Patricia Rice (18 page)

Christina screamed and surrendered to the tides washing over her, lifting and taking and coming apart beneath this simplest of conquests.

Before the last wave engulfed her, Harry slid his body over hers, brushed her breasts with his chest, and whispered meaningless words against her ear. The tension began to build all over again as he parted her legs, and she felt the hard heat of his maleness where his gentle caress had been earlier.

He eased inside, giving her a moment to adjust. She didn’t want a moment. Grabbing the sinewy arms straining on either side of her, Christina lifted her hips into his, glorying in the stabbing pain as he broke through her innocence, making her his wife at last.

Lost to the sensation of Harry filling the narrow passage of her maidenhood, she surrendered any conscious thought and became a true creature of nature, acting out of instinct, love, and the need for the intimacy this act forced upon them. She accepted his thrusts and returned them with fervency. When he rested to give her ease, she spread kisses across his jaw, dug her fingers into his shoulders, and raised her hips for more.

Unable to resist, Harry moved with increasing power, driving her to a frenzy of need all over again. Crying out, she clung to him and flew free.

Her response produced a roar of release from Harry. As his seed spilled into her, Christina opened to the spirits hiding in the rowans, letting them enter as they would, becoming one with the earth and air and with her husband, whose body held her close and shuddered with the spasms of life-giving release.

Conscious of his heavy weight crushing Christina beneath him, Harry rolled to one side. Christina rolled with him. Her firm breasts pressed against his chest, stirring the blood in his loins. Vaguely, he wondered if it would be monstrous to take her again. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so good. If ever. His hand slid of its own accord to her slender waist and curvaceous hip, pulling her into him.

“How many times do you think we should do this before you have your heir, Harry?” she murmured, nuzzling his neck with kisses.

“As many times as we can manage.” To hell with heirs. He just wanted her body under him again, to experience the miracle of her instinctive responses. He’d never taken a virgin before. She’d been tight and eager, and he felt as if he’d just been given a precious essence to cherish forever. The emotion of the experience had disoriented him, and his mind still wasn’t focusing right.

After the magic moments with which she’d just gifted him, he wanted to be the romantic hero she longed for, but all he could think to ask, was “Are you cold? Should I take you to the house?”

“And shock Lady Anne?” she murmured with what he hoped was a giggle. “Can we do it again here?”

Exulting in her answer, forgetting all his other concerns, Harry covered her mouth with his and let his kisses answer for him.

She was every bit as warm and pliant as the first time. He loved the tiny moans she made in her throat and the way she threw her head back and arched her hips demandingly. He even loved the way she grabbed him in frustration if he didn’t proceed at the pace she thought she desired.

He knew what she needed better than she did right now. He worked her slowly, bringing her back to the peaks of earlier, not wanting her to be disappointed in any way. She was weeping in frustration and whipping her lovely hair back and forth by the time he entered her the second time. His bride was an enchantress, a seductive siren, and a woman with all the wiles of nature. It was a joy and triumph to claim her.

The hills echoed with her cries as he drove her high and higher, and he responded to her music with more enthusiasm and desire than he could remember ever experiencing. With total loss of control, he tumbled her over the precipice with shattering thrusts. He’d never so lost himself as to forget his partner, but Christina had the power to twist his head around.

“I’m sorry. I’ve probably made you sore.” Collapsing back on the daybed, he lifted her head to his shoulder and curled her beneath his arm to keep her warm. Her hair spilled across his chest and her breasts, but he could still admire the way her nipples grew taut at the slightest breeze.

“Can we do this even when I’m big and round?” she murmured against his neck, shooting a thrilling shiver through his skin. “I hated to ask my sisters that.”

Harry chuckled. “Most ladies chase men away once they’re breeding. I’m willing to experiment if you are. But I don’t recommend our outdoor boudoir for expectant ladies.”

“Hmpf.” She snuggled her nose against his throat. “You’d rather do it with Lady Anne and Father Oswald watching? I’ll have to forbid them access to our chamber. Although now that Father Oswald has his chalice, he doesn’t come around much.”

“Once I tear down the Abomination, maybe they’ll go back to their graves where they belong. They deserve a good long rest,” he said from the comfort of satiation.

He knew he’d said the wrong thing the instant Christina shot from his arms as if stung by a nest of hornets. The cold of her departure doused his languor.

“Tear it down? You cannot! The house is their
home
. How can you possibly tear it down?”

