Miss Sophie was right, Victoire had to admit. Between the colorful splash of the bouquet and the graceful headdress with ribbons in the same colors as the fresh flowers, the old woolen gown seemed to fade away, no longer making her look like the most reluctant bride in the kingdom.

  And now she was lying to herself! She had tried to convince herself she didn’t want this marriage, and had nearly succeeded. But the truth was . . . the truth was, her heart was pounding so hard it threatened to rip right through her chemise, stays, and gown. Her legs were so wobbly she feared she might collapse in the middle of the ceremony, her head in such a whirl she feared she would mix up the words so badly the vicar would snap closed his book, declaring the marriage null and void.

  She was terrified.

  She was marrying the man who had planned to marry Julia Tarleton. And when he couldn’t have her, had become a man of violence, a private policeman. A Devil’s Disciple. A rake.

  And yet he was more man than she had ever hoped to find. If only she could keep him.

  “It’s time,” Julia said. “We must go.”

  “Only a flight of stairs, a few steps to the drawing room,” Miss Sophie assured her.

  When Victoire didn’t move, Julia said softly, and not for the first time, “Jack’s a good man, Victoire. You have no need to worry, he’ll make a good husband.”

  You should know.

  Ah, bah, how could she be so stupid, so petty . . . so jealous. Jack and Julia were long ago. But had he ever stopped loving her?

  “Come, dear,” Miss Sophie declared. “We mustn’t keep the vicar waiting.”

  Heaven forbid they should keep the vicar waiting! Victoire mocked. Clutching her bouquet so tightly she feared the stems would snap, she marched toward the door, head high, lips thinned in determination. She doubted this was what Papa and Granpère had in mind when they planned to send her to England, but this was the twist her life had taken and she would deal with it.

  Jack stood in the drawing room, shoulder to shoulder with Nick. The vicar, hovering nearby, had already inspected the Special License Jack had been carrying around with him since his highly developed sense of honor had first whispered “marriage” in his ear. A few feet away, the Earl of Ellington and his countess sat side by side on a sofa, their expressions benign, almost eager—clearly far less conflicted about this moment than he himself. Jack turned abruptly away.

  Trapped in Hell’s limbo, with his eyes fixed on nothing, he waited . . . waited for Victoire. His bride. A shiver ran up his spine, nearly startling an oath out of him. He scowled. The leader of Harding’s Hellions did not shiver, did not cower. He might know fear, but he never showed it, never let it slow him down. How fortunate his shirt and tail-coat covered the hairs now standing upright on his arms.

  He was getting married. Not so shocking. Almost every man, after all, succumbed to this idiocy at some time in his life. He’d had a good run, nearly thirty-five years. If Nick had not returned from the dead . . . well, clearly he would have been a husband long since.

  It wasn’t as if the delights offered by the caves in West Wycombe hadn’t begun to pale. Though Avery would miss him . . .

  And it wasn’t as if he was giving up his employment—though he’d begun to have doubts about that as well.

  But to be obliged to a wife, who would take precedence over his brother, his friends . . . even Terence—that would take more than a little adjustment. Many men ignored their marital obligations, Jack conceded, but not Terence or Nick. Nor their noble acquaintances, the Trowbridge twins . . .

  “Marriages have had worse beginnings,” Nick offered, dragging Jack back to the reality of the sunny drawing room.

  No need to elaborate, for Nick would never twist the knife, rubbing in his happiness with Julia. Well, hell . . .

  And then Julia slipped through the doorway and stood aside, smiling softly at the young woman who had come in behind her. Victoire. Who took his breath away. Jack didn’t see the well-used blue gown, only a softly glowing dark-haired bride, clutching a large bouquet of spring flowers. A fair maiden with ribbons flowing about a pale face, a face that looked as worried about the repercussions of this marriage as he was.

  But he saw no reluctance; nor could he find any hint of it among his own kaleidoscope of emotions. Neither of them might welcome marriage, but it was possible Victoire might welcome him with considerably more enthusiasm than she welcomed the permanency of being bound to him for life.

  He’d gone mad!

