Ever His Bride (35 page)

“Instruction!”

“Friend to friend, if it can’t be husband to
wife.”

“Good God.” He raked his fingers through his
hair and dropped down to sit on the edge of the bed. He couldn’t
look at her for fear of giving in to her ridiculous notion.

She sat up and leaned toward him. “I think
Article Four in our marriage contract covers this sort of thing,
Hunter.”

He snorted. “A miscalculation, you called
it.”

“It wouldn’t be a miscalculation if we both
agreed to the risk.” She touched his elbow with the sparest of
pressure, an indelible entreaty.

It would be the biggest of all
miscalculations. He was insane to even consider it. A child might
come of it, and what then? Children with her would complicate
matters.

“Well, Hunter? Are you willing?”

He finally dared a glance at her—the wood
nymph caught inside the unsuspecting master’s house, sweet of face
but determined to do her inexplicable magic where it wasn’t
wanted.

Oh, but he did want her. His flesh had wanted
her from the start, yet his heart had been the first to betray him.
He needed time and distance.

“First answer me this, Felicity.” He tilted
his chin upward and submitted to her nibbling kiss at the base of
his throat.

“Yes?”

“When did you last bleed?”

She sat upright, frowning. “That’s personal
and private, and no kind of a question for a man to be asking, Mr.
Claybourne.”

“Maybe not, Mrs. Claybourne, but I’m asking.”
He wasn’t going to risk a pregnancy. He’d read of cycles and
fertility, had a book somewhere in his library, and knew there was
a right time and a wrong. “When was it, Felicity?”

“I’m not going to tell you.”

“Very well.” He stood. His presumptuous
question served as he’d hoped it would, to dampen her interest and
postpone the matter for another day. He could better fight the
battle and determine the risks when his nerves were cooler. “Good
night, my dear. Sleep well.”

Felicity burned with indignation as she
watched her husband leave. She couldn’t imagine why he’d wanted to
know when she had last had her monthly visit. He was a man . . .
and a very nosy one.

Yet that very realization made her feel giddy
and warm inside. So did the memory of his rough-palmed hands on her
breasts, and his mouth playing havoc with her senses.

With any luck his urges would remain as
strong as hers, and someday he would take her to his bed and make
her his wife in truth.

She relit the lamp at her desk. Work was the
only way to dispel her confusion. A good dose of editorializing
about the workhouse at Blenwick would do it.

She sat down and began adding to the list of
horrors she had seen, planning out her idea for a new set of
articles. She would continue her travels, but she would visit
workhouses and apprentice schools, instead of charming little
cottages and cheese festivals. Wouldn’t rest a moment until the
last child was rescued.

Even so, half an hour’s effort to sidetrack
her thoughts of Hunter had only served to make her think about him
even more.

His question hadn’t been completely indecent.
Perhaps he just wanted to know that it wasn’t happening right
now—perfectly understandable, considering. He hadn’t said why he
needed to know such a thing, and she’d been too startled to
ask.

She hadn’t been fair to him; hadn’t been
wise.

She turned down the flame on her desk lamp
and crossed the dim hallway to Hunter’s room. She knocked, but he
didn’t answer; called his name softly, but still he didn’t come to
the door. She had heard him leave his room soon after he’d left
hers, but he had returned not five minutes later. Maybe he’d gone
out again.

Determined to settle her mind before the
night got any longer, Felicity let herself into his room to wait
for him.

But as she closed the door, she heard a sound
across the room and turned. Her husband stepped out of the bath
closet just then, swabbing a towel across his face and his newly
washed hair.

And he wasn’t wearing a stitch of clothing.
Not a stitch. And he was glorious!

“Oh, my—Hunter!”

He stopped in his tracks—the stonecutter’s
art made flesh. Every bit as magnificent as the gods and the
warriors in the British Museum. Even more so!

His midsection would no longer be blurred
when she pictured him in her mind. His apparatus hung from a dark
nest, suspended below an intoxicating looking appendage. The whole
area had just begun to stir when he held the towel in the way of
her gazing.

