The Rogue (20 page)

A
fter his journey, she saw him for the first time from the opposite end of the church. An empty aisle stretched between them, paved with stone, and cold beneath her silk slippers. Her hands were damp around the bouquet of roses.

They were white roses. That morning her bridegroom had sent them to her from the hotel at which he and Lord Michaels had taken rooms upon their return to Edinburgh. He sent them with no note, only his name. The name that would shortly be hers.

Her stomach hurt. Her mouth was dry. But amidst the colorful gowns, bonnets, hats, and coats of the guests packed into the church, she saw only his slight smile as he watched her walk toward him.

The ceremony was swift, his voice strong as he spoke his vows, and the touch of his hands as he slid the ring onto her finger warm but brief. When it was over she looked up into the otherworldly eyes of her husband and tears gathered in her throat. She swallowed them back and smiled.

At the church door, he entwined their fingers and held her
tightly as they walked through the well-wishers tossing rice. He did not speak to her, nor she to him.

She had never imagined her father would agree to her ultimatum. When Saint left for London, she had fully expected her father to cancel the bargain and level a threat at her fencing instructor that would banish him forever. She had never expected to see him again. She went into her own wedding celebration bemused.

He seemed at ease among their guests, whom he barely knew. Rarely was he not at ease, except when he held her.

“Well, Con, you are as stunning a bride as I always knew you would be.” Silvery gray eyes appraising, her friend Wyn Yale studied her face. He had a sharp appreciation for farce, and she suspected he understood that this house now filled with gawkers and gossips and very few actual friends was precisely that.

“Thank you, darling,” she replied. “I clean up nicely, don't I?”

“As nicely as your groom,” Leam's wife, Kitty, said, and glanced at Saint across the room. “It is obvious to me why you chose him. Despite your nerves—”

“She does not have nerves,” Wyn interjected, “rather, ambrosia running through her veins.”

“Despite your nerves today,” Kitty continued, “the two of you seem perfectly natural together. And really, Constance, he is positively . . . well . . . I cannot say it with Wyn and Leam listening.”

Her husband grunted. “'Tis the sword.”

“Ladies do like a nice hard weapon,” Wyn murmured.

“
Wyn.
” Kitty laughed. “You are making the bride blush.”

He eyed her. “Am I, Con?”

Constance could not quite manage a smile. “No. But thank you, Kitty.”

“Still,” Kitty said, “it astonishes me that your father has allowed this.”

“Guilt,” Leam growled. “He's been putting it over on the lot of us for years. He could not deny her now.”

“It isn't guilt,” the Viscount Gray said, entering their group. “Your uncle, Blackwood, never does anything without a carefully planned strategy. You should know that by now. Do you have any idea what his strategy is this time, Constance?” Dark-eyed and tall, with a natural air of authority tempered by gravity, he showed no contrition now for the secret he had been hiding from them all for years.

“I believe I do, Colin,” she said. “But I will not be sharing it with you. How do you like it when the tables are turned?”

A shallow dent appeared in his cheek. “You are your father's daughter, whether you like it or not.”

“We are all marked with our parents' stamp.” Lady Emily Vale appeared at her best friend Kitty's side, and spoke directly to the viscount. “It is the manner in which we cast off those marks that defines us.”

Colin's eyes took on a gleam that Constance had never before seen.

“Is it, then?” he said.

“It is true, of course,” Emily added, “that some prefer to embrace their parents' mistakes rather than correct them.”

Colin's reply was the shifting of a muscle in his jaw.

“Now, here's something I never thought to see.” Wyn looked from Emily to Colin. “A man she likes less than me. Congratulations, Gray. I commend you on this accomplishment. What have you done to ruffle her? You're not the teasing sort, after all.”

“Isn't he?” Emily said with obvious surprise.

“Not for eighteen years at least,” Colin replied and turned to Constance. “Felicitations, my lady.” He bowed over her hand. “I wish you happiness.”