Harry blinked in bewilderment, uncertain how to react to the Valkyrie raging above him. A very naked Valkyrie. “The castle and manor are falling down, Christina. I can’t afford to shore them up.”

“You don’t know that they’re falling down.” She leaped up and raced about the clearing, gathering her clothes.

If he lived to be ten thousand, he’d never forget the sight of his wife flitting about the woods in the sunshine as natural as the day she was born. She looked more forest sprite than duchess, but it was definitely the duchess who was flinging his clothes at his head. A buckle on his breeches clipped him on the nose before he grabbed the offending garment and jammed his legs into it.

“The bloody parapet fell and killed my father and brother,” he countered. “The lintel nearly killed you. I’ve called for engineers, but I’m not a total fool. The buildings are centuries old and falling down. I can’t afford to maintain them.”

“You have no idea how many spirits inhabit those buildings!” she insisted. “Where would they go?” She struggled with the hooks of her stomacher, hiding the ripeness of her splendid figure. He’d always thought her slender and hadn’t expected the lovely bosom filling her bodice to be more than a woman’s artifice. Now that he knew what she hid behind her men’s shirts and simple shifts…

Dragging his breeches up, Harry wanted to growl, but she’d successfully drained him of anything remotely resembling anger. “I refuse to turn real living people into dead ones for the sake of your imaginary characters. I’ll grant that you see things others don’t, but I’ll not build houses for ghosts.”

“What about Lady Anne’s spinning wheel?” she demanded. “She uses it all the time—I can hear it. And Father Oswald showed you the chalice. How can you drive him out of his beloved chapel after all these years? Your father restored that room for a reason.”

“They’re dead people, Christina! Dead, dead,
dead
, buried in their graves where worms have long since eaten them. If the engineer says the buildings are safe, I’ll leave them alone. That’s the most I can promise.” He pulled on his shirt and tucked the hem into his breeches. “Unless, of course, your friendly spirits want to uncover more buried treasure like the chalice so I can pay the damnable mortgage.”

“You can’t sell the chalice,” she said in horror, her hands freezing on the hooks of her bodice.

“I don’t
want
to sell the chalice.” Amazed that they agreed on one thing, Harry crossed the clearing to pull her stomacher into place. “But if I must choose between a chalice and my land, I will choose my land. Don’t use this as an excuse to pull away from me, Christina. I need your support, not your tears.”

As if in answer, a hot tear fell upon his head while he tied the last lace. Scalded, Harry jerked his head up, but Christina scrubbed at her eyes and met his gaze as boldly as any man.

“It’s my duty as a Malcolm and a wife to support you, Harry. And I will, wholeheartedly.” Her lower lip trembled but she stood magnificently straight, her hair blowing in the breeze around her. “Just don’t expect me to do it according to your terms.”

Relieved in ways he didn’t understand, since they were still at odds, Harry laughed at her defiant stance. “I never expect you to do as expected.”

She nodded, satisfied. “Just so we understand each other.”

Wrapping his arm around her waist for the reassurance that he wouldn’t have to fight the battle for her bed all over again, Harry hugged her close. “We will never understand each other. That’s part of your charm. Tell me why you think my father restored a chapel for a ghost. Did he see them too?”

“I can’t say, but the pages in the ledgers that describe the Elizabethan manor have been clearly marked, and the chapel description is precise. Over the centuries, people change the way they live, boarding up doors and taking out walls and such. Maybe all he was trying to do was put them back the way they once were. The new part of the manor that he built does not seem to be occupied by any spirits that I’ve noticed.”

Oddly relieved to think his father’s madness may have only been a means of burying his grief by re-creating the home of his ancestors, however badly he’d done it, Harry reluctantly steered Christina from the magical grove. “I could only wish he hadn’t bankrupted us in the process. I don’t think the ghosts are properly appreciative.”

“It’s possible they are but have no means of expressing it.” Lifting the bulk of her skirt over her arm, Christina followed his stride with ease. “I can’t imagine many people see them, and even I have difficulty communicating with them. Being a spirit must be very lonely.”

Feeling better than he had since his father’s death, Harry laughed out loud at her observation. “If all you have to tend is ghosts, I must see about providing you with a more productive pastime.”

He enjoyed her fancies, but he had no desire to learn
why
she thought the spirits hung about. He feared that if she told him, he’d have to do something about it, and he really needed to deal with his live tenants first. The remembrance of how he’d been treated by ungrateful farmers darkened his mood, but he did his best not to let Christina know.

