Annette Blair - Scandalous Brides

“Bryce, what is wrong? Are you in pain? What can I do for you?”

“It was only a dream,” he said. “A bloody nightmare, like a fretful three-year-old.”

“Of the war?” she asked. “Was it terrible?”

He relinquished her hands. “Light a candle, will you?”

Alex did as he requested, then she poured him a brandy. “ Was it terrible?” she asked again, handing him the glass of dark amber liquid.

He sipped it and laid his head against the back of the sofa. “Horrid.”

“Would you like to tell me about it?”

His sigh was heavy. “There was a huge, hulking dragon…” He paused and opened his eyes to regard her. “I believe it was purple. And scaly.”

Alex sat back on her heels. “You rat, you are toying with me.”

Hawk sat forward and fingered the hair coiled on her shoulder. “Toying with you, am I? If that were true, then I would be satisfied.”

Alex frowned. “What are you talki—”

“Your hair finally grew past your waist,” he said, extending the coil its full length. “You waited all your life for this.”

“You made fun of me, because I made you measure it.”

“Daily,” he added. “But I teased you more for your impatience, because it never grew fast enough . Nothing ever happened fast enough for you. You were so certain that one day your husband would adore your hair long and flowing past your waist.”

Alex regarded her hands, splayed on her knees, reluctant to discover what said husband really thought.

An ember snapped in the hearth.

“You were right,” Hawk said, thrumming her nerves and speeding her heart. “Go back to bed, Lexy. You will take a chill. Did you bring nothing warmer for sleeping?”

Lexy . No one else had ever called her that. Hawk’s tone had gone from gruff to teasing and she dared to regard him. “I understood,” she said, “that a bride wore less… rather than more, to sleep during the honey-month, though I have no firsthand knowledge, you understand.”

“A pity, that,” he said, as if he meant it. “Did Chesterfield realize he was taking a virgin widow to wife?”

Alex bristled and felt cornered once again, as if a misstatement now might carry a price she could not fathom. “We thought you dead for more than a year, Bryce. What makes you so certain that I remain untouched?”

Hawk’s jaw set; the fire in his eyes leapt, and under her hand, the pulse at his wrist trebled. “Are you saying—” He shook his head. “I dreamed…” After a long moment of expectation, he nodded and said nothing more.

Alex rose and went to open his portmanteau , regarding its contents, rather than her husband, as she answered. “I am saying, in all fairness to me, what I did after you died is not your concern—especially given the length of time between the event and your return.” She extracted a fresh shirt and went to offer her hand. “Come, sleep in the bed. You cannot stay here. The covers are soaked.”

“No, I am fine,” Hawk said, but he rose anyway, a measure of his nightmare-muddled senses, Alex thought, as he allowed her to lead him, much as he had led her earlier, into the bedroom. By her guess, the time must be going on two in the morning.

With the only light in the bedchamber coming from a candle left to drown in its own wax, and a scuttle’s worth of glowing embers, she sat Bryce on the edge of the bed and went for his shirt studs.

Stud by stud, Alex divested her husband of his damp shirt and replaced it with the dry one, though, neither of them sought to replace the studs.

Somehow they communicated without words that he would retain his trousers, though Alex ascertained, with a sweep of her hand along one tensely muscled thigh, that they were not as damp as his shirt had been. Then he allowed her to tuck him into the bed, and after she went around to climb in on the opposite side, he even accepted her warmth beside him.

“Cold are you?” he asked, after a silence, more in derision than question. “I warned you.”

“Umhmm.” Alex sought his hand, clenched tight at his side and cupped the hard fist, despite his resistance, taking a good deal of satisfaction in stroking his knuckles with her thumb.

He sighed, then, either in relaxation or resignation, Alex could not be certain which, as she kissed his temple.

“Be still and let a man sleep,” he said.

Before long, Alex heard the soft rumble of his deepened breathing and she reveled in the beauty of the moment.

Somewhere near dawn, during that sweet drifting time between sleep and wakefulness, Alex thought she felt a hand in her hair, someone’s breath upon her brow, a butterfly-soft kiss, but before she could ascertain whether it was a dream or not, her husband left the bed.

Pleased to believe she had not been dreaming, Alex slipped back into the waiting arms of Morpheus.

Hawk woke her hours later, close to noon, gruff and impersonal once more. They departed Stephen’s Hotel before breaking their fast, with his promise that they would stop soon.

Alex surmised that his sullen, somber mood must have to do with his nightmare.

SIX

AFTER TRAVELING for nearly an hour, in the throes of a need to drive himself beyond endurance, Hawk ordered a stop at the Old Welsh Harp Inn, along the Broadway in West Hendon. Alex needed to stretch her legs and refresh herself, and Myerson needed as badly to water the horses.

Hawk realized that this was not a war game he was playing, that slogging on would not catch the enemy unaware. Neither would it drive them beyond the enemy’s reach, for in weak moments, Hawk very much feared that his worst enemy lived inside him.

He secured a bedchamber where he and Alex might both freshen up, but as soon as they entered, the great four-poster in its center loomed large, bright and boldly inviting, in counterpoint to the future, which loomed dark, narrow, and depressingly bleak.

Alex did not love him, Hawk reminded himself, and she deserved better, at any rate. He excused himself and stepped outside on the pretext that she could refresh herself at her leisure and in peace and privacy.

When she came down, he seated her in the private dining parlor he had secured, and took his turn upstairs. By the time he returned, the future seemed so grim, that any appetite he might once have imagined no longer existed.

While they waited to be served, Alex caught him up on his sister Rose’s daughters, now his wards, all the while keeping her aversion to his scars from her expression, even in the well-lit parlor, where his every imperfection must appear obtrusive and hideous.

Beatrix had been four and her sister, Claudia, fifteen, when their widowed mother died of consumption. Among the few remaining members of Hawk’s family—besides his sister-in-law Sabrina and her children—Claude and Bea had been his wards for a year, Alexandra’s for nearly twice as long.

Alex regaled him with homely tales that revealed just how much she had come to love his nieces, proving he had been right in his decision to go to war. They had been better off with her than they would ever have been with him. If only they could all remain together now that he was back.

But he owed Alex such a debt of gratitude, the least he could do was set her free.

“Bea has so vivid an imagination,” Alex said, “that we never know what she will fabricate next. Last month, she told us she was a fairy. And what must we do before every meal but carefully fold her invisible wings for all of ten minutes, so she could sit properly back against her chair to take sustenance. Claudia informed her in exasperation one evening, that everyone knew fairy wings were supposed to fold flat without help, but Bea replied sadly that hers were defective.”