Jessica's dinner appeared about twenty minutes after the mill. Her husband did not. He was in the bar parlor with some companions, according to the innkeeper, and had requested Her Ladyship not to wait for him.
Jessica was not surprised. In her experience, after trying desperately to knock each other's brains from their skulls, men promptly became the very dearest of friends and celebrated their intimacy by becoming cockeyed drunk.
She ate her dinner, washed, and dressed for bed. She didn't bother to don the red and black nightgown. She doubted His Lordship would arrive in a suitable condition to appreciate it. Instead she put on a less interesting cream-colored one and a pastel brocade dressing gown over it, and settled down in a comfortable chair by the fire with Byron's Don Juan.
It was long past midnight when she heard a trio of clumsy footsteps in the hall outside and a trio of drunken voices slurring over a bawdy song. She rose and opened the door.
Dain, who'd been leaning upon his two comrades, pushed himself off and lurched toward her. "Behold, the bridegroom cometh," he announced thickly. He flung his arm over Jessica's shoulder. "Go away," he told his friends.
They staggered away. He kicked the door shut. 'Told you not to wait," he said.
"I thought you might want help," she said. "I sent Andrews to bed. He was asleep on his feet. And I was awake, reading, anyhow."
His coat and previously pristine shirt were rumpled, and he'd lost his neck cloth. His blood-spattered trousers were damp, his boots caked with dried mud.
He released her, and swaying, stared at his boots for a long moment. Then he swore under his breath.
"Why don't you sit down on the bed?" she suggested. "I can help you get your boots off."
He moved unsteadily toward the bed. Clutching the bedpost, he carefully lowered himself onto the mattress. 'Jess."
She approached, and knelt at his feet. "Yes, my lord."
"Yes, my lord," he echoed with a laugh. 'Jess, m'lady, I believe I'm castaway. Lucky you. "
She began tugging at his left boot. "We'll see about my luck. We've only the one bed, and if drink makes you snore the way it does Uncle Arthur, I'm in for a ghastly night—or what's left of the night." "Snoring," he said. "Worried about snoring. Henwit." She got the boot off and started on the other.
"Jess," he said.
"At least you recognize me."
The right boot proved stubborner. Yet she dared not yank too hard, lest he topple forward and crash down on her. "You'd better lie down," she said.
He grinned stupidly at her.
"Down," she said firmly.
"Down," he repeated, giving the room the same vacant grin. "Where's that?"
She rose and set her hands on his chest and gave him a hard shove.
He fell back, setting the mattress bouncing. He chuckled.
Jessica bent and renewed her struggle with the boot.
"Dainty," he said, gazing up at the ceiling. "Dainty Lady Dain. She tastes like rain. She is a great pain. In the arse. Ma com' e bella. Molto bella. Very beautiful… pain… in the arse."
She yanked the boot off. "That doesn't rhyme." She rose. "Byron you are not."
A soft snore answered.
"Behold the bridegroom," she muttered. "Thank heaven if's a large bed. My conjugal devotion does not extend to sleeping on the floor."
She moved away to the washstand. After washing the mud from her hands, she took off her dressing gown and hung it on a chair.
Then she walked round to the other side of the bed, and pulled back the bedclothes as far as she could. It wasn't quite far enough. The upper half of his body sprawled diagonally across the mattress.
She pushed at his shoulder. "Move over, you lummox." Mumbling, he rolled first onto one side, then onto the other.
Jessica shoved harder. "Move, drat you."
He grumbled something and rolled a bit more. She kept pushing, and eventually—and unconscious all the while—he got his head upon the pillow and his feet off the floor. Then he curled up in a fetal position, facing her side of the bed.
She climbed in beside him and angrily yanked the blankets up. "Pain in the hindquarters, am I?" she said under her breath. "I'd have done better to push you onto the floor."
She turned to look at him. Tangled black curls fell over his brow, which, in sleep, was as smooth as an innocent babe's. His right hand clutched a corner of the pillow. He was snoring, but very softly, a low, steady murmur.
Jessica dosed her eyes.
Even though his body wasn't touching hers, she was acutely aware of him, of his weight upon the mattress… and the mingled masculine scents of smoke and spirits and himself… and the warmth his immense body generated.
She was also aware of a most irrational frustration… and hurt, if she were to be completely honest.