“Oh, I have plenty to keep me busy,” she announced. “I have a party to plan, and we can expect my family soon enough. And I suppose children will happen eventually.”

Her casual mention of children so startled Harry that he stumbled over a tree root.
He
would
have
to
start
planning
for
children.

He couldn’t return to his carefree London life. That was over.

Mentally adjusting to a realization that was long past due, he decided he wouldn’t miss politics. He might miss London, but right now, he was more interested in the new experience of his wife and the possibility of children.

Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Christina striding blithely down the hill and tried to imagine her round with his child. He couldn’t do it. He wasn’t an imaginative man.

But they’d just committed an act that could have created a child already. They had done nothing to prevent a child from happening. And Malcolms were very fertile.

He had to save the estate for his children.

Even though the burden on his shoulders grew heavier, Harry walked with a lighter step toward the sprawling palace he called home.

***

Watching Harry ride off to his duties, more aware than ever of the fine-honed integrity of the man shouldering responsibilities for which he’d never been trained, Christina was determined to be the helpmeet he needed. She couldn’t let him tear down his home.

Besides, she didn’t think Harry
wanted
to destroy his home. He loved old things. He just considered tearing down the castle another of his duties, the kind that made him miserable.

So she had to set her mind to saving Harry and the estate and the village. It was growing into quite a challenge. She thought she knew how to accomplish it, though, if all went well. And if the ghosts would cooperate.

She looked for Meg first, to discuss the idea of holding a party for the entire village. As Harry had ordered, she and Peter had returned to their rooms in the manor. Finding Meg sipping tea in the new salon while frowning over the household books, Christina dropped into a lovely gold silk chair and explained her plan for gathering the local people. She didn’t think she could easily explain the rest of her plan, since sending invitations to ghosts wasn’t in any etiquette book she knew. But reading auras wasn’t enough. She hoped the ghosts could help her interpret them.

“A party?” Meg asked doubtfully. “Didn’t you say no one was talking to Harry? Will anyone come?”

“If we say it is an open house? Far more likely than for Harry. I still cannot fathom why anyone would blame him for the problems that are so clearly not his fault.”

“It is easier to blame someone they don’t know, I suppose.” Meg wrinkled her forehead prettily and gave the subject some thought. “Perhaps everyone thinks he went off to London and forgot about them.”

Concluding Meg was a little naive or not telling everything if she thought the villagers were angry because Harry went away, Christina held her tongue on the matter. “Could you make a list of neighbors to invite?”

Meg practically bounced in anticipation. “Why don’t you write your family as well? The promise of having your aristocratic family there will give the neighbors even more incentive to attend.”

Given her family’s meddling ways, Christina didn’t think that quite so fine an idea, but it wouldn’t hurt to make Meg happy after all she’d done to help out.

In the interest of determining what rooms might be available should any of her family accept, she set out to explore the possibilities.

She’d already set the cleaning staff to removing the funeral wreaths from the statuary as well as opening and airing the chambers Harry had approved. They had hired a handyman to begin sealing leaks and repairing damage caused by rodents. With a good, stiff cleaning the family floor of the old Tudor manor would be almost respectable.

She’d located but hadn’t opened a locked suite she assumed had once belonged to Harry’s mother. Under her orders, the hired handyman had pried off the bolts on the duchess’s chamber, but the doors had remained stubbornly locked. She’d have to ask the housekeeper for a key.

A disorderly suite the next door down had been buried in building plans and sketches and more old ledgers. She assumed that one must have belonged to the late duke. She’d checked with Harry earlier, and he’d seemed relieved that she was willing to tackle opening those chambers, as well as his brother’s, assuming they were structurally sound, since they’d been in frequent use. She didn’t think Harry was prepared to occupy them, but if they were to have guests, they would need the space.

Except to check on the servants’ quarters, she hadn’t dared consider the upstairs nursery floor. Perhaps she ought to investigate it more thoroughly, but she’d just learned the joys of marriage and wasn’t ready to contemplate the results.

She was still a bit sore from Harry’s enthusiastic lovemaking, but every step she took reminded her of the beauty of their intimacy. As she went in search of the housekeeper to unlock the duchess’s suite, she wondered if Harry would come to her bed again this evening.

Just thinking of what they might do tonight had her flushed with desire by the time she’d located Mrs. Hoskins and dragged her up to the locked chamber with her key ring. How did people live with this constant urge to couple? She’d thought that once she’d satisfied the need, it would go away. Instead, now that she knew Harry’s seductive talents, she wanted more.