Ever His Bride Read online

  Ever His Bride

  Linda Needham

  Smashwords Edition

  Copyright Notice

  This e-book is licensed to you for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be sold, shared, or given away.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the author or publisher.

  EVER HIS BRIDE

  Copyright © 1997 by Linda Needham

  ISBN: 978-1-940904-01-6

  First Big Scrumpy Press electronic publication: January 2014.

  Big Scrumpy Press, PO Box 1519, North Plains, OR 97133

  http://LindaNeedham.com

  First published in mass market print edition by Avon Books, 1997.

  About EVER HIS BRIDE

  The Darkest Heart

  His looming form blocks the firelight. His voice is like midnight fog, shivering along her skin. Yet Felicity Mayfield must marry hard, cold Hunter Claybourne, or go to debtor’s prison. Boldly, she proposes a bargain to the wealthy financier: she’ll become his wife in name only for one brief year — if he allows her the freedom to continue living an independent life as a roving travel writer.

  The Brightest Love

  Hunter never suspected a wife would be such a nuisance. It was supposed to be a simple business arrangement. Instead, she has invaded his cavernous home — rearranging the furniture, winning over his servants, blinding him with sunlight. Her constant presence is unsettling, her lavender scent everywhere, her skin a soft temptation. Suddenly it seems only right that she should wear his ring … and share his bed. After all, she is his wife. Yet even as Felicity opens a chink in Hunter’s heart, her exposé of the scandalous workhouses threatens to uncover his darkest secret, forcing him to choose between his hard-won empire and the miracle of love.

  REVIEWS

  “The plot twists… are refreshingly different from other historical romances, and Claybourne is a fascinating hero.” Nanci Hellmich, USA TODAY

  The sexual tension is wonderful as are the love scenes which are very “spicy”. Great secondary characters, high drama and a solid backstory makes this a five star book for me. Recommended! – Reader Review – Amazon.com

  My Favorite Book of All Time — I bought this book when it was a new release and I read it until the pages fell out, this is my fifth copy of this book. Strong hero’s with a chink in the armor has always been my weakness, only next to cute, spicy, quirky heroines… I highly recommend this book, it will always be my very favorite. Reader Review – Amazon.com

  EVER HIS BRIDE is a full-length, historical romance novel of approximately 100,000 words, available for the first time as an eBook.

  Chapter 1

  Kentish Countryside, England

  1849

  “Run, Culley! Run hard!”

  Felicity Mayfield had a half-crown on the long-shanked village lad, money she really ought to have kept in her purse. But she’d finally succumbed to the thrill of the Robin Hood Race, to the swirl of festive banners, and to all the shouting and cheering.

  As the lad rounded the final curve of the intricate turf maze, he teetered for a paralyzing moment on the brink of falling off the narrow, ground-level course into the sandy trench.

  “Hang on, Culley!” Felicity shouted, jumping up and down like everyone else in the crowd, staying her next breath as he stumbled forward. But the boy righted himself and broke through the wildflower garland with a whoop of triumph.

  “He won! Bravo, Culley!” She didn’t even know the lad, but at the moment she was his greatest champion.

  Mrs. Duffle patted Felicity on the arm. “You’re a right lucky young woman today, Miss Mayfield!”

  “I’m most grateful for the tip. The boy is every bit as fast as you said he was.” She was as winded from all her shouting as young Culley was from his sprinting. “I’ve never wagered on a footrace before—and I won!”

  Mrs. Duffle beamed as if the Robin Hood Race, the turf maze, the blue sky and the rowdy celebration were all her own doing. “You’ll come back to Beacon Chase and spend May Day with us next year, won’t you dear?”

  “With great pleasure! And I’ll send all my loyal readers, too, Mrs. Duffle. You may count on the Hearth and Heath to spread the good word.”

  “Lovely to hear, Miss Mayfield. And now I insist you come take afternoon tea with me at the Knotted Mazel—as my guest, of course. You’ll find my pigeon pie’s the very best in the county.”

  She was hungry beyond decency; her stomach rattled like rocks on a washboard, primed by the spellbinding smell of meat pasties rising from the warren of food stalls that lined the street.

