The Secret Rose (18 page)

At dusk, a knock had sent her nervously to the door, but it was only the landlord’s wife with her evening meal. She wondered if her husband had been considerate enough to order it for her before he left or if the landlord had simply taken the initiative. She had not inquired. Instead, she had asked for an extra pillow and blanket, saying that she was cold by nature.

She had waited until the meal was cold before eating a portion of it. At any moment, she had expected a tread to pause at her door. Now it was fully night and he had not returned.

Her mouth primmed at the memory of the landlady’s words when she had brought up the extra bedding. “Ducks, ye’ll not be needin’ much cover after this, not with that brawny man ye wed to keep ye warm.”

This giddy anxiety was alien to her nature, yet she could not still the wake of quivering that followed her thoughts. She had chosen a practical answer to a very trying situation, but that did not quell her nervousness. She had bargained away her freedom for comfort and she did not yet know if it would be worth the price.

She closed the bedroom door and sat down on the edge of the bed, reviewing her strategy. She would feign sleep, if in fact she was not truly asleep when Thomas returned. She doubted he would awaken her. Perhaps he might not even enter the room. She had left a pillow and blanket in a conspicuous place in the outer room. He could scarcely misunderstand her intent. In the morning, they would discuss future arrangements.

The noisy rattling of the parlor door latch made her jump. Thomas had returned. With an agility and swiftness rarely resorted to, she tiptoed to the lamp and blew it out. In heart-stopping anxiety, she heard the door creak as she crept back to the bed and slipped off her bed jacket. She raised the sheet and slid under the bedding as she heard her name called.

“Aisleen? Aisleen, me love,” Thomas called as he stood on the threshold gazing at the empty room. Squinting, he looked about. She was not there. He stepped back, peering down the hall at the other doors along the corridor. No, he was not mistaken. This was where he had left his bride.

He entered, liquor singing in his blood. He felt absolutely wonderful. Gone was the anxiety, the doubt, the gnawing concern that Jack’s appearance had planted squarely in the midst of his joy. Aisleen the name was Gaelic for “vision”. His Aisleen might not be a beauty, but then again he had not seen her properly yet to know.

Properly. He chuckled. Improperly would be more like it. He had waited nearly twelve hours to claim his bride, and though his thoughts were less coherent than they might be, one singled itself out. She would not be his until he had bedded her.

He shut the door behind him with exaggerated care. She must be in bed. How neglectful a bridegroom he was to keep her waiting. Poor lass, was she wondering if he would ever return?

He removed his hat and tossed it carelessly aside. “Aisleen, lass. I would not desert ye. Not ever,” he called through the bedroom door. There was no answer.

“Poor wee lass, must be sleeping,” he murmured as he struggled to remove his coat. One arm was caught. He gave a hard tug and heard the broadcloth tear as his arm came free. He did not care. He had no intention of ever wearing the fancy coat again.

“Boots,” he whispered to himself, then put a finger to his lips to remind himself to be quiet. But the whiskey was humming louder, warming him and whispering to him of the delight that lay waiting for him beyond the door.

“Me wife,” he murmured as he bent to pull the first boot from his foot. Aye, he liked the sound of that, a woman of his own, for himself alone. That was something he had never had. His first woman had been an aging whore who had taken pity on a rangy convict boy without a penny. Over the years, he had known a number of women, but they had always been for sale to any man or belonged to another. Only Sally had offered herself to him alone.

Thomas sighed as his first boot came free, and he moved to the second.
Dear, sweet Sally
,
he mused, remembering her soft, full breasts and the warm scent of her skin. She
had been a virgin. He sat upright. So was Aisleen. What did he know of virgins?

“One woman’s made the same as another,” he said in answer to the whiskey murmurings. It would sort itself out.

When the second boot came free he walked to the bedroom door and turned the latch, only to remember the lantern. Padding on bare feet, he crossed the room and pinched the wick. From the corner of his eye, he spied bedding piled on a chair, but the darkness eclipsed it before he thought much of it. Immediately, he retraced his steps and opened the bedroom door.

