The Bridegroom (19 page)

She chose not to converse during the ride from the docks near Mishnish to Castle Carlisle. She felt Carlisle’s eyes on her as they drove past the turn that led to Blackthorne Hall, but she was not willing to give him the satisfaction of revealing how much she yearned to feel her father’s arms around her in a comforting hug.

Several estates bordered the vast acres surrounding Blackthorne Hall, but Reggie had been too young when she was last in Scotland to know which of the neighboring estates belonged to Carlisle.

“There it is,” Carlisle said. “Castle Carlisle. Your new home.”

Reggie gasped. “But that’s Sleeping Beauty’s castle!”

At least, that was the name she and Becky had given the crumbling stone castle when they had stumbled across it on one of their afternoon forays. The Carlisle ancestral home truly looked as though it had been lifted from the pages of a storybook.

The turrets and crenels were even more overgrown with thorny vines than Reggie remembered. And there were no vestiges of the expansive lawn, only a dense growth of intimidating thistles. The path to the front door had disappeared entirely beneath a garden of weeds.

She turned to Carlisle and said, “You cannot mean to live here! It is not habitable. Except by rodents, a great many of which, I can assure you, must have taken up residence.”

“Nevertheless, it will be our home.”

“The front door is off its hinges,” Reggie said, pointing to the off-kilter portal that had left the abandoned property so accessible to curious neighborhood children.

“A new one can be made.”

“The windowpanes are all cracked and broken,” she protested.

“How can you tell?” Carlisle asked. “I do not see any that are not overgrown with vines.”

Reggie turned on him angrily. “Is this part of my father’s punishment? To keep his daughter in a pigsty?”

Reggie saw the flash of pain in Clay’s eyes and felt a
flicker of uncertainty. After all, this was his home, or what was left of it after years of neglect. Perhaps he had not realized the extent of the decay. She returned her gaze to the castle and tried to see it as it must have been when he was a boy growing up there.

She imagined the windowpanes sparkling in the sun, the severity of the gray stone walls relieved by a manicured layer of ivy. The path to the massive wooden doors, with their heavy iron hinges, might have been edged with a profusion of purple heather. And the lawn had surely been an elegant vista of rolling green that swept one’s eye all the way to the sea.

“It is a hovel,” Carlisle said, brusquely interrupting her daydream. “It will be your duty to make it a home.”

Reggie surveyed the dilapidated castle. “I am sure I can do wonders with time and enough money.”

“I have no desire to spend my hard-won fortune refurbishing Castle Carlisle. The only memories I have of the time I spent as master here are unpleasant ones. You will have to make do with what you find.”

Reggie stared aghast at the ruins before her. “But you cannot wish your own comfort to suffer,” she protested.

For the first time since they had argued on board ship, he smiled. “You need not worry, my dear. I have made arrangements to ensure my comfort.”

Reggie noticed he had not said anything about
her
comfort.

She could not remember the last time she had been inside the castle, but it must have been nine or ten years past. Even then the furnishings had been in ruins. She wondered how much everything had deteriorated since
then from the damp weather and the salty winds off the sea.

As a child, she had entered the castle through an opening at the base of the off-kilter door. But she had no intention of entering her new home by crawling in on her hands and knees. She waited impatiently for Carlisle to join her.

“Would you please pry open the door for me? I want to see inside.”

It took Carlisle and Pegg working together to move the heavy portal aside. Carlisle gestured her inside before he and Pegg followed on her heels.

Reggie had opened her mouth to decry the condition of the house when she happened to glance in Carlisle’s direction. She did not think, she simply reacted to the anguish she saw on his face. She linked her arm through his and pressed her body close, offering comfort for the spoiled ruins they had found.

“We can make it what it was, Clay,” she said.

When he turned to her, his eyes were shuttered. “I am afraid the burden of repairing Castle Carlisle will fall on your shoulders, my dear. A more important matter will be occupying my time.”

Reggie took a step back and stared at him in dismay and disbelief. “What could be more important than making this hovel a home?”

“Finding the miscreant who gave false information against me twelve years ago, the man who convinced your father I was guilty of forgery, theft, and attempted murder.”

