The Maiden's Hand (17 page)

“It was too late the moment I made that idiotic vow.” Oliver fingered his dress sword nervously. What a dilemma she had put him in. Her heartbreaking farewell to Spencer had made it clear that she would never love another.

“Kit, I am the blackest of black sheep. A rake and a rogue. A blackguard, a skirt-lifting womanizer. Surely a poor candidate for a h-h—” He couldn’t bring himself to say it.

“Haven’t you always claimed you wish to experience all of life? To try everything? Marriage is the one adventure you have not braved.”

“I only wanted to experience the fun parts. The great challenges.”

Kit sent a significant look at Lark. Expressionless and dull-eyed, she clutched Spencer’s illegal Book of Common Prayer like a shield to her buckram-stiffened chest.

“I ask you, Oliver,” Kit said, “what greater challenge than
that?
”

“You are such a comfort to me, Kit.” Anger uncurled like a flame inside him. He felt used, coerced, driven to this spot
by forces beyond his control. Aye, control. Even from beyond the grave, Spencer remained in command of him.

Richard Speed beckoned them with an impatient wave of his hand.

Feeling no less dread than he had the day he had gone to hang, Oliver de Lacey went to claim his bride.

W
hile promising her future to Oliver de Lacey, Lark peered at him through the screen of a black mourning veil. He stood with his weight shifted negligently on one hip, his hair mussed as if by a lover’s hand, and a look of boredom on his too handsome face.

Richard Speed read through the betrothal agreement and marriage settlement, hastily arranged by Kit. Oliver caught her staring and gave her a broad, insolent wink.

She sniffed and glanced away, pushing aside a sudden thought of Wynter. He would be livid when he discovered what she had done. Nagged by unease, she forced herself to concentrate on Reverend Speed. His health was improving at a rapid rate; soon he would outgrow the hated gowns he wore as a disguise. He appeared almost as uncomfortable as Lark felt, his feet shifting beneath the hem of his skirt, his arms bulging inside the tightly laced sleeves. He had begged to don a cleric’s robes, but Oliver had declared it too risky.

Knowing Oliver’s sense of humor, Lark suspected he found it amusing to be wed by a minister in skirts. Kit
Youngblood, standing as witness at Oliver’s side, pressed his lips together hard, as if holding in an explosion of mirth.

Kind, helpful Kit. Thanks to him this marriage would be legal, a solemn contract entered into for life. Over cups of wine the night before, Kit had recorded the betrothal. He had overseen the financial arrangements, negotiated a dowry and drawn up the marriage settlement.

Now Richard Speed hammered the last nail into her fate. He gave them one final opportunity to disclose any impediment to their union.

Lark took a deep breath. She wanted to turn and run, to declare her unwillingness. Then she heard Spencer’s last words again.
I want you to marry him as soon as I’m gone. Do not tarry and grieve for me. Don’t even wait until I’m cold. Swear it, Lark! Swear you’ll take him as your husband.

She had given her word to a dying man.

Oliver nodded to Richard and said, “Proceed.”

And so they vowed, in the dark, windy chapel of Blackrose, to be husband and wife. Lark heard herself promise to be chaste, submissive and fruitful, and was glad the veil hid her blush as she remembered that marriage had been ordained for procreation.

Then it was Oliver’s turn to speak his vows. She expected him to enumerate them as casually as if he were counting tithes.

Instead he snatched off her peaked veil and grabbed her by the wrist. Her hair, like a maiden’s now, spilled down her back.

“My lord!” She felt naked and frightened. His eyes were the burning blue of the sky on a hot day. “What—”

“I want to see your face when I make my pledge,” he said. “I want to make sure you hear me, Lark.” Without
looking back, he held out his free hand, and Kit gave him a golden ring.

“I vow to provide for thee,” he said, “and to guard thee from danger and want, to be faithful and vigilant over thy welfare.” He stared down at the ring. Lark wondered if she imagined it or if Oliver’s hand actually trembled as he placed the ring on each successive finger of her hand. “With this ring I thee wed, with this gold I thee honor, and with my body I thee worship.”

Lark could not say why, but his words made her seem to float far above the ground.