The cry of the hinges sounded in Aisleen’s ears like the mighty blast of Gabriel’s trumpet, but she remained perfectly still. When she heard nothing more, she opened an eye.

He stood in the doorway, his shirtfront luminously white in the gloom. Aisleen held her breath. How long did he intend to watch her sleep? Did he know that she faked sleep? Did he hope to catch her? The very idea made her angry. She was not a small child seeing to escape the eye of a governess. She was a grown woman. A married woman.

Go away! Go away!
she thought anxiously. “Aisleen, love?” she heard him call softly, and his words strummed the chords of tension within her.

When he moved inside, she lowered her lids, afraid that he would detect the gleam of an eyeball in the dark. Scarcely breathing, she heard him move toward the bed and then a rustling. What was he doing? Why did he not simply go away like any sensible person would?

The answer was suddenly clear as the bed creaked under his weight and a callused hand came to rest on her shoulder. He was not going to leave. He had come to sleep with her.

Aisleen’s eyes flew open, all pretense abandoned. “What are you doing!”

“’Tis only me, Aisleen, lass,” he answered softly, patting her shoulder “’Tis only Tom, yer husband.”

“I—I did not expect you,” she answered, pulling the sheet up tightly under her chin.

“Did ye not? And me thinking ye could think of nothing else but me return.” He reached up and touched the ruffle of the nightcap she wore. The lass had more covers for her head than any woman he had ever known. “Did ye miss me?”

His breath brushed her face and Aisleen’s eyes narrowed. “You, sir, have been drinking whiskey.”

“Aye, that I have,” Thomas agreed pleasantly, “and never had a man a better reason than in the celebrating of his wedding day.”

“I do not approve of drinking spirits,” Aisleen maintained as his fingers worried the lace of her nightcap.

“Ah, well, that may be because ye’ve never drunk them yerself, lass. It would nae come amiss, a wee drop every now and then.” He bent forward to get a better view of her. “Are ye happy, lass?”

“Happy?” Aisleen whispered faintly, keenly aware of the intimate pressure of his chest against her breasts as she lay under the covers.

“Aye.” Thomas nodded. “I’m a happy man. I’ve everything I need. I would that ye were happy, but I hear in yer voice a sadness that I cannot understand.” His fingers moved to the curve of her jaw. “I can make ye happy. I know a way to make ye smile.”

One moment he was leaning over her, his boyish grin a pearly gleam in the darkness. The next Aisleen felt with stunning surprise the warm pressure of his lips against her own.

A shiver went through her, a sensation not entirely unpleasant but one that sent panic fleeing after it. She put up a hand to shove him away but encountered the hot flesh of his shoulder. Appalled, she jerked her hand away. He was naked.

Thomas reached out to catch her chin and bring her face to his. “Do nae be shy, lass,” he murmured as he bent to her once more. “’Tis yer lawful husband ye kiss.”

“Please!” Aisleen muttered against his mouth, beginning to struggle. He was drunk. Too often, she had witnessed her father in a drunken stupor, or worse, when the liquor had released the pent-up anger and violence in him. To the day she died, she would remember his beating. Now her husband was drunk and bent on physical assault. She struck out wildly at him with her fists. This was not what she expected. It was so unfair, so unfair!

Thomas caught her hands and easily pinned them to the bed on either side of her head. “Easy, lass,” he crooned, moving his kisses from her mouth to her ear. “Ye taste so sweet, never like the tart berry ye seem.” He felt himself filling, tightening, rising. “I know how to give ye what ye need. I know.”

“Get off me, you beast!” Aisleen cried. Frightened beyond care for propriety, she kicked at him as she thrashed about.

Thomas responded by holding her down with his weight. She was new to lovemaking. She would be shy and frightened, he reasoned, until he had proved to her that she would receive only pleasure from him. With deliberate slowness, he walked his lips back from her ear to the side of her mouth, tasting the freshness of her skin. She was a woman, a soft and warm woman who was his wife.

