caught his arm around her shoulders and
settled her head against his chest and wondered how she would rate
the Brightwater Arms for her travel gazette.

Hell, he wondered how she would rate him.

The woman fell asleep again in a chair in the
common room of the Brightwater as he was registering. He carried
her up to their small room, then settled her onto the bed—his
bed.

“No choice in the matter, my dear,” he told
his sleeping wife as he unlaced her now tattered, near-soleless
shoes and dropped them on the floor. “It was the only room
left.”

He shucked off his shirt and would have done
the same for his trousers and his drawers, but he thought it best
not to shock the woman when she woke. She slept on like a stone,
even as he covered her with a counterpane then crawled under it
with an involuntary groan. He should have removed her
soot-streaked, blood-stained clothes, but he wasn’t sure he’d be
the first to awaken, and he didn’t want her to strangle him in his
sleep.

“Good night, Felicity,” he whispered. Or
maybe he just thought it.

And maybe he just imagined he heard a sleepy,
“Good night, Hunter,” from the pillow next to his.

F
elicity woke
slowly out of a dreamless sleep, kept her eyes tightly closed and
savored the warm breeze that eddied gently across her cheek. Must
be a bright morning, the sun was streaming in from some nearby
window. Where exactly was she? In which charming village inn, above
which neat little public house. Must have had a late night to be
this drowsy. She yawned and stretched and would have slipped back
to sleep on a lazy morning like this, but for some reason her body
felt pummeled and bruised and she smelled of cinders and steam. .
.dear God, the train!

She opened her eyes and the nightmare rushed
at her like all the horrors of hell; brimstone and broken bodies, a
conflagration of smoke and flame. And Hunter standing amidst the
inferno—doing battle with the devil!

“Hunter—where?” She sat bolt upright, then
breathed out a sigh of relief. He was right there beside her in the
tiny bed, sleeping soundly, his head half on her pillow, breathing
softly – the source of that eddying breeze—his chest bared and
smudged with mud and rust and probably blood, but not his own. A
bruise had taken root on his forehead, and his face was so smeared
with soot and grime he might well have been coalman, or one of the
street urchins he despised so much.

That he wasn’t among the gravely injured or
the dead was a miracle. Every disaster needed a hero; he was that
and more to her, to everyone, last night.

She had wanted so much to dislike him, for
the hundred different faults she could count against his large and
brooding character. And yet she’d seen such startling moments of
virtue in him. He’d been gentle and generous with the injured,
taken command of the rescue, and hadn’t let go.

Yet how could she ever forgive him for his
callous, uncalled-for intolerance in his everyday life, his hatred
of the helpless and the innocent. He’d treated Giles like a beast,
as though the boy were nothing more than leavings to sweep into the
gutter. Had become a wild-eyed madman when he’d found her near the
slums; had nearly drowned her until he’d scrubbed the muck off her
clothes.

Where did a man come by such blind prejudice?
In a home filled with hate? A brutal father could as easily teach a
son to loathe as he could to fish; could beat a boy and abuse his
heart until that son learned to raise himself up and fight back the
only way he knew how, with a cold heart turned against the world,
against the light. Living in a house as gray as a tomb, and as
silent—a refuge against the encroaching wildness of the heath.

Though he wasn’t particularly miserly, nor
was his pride propped up by the imperious trappings of his wealth
and position.  When she had dressed her chamber like that of a
princess, he’d only asked after her comfort. When she opened all
the windows to the sunlight, he’d shied from the brightness at
first, but hadn’t complained.

He’d grumbled about the cost of her wardrobe,
but rightly so. Seven hundred pounds was more than most
workingman’s lifetime wage. But he’d paid the bill, never begrudged
her a stitch, never mentioned the cost again, even when the lot was
delivered.

And last evening, before the accident, when
he forced her to ride with him in the rail carriage—he’d surprised
her with his banter. What should have been a ghastly journey made
in a cloud of ill-humor and unvoiced accusations had been a nearly
enjoyable adventure. No, entirely enjoyable. He’d been charming,
conversational, willing to share some of his life with her. And a
pot of strawberry preserves.

And then he’d slipped a wedding band on her
finger, of all the unexpected things!

Something deep inside her had changed in that
moment and in all the dark moments afterward—a commitment she
hadn’t meant to make, entangling her heart.