“How did my father come to suspect you in the first place?” Reggie asked.

“I had signed a contract to buy back a vast tract of land surrounding the castle, which my brother had sold to your father,” Carlisle said. “I had no idea that the papers authorizing the transaction—on credit—had been forged without your father’s knowledge or consent. Or that someone had tried to kill your father to make certain the deal was consummated.”

Reggie frowned. “If you are not guilty, then who is?”

“Your father’s former steward, Cedric Ambleside.”

“Mr. Ambleside tried to murder Papa?” she said, aghast.

“Several times.”

“Then why would Papa blame you?”

“Because Mr. Ambleside told him I was guilty.”

“Where is he now?” Reggie asked.

Carlisle stopped pacing and turned to face her. “Ambleside disappeared twelve years ago.”

“Disappeared? No one just disappears.”

Carlisle shook his head disgustedly. “Cedric Ambleside did. I have had detectives searching the width and breadth of Scotland for the past year looking for the man and all they have been able to find out for sure is that he was last seen twelve years ago in this neighborhood. I intend to find him. When I do, I will make him pay.”

Reggie felt a shiver of alarm roll up her spine. “Pay how?”

“With his life,” Clay said flatly.

Reggie stared at her husband with stricken eyes. Clay was planning cold-blooded murder. If he killed Mr. Ambleside,
he would likely be hanged for it. She imagined Clay with a stiff hemp rope around his neck, imagined him choking, strangling. Suddenly, she could not catch her breath.

Her range of vision narrowed, and she felt as though she were moving down a long, dark tunnel. There was a light at the end, but she could not quite reach it. Finally, it seemed too much effort to try.

C
lay caught his wife as she fainted.

“You were too hard on the lass,” Pegg said, glaring at Clay with his one good eye. “And she did nothin’ to deserve it. Did ye hear her? ‘We can make it what it was, Clay,’ ” Pegg said in a falsetto imitation of Reggie’s voice. “By God, that’s a woman, lad! Why are ye in such a hurry to give her up?”

“Shut your blabber, Pegg, and help me find a place to lay her down.”

“Ye’re not goin’ to leave her to face this ruin alone, while ye go traipsin’ around in search of Mr. Ambleside, are ye?” Pegg said, stumping back and forth angrily in front of Clay. “Not after she was so gallant. I’m tellin’ ye here and now, I’ll not force her to stay in this hellhole once you’re gone. How can ye expect one of the Quality to manage amid such filth?”

Pegg’s agitated stumping frightened an enormous rat out of hiding, and it scurried across the floor. “There, see. The lass was right. ’Tis no fit place for humans.”

Clay scowled. He had listened to Pegg rant on more than one occasion without giving in to the older man’s
persuasion. But it was hard to ignore Pegg’s arguments while he held Reggie in his arms. She felt entirely too soft and warm and desirable.

And looked entirely too vulnerable.

Though he had planned to make her live in surroundings unfit for a lady, he had not been to the castle since he had left it twelve years past. He had known it would need repairs. But he was shocked to find it in such a state of ruin. He stared down into Reggie’s face, noting how fragile her lashes were, how delicate the freckles on her nose. She had always seemed so strong to him. But she was only human. She had limits he was only beginning to learn. And there were some burdens too great even for someone with her great heart to bear.

He fully intended to bed her—if there was still a bed somewhere upstairs. He wanted an heir off of her before he abandoned her once and for all. But he was determined not to care for her. Or to worry about her. Pegg could do the worrying. In any case, he had always intended for Pegg to stand guard on her while he was away searching for Ambleside.

“I suppose I’ve let ye stand there feelin’ the weight of yer folly long enough,” Pegg said. “Take her upstairs, lad. There’s a bed up there where ye can lay her down.”

“How can you know that?” Clay asked peevishly.

“Because I had it put there,” Pegg retorted. “Ye dinna think I’d bring a wee bit of a lass to a place like this without makin’ sure she could manage, do ye? I had that Roger Kenworthy fellow look in here when ye said we’d be comin’ back to Scotland. The man couldna believe
what he found. It didna take much convincin’ to have him fix up one decent place to sleep.”