He released one hand, his own wandering down over the covers until he discovered the mounded fullness of a breast through the covers. “Don’t fight me, lass. Let me make ye my wife.”

“No! Please!” Aisleen begged, but her words were crushed in the embrace of his lips. His kiss was long and hard, not like the first. His lips parted on hers, forcing her mouth open, and then the incredible heat of his tongue
slipped through to touch the tip of her own. She gasped, unable to believe that anyone would want to do something so, so intimate. The beating of her free hand on his back was useless. She did not want to touch him at all.

Finally, the pressure of his kiss lightened, and with tormentingly slow movements he dragged his lips back and forth across hers. This time when she tried to turn away, he caught her nightcap in his free hand and with it a handful of hair. Exerting a slight but firm pressure against the hair at the sensitive juncture of her temple, he held her still. “Kiss me, Aisleen,” he mouthed against her lips. “Kiss yer husband.”

Aisleen caught her breath in a sob. She would not cry, would not allow him that victory. When at last his lips moved aside to climb the summit of her cheek, her breath was ragged. “Please. I beg you! Spare me,” she whispered, afraid that a loud voice would anger him.

When he answered, he did not sound angry, even to her fear-shocked senses. “Stop? How can I?” he questioned in good humor. “We’ve just begun. Just begun.”

He found the top of the coverlet and pulled it from her hand, rising up long enough to strip it from between them “That’s better,” he said softly as he settled down over her and reached for the long row of tiny buttons that closed her gown.

“Lass, ye do like buttons,” he said reproachfully. Without a second thought he grabbed the collar and jerked, sending pearl buttons flying and rolling and skipping in all directions.

The casual violence frightened her and she went limp under the heavy, feverish weight of his body. She had not realized the extent of his strength or the casual ease with which he could use it. She shrank back into the bedding in a foolish attempt to keep his naked skin from contacting her own. But it did, everywhere. She felt the rough furring of
his legs as he embraced her gown-clad limbs between his own. His chest, hard and satin smooth, crushed her.

None of her fears transmitted themselves to Thomas. He found the opening of her gown and with eager interest slipped his hand inside. She was so soft, he could scarcely credit his first light touch of her, and he wondered fleetingly if ladies were indeed different from other women. His caressing hand grew bolder, heavier, until his fingers brushed the peak with its unbudded nipple. Her gasping response made him repeat the gesture, and this time the bud rose. Again and again he stroked the soft peak until a hard little bud stood at the apex.

The whiskey whispered urgently, urging him to hurry before he exploded.
Gently
,
he cautioned himself, but his body was not listening. It was too late. She was too soft, too sweet, too much of what he had not dared to hope for. He had expected her to be as thorny as a rosebush. Instead, she was as soft as new-budded petals. His own flower, his secret rose.

With quick, near-violent movements that gave no thought to her needs or fears, he stripped the gown from her body. She was not unlike a young heifer brought to stud for the first time, he mused, as he savored his body’s response to her seductive writhing.

He murmured broken whispers of assurance to her, not realizing when he traded English for the older Gaelic tongue of his ancestors. His hands swept over her roughly, quickly, wanting to touch every part of her but knowing that there was little time. Next time, he told himself, he would be better able to explore and pleasure her. But not now.

Aisleen cried out in fear as he plunged a knee between her own, separating them. Panic jackknifed her up in bed, but he was there, pushing her back against the bedding and mumbling endearments that had no effect on the terror churning her middle. His hand slid between her thighs and
for a long, mortifying moment, she prayed that she would die. But she did not.

Inexplicably his probing fingers brought her not death but a sinful pleasure that made her want to weep in shame. Appalled by her ignorance of her own body, she did not know why he should do this nor why it should feel pleasant despite her anger and embarrassment.

Thomas smiled as he reached in to stroke from her the moisture of desire. She was so hot there, so impossibly soft. His bride. His wife.