The Wedding Night (32 page)

"Jack, you can't open this one—"

"Oh, but I could, love. More simply than I had imagined, if this is indeed Crown land. No greedy dukes to include in the royalties—"

She shoved him away, his lady lioness. "I will fight you, Jack! With every weapon I can find!"

"I'm sure you would, Mairey."

"I'll raise a strike against you—I'll burn you out! I'll speak to the prince consort!"

Jack didn't dare smile, let alone laugh, though it bubbled up inside him.

"Speak to the prince if you feel you must, Mairey, but I think I'll speak to the queen herself."

"Throwing your power as always?" Her chest rose and fell, and her breasts shifted as he loved them to do.

"I hope it works this time, Mairey." Choosing between
Mairey's
love for him and a hillside rich with silver was the simplest thing he'd ever done.

Mairey was breathless with fear, and even more alarmed by the sudden change in her husband. He was smiling. No. He was grinning devilishly as he came toward her.

"So,
madam, what will you name
this village when it belongs to me?"

A heartless question. "I hate you, Jack."

"No you don't." He was stalking toward her, looking confident and horribly pleased with
himself
. And why not? He had his mine. She had handed it to him on a silver tray.

"I'm going to fight you, Jack."

"No you won't, my love. You'll be too busy raising our children." He lifted her into his arms and kissed her madly. "And I'll be too busy keeping the secret of the
Willowmoon
."

She pushed against his shoulders, misunderstanding his words for the rushing of her pulse against his. "Keeping the secret from your competitors, while you exploit the hillside."

He shook his head. "This is your home, Mairey. I don't need another silver mine."

Hope made such a clamoring noise in her head that she wasn't sure she'd heard him right. "What did you say?"

"I already have two. And if another means losing you, my love, I don't want any part of it."

There were joyous bells this time, and Jack's
laughter,
and the erotic swell of his melody as he made love to her mouth.

"Look, Caro! Mairey is kissing Lord Jack again!"

They were at the edge of the woods, coming fast.

"We're not alone, wife."

"I love you so much, Jack."

"I know." Mairey felt his smile as he closed his mouth over hers; heard the rumble of his laughter. "Does your cottage have a private room for the two of us?"

"Oh, yes, my love."

"Good. Because I plan a good deal of princess-plundering tonight."

"Come plunder, my dragon. I am yours forever."

Epilogue

«
^

Drakestone
House

Eighteen months later

"Y
ou are a darling tyrant, Lady Rushford." Lady Arthur shook
Mairey's
hand vigorously and started down the front steps of
Drakestone
House, remarkably agile for a woman of more than sixty.

"We have to be relentless, Lady Arthur, if we're going to change the laws to protect the health of miners and their families." Mairey followed the woman to her phaeton, delighted that this afternoon's meeting had gone so smoothly and had been so well attended by the wives of peers and parliamentary ministers. "The mining barons certainly aren't going to spend their profits on research into black lung and poor diet and lack of sunshine unless we force them."

"No, indeed. May all the mine owners in
Britain
beware.
" She added with a broad wink, "Your own husband included."

"Viscount Rushford is foursquare behind the British Women's Colliery Health Standards Commission." Mairey would defend her husband's honor with her bare hands if necessary. "He's spent thousands already!"

"I know, dear." Lady Arthur's grin was filled with affable mischief. "I was referring to the fact that his beautiful wife wraps him so easily around her little finger. Good girl."

Mairey couldn't help her flush or her smile. Her dragon had been wrapped around more than her little finger last night—and early this morning, before their son had awakened for his breakfast.

"Jack does indulge me now and then. He would have joined us today, but there was an important meeting he had to attend." Jack's meeting was with little Patrick, and the agenda included diapers and pram-strolling and all those irresistible cooing and smooching noises Jack made to him.

Hardly a fitting reputation for
Britain
's most influential mining baron, but a matchless reputation for a father and husband.

"Parade your husband for us next time, dear. He's sinfully handsome, and quite the gentleman." Lady Arthur waved as her carriage sped away.

Mairey loved her new crusade and was committed to the fullest, but she had missed her son and his father terribly these last three hours. She gathered up her notes from Jack's conference table, and left his office for her desk in the library. A picnic would be a fine way to spend the rest of the day.

The warm afternoon light streamed in through the library windows, scattering rainbows across the room. Her search for father and son ended on the sun-washed carpet. Jack was lying on his back, his head propped on a cushion and his son sprawled loose-limbed across his chest, his long, bronze fingers splayed possessively over Patrick's diaper-thick bottom.

They were both snoozing blissfully.

Mairey felt like weeping for the boundless joy they brought her.

Jack was never far away from her these days. She had assumed that after a chaotic year of negotiating his way past three little girls and a new wife, and now a son, all of whom adored him, Jack would have grown immune to his family, weary of their demands. But every day he seemed to draw them even closer.

He encouraged the girls in their pursuits, supported
Tattie
in her tussles with Sumner, and joined Mairey in her causes.

And now he held her village and the silvery peaks from the Crown, a landlord with all the powers of the State behind him. He'd kept his promise to keep the glade of the
Willowmoon
a secret between them, reserved and protected forever under the control of Rushford Mining and Minerals.

"I love you so, Jack," she whispered. Patrick stirred, wriggled his nose and his fingers and his toes, and then settled his little cherub cheek against his father's heart, and
Mairey's
breasts reacted on cue. He would be bellowing for a snack in a moment, waking his dear father from a much-needed nap.

"Come, my little one." She scooped her baby into her arms, but he slept on, undisturbed even as she settled him into his cradle beside Jack's desk. Jack looked irresistible, too handsome not to kiss while he slept. She knelt to do so, only to feel her husband's familiar hand sifting through her skirts, brushing lightly along the inside of her thigh. She gazed down at his eyes, glistening beneath his dark lashes.