Clay grinned. “Bless you, Pegg. You’re a good man.” He clutched Reggie more tightly to him as he turned and headed quickly up the familiar winding staircase.

“I hope this means ye plan to make a go of it with the lass,” Pegg called up after him.

Clay gently laid Reggie on top of the neatly made four-poster bed in what had been his father’s bedroom. “Long enough to get my heir, Pegg,” he murmured. “That long. But no longer.” He crossed the room and closed the door, then returned to the bed, where Reggie was beginning to rouse. He looked around for a pitcher of water and was surprised to find one on the dressing table. Pegg had apparently had someone come in from the village to prepare the room for their arrival while they were unloading the cargo he had brought with him from London.

Clay poured some water into a bowl, dampened a cloth, and brought it back to the bed. As he laid the cool cloth on Reggie’s forehead, her eyelids blinked open, closed as though to clear her vision, then opened again. “We’re upstairs,” he said in answer to the confusion he saw in her eyes.

He watched as her darting glance took in the cleanliness of the wooden floor and the freshly painted walls. The windowpanes, two of which were cracked, were bare of drapes but were curtained on the outside by ivy. Aside from the neatly made bed, an end table bearing a candlestick, the dressing table with pitcher and bowl, a wardrobe,
and an overstuffed wing chair by the fireplace, the room was devoid of decoration.

“How long have I been—”

“Not long enough for this room to be cleaned and furnished,” Clay assured her with a wry smile. “Pegg had this done.”

“Oh, bless him,” Reggie said with a sigh. “At least I will have a vermin-free place to sleep.”

“
We
have a place to sleep,” he corrected her. He stared at her until she flushed, and he was certain she had taken his intent. There was no reason to keep his distance. She was his for the moment. And he must make love to her to get his heir.

Reggie stared at him without speaking, then dragged the cloth from her forehead and struggled to sit up.

“Lie down,” he said, pressing firmly but gently on her shoulder. “You need—”

She knocked his arm aside, sat up so that her legs hung over the edge of the bed, then angled her face to look him in the eye. “Are you intending to sleep in this bed with me?”

“I believe it is the only bed in the house,” Clay said.

She had changed into one of the low-cut dresses for the journey from the ship to the castle, but had used one of his linen handkerchiefs as a fichu. He reached out and removed the cloth, revealing the swell of her breasts almost to her nipples. He saw her eyes dart anxiously toward the door and back to him.

“You cannot escape, my dear. And besides, we are husband and wife.”

She reached for his neck cloth and pulled it free. “I
did not wish to escape,” she said, her bosom heaving practically beneath his nose. “I only wondered whether the door was locked. I would not wish to be disturbed.”

Clay rose, crossed to the door, and turned the lock. Then he turned back to her, his body taut with expectation. “Very well, my dear. Our privacy is assured.”

He began removing his clothing, quickly stripping off his jacket, waistcoat, and shirt. He sat down on a chair near the dressing table to pull off his boots and stockings. Then he stood barefooted, wearing only his trousers and smalls, and crossed to sit beside her.

She sat unmoving, her eyes wide, her lips half-parted. He brushed a hand across one of her breasts and watched as the nipple beaded obviously beneath the cloth. He leaned over and kissed the gentle swell of flesh revealed by the low-cut dress.

“My lord,” she said, tugging on his hair. “Wait. We must talk.”

He watched her eyes dilate and her breathing grow raspy as his hands played over her body. “Talk.”

“I will need servants, help to—”

“You may have as many servants as you need to make such repairs as are necessary to live here without assault from the elements.”

“Thank you, Clay,” she said.

He could see her mind working, planning a great deal more renovation than he intended. He did not want the castle repaired. He wanted Blackthorne to imagine his daughter living in the hovel his home had become. But he could not help but wonder what they might make of the place together.

“I give nothing for nothing,” he said in a hard voice, desperate to cut off such thoughts.

“What is it you want?” she asked.

“I want a son.”

The silence was deafening.

He met Reggie’s gaze and said, “You must have known I want an heir.”

It was devilishly unfair to add children to the precarious scale on which their marriage was currently balanced. But life was rarely fair. Clay had learned to use whatever means were at hand—fair or foul—to get what he wanted. And he wanted a son.