The Irish Bride (20 page)

“I could do with a glass of something,” she admitted.

“My father had this laid down on the day I was born,” Nick said. The pop of a champagne cork startled her.

“To serve at your wedding breakfast, no doubt.” Her tone held a forced brightness that made Nick feel like the lowest thing that crawled.

“Exactly.” He poured a glass and put it into her hand. “I’ll not offer you a toast,” he said. “Not yet”

“No, we’ve nothing whatever to celebrate.”

“I hope you won’t continue to feel that way, Rietta.”

“What a charming spot this is, Sir Nicholas. Is the river very deep at this point?”

“Not deep enough to drown in.”

“That’s too bad. A spot deep enough to drown in would be marvelously apt at this moment.”

“On the contrary, I would find it of no use at all.” He wiped the dew off the bench with a napkin and encouraged her to sit down. “My grandfather set this bench here, fifty years ago or more. He proposed to my grandmother here.”

“Are we on your land already?” she asked as politely as a guest making conversation at a rather dull party.

“Yes, all this belongs to Greenwood. The family castle was on the far side of the stream once upon a time. The river widened, the castle fell down, the river narrowed again, and here we are. The bench is made from stone recovered from the river.”

“Your family didn’t rebuild your castle?”

“There was no need. The days of stealing cattle from our neighbors were long over and a castle was no protection against Cromwell’s guns. So we moved up over the hill and built Greenwood-—a few times over.”

“Your home is nearby, then?”

“Half a mile away. You can see the lights around the next turn.”

“And yet you break our journey here?”

“We need to talk before we go home.”

“I suppose we must.” Her glass glinted as she tilted it to drink the last few drops.

“More?” Nick asked.

She hesitated before refusing. “I shall face my ordeal without Dutch courage.”

“So bad as that?”

“Why did you do it?” she demanded as though the words were torn from her. “Why? You must have known I was unwilling. If you had refused ...”

“Your father made it impossible to refuse.”

“My father,” she said brokenly, turning away. “I can never forgive him for this.”

She spoke so sadly, as though her inability to forgive was more her pain than her father’s, that Nick couldn’t resist leaning down to put his arm about her, to comfort her as though she were a child. But Rietta shrugged off his touch.

“Rietta, if there’d been another way ... he threatened to throw you onto the street or to marry you to the first man he met. What could I do but marry you to save you from that?”

“You are too kind, sir,” she said, her body rising along with her voice. “Shall I express the depth of my gratitude? I cannot. I have none to give you.”

“I don’t want gratitude, Rietta.”

“It never occurred to you, I suppose, to offer me sanctuary in your home. Or, say, fifty pounds to take myself to my aunt in England?”

“I didn’t know you had an aunt in England. But no, it didn’t occur to me.”

“Why not?”

“You know why not. Surely if anything is clear, it is that. I want you.” He didn’t take so much as a single step toward her, although every impulse in his body was urging him to do so.

“So it wasn’t entirely from altruistic motives that you have married me this night.”

Nick shook his head. “I begin to wonder if there was any unselfishness in my soul at all.”

“Perhaps there was. A little.” She held up her hand. “No. Don’t touch me.”

“I wasn’t. I won’t. No matter how much I want to.”

She began to pace restlessly, her dress sweeping over the wet grass. Nick guessed that she felt as trapped as a lioness in a menagerie cage, confined through no fault of her own, and now people were poking sticks at her through the bars. “I suppose there is no doubt that ours is a legal marriage.”

“Your father’s consent is all that was required. And, forgive me, Rietta, you did take the vows of your own free will.”

“Did I? My father made the same threats to me as he did to you. Marriage by menaces. I am so ...” her voice trailed off as she covered her face with her hands.

Nick longed to take her in his arms and kiss away her tears, but he did not feel he had the right. She’d been overpowered by male authority enough for one day. Even the tenderest of coercion would be an insult from which their marriage might never recover.

“Marriage,” he said aloud. “Our marriage.”

The words warmed him in a way that was new and strange. Nick suddenly realized that, whatever else happened, he need never fear being alone with his ghosts. Rietta would be his wife, in name only for a time, in full flower later on. For their lifetimes to come, this tie would be between them, a halter sometimes, a lifeline at others.

