At Your Pleasure

  “But you will,” he said very softly.

  Goose bumps rose on her skin.

  “Your brother will not touch you,” he continued, his words still low, as though he sought to lull her into believing them. “As a Ferrers, you cannot be touched. You will be safe, and so, too, this place you love: I swear it to you.”

  Her scoff seemed to explode, echoing around them. “Such charitable motives!”

  And she drove her knife into his arm.

  To her shock, he did not cry out—or release her, either. A small hissing breath escaped him. His free hand gripped hers, twisting hard, until she gasped from pain and the knife dropped from her numb fingers.

  A cask toppled as he dragged her backward into the iron grip of his arms. She flinched—but naught happened, save that his mouth came against her ear.

  “I see that you will make a most interesting wife.”

  14

  The bride was bound and gagged. The parson was drunk, and had been kept so since Adrian’s men had purloined him from the high road a day earlier. At first terror-stricken at being separated from his party, the clergyman had found calm in a sizable bribe. It now resided in his dusty pockets, the former contents of which had sealed his fate: Jonathon Masters of York was one of those innumerable clergymen who did a brisk trade in illicitly distributed marriage licenses, properly stamped, affixed with the seal of the Royal Arms, conveniently lacking only the names of bride and groom.

  Adrian’s men had detained three other holy men before finding one so well equipped. The only surprise was that it had taken so long: the trade in such certificates was a much-favored way to support the godly lifestyle.

  The clergyman slurred out the words now from the Book of Common Prayer, his voice rising in counterpoise to the bride’s furious grunts. Braddock and Henslow, flanking the parson to encourage him, presented stern countenances only occasionally prey to smirks: alas, the parson’s faculties at present were not equal to the language of his office.

  When Masters paused to hold out the book a distance from his face, squinting quizzically at the riddles it presented, Adrian shifted impatiently. “Skip to the vows,” he said. “I do not require a jobsworth.”

  The parson lowered the book, blinking. “Well, if it comes to that, your shig—your signatures will shuffice.”

  Reaching inside his valise, he produced a dog-eared folio that he settled atop the altar. Next he produced a bottle of ink—its spillage prevented by a quick, lunging intervention by Braddock—and a quill, which he offered up with a lopsided smile that bespoke pride in his own resourcefulness.

  “Never without it,” he said. “Good many a-marry on the road.”

  Henslow snorted. Undoubtedly these proceedings had taken on a comical note, but Adrian’s current mood did not allow for humor. He wanted this completed—in all regards. And then he wanted Cosmo Colville off this property.

  The quill was in want of sharpening. His signature emerged illegibly, the thick ink smearing with a drop of blood that had escaped the makeshift bandage—his own neckcloth—with which he’d bound his arm. The wound was not deep; he would need to teach her better to defend herself.

  He wiped his palm on his leather waistcoat and signed again, writing his name at a much larger size.

  He turned to Nora, whose glare looked forceful enough to permanently displace her eyes from her skull. For a moment he paused, struck by the finality of this moment: from now forward, this woman was his.

  The smile that grew on his lips did not please her. Her eyes narrowed, threatening him silently.

  “You will forgive me,” he said. Eventually.

  He meant it as a promise to her, even as she furiously shook her head. Now, here, he would right the injustice done them six years ago. After this night, no man would be able to unmake his claim to her.

  Picking up her bound wrists, he forced her right hand around the pen and drew her name himself. Her nails turned into his flesh, digging viciously.

  “God save me when I untie you,” he murmured.

  Her emphatic grunt, in his reckoning, signaled agreement.

  He returned the quill to the parson. “Now you will sign and notarize this page,” he instructed, “stating your name, your direction, and your posting. Should any of the other happy couples registered herein require some proof of their union, they may apply to the Earl of Rivenham for the record of it.”

  The parson frowned. “I don’t—” And then scandalized understanding twisted his mouth. “You can’t mean to keep the registry!”

  “I can,” said Adrian. He nodded toward the page. “Now attest yourself, and then Braddock will see you comfortably provisioned for your journey to Preston. An escort will ride you off at dawn.”

  The parson chewed his lip. “And—and if someone should ask me of this? The bride’s d-d-demeanor?”

  Adrian tightened his arm around his wife’s waist. When he looked into her face, she bent her head to avoid his eyes. The small mole on her right cheek stood out lividly against her pallor.

  “Why, speak the truth,” he said. “While a heavenly vision in the composure of her features, she seemed somewhat . . . indisposed.”

  “Indisposed,” the parson repeated, nodding in the manner of a man set to memorization.

  “But not for long,” Adrian said softly, for her ears alone.

  He had taken her knife.

  He had forced her hand at the registry.

  He had picked her up and carried her out of the chapel like a war prize.

  And now he took her into his rooms—rooms that she, against her will, had been compelled to allot him—and strode directly into his bedchamber, where he knocked aside the bed curtains and settled her atop a dark quilt of embroidered silk that she should have cast into the sty before lending to this blackguard’s use.

  A futile jerk of her wrists confirmed, yet again, that the knots there had been tied with skill. He knelt by the bed, forcing her to twist her neck to an uncomfortable degree to keep him out of her vision.