She had expected Dain to toss back a few glasses with his friends. She'd expected him to arrive the worse for drink. She would not have minded. He would not be the first or the last bridegroom to come tipsy to the bridal bed, and it had occurred to her that hazy perception might make him more tolerant of her inexperience.
Actually, if truth be told, she would have preferred to have him as close to unconscious as possible. Deflowering a virgin was not the most aesthetic of experiences, and Genevieve had told her that it was often the biggest, most thick-skinned brutes who became hysterical over a few drops of maidenly blood. She had also explained how to deal with the hysteria—and everything else.
Aware that her entire future with Dain could hinge upon this night's experience, Jessica had prepared for it as any wise general would prepare for a crucial battle.
She was well informed, and fully determined to do her very best. She was prepared to be cheerful, willing, responsive, and attentive.
She was not prepared for this.
He was no schoolboy. He knew his drinking limits. He knew how much it took to incapacitate him.
Yet he hadn't stopped. On his wedding night.
Reason told her there must be a typically crack-brained masculine reason for his behavior, and sooner or later she'd figure it out, and it would turn out to have nothing to do with trying to hurt her feelings or make her feel undesirable or any of the other gloomy sensations she was experiencing at the moment.
But it had been a long day, and she realized now that she'd spent most of that time tense with mingled anticipation and anxiety about what, it turned out, wasn't going to happen.
She was exhausted and she couldn't sleep, and she must ride another million miles tomorrow at the same hectic pace, in the same agitated emotional state. She wanted to cry. She wanted, even more, to scream and beat him and pull his hair and make him as hurt and angry as she was.
She opened her eyes and sat up and looked about for something she could hit him with without doing permanent damage. She could dump the contents of the water pitcher on him, she thought, as her gaze fell upon the washstand.
Then she realized she shouldn't have been able to see the washstand. She'd left the lamp burning on the bed stand beside her. She moved to the edge of the bed and put it out.
She sat there, staring into the darkness. From outside the window came the predawn chirping of birds.
He grumbled and stirred restlessly.
"Jess." His voice was thick with sleep.
"At least you know I'm here," she muttered. "I suppose that's something." With a sigh, she lay down again. She was tugging the blankets up when she felt the mattress shift and sink. There was more incoherent grumbling. Then he flung his arm over her midriff and his leg over hers.
He was on top of the bedclothes. She was under them.
His big limbs were heavy, but very warm.
She felt marginally better.
In a few moments, she fell asleep.
Dain's first conscious sensations were of a small, soft bottom nestled against his groin and a deliriously rounded breast under his hand. In the instant it took him to mentally connect the agreeable parts with the female they belonged to, a host of other recollections flooded in, and his mood of sleepy amorousness swept away on a tide of self-loathing.
He'd brawled in an inn yard like a common yokel while his wife looked on. He had consumed enough wine to float an East Indiaman and, instead of considerately passing out in the bar parlor, he'd let his oafish friends haul him up to the bridal chamber. As though it hadn't been enough for his new bride to see him filthy and rank with sweat, he must also display himself in all his drink-sodden grossness. Even then, he hadn't shown the courtesy of collapsing on the floor, well away from her. He'd dropped his great wine- and smoke-reeking elephant's body onto the bed, and let his dainty lady wife haul off his boots.
His face burned.
He rolled away and stared at the ceiling.
At least he hadn't violated her. He'd drunk a good deal more than even he was accustomed to, in order to make sure of that. It was a miracle he'd made it up the stairs.
He could have done without that miracle. He could have done without a few other things, such as remembering anything at all. He wished the rest of him were as paralyzed as his left arm.
Satan's blacksmith was using his head as an anvil again. Lucifer's chief cook was mixing a foul brew in his mouth. At some point during Dain's pitifully few hours of sleep, the Prince of Darkness had apparently ordered a herd of raging rhinoceroses to stampede over his body.
Beside him, the source of Dain's troubles stirred.
Cautiously he hauled himself up, grimacing as thousands of vicious needles jabbed his left arm and burned and pricked his hand.
He got out of bed, every bone, muscle, and organ viciously protesting, and staggered to the washstand.
He heard a rustle of movement from the bed. Then came a sleep clogged feminine voice. "Do you want any help, Dain?"
