To Tempt a Saint (8 page)

Read To Tempt a Saint Online

Authors: Kate Moore

Yet here she was in the tiny church of her childhood about to marry a hard-eyed stranger who wanted her money, with her reluctant brother as her only attendant and her groom’s hostile, disreputable brother as the chief witness. They would be married and on their way before regular services began.
“Cleo, you can back out, you know.” Charlie had made the same comment a dozen times or more since the brothers had arrived to take them to church.
“I won’t, however.” If she was shaking, it was the cold air. The turn of the year had come. She could see her breath in the little vestibule. She had left off her shabby cloak for a lavender spotted muslin gown purchased with her bridegroom’s money.
“You don’t know him. He looks like a statue.”
“He does, doesn’t he?” He had been generous in his provisions for them, however. She had read the contract a dozen times and was a little giddy with the thought of the pin money she would have.
“He looks at you like a lion looking at a lamb.”
“I don’t want to quarrel with your metaphor, dearest, but surely he looks at me more in the way a banker looks at a vault of gold.”
Charlie shook his head. “Don’t tease. Just because I’m young, don’t think I don’t know my duty by a sister.” He fell silent, his thin shoulders hunched, his hands thrust in his pockets, bony wrists exposed by his outgrown coat sleeves. She could almost see his thoughts, his brow furrowed, his brown hair untamed.
“I should talk to him, man to man. I should make him understand that if anything happens to you, if you are made unhappy, he will have to answer to me.”
“You are sweet, dearest, but he’s not Bluebeard.”
“How do we know? We don’t know his people or his friends.”
“We’ve met his brother.”
Charlie snorted. “His brother looks like a pirate and smells like a brewery.”
“What do you know of breweries?”
“I’m not totally green. What if this Jones is a fraud who just takes your money?”
“I’ll hunt him down and kill him, most likely.” She thought to shock Charlie into a grin, but he only shook his head at her. “You can help me if you like.”
“I’ll be locked up with Uncle March.” He hung his head.
She punched him on the shoulder. “No, you won’t. That’s why we’re doing this.”
“
You’re
doing this. Cleo, have you thought, I mean, married people . . .” Charlie swallowed and squared his shoulders. “. . . Married people sleep together. What if you don’t like sleeping with him?”
Oh, so that was the worry. She had no idea what he knew about sexual congress. Dear Miss Hester Britt had given Cleo a thorough and pointed explanation. But there was no telling what Charlie might have heard or seen on Davies’s farm. She thrust Mrs. Lawful’s proffered bouquet into his hands, took him by the shoulders, and looked straight into his troubled hazel eyes. She could hardly tell him she was marrying an iceman who thought of her as a gasworks. “Married people do sleep together, of course, but every couple comes to it in their own way. I expect that Jones and I will likely wait awhile.”
 
 
 
 
 
I
N the ancient sacristy of Woford Abbey, Will addressed Xander. “You’re out of your mind, you know.”
“Thanks for the hearty endorsement. Have you got the ring?”
Will dipped into his waistcoat pocket and pulled out the simple gold band Xander had purchased for his bride. “If you want to shackle yourself for life, do it, but that girl has no idea what she’s getting into.”
“I haven’t lied to her.” Xander checked his neckcloth in a small mirror next to a hanging surplice that had seen better days.
“Well, you haven’t told her bleeding everything.”
“She wants access to her fortune, and she’ll have it.” His neckcloth looked fine.
“You want access to her fortune.”
“We both benefit then.”
“Why don’t you just loan her the blunt to settle her brother in school? You’re good for it.”
“I’m not a charity organization.” Xander checked his watch. A wizened old bell ringer, hoping for a coin, had shown them to the sacristy, where the curate, Mr. Tucker, was to meet them at eight. At the last moment Xander’s solicitor had been unable to act as witness, so Xander had dragged Will along.
He leaned insolently against the doorjamb. A blackened eye and unshaven chin did nothing for his appearance, but he was sober and had a decent coat on. So far the ancient church was still standing.
“You told her about your rules? She knows that you’ve sworn off bedding toffs? She’s not expecting to mother any fine little Joneses?”
“She has her brother to care for. Stick your head out the door and see if they’re coming.”
Will shrugged away from the doorjamb and looked out. “No sign of bride or curate. Maybe she changed her mind.” He shut the door. “You do have a way out of this, don’t you, Brother?”
“Your touching concern. Yes, there’s a way. It’s a gamble.”
Will yawned. “Do you think she’s mad?”
“You mean do I believe a story that March spread about her?”
“Then you’re taking advantage of an innocent. She’s thin as a sapling and shakes like a leaf.”
“It’s a frosty morning for muslin.” Cleo Spencer might be thin, but Xander had a vision of her standing up to him and thwacking her rug with furious energy. She was no simpering miss to be cowed by him, and he was sure she would hold him to every line of their agreement.
“And then there’s March. You’ll have to watch your back every minute, even if you do get access to her money. Especially if you get access to her money.”
“If March murders me, you’ll have the satisfaction of being right and the chance to arrest him.” The sound of footsteps interrupted him. “Ah, here’s the curate, if I’m not mistaken. Time for me to take a wife.”
 