"You were sleeping a moment ago, my dragon."

"Dreaming of you, my love … of this, of your scent." His eyes turned
smokey
when he found the breach in her drawers, and darkened when she met his questing hand and moaned.

"Oh, Jack! You're incorrigible. And wonderful."

"And you, my love, are delicious." He slipped his free hand behind her neck and pulled her close to kiss her. "You finally finished with your meeting?"

"Oh, yes." She grew light-headed from his exhilarating caress, but encouraged his exploring. "We voted to petition Parliament for a hundred thousand pounds to establish a visiting medical corps. Oh, my!" She took a sharp breath when he dipped his fingers inside her, and another when he stayed to play.

"And then what, sweet?" The devil.

"We had tea—"

"And?"

"Then I told the ladies that I had a burning need to make love with my husband, and so I shooed them out, and came looking for you."

"And here I am, my love."

"You certainly are!" The rogue knew just how to make her sigh and gasp; and a long, breath-stealing moment later she was thoroughly sated, and tucked against Jack's shoulder.

And their son slept on in his cradle, as Jack described in detail how brilliant Patrick was—and only nine months old, mind you—and Mairey listened with all her heart, until Patrick woke up starving and wailing.

Jack wondered how happiness could make his heart ache. Stuffed full, he guessed. Even watching Mairey nurse their son was enough to sting the back of his eyes; the feel of the boy's hand wrapped around his finger sent him soaring with pride and filled with love.

Patrick finished his noisy meal and grinned up at his mother with all the besotted joy that Jack felt.

Could a man be more blessed?

"I was thinking, Jack, of a picnic." Mairey was fastening the two ingenious little openings between the copious pleats in her shirtwaist that allowed modesty while she was nursing.

But Jack was very good at gaining access when his son wasn't busy there… "I was thinking, Mairey, of retiring with you to our bed."

Her smile aroused him in an instant. She stood with Patrick on her hips and offered her hand to Jack, promising a splendid afternoon as soon as they could get the boy to sleep.

But then the library door burst open, and Poppy dashed into the room.

"
Michaelmas
cakes!" She was carrying a plate of lumpy baked goods. "See!"

They were the oddest cakes he'd ever seen. Plump with whole acorns and crumbling oats, spiced with bits of sea green moss, bristling with golden straw and glistening with honey.

"Are these people cakes, Poppy?" he asked, hoping they weren't, wondering how he would pretend to eat one without injuring her feelings.

Poppy giggled. "For the horses, silly!"

"I see," Jack said, forgiven for his gaff.

"Are the cakes cool enough yet, Poppy?" Caro asked as she came skipping through the door in her riding clothes, older these days, and mad for her new nephew, who seemed to think his young aunt was the funniest thing in the world. She nuzzled his nose with hers. "Hello, my baby duck."

Patrick whirled his fists at her and bounced on
Mairey's
hip.

"I'm going to jump the pony today!"

Jack's stomach lurched. Mairey shared a look of horror with him, but smoothed her fingers through Caro's hair. "You mind your teacher, Caroline Faelyn."

"Lord Jack!" They heard Anna long before she came clattering through the door in a pair of wooden garden clogs. She would be twelve two months from now, but was fast adding grace to her girlish beauty, and would soon be trailing gangly young men in her wake. Just now, though, she was wearing homespun gardening trousers and a huge, mud-caked shirt.

"For you, Lord Jack." She handed him a thick, battered envelope that had suffered far more than her finger smudges.

The mail came to
Drakestone
twice a day, and company correspondence flowed up and down the drive like ferries on the
Thames
.

This was not that kind of mail.

"What is it, Jack?" Mairey touched him, shifting Patrick into her arms.

San Francisco
. Addressed in a firm hand to "Jack Rushford,
London
." A simple envelope, but his heart was in his throat.

He had discovered recently that an Emma Rushford had
emigrated
to
America
in the spring of 1844, sailing around the Horn to
California
. His own Emma would have been fourteen, but the manifest hadn't listed ages, so he had sent inquiries to his contacts in
San Francisco
.

He had learned to hold tightly to his hope.

"Where did you get this, Anna?" he asked.

"I was out at the end of the drive, and a boy came by with it."

"Did he say anything?"

She blushed through her sunburned cheeks. "Not about the letter. I told him I would deliver it to you straightaway."

"Thank you, Anna." His hands shook as he sliced the envelope open. He felt
Mairey's
eyes on him, and absorbed the love that she wrapped him in.

"Were you expecting a letter from
San Francisco
, Jack?"

Where was the line between expectation and hope?

"Every day, my love." Because Mairey had taught him to love relentlessly.

Dear Mr. Rushford
. He could hardly see for the tears that welled in his eyes.

If you are my brother, as your handbill at the
San Francisco
post office says, you'll know these pictures as well as I do.

Mairey fit her hand through his arm. The girls were crowded in. And
all the
world stood still.

The next page was a pencil drawing of a cottage on the side of a hill. The next was a rickety wagon—a child's. And then a hearth seat with a carving of a daisy.

"Who drew the pictures, Lord Jack?" Caro asked.

He looked up at Mairey, a huge sob clutching at his heart.

"My sister drew this, Caro. Her name is Emma."
Mairey's
eyes were starry with astonished joy, her cheeks streaming with her lovely tears, and her mouth, when she kissed him tasted of all the miracles she'd brought him.

"Happily ever after, Jack." She nuzzled his chin and gazed up at him, while Anna and Caro and Poppy clung to them both, and their son chortled and blew little bubbles between them.

Jack kissed Mairey soundly, his treasure, his dearest heart. "Oh, my sweet love, now and forever after."

* * * * *