Whatever conscience Lord Dain possessed had sunk into a fatal decline and expired sometime about his tenth birthday. At the sound of his wife's voice offering assistance, it rose, like Lazarus, from the dead. It fastened its gnarled fingers upon his heart and let out a shriek that should have shattered the window, the water jug, and the small washstand mirror into which Dain was gazing.
Yes, he answered silently. He wanted help. He wanted help being born over again and coming out right this time.
"I daresay you've the very devil of a head," she said after a long, silent moment. "Bridget will be up and about by now. I'll send her down to mix a remedy for you. And we'll order you a light breakfast, shall we?"
While she spoke, there was more rustling. Without looking, he was aware of her leaving the bed. When she approached to get her dressing gown from a chair, he turned his gaze to the window. Hazy sunlight dappled the sill and floor. He guessed it was past six o'clock. Monday.
Twelfth of May. The day after his wedding.
It was also his birthday, he recollected with an unpleasant jolt of surprise. His thirty-third birthday. And he'd wakened in the same condition with which he'd greeted the last twenty, and in which he'd greet the next twenty, he thought bleakly.
"There's no cure," he muttered.
She had started toward the door. She paused and turned. "Would you care to place a small wager on that?"
"You're only looking for an excuse to poison me." He lifted the pitcher and clumsily splashed water into the basin.
"If you are not afraid to try it, I promise close to full recovery by the time we set out," she said. "If you are not feeling worlds better by then, you may claim a forfeit of your own choosing. If you are better, you will thank me by stopping at Stonehenge, and letting me explore—without having to listen to sarcastic remarks and complaints about delays."
His glance strayed to her, then quickly away. But not quickly enough. Her tangled black hair hung loose about her shoulders, and the faint flush of sleep yet clung to her cheeks, a wash of pearly pink on creamy white porcelain. Never had she appeared more fragile. Though tousled, her face unwashed, her slim body sagging with fatigue, she had never, either, appeared more beautiful.
Here were Beauty and the Beast with a vengeance, Dain thought as he met his reflection in the mirror.
"If I'm not better," he said, "I shall use your lap as a pillow all the way to Devon."
She laughed and left the room.
At half past seven o'clock in the morning, two miles past Amesbury,
Dain was leaning against a monolithic stone on a rise overlooking the Salisbury Plain. Below and beyond spread an undulating blanket of green with a few rectangular patches of bright yellow rape fields. A small number of houses dotted the landscape, along with the occasional lonely herd of sheep or cattle, all looking as though some giant hand had idly strewn them. Here and there, the same careless hand had stuck a cluster of trees against the horizon or thrust it into the cleavage between the gently swelling slopes.
Dain grimaced at his choice of metaphors: blankets and cleavage and big, clumsy hands. He wished he hadn't swallowed the mugful of odoriferous liquid Jessica had given him. The instant he'd begun to feel better, the itch had started again.
He hadn't had a woman in weeks… months.
If he didn't get relief soon, he would have to hurt somebody. A lot of somebodies. Beating Ainswood had not relieved the condition one iota. Drinking himself blind had only deadened the itch temporarily. Dain supposed he could find a proper-sized whore between here and Devon, but he had a disagreeable suspicion that wouldn't do much more good than fighting or drinking.
It was his slim, woefully fragile wife he wanted, and hadn't been able to stop wanting from the instant he'd met her.
The place was quiet. He could hear the swish of her carriage dress when she moved. The teasing rustle was coming nearer. He kept his eye on the vista straight ahead until she paused a few feet away.
"I understand that one of the trilithons fell not so very long ago," she said.
"Seventeen hundred ninety-seven," he said. "A friend at Eton told me about it. He claimed the stone toppled over in fright the day I was born. So I checked. He was wrong. I was a full two years old at the time."
"I daresay you beat the true facts into your schoolfellow." She tilted her head back to look at him. "Was it Ainswood, I wonder?"
Despite a walk in the brisk morning air, she looked tired. Too pale. Shadows ringed her eyes. His fault.
"It was someone else," he said shortly. "And you're not to think I brawl with every fool who tries to exercise his feeble wit upon me."
"You don't brawl," she said. "You're a most scientific fighter. Intellectual, I should say. You knew what Ainswood would do before he knew it himself."
