“Someone’s knocking at the door downstairs,” he whispered against her ear. “Let’s bring you to pleasure and then I’ll go shoot whoever it is.”
Faith hadn’t heard a thing. Her entire world was filled with sensations, so when he boldly slipped his hands into the long slit of her drawers and stroked the damp vent between her thighs, she shattered like a glass hit by a stone. Her high-pitched yell combined with the now familiar shuddering that accompanied her body’s uninhibited release rocked her like the boom of cannon. She was still riding the remnants of the storm when he kissed her softly and departed, leaving her breathless, shuddering, and alone.
Downstairs, Nick snatched the door open. “What?”
It was Arte. “Good afternoon to you, too,” he cracked. “Why’re you growling at me?”
“What do you want?” Nick asked, holding on to his patience.
“Did I catch you at a bad time?”
“You can say that.”
Arte looked chagrined. “My apologies. Just came to let you know that Uncle Ab will be here on Saturday at two, to marry you and Faith, if that’s agreeable.”
“It is. Thank you.”
“Sorry again.” He left the porch quickly and Nick closed the door.
Upstairs, she was standing just as he’d left her; clothes in disarray, lips swollen from his kisses.
“Who was at the door?” she asked quietly.
“Arte. We’re to be married at two on Saturday.”
Her eyes lingered on his mouth, then rose slowly to his face. “That will give Charity time to make the cake.”
He walked over to where she stood by the fire and dragged a slow finger over the soft tops of her velvet breasts and down the valley between. Leaning in, he used the tip of his tongue to taste the spot and pressed his lips against the nook of her throat. His manhood was hard as a length of mahogany. He wanted her to touch him, but knew it was too soon to ask that of her; she was still new at this dance, so he concentrated on her pleasuring instead.
The fog rose up again to enclose Faith in a world where only they and desire existed. Sunlight poured through the room’s many windows, highlighting something else she didn’t know. She thought lovemaking was only done while lying in bed at night, but that was obviously not true. What was true was that he was an expert at this, and when his fingers between her thighs showed how much, she shattered and cried out again.
Nicholas was breathing as if he’d run a race and he forced himself to move away from her or break his vow to wait for her to become his wife. He retreated across the room and took up a position near the windows, hoping the distance might help him regain control. He saw that she was breathing just as harshly. As she stood there with her nipples hard and her lips parted, the hunger in her passion-lidded eyes made him turn away or be lost. “I need you to right your clothing again, Faith.”
Because he had his back turned he missed the slow smile that crossed her lips as she complied. After a few moments of silence, he heard her say, “I’m done, Nicholas.”
He turned and saw that although she was dressed, it would be a while before the way she tasted and felt faded from his body’s memory. In truth, he’d want her for a lifetime, but for the moment, he just needed his desire to retreat long enough for his breathing to normalize and his manhood to stop its virile pulsing. “You’re very tempting, Miss Kingston.”
“As are you, Mr. Grey.”
“Are you enjoying this part of our adventure?”
“Very much.”
Nick wondered what their children might look like. Would there be raven-eyed daughters who were miniatures of their mother, or tall, lean boys with features reminiscent of him and their late grandfather. He’d settle for either just as long as he could continue to visually feast on her loveliness.
Later, they shared dinner at the small table in the kitchen. The warmth and light emanating from the fire made the atmosphere in the room very cozy.
Nicholas watched her moving around the kitchen putting up the last of the dishes and utensils they’d used for the meal, and he admitted that he knew next to nothing about her other than how much he craved her kisses, but he wanted to know more about Faith, the woman. “Have you and your father done much traveling?”
She shook her head as she retook her seat at the table. All the chores were done for the day. “Other than to Lexington and Concord for church events, no.”
“Never been to Philadelphia or New York?”
“Or down South, or to Rhode Island, or anywhere else but here. How did you come to live with the Iroquois?”
He didn’t respond for a few moments due to the flow of his memories. “It was during the Seven Years’ War. My father and I were with a British unit in New York. We were split into two patrols; he was in one, I was in the other. One morning, my unit came across an Iroquois village made of four longhouses.”
“What’s a longhouse?”
“It’s a very long house,” he said, smiling. “It’s made of upright poles and covered with tight layers of bark to keep out the weather. Some are a hundred feet long and twenty feet high.”
“These are Iroquois homes?”
“Yes. Inside, there’s often two living levels. The lower level for gatherings and cooking, and a place for the fire to keep everyone warm. The upper floor is usually for sleeping.”
“I guess I never thought about how they lived or what they lived in. All you hear are tales of savagery and butchery.”
“Makes it easier to take their land if they aren’t seen as human.”
She nodded her understanding.
“So on that day, we saw the village. A few days earlier, a farm a few miles away had been burned, and the occupants, a man, his wife, and three children had perished in the flames. Our lieutenant had no evidence that the people in this particular village of Iroquois were responsible, but he didn’t care. He ordered us to open fire, and we did.”
