Ever His Bride Page 8

  He’d spent the early evening in his office, analyzing the prospectus for a small company that was developing a new, more economical steel-making process, then had taken a late dinner with two members of the prime minister’s cabinet. It wasn’t until his carriage arrived in the courtyard of Claybourne Manor that he realized, with a mild shock, that his wife would be somewhere inside.

  “Delivered safely, Mr. Claybourne.”

  Hunter glanced at Branson and wondered when the man’s mustache had begun to go gray. “Of course,” he said, stomping up the front steps of the manor and into the foyer. The staircase was blue-dark and free of shadows, silent and immense. And all of it was his.

  “Where did you put her?”

  “Put her?” Branson asked, his steps halting abruptly.

  Hunter turned. “Where did you put Miss Mayfield?” he asked, wondering if Branson’s hearing had aged as rapidly as his close-cropped temples.

  “Sir,” Branson said, brimming his hat through his fingers, “do you mean to say Mrs. Claybourne?”

  “Yes, yes, Branson. Mrs. Claybourne. Where did you put her?”

  Branson frowned. “I don’t know, sir.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “That part hadn’t been settled when I left.”

  “Hmmm. See to it that you find out. I want to be sure she hasn’t bolted.”

  “She promised me she would stay. Was eating like a blacksmith as I left. I warned Ernest to send word if he had any trouble with her. I heard nothing, sir.”

  “I’m pleased to hear it. Good night, Branson.”

  The day had been long and he craved the solace of his chamber, where he could shut the door against the everlasting tension. His footfalls rang against the stone walls as he climbed the wide staircase to the upper floor.

  He turned at the landing and glanced down the western corridor. She would be there somewhere, behind one of those doors, sleeping, dreaming of her uncle and his fool’s-gold fortune. Her hair would be slumber-tossed against one of his pillows, her defiant chin tucked beneath his counterpane.

  Wife. A damned odd circumstance. He thought to check on her himself, but had no idea which room was hers and decided he would speak with her come morning, to lay down the rules.

  All was as it should be in his chamber: the fire lit and his brandy heating on the hob, his bed turned down.

  And something else.

  The scent of lavender, a lightness behind him where there ought to be shadow.

  “Good evening husband—darling. Did you miss me?”

  Miss Mayfield was sitting in his chair beside the bed, her legs tucked beneath her, a book resting open across the enticing rise of her thigh. She’d loosened her hair from its ribbons, and now great cascades of gold clouded her shoulders, as wildly as she had clouded his senses.

  He steadied his breathing and lifted the brandy to let the shimmering fumes rise against his nose. Her robe was russet velvet and heavy, the cuffs rolled, and the shoulders drooped to her elbows. Not her robe. The damn thing was his.

  “What are you doing in here?” he asked as harshly as he could manage, trying to ignore the unnamed stirring in his chest, the hollow burning that spread downward to his knees, that deepened his breathing and leadened his arms.

  “What am I doing here, Mr. Claybourne?”

  Felicity abandoned her vow to keep her temper and flung herself out of the chair. She’d planned all day to be cooler than he—impossible unless she were an iceberg. “I’m here because you threw me into your carriage and had me hauled off to your very charming estate in the wilds of Hampstead.”

  “This may be your home for the next year, Miss Mayfield. But that doesn’t give you leave to enter my chamber uninvited.”

  “Uninvited, sir? But isn’t this the master’s chamber? Aren’t we married, Mr. Claybourne? And isn’t this our wedding night?”

  “Is that why you’ve claimed my robe?”

  “If you remember, sir, I have nothing else to wear.” She refused to be embarrassed by the heat plaguing her cheeks again, confused that the warmth should find its way to her chest.

  “And you think this is my fault?” He tipped his brandy to his mouth and sipped slowly. He had a wicked way of looking at her—through her; and through her robe—his robe.

  She stuck her fingers into the sash wrapping and flicked open the front of it. The cold hit her like a slap, but she shrugged out of the sleeves and tossed the robe onto the end of the bed.