She moved away, toward a fallen stone. "I'd wondered how you would manage it, with but one arm." She dropped her umbrella onto the stone and posed, fists clenched, one held closer to her body. "How, I asked myself, can he shield himself and strike simultaneously? But you didn't do it that way." She ducked her head to the side, as though dodging a blow, and backed off. 'It was dodge and retreat, luring him on, letting him waste his strength. "
"It wasn't hard," he said, swallowing his surprise. "He wasn't as alert as he might have been. Not nearly so quick as he is when sober."
"I'm sober," she said. She leapt onto the stone. "Come, let's see if I'm quick enough."
She was wearing an immense leghorn hat, with flowers and satin ribbons sprouting from the top. It was tied under her left ear in an enormous bow. The carriage dress was the usual fashionable insanity of flounces and lace and overblown sleeves. A pair of satin straps buckled each sleeve above the elbow, so that her upper arms appeared to be made of balloons. The satin cords lacing up the lower sleeves ended in long tassels that dangled from the middle of her forearms.
He could not remember when he'd seen anything so ludicrous as this silly bit of femininity gravely poised upon a stone in approved boxing stance.
He walked up to her, his mouth quivering. "Come down, Jess. You look like a complete addle pate."
Her fist shot out. His head went back, reflexively, and she missed… but only by a hairs-breadth.
He laughed—and something struck his ear. He eyed her narrowly. She was smiling, and twin glints of mischief lit her grey eyes. "Did I hurt you, Dain?" she asked with patently false concern.
"Hurt me?" he echoed. "Do you actually believe you can hurt me with that?"
He grabbed the offending hand.
She lost her balance and stumbled forward and caught hold of his shoulder.
Her mouth was inches from his. He closed the distance and kissed her, fiercely, while he let go of her hand to wrap his arm around her waist.
The morning sun beat down warmly, but she tasted like rain, like a summer storm, and the thunder he heard was his own need, his blood pounding in his ears, his heart drumming the same unsteady beat.
He deepened the kiss, thirstily plundering the sweet heat of her mouth, and instantly intoxicated when she answered in kind, her tongue curling over his in a teasing dance that made him dizzy. Her slender arms wound about his neck and tightened. Her firm, round breasts pressed against his chest, sending whorls of heat down, to throb in his loins. He slid his hand down, cupping her small, deliciously rounded derriere.
Mine, he thought. She was light and slender and curved to sweet perfection… and she was his. His very own wife, ravishing him with her innocently wanton mouth and tongue, clinging to him with intoxicating possessiveness. As though she wanted him, as though she felt what he did, the same mindless, hammering need.
His mouth still locked with hers, he swept her down from her stony pedestal and would have swept her onto the hard ground as well… but a raucous cry from above jolted him back to reality.
He broke away from her mouth and looked up.
A carrion crow fearlessly alit on one of the smaller bluestones, and offered a beaky profile from which one glinting eye appeared to regard Dain with mocking avian amusement.
Big Beak, Ainswood had called him last night. One of the old Eton epithets—along with "Ear-wig."
"Black Buzzard," and a host of other endearments.
His face burning, he turned away from his wife. "Come along," he said, his voice sharp with bitterness. "We can't dawdle here all day."
Jessica heard the bitterness and discerned the flush under his olive skin. For a few moments, she fretted that she'd done something to offend or disgust him. But halfway down the incline, he slowed to let her catch up with him. And when she took his hand—the crippled one—and squeezed it, he glanced at her, and said, "I hate crows. Noisy, filthy things."
She supposed that was as close to an explanation or apology as he could come. She glanced back at the ancient temple. "I collect it's because you're a high-strung thoroughbred. He was merely part of the atmosphere to me. I thought it all very romantic."
He gave a short laugh. "You mean 'gothic,' I think."
"No, I don't," she said. "There was I in the arms of a dark, dangerous hero, amid the ruins of Stonehenge, an ancient place of mystery. Byron himself could not have painted a more romantic scene. I'm sure you believe there isn't a romantic bone in your body," she added with a sidelong glance. "If you found one, you'd break it. But you needn't worry. I shouldn't dream of declaring otherwise to anyone else."
"I'm not romantic," he said tightly. "And I most certainly am not high strung. As to thoroughbreds—you know very well I'm half-Italian."
