The Irish Bride (34 page)

Rietta, despite the cooling effect of evaporation on her arms and chest, felt far from cold when Nick looked at her like that. The telltale evidence of his interest in her showed plainly beneath the clinging fabric of his dressing gown. “I’d invite you in,” she said shamelessly, “but there’s no more room.”

“You could sit on my lap....” He untied the belt and let the dressing gown swing open. Rietta couldn’t control her eyes.

“I’ll just get out, shall I?”

Nick picked up the towel warming over a rack near the fire. “Let me help you.”

“Close your eyes, then.”

“No.” He grinned at her, cocky as the devil.

“Very well.” Rietta stood up and felt a purely feminine satisfaction at the stunned expression on his face. He held out his hand to help her step over the edge of the tub. Then he pulled her into his embrace.

After a few minutes, Rietta pushed at his shoulders. “I’m all wet.”

“I don’t mind a bit.” His hands slipped over her slick skin until she was gasping. Then he reached for the towel and took his time drying every inch of her body. After that, he threw the towel back on the rack. “Time for bed.”

“It’s broad daylight.”

“We’ll keep the curtains closed. One thing about being married to you—so long as you are in my bed I will never feel less than alive.”

“Nick ...” Rietta stopped his headlong rush to the bed and gazed up at him worriedly. “I promised myself I would never ask, but now I must know ...”

He took her hands in his and raised each to his lips, kissing them as reverently as though they were in church. “Yes, I do love you. In time, you’ll come to care for me. I promise I’ll make you care.”

“I do already. You must know that. I love you.”

“You do?” He stared into her eyes as if willing her to show him. “Are you sure?”

Rietta laughed. “Come to bed, husband. I’ll prove it to you.”

“You already have.” Nick’s eyes glistened with a sudden rush of tears. “I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t married me.”

Sitting on the rumpled bed, Rietta reached out to draw him down beside her. “I think, you know, that my father’s interference only advanced something that was bound to happen anyway. From the first moment I saw you, ogling Blanche, I knew—

“I was not ogling Blanche!”

“I knew it would be you and me forever. I didn’t really believe it would happen, but I knew it. Does that make sense?”

“Yes, perfect sense. I found that out later, standing in the abbey with you. It felt so foreordained, as though I at last had a reason why I survived all the battles. I dismissed the notion at once, but it was there.”

Now Rietta’s eyes filled with tears. “I will try to be all you want in a wife.”

“Just be yourself. That is all any man could want from you. I need you, Rietta. Just you.”

As they came together, Rietta’s only thought was to prove, beyond all possible doubt, the truth of her love.

When they lay together in a rosy glow, Nick sighed and murmured “That’s one battle I don’t mind losing. Just remember, like Napoleon, I will rise again.”

Rietta muffled her laughter against his shoulder. “I’m so glad. How shall we decide who wins?”

“We’ve both won.”

As she drifted off to sleep, Rietta knew it was a victory that would last a lifetime.

Epilogue

As it turned out,
not all Blanche’s wiles worked as well on Niall Joyce as those few minutes of genuine emotion. Though he confessed to Nick that he had every intention of marrying Blanche, he wanted to wait until she’d grown up a bit more. The year she spent with her sister and brother-in-law, watching them grow more and more involved with each other and the estate, completed the process. When Niall proposed again, she refused him.

“I’m not good enough for him,” she said, storming up and down the drawing room while Rietta watched her from the comfort of an upright chair.

“Who do you imagine yourself marrying?” “I don’t know. I hear David Mochrie’s back from England. He’s low enough for the likes of me.”

“Come now, Blanche. You’re too hard on yourself.” “No,” she said with deep sincerity. “What have I ever done to make him fall in love with me? I have a pretty face. Well, that won’t last. I can’t allow him to marry me for my face when in ten years I’ll be a hag.”

“Isn’t that Niall’s lookout?” Rietta had seen her sister become gradually less flighty and less vain. Why, just yesterday, she’d come in from a walk in the rain and did not check her reflection for half an hour. “What do you want to do? Turn into a bluestocking? Or a philanthropist?”

“That would be better than remaining a butterfly all my life.”

“A butterfly?”

“Niall called me that one day. He said I was as pretty and insubstantial as a butterfly. Well, I refuse to be a butterfly any longer.”

“It’s not like Niall to be so thoughtless. When did he call you that?”

Blanche shrugged and sat down with a dejected thump in the armchair opposite. “Oh, last spring. We were out riding and there were butterflies in the hedges.”

“Do you remember everything Niall says to you?”

“Every word. Don’t you with Nick?”

“We talk so much I’d be hard-pressed to remember it all.” She smoothed down her shirt and gazed in loving wonder at her infant, asleep with a trace of milk still upon her lips. “We’ve put Maire right to sleep with our chattering.”

“Shall I take her to Nurse?”

“No, let me keep her a little while. Nurse will be down soon enough and I don’t have enough chances to look at her.”

Blanche came over and smoothed the baby’s featherlight hair. “Will it ever lie down?”

“Some day. It’s like Nick’s—black, thick, and heavy. Much better than my red.”

Rietta looked up at her sister. “You love Niall, but you’re afraid to marry him because he might regret it when you lose your looks, is that it?”

“He deserves so much better than me.”

“Then he should definitely marry Emma.”

“Emma?”

“Why, yes. I like Niall
and want to have him for my brother. Since you won’t marry him, it will have to be Emma.”