“What about it?” she asked.

“My mother mustn’t know the full tale of our deeds tonight. The thought that her children should marry for anything but love is repugnant to her.”

“She is a very kind woman.”

“Yes. And not in the best of health, I’m afraid. Life with my father was not conducive to a happy or secure outlook on life. I’d do anything to spare her pain.”

“What tale can we tell, though, to explain my sudden arrival at Greenwood and in such a condition?” Rietta seemed to become aware that her hair was imperfectly stuffed beneath her bonnet and took off the confining headgear with an impatient jerk of the ribbons.

She shook her hair free, combing through the tangles with the fingers of one hand. Nick’s mouth went dry and he took a hasty gulp of champagne. The bubbles went the wrong way, making him choke, but it wasn’t the alcohol that made him feel so dizzy. With hair neatly coiled on the top of her head, her eyes mild and intelligent, neat in her dress and movements, Rietta had attracted him both physically and emotionally. A quiet, uncomplicated girl made a precise antidote to the horrors of war.

Now she appeared to him like a wild water spirit, her hair blowing free like a spume of sea mist thrown up on the rocks. Naked emotion shown in her eyes, moving him as her fortitude had not. She was disheveled, exhausted, and infinitely dear, all the more so when he knew tomorrow she would appear as controlled and engaging as before. Only he had this glimpse of the other side of her. Nick found himself wishing jealously to keep this image of Rietta all to himself.

“I suppose we might tell your mother that we have eloped,” she said.

“Eloped? That might work. But why have we done this rash thing?”

“My father’s objections?”

“She won’t believe he could have any. She thinks I’m perfect.”

‘There’s no accounting for a parent’s partiality. I would have staked my life that my father thought I was ... valuable.”

Nick had to cross his arms, tucking his hands away securely to keep from embracing her, so bleak and miserable did she sound.

“We’ll tell Mother that I rescued you from him,” he said bracingly. “She’ll like that; it sounds romantic. Your father was pressuring you into an uncongenial marriage, say with James Greeves.”

“Yes,” she said, sniffing but attempting with great courage to join in the game of make-believe. “That’s a stock device from plays—the older man who wants to marry youth.”

“It never fails to intrigue the audience. At least, not this audience. Mother’s very fond of gothic novels. It’s a pity we can’t make Greeves some sort of Italian count with his own castle, preferably with an oubliette under the floor. She’d be happier with a few exotic trimmings.”

“My father has dealings with Egyptian cotton merchants. We could claim that Father has sold me to one such, a sheik perhaps, to pay a lading bill or something.”

“A distasteful suitor will serve without dragging in the Egyptian cotton market. So, you have an elderly suitor, preferred by your father, and then—what? I suppose you toyed with the notion, only to find me more to your taste?”

“No, I resisted tooth and nail, determined never to agree to a marriage of such inequality. Then when I met you ...”

“You met your beau ideal?” he said, grinning.

“Hardly that. We don’t want to have to pretend to be ... to be fond of each other.”

“I am fond of you, Rietta. I cannot imagine another woman for whom I’d have so willingly run my head into this noose.”

“But you do not love me.”

He would have gladly damned himself for a swifter tongue, one that would not hesitate over a firm “yes.” As it was, he could neither lie ardently, nor would a flat negative serve to answer her. Nick did not believe that he loved Rietta, but he certainly loved no one else.

“If you try to counterfeit love,” Rietta said, not waiting, “your mother will know that you do not mean it.”

“I haven’t been in love since I was seventeen.” Nick strove to recapture their easy banter. “Would you like to hear about her?”

“In truth? No.”

“Pity. I make quite an affecting tale of my lost beloved.” He made some show of sighing sentimentally. “It comes in most useful at times.”

“When you wish to be out of an entanglement?” Her voice sounded a trifle choked. In the uncertain moonlight, he couldn’t tell if it was with laughter or tears.

“Exactly. How well you understand me.”

“Have there been many women in your life? Not that I care,” she added hurriedly.

“It depends on what you mean by ‘many,’ I suppose. I haven’t been a saint, Rietta.”

“I did not expect you to have been one, Sir Nicholas.”

“That won’t do. You’ll have to call me Nick.”