And she’d so blithely sealed it with a kiss.
If only she hadn’t been so eager, but the moment had been heady and
hot, so lovely she’d wanted it to go on and on. And wasn’t entirely
his fault! How was the poor man to be expected to restrain his
urges if she encouraged him?

Urges. She had felt them in herself long
before he kissed her, and during, felt them rising even now as she
lay here beside him, making a study of his coal black lashes, his
finely sculpted mouth.

He stirred, frowned and flinched in his
sleep, then turned his head from her.

Better to let him sleep while she took a
steaming hot bath, if she could find one.

She gathered a change of clothes from her
bag, limped down the hall to the bath closet, and lounged for half
an hour before drying off and dressing in her clean brown traveling
suit and returning to the room.

Her husband was still sleeping. So Felicity
took her portmanteau with her folios and went downstairs to have
tea in the common room.

A full two hours later, she heard a thump and
a thunderous voice above stairs, and looked up from her writing.
The three women who sat nearby had heard it, too, and stared at her
as though she could explain the sounds.

She had her suspicions.

Footsteps raged down the narrow stairwell,
and an instant later Hunter Claybourne stumbled into view in the
doorway, his chest bare and heaving, his hair rumpled, his face
still smudged, and his eyes blazing.

“Where do you think you’re going, wife?” he
bellowed, coming to a staggering halt on the last step, holding
fast to either side of the opening. He looked very large.

She hadn’t known he could move so
quickly.

“I’m not going anywhere, Mr. Claybourne, and
neither should you. Especially without your shirt.” She hid her
smile from him. But the other women now stared openly at the
scandalously deranged man who had just swooped down on the
diners.

He was a proud man and she hoped he wouldn’t
feel as exposed as he appeared. He glanced toward the sheltered
titters from the other side of the room, then turned and
disappeared up the stairs.

When her scowling husband was out of earshot,
Felicity winked at the three women. “As handsome as he is mad,
isn’t he?”

They must have agreed, because the giggling
continued amid talk of the train wreck and the mysterious man who
had exhibited superhuman powers in his single-handed rescue.

When he finally descended the stairs a
half-hour later, he looked as he always did on his way out the door
to his office: scrubbed and tailored and confident, except for the
wary gaze he swept across the room.

“They’re are gone, Mr. Claybourne,” she said,
pleased to finally be alone with him.

“And the inspectors?” He tugged stiffly on
each cuff, gave his neckcloth a tug, and came toward her with a
slight hitch in his step.

“Gone to a tavern, it seems. Mr. Sawyer asked
me to tell you there’d be a photographer here tomorrow
morning.”

“Good.” He exhaled a short, stiff grunt as he
sat down opposite her at the table.

She wanted to inspect the bruise that hid
among the loosened curls at his hairline, but decided against
drawing his temper. “You seem not much the worse for last night’s
wear.”

“I’m older by a decade, at least.”

“That would make you how old, Mr. Claybourne?
About forty?”

“Well into my eighties.”

She smiled. “Then you’ve aged nicely, sir.”
He looked quite miserable in his stiff collar. “But truthfully,
husband, I really ought to know how old you are. In case anyone
asks. You know, in the same way I needed to know how to answer if
they asked if you’ve kissed me.”

He leaned toward her with such imposing
determination, she thought he would kiss her again right there in
the common room. But he stopped short of such a display and said in
a very low, very pointed tone, “Tell them to mind their own
business.”

“I’ll tell them you’re eighty.”

“Have you eaten?” he asked, eyeing the cook
as the woman came toward them with a plate.

“Twice,” she said. “I said you’d be hungry as
soon as you came down. I also thought you’d like this.” She handed
him a copy of the
Times.

He looked surprised and cleared his throat.
“Thank you.”

She forgave him his brusqueness, and moved
her writing out of the way as the woman sat a heaping plate of
sliced beef and roasted potatoes in front of Claybourne. “And I
ordered your favorite wine.”

“And how would you know what kind of wine I
prefer?”

“You have crates of it in your cellar.”

Hunter felt suddenly catered to, and
altogether suspicious of her motives. “Ah, yes, my cellar. I might
have known you’d have found your way down there.”

He decided that his wife was entirely too
observant, and entirely too lovely this evening. Her hair hung down
her back, tied away from her face by a ribbon of the same lush
green as her eyes. She was dressed again in her travel-brown,
poised, it seemed, to leave him at a moment’s notice. And yet she
was gazing at him over the top of her tea cup, and he wondered what
devilment she was designing and what part she had planned for
him.