Nicholas quieted for a few moments and relived the sounds of the guns, the smells of the powder, the screams of the terrified women and children. “The men of the village must have been out hunting because there were less than a handful left there to oppose us when we opened our guns. They had only knives and hatchets, but they charged us anyway, giving their lives in the hope that some of the many women and children fleeing out the longhouse’s doors and into the woods would survive our assault.”
She tightened her lips and shook her head.
“In the midst of all the smoke, chaos, and death, someone in our unit put a torch to the houses and the four structures began to burn. By then, any Iroquois who could flee had done so and the men in our unit began to celebrate and cheer. Just as the last house became fully engulfed we heard a baby wailing. The cheering stopped and some of the men appeared concerned but it was just an Indian baby so . . .”
“So no one cared.”
“It seemed that way. Yes, we were at war, but this was a baby. I told the lieutenant I couldn’t stand by and let a child burn to death. He told me if I broke ranks, he’d have my fellows shoot me.”
Faith’s mouth dropped open.
“So I disobeyed orders, and by the time I reached the burning house, I had five balls in my back.”
“No!”
“Yes. Somehow I still managed to find the child and when I did, I took him out of that burning building, put him inside my coat, and stumbled off into the forest in the direction the tribe had taken. I swore never to serve in the British Army again.”
“So what happened next? You obviously lived.”
“Barely. There was another longhouse village a day’s walk away. I didn’t know it at the time, I was just hoping to find the baby’s people. By that point, I was delirious and in so much pain, I’d no idea where I was. The clan mothers said I walked into the village in the middle of the night and collapsed by a fire. They opened my coat to see if my heart was still beating and found the babe.”
“And they nursed you back to health.”
He n
odded. “Eventually, yes.”
“As you did me.”
He nodded again.
“And the babe was well?”
“Yes. He turned out to be the grandson of the clan matriarch. She was very grateful that I’d saved his life.”
“How long did you stay with them?”
“A year or so. Long enough to develop a fondness for sleeping on a pelt pallet and to learn their ways and myths.”
“And after leaving them, where did you go?”
“North and west. Spent the next few years trapping, selling, and trading furs; guiding settlers; and accumulating enough wealth from the furs and the rest to call myself a very wealthy man.”
“So that explains why you are so loose with your coin.”
“I’m not loose. Since I can’t take it with me, why not buy you new drawers.”
She dropped her head and chuckled.
“In fact, the night I was shanghaied I was in a tavern celebrating having sold a load of furs to a Russian count. After vowing to never have anything to do with British military forces again, you can imagine my anger at finding myself impressed into their navy.”
“That had to have been terribly upsetting.”
“A polite way of stating it. I hate the British.”
After hearing his story Faith understood why.
He looked at her and said, “This was supposed to have been a conversation about you and your life and I ended up talking about mine.”
“That’s quite all right. My life hasn’t been nearly as exciting.”
“I would have been happier with less, believe me.”
Faith studied him silently for a long few moments. The two of them had needed this quiet together because now she knew more about him. He’d claimed to be half tamed and she understood a bit better what he’d meant. All that he’d experienced helped mold him into the man he’d become, and in a few more days he was going to become her husband. How would that mold them both?
“What are you thinking, Faith?” he asked quietly.
She shrugged. “Just how we are molded by our lives. Mine has been a life of frugalness and self-reliance, all the things a goodly raised woman should be, yet I’ve never seen the sun rise or set except here in Boston, while you’ve seen it all over the world. Parts of me envy you those experiences.” She added, “Not the terrible ones though.”
He smiled his understanding. “Then maybe we’ll take a wedding trip when the weather warms. Since Philadelphia is the largest city in the colonies, we’ll go there.”
She brightened. “Truly?”
“Truly.”
“We’ll take the stagecoach and you can begin having your own experiences.”
“I’d like that.”
“Good.” Nicholas thought about how simple it seemed to please her. He’d known women in the past who would never have questioned the amount of money spent on them, but this little Tory-raised rose had fretted and nearly worried him to distraction. She was special; intelligent, bossy, beautiful, and blunt, but becoming even more special every moment they were together. Parts of Nicholas knew this was love, but he chose not to acknowledge it.
She had a question. “Will you be content to be a farmer after living life so freely?”
“I asked myself the very same thing a few days after my return, but I’m adjusting.”
He paused a moment to look into her face and then said, “Besides, I have you around now, and that will probably be all the excitement I’ll need.”
“We’ll see,” she said, smiling. “We’ll see.”
Chapter 19
The day of the wedding, Faith awakened to dark clouds and rain. She supposed somewhere in the world such a downpour was greeted as a positive sign for a couple about to embark upon marriage, but in the colonies, it was just wet. With no alternative but to put a happy face on the situation, she got out of bed to start the day.