She turned her shoulder to him. It was all he could do not to reach out to draw one of her silky strands of hair through his fingers, but he’d promised not to touch her.

Walking around her, Nick captured her gaze when it wanted, butterfly-like, to land everywhere but on him. “You must call me Nick, Rietta, or they’ll wonder why.”

“Are we married, Sir Nicholas?” she asked desperately. “Are we, in truth?”

“In truth, Rietta, we are.”

She nodded like someone hearing the official word of a crushing defeat. As if too exhausted for the moment to even negotiate a surrender, she hardly seemed able to stand. “Very well, Nick. Tell your mother what fiction you will and I’ll agree.”

* * * *

Tears came to Lady Kirwan’s eyes as she embraced her new daughter. “You’re going to think me a foolish old woman, but the moment I saw you I knew you were right for Nick.”

‘I'm sure you must find the nature of our marriage to be peculiar, to say the least.”

“
I
think it’s romantic,” Amelia said firmly.

“Very romantic,” Emma echoed, but with a sigh.

They’d all come down in various states of undress when Nick had shouted their names up the stairway. For a moment they’d stood on the landing, staring in amazement at Rietta. She’d felt her cheeks burn as she instinctively moved closer to Nick. Then, without giving either of them a chance to explain her presence, his sisters and mother had hastened down the steps to greet her. Rietta had been almost overcome by the warmth of their welcome.

Only after they’d seen her seated by the fire, a cup of tea and plate of biscuits at her elbow, loving hands having taking her bonnet and pelisse and given her a towel for her damp hair, did they spare an instant to hear Nick out. But at the words “we’re married,” all further explanation had to wait for exclamations of joy and warm embraces all around. Even Emma, who was dressed as though in deepest mourning, clapped her hands in glee.

“Married! What could be more wonderful?”

A flood of questions followed their first pleasure. Nick answered them all, leaving Rietta to recover her equilibrium. She’d never expected such a reception. Where were the disdainful glances, the doubtful questions, the repulsing gestures? If they knew the truth, Lady Kirwan and her daughters would retreat from their friendly attitude. Any woman would, upon realizing her adored son had been trapped into marriage. Wouldn’t Lady Kirwan assume that Rietta had been involved in her father’s plot?

She’d seen upon their first meeting that Nick was the center of Lady Kirwan’s universe. If he was in the room, she had no eyes for anyone else. Looking at him now, Rietta realized that she’d never seen him be himself before. He looked relaxed, his mouth ready to smile at Amelia’s forthrightness, while he gave Emma a reassuring squeeze of the hand when an incautious word reminded the girl of her false lover. When he turned to his mother, his eyes betrayed much tenderness.

Rietta closed her eyes and leaned her head back, trying to recall exactly how his expression appeared when he looked at her. Did his smile warm his eyes? Or was it only the heat of lust glimmering there? She sighed sadly.

“The poor dear,” Lady Kirwan said. “Quite worn out. Take her upstairs and then leave her to us, Nick.”

On a sensation of floating, Rietta opened her eyes. Nick had only to turn his head a fraction of an inch to look into her face, for he was carrying her. He must have felt her tense. “You fell asleep,” he said softly. “My mother told me to carry you up to bed.”

“No...,” she whispered in a panic.

“Never fear. I have my orders and they are quite precise. I carry you. I place you on the bed. I leave. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

‘That’s right. But I can walk very well.”

“Don’t squirm so; I may drop you.”

“Please put me down.”

“I can’t. About the only thing of value that I learned in the army was to follow orders blindly.” A moment later, he said, “Whoops!” as she dropped a bit lower. “It would help if you’d put your arms about my neck to take some of the strain.”

She quickly did as he asked, though it brought them into even closer contact. Her breast rested against his shoulder, while she could have buried her hot face in the side of his neck. Instead, she stared straight ahead, as nearly as possible ignoring the man who carried her.

“That’s better,” he said.

“For whom?”

She felt a chuckle shake his chest. A moment later, they entered a candlelit room on the next level. Rietta hardly had a chance to glance around before he placed her gently in the center of a curtained bed. He bent over her, his hand flat on the mattress. Rietta blinked up at him, motionless as a bird that fears a cat prowling nearby.