St. Leger 1: The Bride Finder

  It occurred to her that he probably didn't know what that was, so she added, "Reading."

  Anatole glowered up at her. He stalked toward her with a warrior's stride, hands planted on the flat plane of his hips. Madeline clutched the top of the ladder, feeling like a kitten treed by a great snarling mastiff. Now, what had happened to make him so angry, she wondered in dismay? Would there ever be any comprehending the man's black moods?

  She went on desperately, "You have an excellent library here, my lord. I was so surprised. It didn't seem like anything that you would—I—I mean…"

  "Anything that I would bother with? It isn't. This was my father's world, not mine," Anatole said with a bitterness Madeline was unable to understand.

  "Well, it's wonderful," she concluded weakly. "I can see myself spending many happy hours here."

  Anatole's eyes flashed dark fire. The ladder must have been more unstable than she'd imagined, for it began to sway wildly beneath her. With a startled cry Madeline grabbed for the shelves, sending books flying as she tried to maintain her balance, but to no avail.

  She tumbled from the rung only to be caught hard against Anatole's body. She felt giddy, helpless for a moment, held suspended against his powerful frame. Then he plunked her down on the carpet, his hands still gripped possessively about her waist.

  "You won't be spending any time here at all," he growled. "Not if it means neglecting your duties as my wife."

  "What duties?" she asked in astonishment. "What have I neglected?"

  "My bed."

  His bluntness brought the fire to her cheeks. Her eyes roved over him, taking in the details of his appearance. Clad only in his breeches, boots, and shirt, the topmost buttons were undone to reveal a disturbing glimpse of hair-roughened chest. Like a warlord who'd started stripping himself for action, only to find the enemy flown.

  But she wasn't his enemy. She was his wife.

  "I'm sorry," she said. "I came into the library, and I fear I lost track of time. I wasn't tired."

  "I didn't want you in my bed to sleep."

  "I know that." Madeline raised her head, meeting his gaze with a calm she didn't feel. "And so you've tracked me down to fling me over your shoulder and cart me upstairs?"

  His hands on her waist tightened. "If necessary."

  "It won't be," she said sadly. "I am fully prepared to—to submit."

  "Good." He hauled her into his arms, taking her mouth in a kiss that savored more of conquest than any sweeter emotion. So much for all his promises to be more gentle, Madeline thought, her heart breaking.

  But she held herself still, offering herself up to his embrace as rigidly as any martyr consigned to the flames. Her lack of response only seemed to fuel his passion. He breached the seal of her lips, his tongue invading her mouth with a fierce desperation that stirred strange, conflicting desires inside her, the desire to flee, the desire to melt closer against him.

  But when he reached up to cup her breast, alarm won out; it was a touch too intimate, too new. Struggling wildly, she managed to break free and backed away. But the bookcase behind her allowed her little room for retreat.

  Anatole stalked after her, pinning her with his brooding gaze.

  "I will have you, Madeline," he said. "I've waited and dreamed of this night for far too long."

  "So have I," she cried. "But our dreams were not the same."

  "Obviously not."

  Madeline gasped as he plunged his hand down her bodice, but only to draw forth the miniature portrait and dangle it accusingly before her.

  "Why do you continue to wear this God-cursed thing?"

  How had he even known that she still had it? Madeline wondered. Remembering how brutally Anatole had treated her cherished portrait last time, Madeline snatched the miniature away from him, cupping it in her hands.

  "I continue to wear it because I like it," she said. "It's a lovely painting."

  "I won't have my wife mooning over the image of another man." His hand closed over her wrist as though he meant to pry her fingers open.

  Desperately Madeline tightened her grip. "It's not another man. It's a likeness of you."

  "Don't be a fool, damn it! You can see plainly that it's not."

  "Then, you should curse the artist instead of me."

  "I have! Ever since I painted the—" Swearing under his breath, Anatole broke off what he'd been about to say.