“May I help you, Mrs. Claybourne?” he asked,
as full of business as if she’d met him in Threadneedle Street.

“My name is
Felicity,”
she informed
him, pleased to see a leveling blush on Hunter’s face. “If I’m to
see that much of you, my dear husband, you’ll have to call me
Felicity.”

She couldn’t help staring at the bulge
beneath his towel, and felt a great deal of power: she was quite
certain that she had something to do with stirring it, causing it
to grow before her eyes.

“Have you come just to stare, Felicity?” He
seemed irritated, and turned away, revealing a godlike backside as
he dropped the towel to the hearth.

“Of course not, Hunter.” She righted her
thoughts, but watched him anyway, muscle converging against muscle
as he stuck his arms through the sleeves of his silken robe.

“What brings you across the hall?”

Felicity felt terribly disappointed when he
closed the front of his robe and tied the sash across his waist
before he turned. He looked even more irritated with her as he hung
the towel in the closet.

“I’ve been thinking that a wife ought be able
to discuss anything with her husband, no matter how temporary the
arrangement might be. So I’ve come to tell you . . .” She felt her
face begin to glow from a blaze that had begun in her chest.

“Tell me what?”

“There you see, Hunter, I’m blushing just to
think of confessing this to you.”

He threw wood onto the fire and shoved at it
with the poker. “Just what are you trying to confess?”

“Well . . She decided to let the words rush
out, and then she would leave quickly. “My last bleeding was a week
and a few days ago—whatever that means to you.”

“Damn. . .” The poker clattered into the
brass bucket. She said nothing as he came to stand at the foot of
the bed. “Are you sure?”

“Very sure.” He was so tall, and his eyes
shone so brightly . . . and she loved him so dearly. He seemed as
serious as he had that first day in his office. Their wedding
day.

“Are you sure of your calculations?”

“I remember such things very well, Hunter. A
woman must do so, in order to keep from staining her clothes and to
avoid embarrassing accidents.” She felt terribly giddy, felt his
gaze rest as hotly on her breasts as his hands had done earlier.
“So I’m certain that it started, on schedule, two days before I
left you for Northumberland.”

“Ah,” he whispered through a voice that had a
distinct creak in it. “And it happens . . . how often?”

“I’ve left you for Northumberland only once .
. . so far.” Felicity smiled because he did, and his was quirky and
laced with a humor he turned inward upon himself. And he had
shaved. Which seemed altogether odd, considering that he had been
about to go to bed.

“You must tell me how often you bleed.” He
stood there like a seething statue, his limbs made of granite, but
his chest rising and falling like a bellows. She wanted him to kiss
her.

“Every four weeks, give or take a day, maybe
two.”

“I see.” Her answer hadn’t eased his
breathing, it only seemed to draw him closer. And now he stood
above her, a dark scowl etched into his handsome features. It took
every effort not to touch him.

“Can I ask why you care, Hunter?”

“Children,” he answered, his brow now
profoundly fretted.

“Whose?”

“Ours.”

“Oh, my God! Children!” She’d thought of
children between them only in the abstract—Article Four of the
contract. A possible
miscalculation
. What a dreadful,
selfish word! She’d seen too many forgotten children recently, cold
and starving, left out on the streets to fend for themselves by
mothers who couldn’t afford to feed them. A child conceived
tonight, or any other night, wouldn’t be a miscalculation, but a
child. And she would have an innocent, month-old babe to protect
when her year with Hunter was up, when he set her out on her own.
She couldn’t very well travel with an infant, couldn’t possibly
afford
not
to travel. She’d be one of those pitiful
creatures forced by the parish governors to abandon her child at
the workhouse door. Never!

“Good night, Hunter,” she said, brushing past
him to the door.

“Good night?”

She got the door partially open before Hunter
closed it again. “Wait, please.”

“I’ve changed my mind, Mr. Claybourne,” she
said, as he guided her gently into the room.

“We’re in the middle of a discussion.”

“No. We’re at the
end
of it. Forever.
You were right. This isn’t wise, isn’t fair.” Felicity sat down on
the edge of a chair, suddenly terrified. “What if a child comes of
tonight?”