  “You play mute disdain very well,” he said.

  She stared fixedly at an oak bedpost carved into a cascade of flowers and fruit. The mattress sagged as he settled beside her. The scent of cloves rose from the bed linens beneath them. She went rigid to avoid contact with his body.

  His touch on the tender skin of her inner wrists made her flinch. A moment later the bonds about her wrists loosened and slipped away.

  She twisted at the waist and punched him.

  The blow was sound, a solid crack across his cheek. Her numb hand did not register its force, but her forearm ached like a struck bell.

  His impassive reaction gave no satisfaction. She struck out again.

  He caught her fist before it landed, his grip hard.

  Very well, then her skull would make a weapon! She hurled herself at him.

  He leaned back, forcing her head into his chest, then gripped it against him as he fell backward onto the mattress. Her belly came up against his. She scratched for his eyes and brought up her knee, driving for his balls or his gut, but in one broad hand he caught her thigh and twisted out from beneath her, flipping her onto her back and placing his knee over her legs.

  His hand at her wrists pinned her flat.

  A silent scream rasped in her throat, hot and rapid; there was not enough air to feed this conflagration of rage inside her. She jerked at his hold, but under his narrow regard, the fruitless struggle to free herself seemed like a new humiliation.

  She fell still, loathing him. The bandage he’d tied around his arm galled her, proof of her stupidity. She should have stabbed him in the throat!

  At least he wore the mark of her nails now. A long, vicious scratch ran from the corner of his eye to his mouth.

  His face grim, he hauled her upright and pulled her to the edge of the bed so her legs dangled into air. His hand, which still trapped her own, began to massage her, coaxing the blood to prickle painfully back through her fingers.

  She
bit hard on the gag and stared fixedly at nothing. She was alone, she told herself. She was anywhere but here. This was a dream; it would pass. She had not just been forced, again, into marriage—this time by the very man who had first lured her to dream of wifehood. No, she could not compass such a betrayal. That he of all men should treat her only as a woman, as all men treated women—as a witless creature born only to do men’s bidding, at men’s convenience—

  That parson had been fraudulent. This could be undone.

  “You were right to call me a villain,” he said quietly. “But you were wrong to think that only the circumstances cast me as such.”

  Riddles. He should speak them to someone who cared. She was deaf to him.

  “I am as much a villain in my nature as a common thief on the high road,” he said. “Did you not know it?”

  His words framed a confession but he spoke it shamelessly. He did not sound sorry at all.

  “Here is what makes me a criminal, Nora. Righteous men conceive of an end and pray for righteous means to obtain it. But criminals do not look to prayer for their hopes. They place no faith in chance. When they see an end, they risk everything to obtain it—no matter whether it is theirs to risk or no.”

  She heard him loose a breath.

  “I have loved you for a very long time now, you see.”

  For a mad moment her very blood seemed to leap and pulse. Tears came to her eyes. She shut them to crush the tears away. He loved her? Words were nothing, unmarried to action!

  “For the remainder of my life, no matter what course it runs, I will not regret this night. I did what I must, by what means were available. I knew the opportunity to have you would not come again, and I have loved you too long now to hesitate.”

  The words burned through her like fire. She ground the gag between her teeth, longing to scream, to strike him, to curse him for speaking words of love. A pox on him! What scurvy love was this, which stripped her of her honor and choice? His love meant nothing to her. She would not allow it to mean aught. It was diseased. How dare he speak such words to her now?

  “A villain’s love is not a comfortable thing,” he said. “But I promise, I will endeavor to make it a pleasure to you.”

  He released her hands, sliding his own up her arms, slowly but without hesitation. She willed her flesh to feel nothing. She would have slapped him again but it would only provoke him to put himself atop her. Instead she made her hands into fists, her fingernails digging for blood. Bloodshed seemed fitting.

  His fingers moved against her nape and then the gag loosened. She spat it out, loathing the taste of wool, uncaring of whether her spittle touched him or not.

  The idea inspired her rage. She twisted toward him and spat in his face.

  His eyes met hers. Shadows gathered beneath them. Her spit trailed down his cheek.

  She did not care for his exhaustion!

  When he still did not move, her temper seized her tongue. “Wipe your face, jackanapes. Or would you prefer that I slap it off?”

  To her disbelief, he laughed softly. “You may try.”

  Try? To hell with him! She lashed out with her palm.

  He caught her wrist and turned his mouth into it. His teeth closed on her skin, and his tongue made a hot stroke over her pulse.

  Her breath shuddered out in a loud gust. She stared at him, appalled—not only by him but also by herself. This fury felt like a movable creature stretching inside her skin, expanding now into a violence to which his mouth seemed the answer.

  Her body had learned too well that lesson in the meadow. It still answered to the instruction of his flesh.

  She wanted to claw his face bloody!

  She wanted him to bite her harder.

  And why not? He had hurt her, tonight, in the sharpest and most deadly way possible: not with his body but with his mind, outwitting her, stripping her of her ability to decide for herself, to lay her own course. He had herded her like a dumb animal, a sheep, a dog.