  But it was too late. Madeline had heard enough to gape at him in astonishment. "You painted the portrait yourself?" she asked, taking no pains to conceal her incredulity.

  He didn't answer her. Shame washed over his features. He released her wrist and stepped back. Madeline slowly uncurled her fingers, trying to reconcile the delicate brush strokes of the painting with Anatole's large rough hands. Was it possible a man as fierce and ruthless as Anatole could have created the face that had captured her heart and imagination? The expression exquisitely gentle, the mouth so sensitive, the eyes filled with a haunting sorrow the way… Madeline's breath caught in her throat. The way Anatole's eyes were now.

  The barrier of his pride was down, allowing her a glimpse of a far different man. Lonely, vulnerable, unsure of himself.

  Then he turned away, flinging up one hand as though he would shield himself from her searching gaze.

  "Never mind," he muttered. "Keep the damn portrait, and let your dreams warm your bed. I wish you joy of them."

  He strode toward the door. He was offering her a reprieve. Madeline should have been grateful, and yet…

  She stared at the miniature, the Reverend Fitzleger's words echoing through her mind. 'Tis the portrait of his soul.

  "Anatole!" she cried out. “Wait!"

  He didn't turn around, but he hesitated long enough for Madeline to lift her skirts and rush after him. All anger had drained from his face, leaving only an expression of great weariness.

  She held the portrait out to him and said, "You really did paint this?"

  "Aye," he replied dully.

  Dozens of questions rushed into her head, but how could she possibly ask him what she most wanted to know? Why? How, with such incredible skill, had he come to depict features so different from his own?

  "You intended it to be a self-portrait, then?" she inquired hesitantly. "You did it by looking into a mirror?"

  He gave a harsh laugh, raking back his black tangle of hair, touching his scar. "Does it look as though I had?"

  "I only thought… well, you might have painted this when you were younger."

  "I was but fifteen, but I never resembled the face in that painting, even then."

  "Fifteen!" Madeline exclaimed in awe. She'd known many acclaimed artists in London whose work did not display half as much talent. "Dear heavens, you were a prodigy."

  "I was a fool," he said. "Wasting my time painting images of the man I could never be. The sort of man that…" He reached out to touch her hair, his calloused fingers snagging on a silken tendril, his eyes darkening with a hopeless longing. He allowed his hand to fall back to his side.

  "The sort of man who wouldn't terrify his bride into hiding in the library on their wedding night."

  "I wasn't hiding. And I'm not terrified of you."

  "No?" A sad smile touched his lips.

  "Well, not that terrified," she amended. "I only came to the library seeking information."

  "What kind of information?"

  "About our wedding night." Madeline tussled with her own pride before blurting out, "I don't have the least notion what I'm supposed to do."

  When Anatole's brow knit in confusion, she ducked her head, her voice coming out in accents of muffled embarrassment. "I don't know how to—to consummate our marriage."

  She braced herself, waiting for Anatole to break into a gale of laughter. But a silence settled over the room, one that stretched out for so long, she was forced to-risk a peek at him.

  He stood frozen, completely thunderstruck. He opened his mouth as if to speak, then closed it again, finally pro
testing, "But surely your mother must have explained matters to you."

  "My mother was always too busy selecting a new gown or attending the latest salon to ever be bothered explaining anything."

  "But your sisters. Fitzleger told me you had married sisters. Surely they—"

  "Louisa and Juliette?" Madeline said, appalled by the mere suggestion. "They are younger than I.I have always been the one to give advice. I could hardly go to them and admit that—that—"

  "That there was something you didn't know?" Anatole filled in dryly.

  "Exactly!"

  "Then, what in thunderation were you planning to do?"

  Madeline supposed this was not a good time to remind him that she'd expected her husband to be a different sort of man, tender and patient about initiating his bride into the mysteries of married life. She moved past him, fidgeting with the ribbon that held the portrait.

  "I was hoping that my maid Estelle might have been able to give me a hint or two. Frenchwomen seem born knowing about such things. But since she is gone, I had no choice but to come to the library to research the problem."

