His words made her throat ache. Would he ever become accustomed to her? She shook her head, felt the pins of her coiffure loosen, her unruly hair fighting for release. She froze.
“Listen,” he continued. “The whole of Little Billings knows you left with me. They expect you to return as my wife. To not do so will sink you into ruin, mire you so deep you shall never recover. The effects of which would spill over onto Nicholas. You can’t very well run like a frightened rabbit now, can you?”
He was right, of course. She could not walk away now. She could not be so selfish. She’d never been weak or cowardly before. By damn if she would begin now.
She nodded once. “You are right, of course.”
“This is settled then.” He arched one brow. “At last?”
“Yes.” She swallowed hard. “At last.”
“I’ll hazard to guess that marriage is scary under the best of circumstances.” His lips twisted. “But I vow to never hurt you.” His hands gentled on her arms, flexing. “You needn’t fear me, do you understand?”
She gazed into his eyes, drowning in the woodland green, soaking up his words, letting them fortify her. “I’m not afraid.”
“But you were.” Something sparked in his eyes then. “Is it him? Is it Ian?”
Ian? She shook her head, frowned. Ian? The dead man hadn’t crossed her mind. An irrational laugh bubbled in the back of her hot throat, but she fought against it, bit it back.
She should be thinking of him. He was Nicholas’s father, after all. But only Spencer filled her head. Spencer’s nearness, his overwhelming maleness, the memory of his bare chest, ridged with muscles that resembled a Greek sculpture. The thought that he would be her husband, that he would finish what they started in the library, made her heart pound faster.
And it dawned on her. She didn’t fear Spencer at all—she feared herself. That’s what she was running from.
She melted in his arms and watched him like a starving woman. Even now, the night ahead tormented her. Enticed and tormented her—equally.
She wanted to consummate their marriage. She could finally learn all that transpired in the marriage bed with a man who brought her body to life. But that would mean he would likely uncover all she sought to hide. The secret she had guarded so closely these years. What a mess.
His fingers slid up her arms, singeing her through the fabric of her dress. “Answer me. Do I have a ghost to contend with?”
She held his gaze, read the stark need in the brilliant green depths. The demand for truth.
She licked her lips, considered her answer, and blurted, “Yes.”
He jerked.
As much as she loathed adding another lie to the web, if it stayed his impulse to seduce her, it was worth it.
“I feel as though I’m betraying Ian.” A logical enough reason to keep Spencer at arm’s length, however much it pained her to spit the lie past her lips.
Something passed over his features then. “Betraying Ian,” he murmured. His hands fell from her. “Legitimizing his son? Giving Nicholas a future he could never hope to have as a bastard? Hardly rings of betrayal.”
She nodded. “Of course not, but feelings of the heart are not always logical. Just because we marry today doesn’t mean we have to consummate tonight—”
“You’ve made your wishes clear on that matter.” His eyes stared at her. Hard. Intractable. “Tirelessly so.”
A knock sounded on the parlor door then, followed by Mrs. Macgregor, the innkeeper’s wife. A tall gentleman with wind-chapped cheeks fell close on her heels.
Cold washed over Evie, dulling everything else—even the usual heat she felt in Spencer’s presence. Fortunate, she supposed. She needed to be dulled. Numb to this farcical undertaking.
Mrs. Macgregor introduced Mr. Hart.
Somehow, a proper greeting passed her lips.
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” Mr. Hart said. “If you’ll stand here, we can proceed.”
Spencer took her elbow and guided her before the window. Cold drifted from the glass, penetrating the wool of her dress. She shivered and folded her arms in front of her. Spencer must have felt her shudder. He stepped close, the length of his arm lining with her body, which only made her tremble more.
The reverend began.
She watched his lips move, tried to absorb his words. It was as though she drifted underwater, in a great vacuum, void of time and noise.
Turning, she studied the strong profile of the man at her side. Stoic. His mouth didn’t give the slightest bend. His features looked carved from marble.
He would be a part of her life now. Forever. Unto death. She struggled to wrap her head around that. To appreciate the significance of the moment. The enormity of marrying a stranger. Even as she tried to absorb all that, to see through the blur, to hear past the dull roar in her head, nothing the reverend said penetrated. Not her name. Not his.
Nothing until Mr. Hart uttered the words man and wife.
Man and wife. Man and wife.
She was married.
As a girl at Penwich, she had dreamed of adventure, of leaving the ordinary behind and flying away from the familiar. Even in those days, marriage had not played into her notions of adventure. And afterwards, after Nicholas was born and she’d given up on the notion of adventure, marriage had loomed ever further, the most distant and remote of possibilities.
And yet now, here she stood. A wife.
“You may now kiss your bride.”
The pronouncement launched her heart into her throat. She turned.
Those pale green eyes stared down at her, inching closer as his head lowered. She felt the others watching her, cheerful, interested, blind to the fact that they watched a set of strangers wed . . . prepare to kiss.
His hands took hold of her shoulders, firm but gentle.
Her gaze fixed on his descending lips.
At the last moment, she turned her face away. His lips landed on her cheek, stilled there for a moment, a warm press to her chilled cheek. She fixed her eyes on the frosted windowpane until his mouth lifted. Until his hands fell away.