  “There,” she said, closing her arms across the cotton nightshirt that seemed as slight as a cobweb. Her feet were bare against the polished wood floor, and she stepped in front of the fire to keep her teeth from chattering.

  “Whose nightshirt is that?” His eyes narrowed in his shadowy assessment.

  “I don’t know. I found it with a towel in the bathing closet next to your chamber.” Claybourne was frowning. “I suspect it belongs to Ernest.” That explanation didn’t seem to make him any happier.

  “We’ll discuss this in the morning. Go to bed.”

  “Mr. Claybourne, I’ve decided to treat you as an innkeeper.”

  “You have?” He seemed vainly amused.

  “And in the morning, I might just decide to be gone from here. I can’t afford to stay long; I haven’t written a coherent word about my travels all day. Claybourne Manor doesn’t lend itself to creativity, nor does the idea of being entirely dependent upon you. Article Two of our marriage contract allows me to decide when and where I travel.”

  “That may be. But the very legal fact of our marriage allows me the right as your husband to nullify that decision, and any other decision you might make in the coming year.”

  He was so very calm, his voice even and precise. She wanted to scream, but she matched his composure and spoke through her clenched teeth.

  “So I’ve exchanged a sentence in the Queen’s Bench Prison for a more hideous one in the Claybourne Manor? That explains the gray walls and the gruel.”

  “We’ll speak of this tomorrow.”

  “We’ll speak of it now.” She was cold to the bone, despite the fire at her back.

  “Madam, my home is a quiet place.”

  “A tomb. I’ve noticed.”

  “And I plan to keep it that way.” Claybourne set his empty glass on the washstand, his manner turned perilously benign. “This arrangement of ours is … unconventional at best. It’s ill-fitting and uncomfortable, and as new to me as it is to you. But we are now connected, and I have a reputation to consider. You, madam, have no money, and no place to stay. I cannot have that in a wife. Therefore, you need only prove to me that you have sense enough not to disturb my life any more than you already have, after which you may, with my most sincere blessing, leave on your travels for as long as you wish.”

  “Oh, and how am I to prove this to you?”

  “You can start by going to bed when I tell you.”

  She aimed an entirely uncalled for glance at Claybourne’s bed. The huge man’s gaze followed hers and lingered like a fragrance among the pillows, sending her into another fit of blushing.

  “You have nothing to fear from me, Miss Mayfield.” His face was as blank as a slate; yet his mouth remained every bit as fascinating to her, well-planed and improvident. “Article Four states that our marriage will remain unconsummated. I have no salacious designs on you.”

  She blotted up his scorn and used it against him. “Good. For I plan to have a real husband someday, and will go to his bed chaste.”

  “My best to you both. Now, go to bed, Miss Mayfield,” he said quietly.

  “Go to hell, Mr. Claybourne.”

  He frowned, took her gently by the elbow, and swept her out into the corridor, then shut the door in her face.

  “Pinchfist!” she shouted. The word multiplied itself and bounced away from her, leaving a bleak silence in its wake. He was the rudest, most callous man she’d ever met. To everyone it seemed. Cold and hungry again, she was glad she’d been locked out of his roo
m, instead of in.

  “But damnation!” She’d left her blanket in Claybourne’s chamber, wasn’t about to return for it. And she’d forgotten to ask him about a bed. At least one that wasn’t his.

  She hurried to the kitchen and huddled beside the still-warm stove. Mrs. Sweeney hadn’t left so much as a crumb of food anywhere, and the larder was locked down tightly. A stuttering oil lamp kept the room from total darkness. The only difference between this night and the previous one at Cobson’s Rest was space. There were tall, dreary gobs of it everywhere she looked.

  Her one and only skirt and shirtwaist were drying on a rack near the stove, hadn’t known Mrs. Sweeney was going to wash them until her clothes disappeared from the bathing closet. Now they seemed to have lost some of the blue and gained a tinge of black along the seams, from the woman’s dye pot.

  With the exception of Claybourne’s chamber, this was the warmest room in the house—certainly warmer and more quiet than London Bridge Station—and Mrs. Sweeney’s rocking chair would do just fine as a bed. Tomorrow she would demand to be taken to London for the day, else she would walk there herself.