  “I’d be delighted, Mrs. Duffle. Thank you.” She collected her winnings from the man in a bright yellow hat, then hefted her portmanteau and followed Mrs. Duffle through the crowded street, to the cottage inn tucked against a woodland at the edge of the village.

  “Oh, you’ve a lovely setting, Mrs. Duffle.” She made notes in her head, approving of the riotous flower garden and the ornately woven ridge of the thatched roof. If the food and lodging proved as charming as the spacious, sunlit dining room, the Knotted Mazel would rate an excellent review in her travel gazette. A perfect spot to recommend for a holiday in the Kent countryside.

  Mrs. Duffle’s tray of good silver clattered as she set it on the table. “The very same tea served at Windsor Castle, Miss Mayfield. True China tea, not that secondhand compost served across the street at the Skipping Toad. Our beds are feather and our linens the finest. None but the best for my guests at the Mazel.”

  “Delicious!” Felicity spoke overloud, hoping to mask the indelicate growl from her stomach as the piping hot tea collided with the emptiness there. Breakfast had been a bite of an inedible meat pie, purchased before dawn from a stall at Ashford Station on the South Eastern Main Line, the rest of it discarded out the window of the moving train. Not the sort of meal to recommend to her readers.

  But dear Mrs. Duffle spread a mouthwatering tea for her, then sat with her and talked in an unbroken stream about her grown and gone sons, grandchildren, her late, unlamented husband, and her scandalous sister who’d married a man half her own age. A gregarious, eccentric innkeeper, her favorite kind, and one of the top reasons she liked her job so well.

  She was just biting into a steaming, jam-filled scone when the front door of the shop slammed open to the sharp glare of the afternoon, darkening the details of the two figures standing together in the portal.

  “Sheriff Hinchcliffe!” Mrs. Duffle clapped her hands together and laughed. “That was quite a race your Culley won!”

  The man’s chest strained with pride at the buttons of his waistcoat. “Yup. Proud of the boy,” he said, sauntering into the room, rubbing his palms together.

  “Ooo, I know that look, Sheriff.” Mrs. Duffle drew a steaming plate beneath the man’s nose. “You’ve come for a helping of my pigeon pie.”

  The gangly man beside him hissed something into his ear. Hinchcliffe straightened and pushed the plate aside. “Actually, Mrs. Duffle,” he said, “I’ve come for that pigeon over there.” He pointed toward Felicity.

  Felicity blinked and glanced over her shoulder. But there was no one behind her. The man was pointing right at her! For no reason at all, that last bite of scone turned to lead. She stood up, wincing at the scrape of her chair across the stone floor as the sheriff made his way toward her.

  “You came here for me?” Her mouth had gone dry as
dust. She was an utter stranger to Beacon Chase, had only arrived that morning from Dover to make her notes on the village’s traditional May Day celebration. Few people knew she was here, and even fewer cared. Perhaps the constable needed only to ask her a few questions.

  But Hinchcliffe stopped a scant yard from her table and fixed her with a cold, professional stare.

  “Are you sure this is the right girl, Cobson?” he asked from the corner of his mouth, still watching Felicity with a deep-browed suspicion.

  Cobson joined him, cocking his head at her as though sizing up a two-headed goat on display at the faire. “A young woman, seven-and-a-half stone. Five feet three’ish tall, wheat-blond hair, green eyes. Yessir. Just as the bailiff said.”

  “Just as what bailiff said?” As dumbfounded as she’d ever been in her life, Felicity tried to make herself seem taller, and a bit bigger around. “Who are you, sir?”

  The constable plunged his thumb into the fob pocket of his waistcoat and squinted at her. “Tell me, girl, is your name Felicity Mayfield?”

  Mrs. Duffle sucked in a long, awe-filled breath. “That it is, Constable! That’s the name she gave me when she started talking to me with her notepad and all her fancy words about listing the Knotted Mazel in some kind of travel gazette. What wicked thing has she done?”

  “I’ve done nothing wicked, Mrs. Duffle.” Felicity felt very alone at the moment, and wished suddenly that she had a warm place to run home to. “If these gentlemen will tell me their business—”

  “I have here an arrest warrant for a Felicity Mayfield.” Cobson held up a folded document.