“Until death us do part,” Oliver concluded. As he spoke the final pledge, the intense merriment left his eyes; they clouded and darkened, and his mouth went taut as if a sudden pain had gripped him. Then the moment passed, and Lark decided she had imagined his torment, for he was smiling down at her once again.

She barely heard Speed’s awesome proclamation: “Those whom God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.”

Oliver touched her chin, gaining her attention. “Lark? It’s over.”

“Over?” she asked stupidly.

“Aye, sweet. Well, the boring part, anyway.”

“Would His Lordship like to kiss the bride?” Speed asked.

Oliver’s grin was wry, possibly bitter. “Now the interesting part begins.”

Alone, Oliver entered the bride’s chamber and found it empty. Their wedding supper was a simple affair of bread and wine and apples set out on an oval table. Sullenly Oliver poured himself a goblet of wine and went to the window to await his bride.

The house servants and retainers had taken the news of the marriage with surprising aplomb, as if Spencer, even in death, had the power to make them obey.

A bird alit on the ledge outside the open window. Oliver noticed that someone had left crumbs there. Lark. He imagined her alone in this room, year after year, setting out crumbs to draw the birds, perhaps craving their company while she worked at her tedious spinning and sewing.

The sky was a deep, twilight-blue pierced by the first winking stars of evening. The bird chirruped. Oliver drank his wine in one gulp and belched loudly. The bird flew off.

“I’ll have another little lark to manage tonight,” he muttered. “Pity she doesn’t scare as easily.” A twist of apprehension knotted his gut. He had no fear of making love to her, of course, but what if she became pregnant? He had often daydreamed about having a child, but it was always in the abstract, and the child in his imaginings did not have a real child’s needs. In truth, Oliver knew it would be best never to father a child. His illness was unpredictable. He had every reason to suppose it could be passed to one’s children, much like one’s looks. His own brother had suffered from the same ailment, and Dickon had not lived to see six summers.

Even if Oliver sired a perfectly healthy child, he himself was far from perfect. What good was he, a profligate likely to die young, to a son or daughter?

Damn her. She had trapped him into this marriage.

Lark came into the room a few minutes later. At first she didn’t spy him by the window, and she leaned against the door, closed her eyes and wiped the back of her hand against her brow.

“Don’t be so quick to breathe a sigh of relief.” Oliver pushed away from the window ledge and sauntered toward
her. He spread his arms wide. “Madam, felicitations. You and Spencer have managed to land the Wimberleigh heir.”

A fire blazed in her gray eyes, like globed flames on a rainy day. “What on earth are you implying?”

He stopped at the table, set down his goblet and pressed his palms to the smooth surface. Leaning forward, he said, “I am implying that you and Spencer—God rest his soul—went to a great deal of trouble in order to bring me to heel. First saving me from the gallows, then using me to break the entail, and finally closing the trap just as Spencer turns up his toes. Very well executed, if you’ll pardon the expression.”

“That is the most outrageous, conceited, worm-witted nonsense I have ever heard.”

“You deny it?” He lifted one insolent eyebrow.

“Of course I deny it. You practically forced me to make that deathbed promise to Spencer.”

“I wish I had come to realize your ruse sooner. You’re a fine little actress, Lark. You made me pity you.”

She, too, put her hands on the table and bent toward him. They were nose to nose, each trying to outglare the other. “That was no act. I had no idea Spencer meant to pair us off. It was the last thing I wanted. In fact,
you
arranged it to trap
me!
”

“Ha!” Disbelief exploded from Oliver, but she didn’t even flinch. “Now that, sweetheart, is the most ridiculous bit of fiction yet. Why in God’s name would I want to trap
you?
”

The ugly words hurled out before he could stop them.

She caught her breath as if he had struck her.

He froze, wishing he could reel them back in. He was tempted to tell her the truth, but the truth was, he was scared. He had wanted her for weeks. Now that she was
finally his, he realized that it was not enough simply to have her. He was now responsible for her safety, her happiness.

Happiness? What in God’s name did he know about making a woman happy outside the bedchamber?

“Why?” she echoed. “Because I’m a wealthy widow.”