Two days had passed since their talk in the kitchen and she’d spent the time in between preparing the house for the wedding and the guests. Nicholas searched out Adeline’s good china and found it packed away in tarp-lined crates in the cellar. The gold-edged plates had a single rose in the center, and their beauty outshone any other china Faith had seen. In the crates were everything from teacups to gravy boats, and she spent the remainder of the afternoon washing them and placing them in the dining room’s highboy where Nicholas said they’d been kept when he was growing up. There were crystal goblets and silverware, some of it still in its original packaging, which made Faith wonder sadly if Adeline had died before she could use them. When passing through the parlor, Faith stopped and looked up at her portrait often, wondering what she’d been like, and what role she’d played in the feud between her father and Primus, but Adeline remained posed and silent, offering only the secretive smile in her eyes as her reply.
But now Faith was in the kitchen. It was still dark and she hoped the pounding rain would run its course before the pastor and the guests arrived later that afternoon. With breakfast on the fire and Nicholas’s awful-tasting coffee ready to be poured, Faith was setting plates on the table when he walked in.
“Good morning,” he said to her. “I’d hoped to come down and make breakfast for you today but as I can see, I’m late.”
“Good morning, and yes, you are.”
“After today, you are allowed to get up after sunrise.”
“Why wait for sunrise when there are chores to do?” she asked, pausing to study his face.
He chuckled softly. “This isn’t the Kingston Inn, sweet Faith. No one here but the two of us.”
“And?”
He folded his arms and studied her. “You don’t have to work so hard anymore, is what I’m trying to say to you.”
She took that in for a moment and replied, “Oh.” Getting up later wasn’t anything Faith had ever considered. Rising before dawn so that she and her father could breakfast at six had been her routine since she was eight or nine years old. “I’ve never been a lazybones, Nicholas.”
“And I’m not asking you to be. I’m just asking you to be human.” And he added with an indulgent smile and voice, “If you can.”
That touched her heart. “I will try. I’ll get up at five tomorrow.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“Six then,” she said, amending her claim.
“Better.”
Faith decided she liked this man, very much.
“And besides, tonight will be our wedding night. You may not want to get up tomorrow until noon.”
“I’ve never stayed in bed that late.”
“There’s a first time for everything, Faith Kingston, and tonight will be one of those new experiences you’ve been seeking.”
She blinked.
“Coffee ready?”
Tearing herself away from humor reflected in his eyes, she stammered, “Um. Yes.”
Padding her hand with a cloth, she picked up the coffeepot and carried it to the table.
Charity showed up just as Faith was finishing the kitchen cleanup. She had the cake, her hair irons, the food she was providing for the wedding meal, a tarp-covered crate of unknown contents, and a tarp-covered garment on a hanger. Faith assumed the hanger held the dress Charity planned to change into later for the wedding. However, after they stowed the food and she and Charity went up to Faith’s room, Faith found her assumption had been wrong.
After removing the tarp, Charity laid the dress on the bed, and when she drew away the layer of linen it was wrapped in, Faith stood gaping at the most beautiful ball gown in the world. “Mama said you are to wear this.”
The bodice and overskirt were the palest yellow. The layers of tiered petticoats visible between the open panels of the over skirt were snow white, as was the lace on the square-cut décolletage and the cuffs of the long sleeves. The dress was breathtaking enough for a queen. “Charity, I can’t wear this.”
“We knew you’d say that so I’m simply going to ignore it.”
Fai
th stared in amazement. “She couldn’t have finished this in the time since I’ve seen her. Where did this come from?”
“Paris. Mama shipped it to a client last fall but the woman returned it with a note saying it didn’t fit well. It arrived yesterday. We’re hoping it’ll fit you.”
A few days ago, Faith had made the decision to wear her new gray suit as her wedding clothes, but this gorgeous confection would be unlike anything she’d ever worn before. “I will be very careful not to dirty it so that your mother may have it back.”
Charity smiled and shook her head. “If it fits you are to keep it. Mama says it’s her wedding gift. She’ll be here in time for the ceremony.”
Faith gaped.
“Close your mouth and sit so that I can start your hair.”
Faith complied, but her eyes kept straying to the dress.
With her hair done and her dress on, Faith viewed herself in the mirror and felt tears wet her eyes.
Charity scolded, “Don’t you dare cry. We’ll both be downstairs with swollen eyes and that won’t be a pretty sight. You look beautiful.”
“Yes, I do,” she whispered. The dress fit well. The square neckline offered only a tiniest hint of the rise of her breasts but to Faith’s eyes it appeared very daring. “I’m not accustomed to showing my neck this way.”
“It’s only for a few hours, Faith. You can go back to being clothed to your ears tomorrow.”