“She’s in love with him already, I daresay.”

“No, I shouldn’t think so. But why should that stop her?”

“I never thought I’d hear you express such heartless sentiments. Didn’t you suffer enough from Father’s plans?”

Gazing on her child, Rietta smiled reminiscently. “I’d hardly say I suffered at all.”

Blanche resumed her hectic pacing. Rietta rocked her child and sang softly. True, Maire was asleep, but she seemed to relax into a deeper sleep when her mother sang. She could have slept a little herself; now that Maire was four months old, Nick and she had resumed their love-making and had a lot of time to catch up on.

“Speak of the devil,” she said when Nick appeared escorting his mother.

“How are my ladies?” he asked softly.

“Very content indeed, except for Blanche.”

Nick smiled at his sister-in-law. “And what’s amiss with Her Highness?”

“You might as well know. I’ve refused Niall Joyce’s offer.”

“Refused it?” Lady Kirwan echoed. “And the poor boy half crazy with love for you?”

“I just can’t bring myself to disappoint him,” Blanche said. The tears came into her beautiful eyes and she bolted from the room like a half-tamed filly.

“Poor child.” Lady Kirwan eased herself down into the unoccupied chair. ‘“Tis a pity she hasn’t more confidence.”

“She’s confident enough,” Nick said.

“Not really.” Rietta agreed. “She pretends to be, but I think she is honestly worried that he won’t love her once he lives with her a time.”

“She’s afraid of losing her looks, too, isn’t she? As if that were all that man were interested in.”

“He can’t love her for her mind,” Nick said. “She’s easier to have around the house than I would have believed a year ago, but she’s not a clever woman.”

“If Niall Joyce had wanted a clever woman,” Lady Kirwan said “he would have been hanging out for Rietta. He wants Blanche and I must say I think it would be a very good match for both of them. He is too serious. He will steady her; she will enliven him.”

“Undoubtedly you are right.” Rietta gazed her fill on her child, for she’d heard Nurse’s no-nonsense step on the stairs. “But as she has refused him outright, there’s nothing more to be done until Niall asks again. If he asks again.”

She watched all she could see of Maire over her nurse’s shoulder until the door closed behind the woman’s stiff-starched cap. Then, unconsciously, she sighed woefully.

Nick rose and came to her side. “If you want to dismiss me nurse, Rietta, just say so.”

“Yes, please do,” Lady Kirwan said. “She’s a very good woman but the way she watches one! I picked up little Maire yesterday and from the way she acted you’d think I’d never held a baby before. I know Emma is simply dying to take care of Maire, too. But I think the nurse frightens her.”

“She certainly frightens me,” Nick said. “I don’t believe she thinks a father ought to have anything to do with children, except to teach them to ride.”

Rietta pressed her hand to her heart. “Here I was thinking I was the only one who was afraid of her. But I’m not afraid to dismiss her. I’ll write an excellent reference, naturally. After all, I’m quite grateful for all she’s done but I do so want to care for Maire myself.”

Nick picked up her hand and kissed it. ‘That’s settled, then. Now, about Blanche ...”

“There’s nothing we can do,” Rietta said. “Her mind seems to be made up.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Lady Kirwan said, leaning back and smiling. “It seems to me that there’s a certain ruined abbey that might prove just the thing.”

“Mamma!”

“Mother?”

“Why not? It brought you two great happiness, didn’t it? Why would it not do the same for Blanche? You can’t imagine Niall would object, and it isn’t really against Blanche’s will, now is it?”

So, under a half moon that painted the roofless walls with silver, Niall Joyce and Blanche Ferris were married. The groom was point-device in blue superfine and biscuit-colored breeches; the bride less so in a draggled riding habit and a veiled hat leaning at a drunken angle. Her family, nearest and extended, were all present and cheered when the ancient monk stopped mumbling.

The bride was flushed and furious until the groom took her behind some tombstones and kissed her into submission. Blushing and bashful, she repeated the vows, gazing adoringly at the husband she felt herself unworthy to marry.

Afterwards, Nick walked with Rietta. “It is a pretty place. We shall have to come see it by daylight.”

“Perhaps when Emma marries we can hold the ceremony at noon instead of at night.”

“When Emma marries? Who is she to marry?”

“Your mother hasn’t told me yet, but I’m certain she has someone in mind.”

“Will you vow with me, here and now, never to interfere in the course of little Maire’s affections?”

“Of course I won’t. It’s a mother’s right to see her children happy. And a father’s right, too.”

“You believe that?”

“I do now that I have a child of my own. Perhaps my father’s motives were not so high-minded as that, but I cannot deny that I am happy with you.”

Nick kissed her long and deliciously under the moon. “A father’s right to meddle? I don’t imagine Maire will see it that way, but I will be more subtle than your father was.”

Rietta laughed. “I will believe that when I see it.”

“Are you calling me an overly protective father?”

“Yes. And I shouldn’t want you to be anything else. As a matter of fact, though, I believe Maire would be happier if you had more children to protect. That way the entire burden wouldn’t fall upon her. For her sake, therefore, I
suggest we have at least half a dozen.”

“As my lady wishes.”

Copyright © 2001 by Cynthia Bailey Pratt

Originally published by Jove  (ISBN 0515130141)

Electronically published in 2012 by Belgrave House

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This is a work of fiction. All names in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to any person living or dead is coincidental.