The way her voice faltered over the word
widow
gave him pause. He cleared his mind of the wine he had drunk and remembered. He recalled Lark bending over Spencer at the moment of his death, giving him a kiss of depthless grief and tenderness. She had loved the old man, and by dying, he had broken her heart.
How will I live without you?
Her agonized whisper haunted him still.

Oliver cursed under his breath and shoved away from the table. “Let’s not argue. ’Tis done. I vowed I would take you as my wife. And so I have.” He walked to her side of the table, took her hand and raised it to his lips. “Almost.”

Touching her had its usual effect on him. He noted the softness of her skin, the clean womanly scent of her, the warmth that seemed to emanate from her.

When he lifted his lips from her palm and looked up, he saw the wounds in her eyes. Her expression made him forget his concerns about fathering a child, even as it made him remember the rest of his vow.

“I promised Spencer I would protect and cherish you.”

She snatched her hand away. “I’ve fared perfectly well without you thus far. As for the cherishing, I don’t need it.”

He took a step toward her. “Aye, Lark. You do.”

She inched backward. “Not from a man who sees all of life as a series of sport and jest. Who makes a game of toying with a woman’s feelings. Who keeps the vows that amuse him and discards the ones that lose his interest.”

What bothered him most about her tirade was that she was right. As unbending as a battle lance, she enumerated his faults and flung them in his face.

He backed her up until she had nowhere else to go. Her rigid spine pressed against a paneled wall. He flattened his palms to the wall and lowered his head to look her in the eye.

“That may be true, Lark.” He smiled and played his trump card. “But I’m all you’ve got.” Without even meaning to, he brushed his lips over hers, drawing a gasp of surprise from her. “You would not dance with me earlier, during supper.”

“It would be unseemly for me to dance so soon after the death of my—of Spencer.”

“There is no one to see now, Lark. No one but me. Dance with me, Lark. Dance with your husband.”

“No,” she whispered, her face going pale. “We cannot. There are no musicians—”

“I can hum a tune.”

“That is not the point, Oliver! I will
not
dance with you.”

“Very well,” he said, growing aroused by her nearness and, surprisingly, by hearing his name on her lips. He wondered if she could feel the heat that fired his blood. “It’s our wedding night. Let’s not talk. Every time we talk, we end up quarreling.”

She stared at him for a long, long time. Her face never changed. Her eyes never left him. He started to feel uncomfortable. He wondered what she could be thinking—if she was taking his measure and finding him wanting, if she thought Richard Speed was more handsome, or Kit more reliable or, heaven forfend, better endowed.

“I don’t know what you want me to do,” she said at last.

He nearly collapsed with relief. So
that
was what had
her so bothered. Dear Lark. Ever competent in all things, she was ashamed of this one shortcoming, if it could be termed that.

“Ah, Lark.” He cupped her cheeks in his palms, marveling at the pearly texture of her skin. “I beg you, do not worry about matters of protocol tonight. Besides, what of our talk we had beside the river? Do you never think of that?”

“You never told me how to feel, what to say.”

“I beg you, just this once, not to worry about the proper thing to say and do.”

“But I must explain something—”

“Hush.” He dropped his hands to her shoulders and started massaging them gently. He could feel the tension in her coiled muscles and stiff posture. “Do you remember the birds at Newgate Market?”

She nodded. “How could I forget?”

“Do you think, when I set them all free, they worried about how they were going to fly, where they were going to go?”

“Certainly not. They’re
birds,
my lord. They but did what instinct told them to do.”

“And so must you, my Lark.” He bent and blew softly into her ear. “Enough of fretting and worrying about right and wrong. “You are God’s creature as much as any bird or beast. You have to stop thinking so much and simply
feel.”

“I don’t think—” she shuddered as he blew into her ear again “—I can do that.”

“Sweetheart, you just did.”

“I did?”

“You did.”

It was the most unusual seduction Oliver had ever performed. It was not simply that Lark was so naive, that she was wrapped in layer after layer of puritanical beliefs and
rhetoric. Such virtues might have been good for the soul but had no place in a seduction.

More than that, his heart was caught. That was the true source of his anger, his fear. That had never happened to him before, and he did not quite know how to cope.

He had wanted a challenge. How many times had he declared as much? Kit was right. She was the challenge of his life. Marriage was the one adventure he had not yet sampled.