  “For me? An arrest warrant?” Felicity fought the ridiculous urge to dodge her way between the tables and out the door. “Why? What have I done?”

  “Cobson, here, is an officer of the Queen’s Bench, and is authorized to take you to London—”

  “To London?” Her fear quickened alongside her suddenly racing heart, her pulse pounding in her ears. “On what charge?”

  Cobson snapped open the document and displayed it for her. “On the charge of criminal debt, Miss Mayfield.”

  “Debt?” A huge weight lifted from her shoulders making her laugh at the notion. “I’m afraid you have the wrong person, Mr. Cobson. I owe nothing to anyone!”

  Hinchcliffe snickered and poked Cobson with his elbow. “I’ll bet you’ve heard that tune sung a few times, eh?”

  Cobson snorted. “And all the verses. If I’d a penny for every time, I sure’s hell wouldn’t be doin’ this job! You’re comin’ along with me, Miss Mayfield.” He reached for her, but Felicity stepped backward into Mrs. Duffle.

  “I will not go anywhere with you, Mr. Cobson!” She’d heard quite enough of this nonsense, gathered her anger into a hard knot of indignation to help shore up her wobbling knees. “This charge is entirely false.

  Cobson shrugged. “Not mine to judge, miss.”

  The scone she’d just eaten began to churn as she turned to Hinchcliffe. “Sir, you can’t let this man haul me away! What if he’s here to kidnap me and force me to do his will?”

  “I’m sure you’re innocent of the charge, Miss Mayfield,” the constable said, shaking his head in conspicuously false sympathy. “And I know this is a great miscarriage of justice. But a warrant is a warrant.”

  “Let me see that!” She tore the warrant out of Cobson’s hands. The page was official-looking; the script overly frilled, but it read quite clearly, “Felicity Mayfield to be arrested for criminal debt owing to Mister Hunter Claybourne, London.”

  Felicity looked up at Cobson, more confused than ever. “Claybourne? The Hunter Claybourne?”

  “I doubt there’s more than one, Miss Mayfield.”

  Felicity doubted it, too. Just as strongly as she doubted that the sinfully wealthy Hunter Claybourne could possibly have any connection to her at all.

  “Come along, Miss Mayfield, “Cobson said, clamping his efficient fingers around her elbow, and starting toward the door. “The train to London Bridge Station’s due any minute, and you’ve an engagement at the Queen’s Bench Prison.”

  Felicity overran Cobson with her questions all the way to London, but arrived at London Bridge Station no wiser for her efforts, and completely unnerved by his silence. He led her from the station into the rain-soaked, poorly lit streets of Southwark.

  “This is an enormous mistake, Mr. Cobson,” Felicity said for the hundredth time since leaving Beacon Chase. “I don’t know Mister Hunter Claybourne. He couldn’t possibly know me.”

  “A man like Mr. Claybourne don’t make mistakes, Miss Mayfield.” Cobson reeled an overlong kerchief from his coat pocket, and swabbed at his nose. “I been rounding up his debtors for seven years, now. All I know is: those that do come his way don’t remain debtors for long. He always gets his pound of flesh… and then some.”

  She fastened her thin shawl around her shoulders, her stomach reeling as though she’d dined on live eels. Hunter Claybourne? Railroads, shipping, foreign trade; no man was better known or more feared in the financial affairs of the nation. What the devil did he want with her? What possible debt could she owe a man like him?

  Cobson slung her portmanteau into a crowded hackney cab and they wheeled away into the drizzling night, only to be deposited in front of a clapboard house not a mile from the station.

  “Inside, Miss Mayfield.” Cobson took her elbow and started toward the house.

  The windows and the front door of the sagging building were barred with iron. The rain had lessened to a fine spray, giving the dirty clapboard a greasy look. A house of evil intentions.

  “What kind of place is this, Mr. Cobson? I’m not taking another step unless you tell me!”

  “Then let me welcome you to Cobson’s Rest, Miss Mayfield. The missus and I run a respectable sponging house.”