  Anatole gazed about him, appearing to study his library with a new respect. "I have books about that?"

  "No," Madeline said glumly. "At least, nothing specific enough. The best I found was a reference in Chaucer to something he called 'a merrie fit.' But that's not at all helpful."

  "No, I suppose it wouldn't be." A thoughtful frown creased his brow.

  Madeline had expected him to be amused by her predicament. Or else impatient and annoyed. The last thing she'd expected was that he might be as nonplussed as she was. An awful thought struck her.

  "Dear Lord," she murmured. "You're not a virgin, too, are you?"

  "Of course not! However, my experience with well-bred ladies is not wide. I have never bedded a woman innocent of the ways of men."

  "Will it be so very different, then?" Madeline asked anxiously.

  "If I've never bedded a virgin before, how the deuce should I know?" He took to prowling about the room, restlessly fingering the books she'd discarded. He fetched up in front of the window, shoving back the heavy must-laden draperies to stare out into the night.

  As Madeline watched him, realization dawned on her, one that flooded her with amazement. Beneath all his fierce male bluster, Anatole was as nervous and uncertain about tonight as she was. Only while she had sought her answers in books, he seemed to be seeking his in the darkness of the land beyond the glass.

  Candlelight limned his profile, somehow rendering his harsh features more vulnerable than she'd ever seen him before. Despite the broad reach of his shoulders and his towering height, she found herself thinking instead of a fifteen-year-old boy that had once wandered the rooms of this vast empty house. So lonely, he'd spent his time with watercolor and brush, trying to redesign his own face.

  What dark forces had shaped that boy into the man that now stood before her, this man with his scarred face and haunted eyes, who loved horses and hated books, whose mind seemed a battleground, torn between his own imperious will and ancient superstitions? There was obviously much more to the fierce-tempered Anatole than Madeline had ever imagined. So much about him that she did not yet understand. But if he was ever truly going to be her husband, she needed to try.

  Gazing down at the portrait one last time, she slowly removed it and laid it upon the library table. Drifting closer to Anatole, she touched him lightly on the sleeve. Gathering up her courage, she said, "We are two reasonably intelligent people, my lord. Surely we can find some way to muddle through this wedding night of ours."

  She summoned up a smile, her hand remarkably steady as she held it out to him. "It is getting late. I think that it is time that we went to bed."

  Anatole stared at her proffered hand as though afraid if he dared reach for it, it would be withdrawn. Then slowly, carefully, he engulfed her fingers in the warm strength of his own.

  "Aye, lady," he said huskily, raising her hand to his lips.

  Picking up a candle to light the way, he escorted her from the library with a solemn courtesy. Hand in hand, they crossed the silent hall to face the dark at the top of the stairs together.

  * * * * *

  Madeline's bedchamber already seemed to have taken on the aura of her presence, her fragrance lingering in the air, the dresser strewn with ivory-handled hairbrushes, ribbons, and other female lacy things, as soft and mysterious to Anatole as his bride herself.

  Madeline stood near the foot of her bed, facing him, the glow of a single candle illuminating her look of shy expectancy. Anatole realized it was up to him to make the next move. After all, he was the one who was supposed to know what he was doing here.

  But all he seemed able to do was stare at her, clumsy as some awestruck peasant lad. He flexed his hand, still warm from the gentle imprint of her fingers. He couldn't remember the last time anyone had dared reach for his hand. Perhaps no one ever had.

  The gesture left him shaken. He'd spent so much of this day imagining taking her, it had never occurred to him that Madeline might end by taking him, in some subtle way he did not fully understand.

  As the minutes stretched out, Madeline became nervous beneath his regard. Fretting with the trim on her gown, she asked, "Should I fetch my nightgown now?"

  "No," he said hoarsely. "You won't be needing one."

  "But what am I to wear to—Oh!" Her cheeks flamed bright red as realization appeared to strike her.