  “Dearly Beloved . . .”

  Time to turn off his raging thoughts, pay attention to the words the vicar was intoning from The Book of Common Prayer, before he made a complete fool of himself.

  Hell and Devil, had Nick remembered the ring?

  They were married. Victoire leaned back against the amber velvet squabs of the Earl of Ellington’s coach and tried to make sense of the last twenty-four hours, in which she had gone from a firm determination to return to Québec to jouncing down the road to London, a married woman on the way to her new home. With her husband riding outside the coach, a rifle over his back and a pistol tucked into each pocket of his greatcoat. She wouldn’t be surprised to discover he carried a knife or two as well. And with him were Tom Dudley and his men, each, she suspected, as well-armed as Jack.

  Not the most romantic way to begin a marriage. Victoire sighed.

  “Do you think we’ll stop at an inn for the night, miss—missus?” Annie asked, a trifle plaintively.

  To Victoire’s disgust, she had no idea. Men could be beasts, every last one of them. Tonight was her wedding night, and here she was rattling around the coach like a stray coffee bean left in the grinder, with no idea what her husband’s plans were. A lowering thought, to say the least.

  “Looks like we’re stopping, missus,” Annie announced, just as Victoire’s jaw was beginning to ache from clenching her teeth so tight. “Changing horses again, most like.”

  The door swung open and Jack stuck his head inside. “One more stage and then we’ll stop for the night. I’m sorry for the haste, but the sooner we reach town and make our marriage known, the safer you’ll be.”

  “When our marriage is known, we will both be targets,” Victoire returned in no uncertain terms. “I have tried to tell you that.”

  “My dear girl, I’ve been a target for years. I am accustomed to it.” Jack waved a vague salute in her direction and disappeared, the door slammed shut, a shout to the coachman, and they were off.

  Tears misted Victoire’s eyes as the horses picked up speed and settled into a bone-rattling pace. Marriage was supposed to solve her problem. So far it didn’t seem to be working.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  “You pout quite prettily,” Jack observed, viewing his bride through the steam rising from mugs of hot punch the landlord had just set before them. A flash of fire from her dark eyes, undoubtedly intended to set him back on his heels, and then she was once again contemplating her mug, though he suspected she would prefer to heave it at his head.

  “I set a fast pace,” Jack said, realizing he had left explanations too late, “as I believed this to be the only inn where we could be both comfortable and safe for the night. My apologies if I did not make that clear.”

  “What is clear, Mr. Harding,” Victoire huffed, “is that you are unaccustomed to communicating your plans to anyone. Including a wife.”

  Hell and the devil, a hit, a veritable hit. He was like a saddle horse suddenly transformed into a coach horse, hitched in tandem. No longer independent but part of a team. It would take some getting used to . . .

  He knew men who never did. But Nick had managed it. Terence, Conyngham and Trowbridge as well—their wives all clearly happy. And if those rascals could do it, so could he.

  If he wanted to. And, surprisingly, he rather thought he did. If he had to be leg-shackled, then Victoire du Bois was the cream of the crop. Victoire Harding. Jack nearly groaned aloud. The name didn’t have the same ring. Purely plebeian, it reminded him once again that Victoire was descended from a ducal family while he was merely Jack the Bastard.

  Wasn’t that what Conyngham had once called himself—Blas the Bastard—when he was actually the heir to a dukedom? He had, in fact, reveled in it, as Jack recalled. Which was all well and good if you weren’t really a bastard.

  “If you have so little interest in me,” Victoire declared, clearly incensed by his wandering thoughts, “why on earth did you insist on marrying me?”

  Jack opened his mouth but no words came to his usually glib tongue. He took refuge in a long swallow of the landlord’s gut-warming punch. Finally, he lowered the mug to the table, leaned back in his chair and stared straight into his wife’s eyes.

  “I married you quite selfishly,” he told her, enjoying those velvet brown eyes widening in surprise. With a goodly dollop of skepticism, as well. “I married you because I wanted to. Your problems were but a convenient excuse.”