Slowly, she settled her gaze on his face.
A breath shivered from her lips. Something dark and angry glittered in the green of his eyes, and she understood at once. He did not like being denied. Especially this. Their first kiss as man and wife. Not an auspicious beginning, but she could not help herself.
Mrs. Macgregor clapped heartily, unaware of the tension. For a few moments, they preoccupied themselves with signing a leather-bound register. Well, the others did. She could narrowly function. With a shaking hand, she signed her name, an indistinct scrawl. And it was done.
Now she had the rest of her life to become acquainted with her husband.
And pray he never became too acquainted with her.
Chapter 15
“We’re sleeping here?”
Spencer watched as Evie stood in the center of the inn’s finest room and tried to grasp that she was his wife.
“Yes.” Leaning against the armoire, he broodingly watched as her gaze flicked to the bed, then away, then back again. His lips twitched. “Is there something wrong with the room?”
Alarm filled her brilliant blue eyes even as she managed a calmly murmured, “No.”
His gaze dropped to the fingers that she was twisting blue. To hide his smile, he sank into the armchair beside the window and began tugging off his boots, certain he would hear more on the matter of their shared room. If he knew one thing about his wife, it was that he made her uneasy. His smile slipped. Being in love with another man, even a dead one, would do that to a woman.
True to form, she inquired, “Were there no other rooms available?”
“Inn’s full.” His first boot hit the floor. “Didn’t seem logical to move to another inn across the village simply for a second room. Not as we’re married.”
She nodded, clearly suppressing her thoughts. Not that he needed her to speak her feelings to know her thoughts. The fine skin of her jaw feathered where she clenched her teeth. He knew. He knew she was staring at that bed and thinking of them in it together. Thinking of Ian . . . . and that the moment she climbed in bed with him, she betrayed Ian. A deep growl swelled inside his chest.
Why, he wondered, did he not suffer the same sentiment? How is it she felt a greater loyalty to Ian than he did? He dragged a hand over his jaw. He had loved his cousin, mourned his loss. Shouldn’t there be a token of shame twisting his gut for wanting to part her thighs and claim her? Mark her as his own?
With a vicious yank, he dropped another boot to the floor. “I suggest we get some sleep. Weather withstanding, we’ll depart early in the morn.”
She moved to her valise, pulling out her nightrail. With a guarded glance over her shoulder at him, she stepped behind the screen.
He stripped off his shirt, then paused, hands on the front of his trousers. Deciding to respect her sensibilities, he left his trousers on.
She emerged from the screen clad in the same white nightrail as the night before. Even so, he was stirred. He watched her as she moved to the mirror and unpinned her hair. It tumbled over her shoulders like dark honey in the candlelight. Her eyes flickered to him and away. She looked very young.
The thought came to him, unbidden: had Ian ever seen her with her hair unbound? More than likely their secret trysts had not afforded them time to fully unclothe. Jealous, stupid hope unfurled in his clenched chest. Perhaps his cousin had not even seen her entirely naked.
Dragging a hand through his hair, he silently cursed. He couldn’t change the fact that she had been with Ian. It was the reason he even knew her. The reason he’d married her. Perhaps, to some degree, the reason he wanted her so badly.
He was a fool to feel jealous over the past . . . or to seek a first with her.
You married her. You’re her first in that regard.
“Bloody hell.”
She shot him a quick glance, blinking at his harshly muttered expletive.
“Did you say something—”
He pulled down the bed with a rough yank. “No,” he bit out, angered beyond reason. “Nothing at all. It’s been a long day. Let us just go to bed.”
She slid beneath the coverlet, pulling it up and folding it neatly at her chest.
For a moment he paused, staring at her on her far side of the bed. She clenched trembling hands together over her stomach. Bloody hell. He terrified her. Did she think he would pounce on her?
He turned away and quickly doused the lamp. Climbing into bed beside her, he was careful not to touch her. More for himself than her. He didn’t trust himself. Didn’t trust his control.
Lying in bed, the low-burning fire from the hearth cast the room in a lazy glow. Outside, a flurry of white fell.
He thought of their vows. She had turned her cheek to him at the end. His hand curled into a fist at his side in memory of that rebuff. Could she not bear even the smallest kiss to seal their union? Did Ian’s ghost prevent her from even so small a gesture? And why the hell should any of it matter so much to him? He had his wife. Soon he would have his heir. It wasn’t as though he wanted her affections.
In that moment, he couldn’t abide himself. He couldn’t stomach the jealousy he felt for his cousin. And he couldn’t understand this overriding need to claim the woman he had wed, to prove to her that she wanted him, that he could make her burn with desire. More than any ghost she loved ever could.
Evie feigned sleep.
That’s not to say she didn’t attempt to sleep. She tried. Valiantly, she tried.
She told herself the night would fly past if she could only surrender to dreams. She wouldn’t even know a man slept beside her—a man as virile and handsome as the one she had wed. The bed yawned large enough between them. They would likely never even brush against each other.
In the morning they would wake and return to Ashton Grange. To the separate beds that awaited them there. One night in a bed together was nothing about which to feel alarm.