“I don't forgive you, you know.”

“You will.” With a nod to the others, he departed.

Wyn turned fully to Emily. “
Do
tell, my lady. Names, dates, places, anything necessary for me to understand the reason for your disdain of the inestimable Lord Gray. I want to write it all down and compare it to my list of deficiencies, and then crow.”

“Stop, Wyn,” Kitty said. “Pocahontas needn't explain herself to you or anyone else.”

“It's clear at least that she needn't explain it to our redoubtable viscount. He seems to be in the know. And it's Pocahontas that you're going by now? Charming.”

“You are a wart upon the foot of humanity,” Emily said. “I don't know how Diantha bears you.”

He grinned. “Currently by casting up her accounts daily—”

“I don't blame her in the least.”

“—due to my child that she is carrying.”

“It seems she has fewer wits than I thought.”

“You two bicker like siblings,” Kitty said with a fond smile and tucked her hand into Constance's. “Constance, it has been a delightful sennight here with you. And I have grown tremendously fond of Dr. Shaw and Libby. I should like to remain longer and become better acquainted with your husband too. But the two of you must want some time alone, and we should be returning home to the children tomorrow.”

A footman offered champagne. Constance declined it. Her head was light enough without aid.

“I hope we can all gather this fall when Jinan and Viola have returned from abroad,” she said. “I adored having Jamie at the castle in February.”

“Aye,” Leam said. “The bait that brought the swordsman to Scotland, with my unwitting assistance.” Along with Ben Doreé, he was the closest to a brother she had, and now he looked upon her somberly. “Constance, take care. My uncle has been playing a deep game. I don't wish to see you hurt.”

“Not to fret, darling. I'm sure I have nothing to fear.”

Except her own wedding night.

C
LOSE TO MIDNIGHT,
after the Edinburghians departed and Constance's friends retired to their bedchambers, the servants went about dousing lamps. She stayed them from snuffing the last in the drawing room, and as they left they closed
the doors. Saint remained where he stood across the room, his head bent, his back partially turned to her, his fingertips resting on a marble bookend carved into the shape of a horse.

“Well,
wife
.” His voice was in shadow. “This is an interesting circumstance we find ourselves in.”

“Do you think so?” she murmured, apprehension and excitement skimming up the back of her neck in a tangled braid.

“I am to be played like a pawn.” He turned to her. The lamplight cast his hair into bronze and his eyes were sober. “Am I not?”

“Of course not.”

He walked slowly forward. “Did you think me naïve?”

“I thought you avowed to protect me.”

He came close and the tingles in her belly became fireworks. Taking up a strand of her hair draped upon her shoulder, he twined it around two fingers. “I have wanted to do this for six years.”

She turned her chin toward his hand and felt a frisson of pleasure at the brush of her skin against his. “Now you may.”

“It is a peculiar thing, on a day like this, to feel so certain,” he said quietly.

Her heartbeats were wildly off kilter. “Certain of what?”

“That it will not last.” He stroked his knuckles along her cheek. “And this. I have wanted to do this too, again.”

“Yes,” she whispered.

“When, I wonder, will it be? At the moment the threshold of the Devil's lair is crossed? Or will you wait until the next morning to demand that your father summon the bishop? When will I be annulled?”

She snapped her gaze up to meet his. “Annulled?”

“Surprise from my bride?” He studied her features. “And it seems so genuine.”

“It
is
genuine.”

His hand encompassed her shoulder and he bent his head.

“I admit, it will prove difficult.” She felt his words against her hair.

She tilted her face to bring her lips closer to his. “What will prove difficult?”

“Forsaking my bride's bed. But if we are to do this thing right, we may as well play it honestly. I cannot very well stand before priest and Parliament and swear to the Almighty that I have not enjoyed the rewards of this marriage if in fact I have. Can I?”