  She dragged the rocker out of the corner, dislodging a bundle of rags from behind it. The bundle teetered and rolled to the center of the room, and a small, grimy face appeared among the folds.

  She would have jumped out of her skin, but that little face was far too familiar.

  “Giles Pepperpot!” she hissed, catching and holding the boy by the ear. “So we meet again!”

  “Ouch, miss! Let go, please! Owwww!” His arms whirled and his eyes pinched closed as she dragged him toward the wan light. “You’re hurting me.”

  “Good. I ought to throw you to Claybourne’s dogs. They’d like a tender little morsel to chew on.”

  “Leave off!”

  “You stole everything I own, Mr. Pepperpot. There’s nothing left to steal. And you’re a bloody little fool if you’ve come here to rob from Claybourne! He’ll have you hanged for the thief you are!”

  “But I didn’t come for nothing like that! I come to settle with you.”

  “To settle with me?” She tapped the middle of his bony chest and he fell, panic-stricken, backward into the rocking chair. The dark circles under his eyes made him look older than Claybourne, but she wasn’t about to feel sorry for the little felon. “I won’t be made a fool of twice, Mr. Pepperpot. Today on the street I was being generous. Now you’ve come to take advantage. That makes me angry, and very dangerous to a sneak thief! How did you get here all the way from London?”

  “In the carriage boot.” He drew his scrawny, threadbare knees against his chest and clung to them. “I saw the big man send you away this noon, and I kenned the brougham would come back for him sometime today, so I waited and when it did come, I slipped inside and waited some more. Then I hid out here in the stables till it was safe to come inside.”

  “Why, Mr. Pepperpot?” She grasped the rocker arms and leaned forward. The reek of poverty nearly gagged her; Giles Pepperpot was the sewers of London made flesh. She closed her nose against the horrible smell and pressed him for the truth. “Why did you come here if it wasn’t to practice your nefarious trade?”

  “I come to give this back to you.” He drew a folio of papers out of his shirt.

  “My articles!” She grabbed the folio and hugged it against her, wanting to whoop for joy. For her ticket to her independence from Claybourne. “Thank you!”

  “It was the only thing I could bring you.” The boy’s head was cocked, and a ripe new bruise bulged on his brow.

  “You did this for me? Came all the way to Hampstead in the boot of a carriage to return my portfolio?”

  He shrugged. “Figured I owed ya.”

  Grateful beyond words, she leaned down and kissed his cheek, trying to ignore the grime there. “Thank you, Mr. Pepperpot.”

  The boy laid his hand across the kiss and his eyes seemed to grow liquid in the dim light. “I’d return your money, miss, but I don’t have it anymore.”

  “Never mind about that. I owed you the coins to pay for your torn shirt. I hope you bought something with the money to keep you warm.”

  He shook his head. “Harry kept it.”

  “Harry—the other boy? He kept the money?”

  Giles nodded and rubbed the bruise on his forehead.

  “He shared nothing with you?”

  “I work for him. Why should he?”

  “Ah, then Mr. Claybourne was right. You are a member of the gang of boys that works Threadneedle.”

  “And Chancery Lane when Threadneedle gets too close.” He unwound his legs and arms as his hesitancy slipped off him like a too-big coat. His bristling courage reminded her of a young eagle whose feathers have only just begun to sprout. “I’ve never been caught before. You saved me from the workhouse. And I’d rather die than go back there.”

  “A terrible place, is it?”

  The boy wouldn’t elaborate; only nodded.

  “Well, Mr. Pepperpot, I don’t condone your trade, but you’re very good at it. You cut my purse and I didn’t discover it missing until you were long gone.”

  “Cut it with your own scissors.”

  “How?” She laughed in earnest for the first time in days. “Never mind! I don’t want to know. Slicker than a railway baron. You’ll go far, Mr. Pepperpot, if you apply yourself.”

  The boy didn’t take well to the compliment. He blushed like a beet, clear through the grime. His smile sloughed its hard-edged cynicism and softened in innocence.

  “Well, miss, I come here to return your papers and I done that, so I’d best be leaving.”

