The Heiress Bride (Sherbrooke Brides 3)

“The reason I was so ill was because I was knifed, and like a fool, I didn’t see a physician. I didn’t want you to know because I could just see you tearing London apart with your bare hands to find the villain and bring me his head on a platter. Now we’re out of London so it doesn’t matter. You’re safe from yourself.”

Sinjun simply looked at him. He had a point. She would have been greatly incensed, no doubt about that. She smiled down at him. “Does the bandage need to be changed?”

“Yes, I suppose so. The stitches need to come out tomorrow or the next day.”

“All right,” she said. “I’ll do it. The good Lord knows I’ve had enough practice with all of Ryder’s children.”

“Your brother? How many children does he have?”

“I call them his Beloved Ones. Ryder saves children from dreadful situations and brings them to live in Brandon House. There are about a dozen children there right now, but one never knows when another will arrive, or when one will leave to go to a family Ryder has carefully selected. Sometimes it m

akes you cry, Colin, to see a little one battered by a cruel drunken father or just left in an alley by a gin-soaked mother.”

“I see. Get yourself dressed, but first cover me up.”

She did, reluctantly, and he found he was chuckling. Never in his life had he met any female like her. Her interest in his body was embarrassing it was so blatant.

Sinjun solved the privacy problem with a blanket hung over an open armoire door. She didn’t stop talking to Colin while she dressed. While she was eating her breakfast, she watched him shave. She volunteered to help him bathe, but that treat was denied her. Again, she was ordered to pack their things, her back turned to him. He did, however, allow her to look at his thigh. The wound was healing nicely. Sinjun lightly pressed the flesh around the stitches. “Thank God,” she said, “I was so afraid.”

“I’m fine now. It’s just a matter of building back my strength.”

“This is all very strange.”

He eyed her, the flamboyant girl who didn’t seem to have a fear of anything or anyone, who looked at the world as if it were hers to rearrange and reshape just as she wished. Life, in his brief experience, had a way of knocking that out of one. He found himself rather hoping it wouldn’t be knocked out of her for a good long time. She was strong, no fluttering miss, and for that he was grateful. A fluttering English miss would never survive Vere Castle and all its denizens, of that he was sure. Just then he saw a hint of panic in her eyes, and it was that small sign of vulnerability that kept him quiet. She would find out quickly enough.

Then she was laughing and smiling again, even at Mr. Mole, the ostler of the White Hart. When he made a leering comment to her as they were leaving, she merely turned to him and frowned. “It is a pity, sir,” she said, “that you must needs be so disagreeable and show so little breeding. My husband and I stopped here only because he is ill. I assure you that we will never come here again, unless he is ill again, which is unlikely because—”

Colin laughed and took her hand.

He soon became markedly silent, and Sinjun left him to his thoughts. He continued silent through the day and the evening and into the next day. He was preoccupied, frankly absent from her, and she decided to allow him the peace to work out whatever was bothering him. What bothered her most was that he had ordered two bedchambers for them, without explanation. She’d left it alone.

It was late the following afternoon, as the carriage bowled toward Grantham, that he turned to face her in the carriage and dropped the boot. “I have given this a lot of thought, Joan. This is difficult for me, but I must do it, to absolve myself of a veritable little bit of my guilt. I abused your brother’s hospitality by slipping out like a thief in the night with his sister. No, no, keep quiet. Let me finish. In short, I cannot justify what I’ve done, no matter how hard I try to rationalize it. However, there is one thing I can do that will hold some honor, that will help me live with myself. I won’t take your virginity until our wedding night.”

“What? You mean I’ve left you to yourself, been silent as a punch bowl, and over the past day and a half all you’ve come up with is that bit of arrant nonsense? Colin, listen, you don’t know my brothers! We must, that is, you must make me your wife and this very night, else—”

“Enough! You make it seem like I’m going to torture you, for God’s sake, rather than preserve your damned innocence. It isn’t nonsense, arrant or otherwise. I won’t dishonor you in that way; I won’t dishonor your family in that way. I was raised to hold honor dear. It’s in my blood, in my heritage, generation upon generation of it, even through all the killings, the savage battles, there was honor somewhere lurking about. I must marry quickly to save my family and my holdings, you know that well enough, and to protect them from the damned raiding and lying MacPhersons, but one thing I don’t have to do is be a rutting stoat on an innocent girl who isn’t yet my wife.”

“Who are the MacPhersons?”

“Damnation, I didn’t mean to mention them. Forget them.”

“But what if Douglas catches us?”

“I will handle it when and if it happens.”

“I understand about honor, I truly do, Colin, but somehow it’s more than that, isn’t it? Do you dislike me so much? I know I’m too tall and perhaps too skinny for your tastes, but—”

“No, you’re not too tall or too skinny. Just leave it be, Joan. My mind is made up. I won’t take your virginity until we’re wed, and that’s that.”

“I see, my lord. Well, my lord, my mind is also made up. I fully intend for my virginity to be but a memory by the time we reach Scotland. I don’t think it reasonable to think that you can simply handle Douglas if he catches us. You don’t know my brother. I might think I’m clever, all my machinations to evade him, trying alternate routes and all that, but he’s as cunning as a snake. No, my virginity is more than just a marital thing, Colin. It’s necessary that you rid me of it quickly. I feel very strongly about this, so it’s not just that’s that. Now, just whose mind is it that will carry the day?”

She wished he’d yell as Douglas and Ryder did, but he didn’t, saying only, very calmly, very coldly, “Mine, naturally. I’m the man. I will be your husband and you will obey me. You can begin obeying me now. It will doubtless be good for your character.”

“No one has ever spoken to me like that except my mother, and she I could always ignore.”

“You won’t ignore me. Don’t be childish about this. Trust me.”

“You’re as autocratic as Douglas, damn you, even though you haven’t yelled.”