“It won’t.”

She snorted and jammed her fists between her
knees. “Are you God? Do you know this for certain?”

“As certain as God’s science allows. I’ve
been consulting this book on the human fertility cycle.” Hunter
pointed to a thin volume on the table beside her.

“Never heard of such a thing.” But the book
was opened to a chart with ascending and descending lines and the
words
barren
and
procreative
written in various
places on the grid.

“I recalled that I had it in my library. And
wanted to be sure I was correct.”

“The only way we will know for certain is if
we don’t do this at all. Ever.” She left him to his book and went
to the door. “I won’t bring a child into the world if I can’t
provide a home and blankets and enough food to keep its little
tummy from aching—”

“Damn it, Felicity! No child of mine will
ever starve.”

“But if our marriage . . .
when
our
marriage ends, the child wouldn’t be yours, Hunter. It would be
mine. Like our contract says.”

“Well, damn the contract. The child would be
mine.”

“Well, that’s it, then!” The wicked man
intended to steal her child right out of her arms. She made a grab
for the latch, but he stepped between her and the door and held her
away from him.

“Felicity, what’s gotten into you?”

“Your deception, sir!” She twisted away, but
he followed on her heels and turned her.

“I’m speaking as truthfully as I can.” His
look of injured innocence didn’t sway her.

“And you’ve proved that, Mr. Claybourne. You
would keep my child for yourself! Even after you signed your name,
even after your promise to—”

“Good God, Felicity, I wouldn’t desert you.
I’d never leave you or my child to starve!” Hunter heard himself
say the words, felt them swirling around in his chest, and knew
that he had never spoken a more certain truth.

“I don’t even know what that means, Hunter.”
She planted her hands firmly on her hips. He hadn’t seen that pose
coupled with that particular look of defiance since the night he’d
first seen her, at the Cobsons.

“Felicity, I am perfectly willing and quite
capable of providing anything you and our child might possibly
need, should the situation ever arise. Which it won’t. But, in
point of fact, I would insist upon supporting you both. Comfortable
beds, warm clothing, shoes, the best schools, bountiful meals—”

“And would you visit him—or her?
Regularly?”

“Visit?” Somehow this picture in his mind had
included Felicity and himself and their handsome family all seated
happily around the dining-room table, sharing stories of their day
and contentedly planning their tomorrows. The image made his eyes
sting. “I would be present for the most important events.”

“And for walks in the park?”

Proudly pushing a pram, Felicity at his side;
he was staggered by the idea. “Of course.”

“And you would love this child?”

She waited relentlessly for his answer, with
her hands clasped behind her, her bare toes flexing against the
carpet. A mother bear without a cub, a steadfast heart too grand
for her own good, too ready to welcome unworthy strays.

“I would hope to love my child unreservedly,
madam,” he said through the tightening of his throat. “How could I
not?”

She didn’t move, and he was afraid to spook
her; huge tears welled in her exquisitely green eyes. Her earnestly
straight shoulders finally slackened from a weight he must have
placed there in his carelessness. Her arms hung limply at her
sides, and her tears streaked like rain down the front of her
nightgown.

She finally snuffled. “Well, then,” she said,
wiping her sleeve across her eyes. “That’s decided.”

He couldn’t help but smile, yet couldn’t help
wondering who had won, or if it mattered. He was just two paces
from her, but couldn’t move for the tilting of the room. He’d have
thought the earth was sliding about, but for her graceful steps
toward him. She took his hand and his world righted.

His skin ached and his heart too; he brought
her palm to his mouth, and then to his kiss. The fire from the
hearth danced in her eyes; it shaded and shaped her nightgown,
draped her like the finest silk, made tight, tawny shadows of her
nipples.

“May I?” he asked as politely as he could
manage, though he’d already slipped his fingers through her hair
and now cradled her head softly, wondering if she could feel the
racing of his pulse in the heels of his hands.

“You may do anything you like, Hunter.” Her
eyes were misted, and tracked his own like a blazing
lighthouse.