  “Where do you live?” But, of course, he wasn’t going to tell her that! She could tell by the set of his jaw. What would he think if he knew she hadn’t much of a home herself? “How will you get back to London?”

  “I’ll walk.”

  “No. Wait. Stay the night in the stables, and you can return in the carriage boot tomorrow without Claybourne or his footman ever being the wiser.”

  “I don’t know….” The boy’s stomach grumbled much like her own had done earlier that day. He didn’t seem to notice.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll make sure you won’t be caught. Let’s steal us a late night feast, and then we’ll put you up where no one will find you.” She went to work on the larder lock, hoping to find a breach in Mrs. Sweeney’s defenses.

  “Allow me, miss.” Giles brushed her hands from the lock, then slipped a thin wire into the keyhole. “Do you work for him, miss? Are you his housekeeper?”

  She smiled. “If you mean Mr. Claybourne, then no, Mr. Pepperpot. I’m his wife.”

  The lock popped open.

  So did Mr. Pepperpot’s mouth.

  Miss Mayfield had called him a pinchfist. Probably the best epithet she could manage; but he’d been called far more colorful things in his life. A man in his business acquired animosity and enemies by the bushelful. The word had just seemed more jagged and empty when she shouted it through the closed door.

  Hunter picked up the robe she’d thrown across his bed and hung it in the closet. She’d left her warmth and the scent of lavender draped among the heavy folds. She’d also left an unblinking image of soft angles and spun gold. He shouldn’t have mentioned the damn robe; he had many others. But he hadn’t reckoned she would throw it off and stand nearly naked in front of the fire in his valet’s nightwear.

  On his wedding night.

  The ache was deep and progressive; it rose out of his chest and curled like a thrashing fever through his groin, leaving his heart to beat a hollow, hollow thrum.

  His wedding night.

  Willing his new wife from his thoughts, he shrugged out of his jacket and planted himself in his chair to watch the fire and read. He’d been spared only a moment’s calm when heavy footsteps slogged up the corridor toward his room.

  Miss Mayfield, no doubt, returned to plague him with more of her opinions. He was out of the chair and opening the door even before the
knock sounded. Branson’s fist hung in the air, unused.

  “What is it Branson?” His pulse was racing; the threat born in the woman he’d so recently married.

  “She’s gone, sir.”

  Hunter didn’t have to ask who she was. “Gone where? She was just here not ten minutes ago.”

  “Here, sir? In your chamber?” Branson looked befuddled and peered past him into the room. “But I thought you weren’t…she said—”

  “Did you look in her room?”

  “Her room, sir?”

  “She left here not five minutes ago. I sent her back to her room.”

  Branson looked at him as if he’d been speaking Greek. “Ah, then, that just might be the problem, sir. She doesn’t have one.”

  “She doesn’t have what? Quit speaking in riddles.”

  “A room, sir. Mrs. Claybourne doesn’t have a room. You neglected to give instructions to—”

  “Damn it, Branson. Do I need to give such instructions? I have a wife now, see that she has a chamber with a bed and all the necessary furnishings.”

  “Yes, well, that was the crux of the problem, sir. All the beds at Claybourne Manor are used up.”

  Hunter opened his mouth to protest the idiocy of Branson’s argument, but he knew the fact to be true. Ten servants, ten cots, and his own tester bed. There were no more beds. He’d never needed more, never entertained or expected overnight guests. Or any other kind of guest, for that matter.

  “Fix it, Branson. Find her. Search the upstairs rooms, every closet—”

  “Ernest is looking—”

  “Oh, for God’s sake!” He left Branson to his excuses and set off down the stairs. She could be halfway to Hampstead by now, gone like a wood nymph to roam her precious heath. He’d take his horse and follow the road. As he passed the dining-room door, he remembered her growling hunger and wondered if his half-witted staff had forgotten to feed her. Miss Mayfield wasn’t one to wait around for room service.

  A faint light limned the kitchen door as he stepped through the butler’s pantry. He caught the murmur of a feather soft voice and the rattle of a cabinet. He gathered back his racing heart. He’d found her.