  Her eyes narrowed, her desire to believe him clearly warring with her common sense. Jack plunged ahead. “I have been dissatisfied with my life for some time now, and though it has not been easy to admit I needed a wife in my life, I am rapidly discovering it is so. Yes, I fought the idea, clinging tooth and nail to my independence. I even convinced myself you could do so much better than marry a bastard who is little more than a mercenary.” Ignoring her protests, he plunged ahead. “And I freely admit it will take me time to adjust to being part of a pair, just as you may not find it easy—”

  Victoire held up her hand. “Tais toi, mon brave. Enough.” Offering a gentle smile, she added, “Marriage is easier for women, I think. We are not so accustomed to having our own way.”

  An answering rueful smile quirked up the corners of Jack’s lips. “Once we are past the bramble patch we’re in at the moment, I believe we can manage the thing. Quite well, in fact. Do you agree?”

  Victoire leaned down, picked up the reticule she had tucked under her chair. She reached inside, her small pistol thunked onto the table. “As long as you know that if I ever find you in bed with another women, I shall shoot you both!”

  Jack sat immobile, not so much as a twitch of his lips revealing his inner satisfaction. This was the real reason he had married her, was it not? Any other woman, and he would have let her sail off into the western sunset with a sigh of relief. But Victoire? Unlike the pampered daughters of the ton, or the almost equally sheltered young misses of the English middle class, this petite fille from Québec had known the hardships of the Canadian wilderness and had her wits sharpened by life with Lord Claude. With beauty that hid an inner core of pure steel, Victoire was a prize he’d gladly cherish. And never look back on a long line of temporary companions. Nor feel sorrow over Julia who, he’d discovered, now provoked nothing more than warm nostalgia for those early days when they had supported each other’s seemingly hopeless causes.

  Jack manufactured a scowl. “Well now,” he drawled, emphasizing each word, “as I see it, I would have no need to look elsewhere as long as my wife was performing her marital duty.”

  Ah! Her eyes were sparking more flame than the fireplace. Good. He had no use for a namby-pamby miss who cowered the moment he frowned.

  “Abominable!” she sputtered, transforming on the instant from cold English beauty to angry French termagant. “C’est affreux! Tell me, how often is this ‘marital duty’? If you do not have me every day—or is it twice a day?—you use this as an excuse to go off to your devil caves and—”

  He should have controlled his laughter, but he couldn’t. He guffawed, then promptly clapped a hand over his mouth, though his shoulders continued to shake, his green eyes dancing above the width of his hand.

  “I should shoot you now!”

  Hand still in place over his mouth, Jack nodded.

  Silence . . . except for the strangled sounds escaping through his fingers. Lord, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt this light-hearted. Perhaps an eon ago when he’d been young. When he’d been known for his humor, his love of fun . . . his love of life.

  And now, somehow, in spite of the precariousness of their situation, Victoire had brought back his youth.

  But, hands clasped under her chin, eyes mere slits beneath a frown, she was showing no sign of sharing his feeling of well-being. Foreboding shot through him. Just because he was enjoying teasing his bride of a few short hours . . .

  Victoire glared at him above her clasped fingers. “You are—what is the word?—bamming me, n’est-ce pas? You find it amusing to speak of ‘marital duties’ to a virgin who is quite terrified her ignorance will disgust such a man of the world as yourself. For you, teasing me is entertaining; for me, it is horrible! I quake. You are tied to me by God and church, yet you will find me but a pale nothing compared to the women you have known, and off you will go.” She gulped back tears, adding most dramatically, “And that will be that. I am abandoned.”

  Good Lord, she couldn’t actually believe that! But she was knuckling both eyes now, a fat tear falling onto the tabletop. Jack shoved back his chair, marched around the table, and scooped her out of her chair. “Silly goose,” he whispered, “if I hadn’t wanted to marry you, you’d be on your way to Plymouth instead of London. Yes, you’ve probably heard I once thought to marry Julia, but that was over long since, though no one else ever took her place in my heart until you came along. Believe me, my girl, no one else could have snared me into parson’s mousetrap. I am not at all sure I am the right man for you, but you are most certainly the right woman for me. Do. You. Understand. That?”