  But this was no new injury. Other men had done it to her before. She had already endured one marriage begun by force. She understood exactly what her future held now.

  So, why should he not hurt her with his body as well?

  “Better to bite out my heart,” she said.

  His face lifted and she saw his mask of indifference dissolve. His nostrils flared, and a muscle flexed in his jaw. “No,” he said. “I mean to keep your heart for myself.”

  The laugh that spilled from her now would have done a scornful court beauty proud. “You will not have it. Not after tonight. You betrayed me—”

  “I saved you,” he said evenly. “And if I betrayed you to do so—so be it. There can be no betrayal where there is no affection.”

  When he reached toward her, she threw herself backward. The carved post knocked into her spine. “Do not speak to me of affection! You corrupt knave—love does not allow for such poxy treatment!”

  “There’s a pretty ideal,” he said. Could nothing shatter his calm? “But I think you are not so blind in this matter as you would wish to be. If you put your own safety first, I believe you will see how this marriage might benefit you.” He paused, considering her squarely. Then the line of his jaw firmed, as though he had resolved himself to some unpleasant decision. “I protect what is mine. And you are a danger to yourself, Leonora. Hate me if you like, but I will not permit you to risk yourself. I will bear your hatred easily so long as you are safe.”

  As his eyes held hers, the silence between them seemed to crackle. She grew suddenly, painfully aware of the mattress beneath her, and the door that stood closed beyond it, and his muscled body, not an arm’s length from hers.

  She threw the words at him: “Will you force me in this, too?”

  “No,” he said more quietly. “I will do nothing to your displeasure.”

  “Then atone,” she said desperately. “For this whole affair displeases me. It is not too late! A marriage may be annulled—”

  His expression did not change, but he placed his hand over hers. His light grip carried its own message: she was caught. No argument remained to be made of it.

  She snatched her hand away. “Then you will not touch me at all!”

  His head tilted. Leisurely he studied her, as though viewing a puzzle he had all the time in the world to solve. “You told me that you would have played the rebel, long ago, only I never made it possible. You craved wildness then . . . and I think you still do. I think you have enough of a taste for it to pursue your own pleasures. I do not think you truly crave to be a martyr for your brother.”

  His words lashed her. Of course she did not crave martyrdom! But what kind of woman would it make her if she permitted this private reluctance to become an excuse for turning to her brother’s enemy? This desire Adrian stirred in her was already dishonorable—all the more so after tonight’s crime. If she betrayed her brother for it, it would spell her damnation! “I do not call it martyrdom to desire to see him well!”

  “I cannot promise his health,” he said gravely. “But the choice I posed to you in the entresol was true. I will not be the man to author his death.”

  “That does not suffice! You work against him—”

  His hand over hers tightened. “He works against himself. He invites his own end. But if he only saw sense, he could find me useful.”

  She caught her breath. “What . . . what does that mean?”

  “It means precisely as I say. I have no small power with the king. But if I should meet your brother in battle, it will not go to his betterment.”

  She searched his face, his eyes so intent upon hers. Was he offering to help her brother, should it come to his peaceful capture? “And if you do not meet in battle? What then?”

  “Then my power may be of use to him.”

  This was a veiled promise at best—and she would be a fool to trust aught from this man after what he had done tonight.

  Only . . . only if Adrian did speak truly now . . . if he did care for her
. . . then if it should come to the worst—if David should be caught—then what would he lose by speaking for her brother?

  Would it not suit the Earl of Rivenham’s station better to ensure that his new brother-in-law was not beheaded before the town?

  In which case, was not this marriage of some advantage after all?

  Her own thoughts frightened her. How easily she made Adrian’s arguments for him!

  He reached out. With one hand he captured her braid and brought it over her shoulder, running his hand down its length, drawing it into a rope that spanned the space between them.

  She resisted the gentle tug he gave. Breath held, skin prickling, she waited to see what he would do.

  He did nothing. He merely watched her. But the gentle play of his hand on the ends of her hair began to sap at her like poison.

  “I cannot trust you,” she whispered.

  The regret in his slight smile was only a show. It must be. “What cause have you to trust me?” he said. “It falls to me to persuade you.”

  “You will not succeed in it.”

  “You may be surprised.” Again he made the barest tug on her braid, urging her toward him. He murmured, “You may learn to enjoy me more than you imagine.”

  She leaned back in resistance, trying desperately to reason her own best action. They were alone in his bedchamber. He was laying hands on her. His intention was clear, though he’d claimed he would not force her.

  I mean to make you mine.

  The echo of those words made her dizzy and hot. She swallowed hard, appalled by herself. The worst of it was, he did not play the enemy. As she resisted him, he made no effort to compel her nearer; indeed, he leaned forward to maintain, not increase, the tension on her hair.

  She could not understand him. If he was a villain, let him behave as one! Her reluctance had infuriated Towe; in London, her coldness had enraged a dozen leering courtiers, who proved willing to proposition her but vicious upon her refusals. Yet Adrian remained perfectly still, that gentle tug on her hair conveying not a command but an invitation. His thumb stroked thoughtfully across the curling ends of her hair as he watched her.