 
 
 
 
A
T the altar Cleo studied the expression in her groom’s proud face. His intensity set him apart from his mocking brother and the shrinking curate. She tried to tell herself that he looked like a man buying a gasworks, but his scrutiny unsettled her. His physical presence made her stomach fluttery, and her skin seemed alive to his gaze. She handed Mrs. Lawful’s bouquet to Charlie, lifted her veil, and gave her husband-to-be as direct a gaze as he was giving her. He surprised her by laughing, his face relaxing into that unsettling smile Cleo remembered from the garden.
“Ready to become Lady Jones, Miss Spencer?”
“Are you hoping I will back out?”
Mr. Tucker cleared his throat. He looked as if he would bolt if either of the brothers said a word to him. “Is there any question about proceeding?”
“None,” said the bored brother. “Get on with it, man.”
Mr. Tucker opened his book and began to work his way through the marriage service. The words seemed to echo off the stones in the empty church, utterly shocking words that Cleo realized she had never attended to before.
What was the church thinking?
Every sentence mentioned carnal embrace. Charlie was probably frightened out of his wits. Mr. Tucker certainly was.
Next to her the man with the unreadable slate eyes and deep, skin-caressing voice was promising to worship her with his body, his tall, lean body that radiated heat in the cold nave. A startling wave of warmth flashed along her skin. By the time he took her hand in his lean, brown one and slipped a gold band on her finger, she felt dizzy with heat.
She steadied herself and repeated her part. Really, intimacies between them were unlikely. They hardly knew each other. Their marriage was all about money. They had aims that would keep them occupied and going in quite different directions. With the rustle of a thin page, Mr. Tucker ran out of text and pronounced them man and wife.
Her groom’s glaring brother slapped him on the back. “All over but the paperwork. Kiss the bride, man,” he muttered.
Cleo’s new husband turned to her, his face closed and proud. The moment lengthened, and she had time to notice threads of silver in his dark hair and the pale groove of a scar that sliced across his right ear. The sensuous jut of his lower lip caught her gaze. His hesitation stretched to the point of awkwardness.
He did not want to kiss her. He would not kiss her. Whatever warmth she felt in his voice was of her own imagining. His spine was stiff, his expression frozen, all but the eyes. His heated pewter gaze was alive and fixed on her mouth. She felt embarrassment sting her cheeks.
Four years of poverty had not entirely cured her of vanity. His reluctance to kiss her wounded her pride. “What an exhausting service,” she said. “Somehow the church manages to squeeze a lifetime into a brief service in language more appropriate to the lowest bawdy house than the holy altar.” She shrugged and turned to Charlie for her bouquet. He seemed frozen, too. If she just kept talking, the moment would pass.
“What a shocking service, Mr. Tucker, with all that talk of
fornication
,
man’s carnal lusts and appetites
, and
the poor brute beasts
. I wonder it doesn’t put you to the blush. The Church of England should be ashamed—such warnings about the dreadful day of judgment and not
enterprising unadvisedly, lightly, or wantonly into the married state.
The worst sort of scare tactics.”
With a quick move her new husband took control, pressing a warm, firm thumb to her lips. They tingled instantly.
“I promise not to strangle you,” he said, his gaze locked with hers. His thumb brushed her lips and released them. But the sensation lingered.
Cleo looked up into gray eyes that seemed molten with heat. “I promise to hold my tongue.” She swallowed. “Occasionally.”
His gaze questioned, and Cleo tried to hide the something hot and alive that leapt up inside her, eager to answer that look.
He swore, a single sharp oath, and took her face in his palms, the palms that had curved around the teacup. She felt her breath catch in her chest while her heart beat a deep, heavy thump against the thin fabric of her gown. He leaned down and pressed his mouth to hers, forcing her lips open and stealing her breath with a ruthless, knowing kiss that went on and on, crumbling undefended walls of permission and participation.
Cleo’s sleeping senses awoke everywhere, uncurled in her breasts and stretched in her belly and lower. Rational thought drowned in eddies of surging energy and helpless languor, until she clutched his fine wool sleeve to keep from melting into the abbey stones.
The kiss ended, and the shock of his abrupt withdrawal left her suspended, intensely alive, sensation still coursing through her. With only a quick steadying touch under her elbow, he led her to sign the register. There she put her hand to the book, marveling that her ordinary faculties functioned effortlessly, while inside some elusive sense she had not known she possessed struggled to fix the impression of his kiss in her body. The formalities accomplished, Mr. Tucker escaped into his sacristy, and the wedding party left the church.
Outside, a weak Michaelmas sun made a faint effort to warm the day. A fine rig with a matching pair of black horses stood waiting, a gawking boy at the horses’ heads. Sir Alexander Jones pulled on his gloves and set his hat on his head. “I’ll put an announcement in the papers.”
He turned to his brother. “Ready, Will?”
Her groom’s piratical brother raised the brow of his good eye and tipped his hat to Cleo. “So much for the treacle moon,” he muttered, and they mounted the rig.
With a glance over his shoulder, her husband said, “I’ve ordered you a breakfast at the inn if you like. Whenever you’re ready to come to town, let Mrs. Lawful know. Arrangements have been made for your transport. If you need funds, you can apply to Mr. Taylor, my man of business.”
He drove off.
Cleo and Charlie stood in the arched stone doorway of the church and watched the brothers disappear down the empty road. The sky looked threatening, and they had a long walk home. Cleo’s slippers would never survive a rain.
“I thought he might kiss you again.” Charlie sighed.
“I suspect he’s off to buy his gasworks.” She would do well to hold on to that thought. Whatever her husband’s kiss had done to her, it had left no mark on him.
“The banks aren’t open.”
“But the inn is, dearest. Shall we enjoy a very large breakfast?”
Chapter Five

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