  She sniffed, and nodded. “You lie most charmingly. You have as many doubts about this match as I, and well you know it.”

  “I don’t deny it. Even if we did not have a whole slew of Darrincotes to worry about, the road ahead will not be easy. You are ton, I am not. You, the close connection of a duke; I, the bastard who works for an even greater bastard, Tobias Brockman.”

  “Is he? A bastard?” Victoire asked, suddenly diverted from her bridal nerves.

  “Son of a coal miner—I was using the term figuratively.”

  An impish, if slightly resigned, smile curled her lips. “Enfin, I was not brought up to expect life to be easy. You challenge me, I think. It is to be the Hardings against the world, n’est-ce pas?”

  He would have kissed the mouth turned up to his, but the thrice-blasted landlord and a serving maid burst through the door, delivering their supper. Jack stepped away from his bride, swearing silently, as the landlord begged pardon several times over while a white cloth was put down, plates and utensils set in place, and a fine roast dinner was set before them. A refill of the punch bowl was warmed by the application of a hot poker.

  After the servers had bowed their way out and shut the door, Jack offered his bride a rueful look across the width of the table. “Truthfully, I had forgotten about dinner. My appetite had wandered in a far different direction.”

  Victoire ducked her head, reached for a napkin. Then, so softly he almost couldn’t hear her, she murmured, “The night is still young.”

  The magic, elusive for so long, crept into the private dining room like wisps of fog drifting off the Thames and infiltrating the streets of London. Silent, furtive, it wound around them as Victoire detailed her halcyon days at The Willows, the sudden intrusion of cold, fear, and guilt with the near-disaster on the lake. As Jack admitted to his futile last-minute attempt to make peace in Belfast and Victoire added anecdotes from her years in the convent, her life with her Papa, her strikingly contrasting life with Granpère.

  Over apple tarts their eyes met, and the magic exploded, deluging them with all the heady excitement of that first night at The Merry Piper, augmented by the warmer, deeper, more intimate knowledge of each other that had developed since. Tarts forgotten, they stared at each other, mouths slightly agape, eyes wide.

  “I–I thought it would never happen again,” Victoire breathed. “This feeling that we fit, that we were meant to be together. Am I a fool, or do you feel it too?”

  “Did you think it an accident I chose an inn with a private dining room much like the Piper?” The teasing warmth in his eyes curled Victoire’s toes. More intimate parts of her echoed her response. Ma foi! Jack had delivered her first lesson in desire months ago, but this . . . this was embarrassing. She could only pray he had no idea of the shocking emotions sweeping over her, for he, with his vast experience with the most lovely and exotic women in the kingdom, could not possibly feel the same. Victoire broke their gaze, staring blindly down toward her untouched apple tart.

  “Victoire?”

  Mon Dieu, but now she knew why women gave themselves to men without marriage. Indescribable longing, the need to touch, to be held. The overwhelming urge to be as close as possible, to be consumed . . .

  Ah, no, she had lived too long with Granpère and his mistresses . . . These were not the emotions of a bride thrust into a marriage of convenience. She was being carried away on a flood tide of emotions she had conjured out of thin air. Out of hot punch and warm memories of a single night that should never have happened. Except . . . this time she had no right to threaten him with a pistol. They were married. Ma foi!

  The scrape of a chair. Footsteps. Hands on her shoulders. “Victoire, are you afraid of me?”

  When he touched her, every wild emotion that threatened to tear her apart doubled in intensity. She could barely whisper, “As I have told you—I fear only that you will find me wanting.”

  He pulled her to her feet, sweeping her into his arms. His head bent, crushing his lips to hers. Not soft, not gentle—more like a warrior claiming his prize. And, surprisingly, she didn’t mind. She did, in fact, discover she relished being claimed. Relished the role of prize, casting away every lesson in reticence to return his desire with all the passion her virgin innocence could offer.

  Jack lifted his lips only long enough to expel a vehement vow. “Never, ever, will I find you wanting.”

 

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