“I don't know why you believe this.” She touched her lips to his jaw and heard his breath catch, and she felt it all inside her—longing and desire and need for him. If only it could remain like this. Perhaps it could. Perhaps the cold panic would not come this time. “But supposing that this marriage is what you say it is, you will not take advantage of it even temporarily?”

“If I were that desperate to have a woman in my bed, I would find one who did not come with a prickly father and dangerous intrigue.”

Her lips smiled against his chin. “You have found me out, it seems. I knew you would.”

“You did mention some weeks ago that you needed a husband. And I don't think your reason for haste is the same as your father's. You, Constance, are an incorrigible schemer.”

She nibbled his jaw, tasted him, and every spark of fire within her flamed. “I think I liked you better when you did not know who I was.”

He touched his fingertips to her arms and gently, tantalizingly, stroked. “And I liked you better when you did not treat me like an object to be used at your convenience.”

She whispered against his cheek, “I needed a husband.”

“To breach the Devil's lair.” His hands tightened around her arms. “But not Loch Irvine?”

“That would have been complicated.”

“Marrying me was preferable to marrying a monster?”

“It seemed the better of the two options.”

“That night, at the Assembly Rooms, when you bade me kiss you—touch you—had you already formulated this plan?”

“No.” His lips were so close. “I wasn't thinking as clearly at that moment as I usually do.”

“You knew your father would demand that you marry.”

“He already had. That night I needed you.”

His lips brushed her cheek, then her brow, and then, softly, her temple. “I don't know that I can entirely believe this.”

“Why don't you believe what I say?”

“Once, some years ago, you told me that you were mine. A year later, you would not admit me to your house. That seems to me fairly good cause for skepticism.”

“I am yours now. For better. For worse.”

He looked into her eyes. “Let no man put us asunder?”

“Aye.”

He lowered his mouth to hers.

There was no hesitation, no uncertainly, only deep satisfaction in the meeting of their lips. His arms came around her, their bodies came together, and heaven passed through her in hot, wonderful ripples of mingled joy and desire. He took her bottom lip between his and then claimed her lips fully, and she slid her hands into his hair, around the back of his neck. He kissed her thoroughly, deliciously. With each kiss she wanted him closer, deeper,
inside her
. His hands moved on her, felt her, from her shoulders down her back, drawing her to him, molding her against his chest so she felt him in her breasts and against her belly and thighs. She wanted to feel him. She needed him to touch her again. And again and again.

His mouth moved to her throat, marking her skin with heat, and his hands held her tightly to him. She ran her palms beneath his coat, his taut strength making her hungry, making her press herself against him.

“I won't make love to you, Constance.”

“I don't want you to anyway.”

“My God.” He buried his mouth in her neck and she clung to him. “This farce makes liars of us both.”

“Then at least we share that.”

He laughed at the ridiculousness of it, of how everything
always seemed real, right, sublime between them, even when they were at odds. Then he kissed her deeper, tasting the sweetness of her mouth that he had dreamed of for years. Groaning, he swept her against him. “Tell me you cannot lie to me.”

“I cannot lie to you. I have not.”

Abruptly he put her away from him, holding her shoulders and looking down into her face. “You have not?”

“Never.” She was trembling in his hands, the most delicate quiver of satin-covered steel. “You are quite likely the only man alive to whom I can say that.”

“Likely?”

“You
are
. I am trying . . . desperately . . .” There was uncertainty in the brilliant blue of her eyes.

“Constance,” he whispered, drawing her close again and pressing his lips to her brow.

“I am trying desperately to hold something back from you,” she confessed. “Anything. The smallest, slightest, least important thing would suffice, and I would account myself a victor in this battle.”

“The battle you wage against me?”

“Against myself.” She pushed him off and staggered back. “Do not visit your bride's bed tonight. Any night. I don't want you in it.”

“This is . . . unexpected.” He ran his hand through his hair and drew in a steadying breath. “But welcome.”

“Now you are lying.”