  Wonderful. Anatole grimaced. Why didn't he just announce that he wanted her naked under him and be done with it? He closed the distance between them, slipping his arms around her in what he hoped was a reassuring manner. But his hands felt wooden and awkward, daunted by the sheer weight of her innocence. She understood nothing of the kind of desire that burned inside him. One wrong move on his part, one rough caress, and he'd shatter the tentative bond beginning to form between them.

  He'd cursed himself for a fool earlier when he ended up blurting out to her the secret of that portrait. But in some odd way, it had made things better. She'd left the miniature downstairs on the library table, forgotten. It was almost as though he'd vanquished a rival.

  Although she was tense, Madeline nestled closer against him. Her breasts grazing his chest proved a sweet torment, and he longed to devour her face with fierce hot kisses.

  Instead he forced himself to brush his lips chastely against her forehead. Running his hands over her back, he began to tug at the laces that held her gown.

  "Wait!" she said, bracing her hands against his chest and glancing up at him. "Could you explain first?"

  "Explain what?" he murmured, intoxicated by her sweet feminine scent, by the feel of soft womanly curves only a bit of silk and lace away.

  "Explain what it is we're going to do."

  The blood that had been warming so nicely through Anatole's veins turned to ice. He stared down at her in horror. No. She couldn't possibly be expecting him to talk about that, could she?

  But it was obvious from the earnest expression in her eyes that she could and did. Anatole stifled a groan. Only Madeline would want a rational explanation for something as irrational as the mating process, the primal urges that drew men and women together.

  "Please," she added as though sensing he was about to bluster out a refusal. "It would make me feel so much better."

  Anatole stilled his hands at her waist and swallowed hard. He had no trouble discussing the most bawdy facts of life with his grooms and stable hands. Why was the prospect so much more intimidating with his own wife?

  "Well," he said at last. "What happens between a man and a woman… It is just something natural."

  "Yes?" Madeline nodded encouragingly when he hesitated.

  Anatole's eyes roved about the bedchamber, seeking inspiration. He racked his brain, trying to remember how he had obtained his first awareness of what his own father had always delicately referred to as "country matters."

  "Surely at some time you must have obse
rved the behavior of bitches?" he asked in pure desperation.

  "Bitches?" Madeline repeated weakly.

  "Hunting hounds. The way they breed."

  "We never had any hunting hounds. Only a little King Charles spaniel." A worried furrow appeared in Madeline's brow. "However, Muffin did have the strangest affinity for the butler's leg."

  "I don't have any interest in your legs," Anatole hurried to reassure her. "At least not that way."

  Pacing a few steps away from her, he blew out a gust of breath and tried again. "What about horses, then? Have you ever—" An unfortunate image rose in his mind of the violent way his own stallion mounted a mare when put to stud.

  "No, never mind about that," he said hastily. This was ridiculous, he thought, dragging his hand back through his hair. He was actually starting to feel beads of perspiration gather on his brow. He'd never been much of a man for talking, always favoring the more direct approach.

  Setting his mouth in a grim line, he said, "Madeline, I think it would be best if you simply allowed me to show you."

  Before she could argue with him, he sank down on the edge of the bed and began doggedly tugging off his boots and hose. His shirt quickly followed. When his hands lowered to the buttons of his breeches, he heard Madeline's soft gasp. But, although he'd often been foolish enough to regret the imperfections of his face, he was not the least bit modest about his body.

  Peeling off his breeches and discarding them, he turned, fully prepared to peel Madeline's fingers away from her face. He was not as prepared to find her staring at him, round eyed.

  Madeline thought she should avert her face or at least lower her eyes. But, although she was blushing hotly, she couldn't seem to do either. Curiosity had always been her besetting sin.

  Her only acquaintance with the male form was through her brother's sketches. On his grand tour Jeremy had gone through an artistic period, trying to copy the European great works of art, most of his efforts seeming to center on classical nudes. But pen and ink was one thing, six feet two inches of naked male flesh quite another.