"The Italian half is blue-blooded, too," she said. "The Due d'Abonville told me your mother's line is very old Florentine nobility. That, apparently, reconciled him to our marriage."
He uttered a series of words she couldn't understand, but guessed were curses in his mother's tongue.
"He means to marry Genevieve," she said mollifying. "That's what made him so overprotective of me. But there are benefits to the attachment. He's taken Bertie in hand, which means you won't be bothered with my brother's financial difficulties in future."
Dain brooded silently until they'd reentered the carriage. Then, releasing a sigh, he leaned back and closed his eyes. "Romantic. High strung. And you think it's reassuring that your grandmother's lover means to take your brainless brother in hand. I do believe, Jess, that you are as demented as every other member—and prospective member—of your entire lunatic family."
"Are you going to sleep?" she asked.
"I might, if you could manage to hold your tongue for three minutes."
"I'm tired, too," she said. "Do you mind if I lean on your arm? I can't sleep sitting bolt upright."
"Take off that idiotic bonnet first," he muttered.
She took it off and rested her head on his brawny arm. After a moment, he shifted sideways a bit and tucked her head against his chest. That was more comfortable.
It was also all the reassurance Jessica needed for now. Later, she'd try to figure out what had upset him during their embrace—and why he'd become so very tense when she spoke of his mother's family. At present she was content to enjoy what felt delightfully like husbandly affection. *
* *
They slept through most of the journey, until they reached the Devon border. Despite the delay in setting out, they reached Exeter by late afternoon. They crossed the River Teign shortly thereafter, then wended down to Bovey Tracey, and across the River Bovey. A few winding miles west, Jessica had her first glimpse of the strange rock formations of Dartmoor.
"Haytor Rocks," he said, pointing out his window at an immense stone outcropping at the top of a hill. She climbed onto his lap to get a better view.
He laughed. "You needn't worry about missing it. There are plenty more. Hundreds of those things, everywhere you look. Tors and cairns and barrows and bogs. You married me, only to wind up in precisely the 'remote outpost of civilization' you wished to avoid. Welcome, Lady Dain, to the howling wilderness of Dartmoor." "I think it's beautiful," she said softly.
Like you, she wanted to add. In the orange glow of the lowering sun, the rugged landscape was dark and harshly beautiful, as he was.
"I'll have to win another wager," she said into the moody silence. "So that you'll take me to those rocks."
"Where you'll contract a lung fever," he said. "It's cold, windy, and wet, and the climate changes from brisk autumn to bitter winter and back again ten times in an hour."
"I never take ill," she said. "I'm not a high-strung thoroughbred— unlike certain individuals who shall remain nameless."
"You'd better get off my lap," he said. "We'll be at Athcourt very shortly, and the staff will be out in full battle regalia. I shall make a poor enough appearance as it is. You've rumpled and wrinkled me past repair. You squirm and fidget even more asleep than awake. I scarcely dosed my eyes the entire way to Exeter."
"Then you must have been snoring with your eyes open," she said as she returned to her place beside him.
"I was not snoring."
"On my head," she said. "And several times, straight into my ear." She had found the deep, masculine rumble inexpressibly endearing.
He scowled at her.
Jessica ignored it, returning her gaze to the passing landscape. "Why is your home called Athcourt?" she asked. "After a great battle, like Blenheim?"
"The Ballisters originally lived further north," he said. "One of them took a fancy to the Dartmoor property as well as the daughter and sole surviving issue of Sir Guy de Ath, a powerful fellow in this area. The name, incidentally, was originally Death. It was changed for obvious reasons. My ancestor got the daughter and the estate on condition he keep the quaint name alive. That's why the males of the family get Guy de Ath stuck on just before 'Ballister.'"
She'd read his name on countless marriage-related documents. "Sebastian Leslie Guy de Ath Ballister," she said, smiling. "And here I thought you had all those names because there's so much of you."
She felt his body stiffen. She looked up. His jaw was tight, too, his mouth set in a hard line.
She wondered what nerve she'd struck inadvertently.
She didn't have time to work out the riddle, because Dain snatched up her forgotten bonnet and shoved it on her head backwards, and she had to right the hat and tie the ribbons. Then she had to try to make a dress she'd traveled in since early morning look presentable, because the carriage was turning in to a gateway, and Dain's ill-concealed agitation told her the drive beyond led to his home.