  “A sponging house!” Prelude to debtor’s prison, designed to intimidate and insult the debtor as he, or she, struggled to arrange for repayment.

  This was a travesty! And even if it weren’t, she had no money to spare. Her thousand pounds were tucked away in the Bank of England, a safeguard against starvation and utter homelessness. But what if no one believed her against the lies of the powerful Hunter Claybourne?

  “You’ll stay here with us until your trial. Unless, of course, you can raise money enough to pay off your debt. Which I doubt.”

  “I tell you, I am no one’s debtor!”

  “Aren’t you now?” Cobson chuckled low in his throat and pointed toward the end of the block. “That building way down there’s the Queen’s Bench Prison. Unless you can come up with the sum you owes to Master Claybourne, you’ll be livin’ there for a very long time.”

  The eels churned again. She’d spent most of her life in the countryside, following her father from one railway engineering project to the next. She didn’t know London very well, but she’d heard tales of the Queen’s Bench, had read horrible accounts of the Marshalsea and the Fleet before they were closed.

  “I owe Claybourne nothing. I don’t even know him. You’ve wasted day’s effort finding me, Mr. Cobson. And when this folly is done, I’ll want my fare back to the Knotted Mazel.”

  But Cobson was a never-shirking force, a transportable jail and she had no choice but to do as he bid. Come tomorrow he’d be sorry! So would this madman Claybourne.

  She would weather this storm as she had weathered others and allowed Cobson to lead her up to the sagging stoop, where his three-part tap with the tarnished brass knocker was answered seconds later by a more intricate pattern of taps. The latch rattled, then the door opened to a candle flame and a soupy voice that spilled from a fleshy female face that seemed to hover just behind the watery circle of light.

  “Ooo! She’s a little thing, Cobby.”

  “May be. But she fights like one of Wellington’s officers.”

  “Quick, Cobby, bring ‘er inside a’fore she blows away in the wind.”

  Cobson’s ever-present fingers pulled Felicity into the house.
The air inside Cobson’s Rest was as dark and close as its shadows: wood smoke and rancid food and mildewed upholstery all sealed up together by windows long ago swollen shut in the damp and barred to the light of day.

  “He’s here, Cobby.” Mrs. Cobson’s whisper was clouded by the reek of day-old onions. “Himself!”

  “Claybourne?” Cobson looked agitated for the first time all day. “Now? But it’s near midnight.”

  “He come here just after dark,” Mrs. Cobson hissed. “Brought the cold in with him, he did. I had to light the fire.”

  “Doesn’t usually come himself. What does he want?”

  Mrs. Cobson’s gaze led right to Felicity. “He wants her, I think.”

  She could only stare back at the woman, unwilling to imagine the confrontation to come. Claybourne’s reputation alone was enough to root her feet to the sagging floor. But Cobson clamped onto her arm again and forcibly edged her into a dreary parlor just off the cramped vestibule. A low fire glowed red in the grate, the only light in the room, making monsters of sideboard and sofa. Wind and rain stuttered against the clapboard siding.

  “A good eve to you, Mister Claybourne, sir,” Cobson said, sliding his cap off his head. “I brought you your debtor. Like I said I would.”

  An enormous darkness moved across the hearth, cooling Felicity’s face, reaching beyond the fragile windows to sap the light from the stars.

  “Leave us, Cobson.” The voice advanced like a midnight fog overtaking a lighthouse.

  She stepped backward, fearing that the sound had substance and might crush her. Shadows hid the man’s face, hinting at sharp ridges and strong planes.

  “As you wish, sir,” Mrs. Cobson trilled as she bustled into the room and lit the lamp on the sideboard. “Shall I bring you a brandy, Mister—”

  “Take your wife and leave us, Cobson.”

  Like a pair of crabs dodging the tide, the Cobsons ducked out of the parlor and slammed the door behind them.

  Felicity had been to the Zoological Gardens in Regent’s Park; had seen the lions pacing the length of their cages. Now felt that same restless power seething inside the dark form in front of her. Yet Claybourne stood motionless, leaving his flickering shadow to stalk the walls and the ceiling.