The Devil Claims a Wife

Mindful of his position and the importance of the visitor to his house, Simon stepped back and allowed Guy to enter the hall before him. ‘Will you take a glass of small ale? Or we have a very good French wine if you prefer.’

‘The ale, if you please,’ Guy said agreeably. ‘It is a warm day and thirsty work riding. I was familiarising myself with Cherriot Vale when I encountered Jane and—Master Aniston, walking in the forest.’ He gave Richard, hovering behind them, no more than a cursory glance.

Jane’s mother swept into the hall, followed by John Aniston, and curtsied low. ‘Sir Guy, you are most welcome. My husband has offered you refreshment?’

‘Sir Guy would like a glass of ale, Margaret. See to it, will you?’

Margaret fussed about while her husband introduced the earl to John Aniston. Richard muttered something unintelligible and, after glowering at his betrothed, disappeared to vent his fury on someone else. Jane’s parents failed to notice that something was grievously wrong between Jane and Richard, so dazzled were their eyes by the illustrious visitor and the importance of his visit.

When their visitor was seated in a high chair Margaret handed him a cup of ale.

‘It’s our finest,’ she said, her heart beating with the hope that past differences were forgiven and that their association with the Earl of Sinnington could only further advance her husband’s standing in the community and with the guild members. She sent up a silent prayer that things were beginning to look up for them at last.

Guy laughed at her pride and turned to smile at Jane. Their eyes met and she caught her breath. She could think of nothing to say. He had such presence. Nothing in his face indicated the path of his thoughts, yet she felt the weight of that unrelenting gaze as surely as if he were touching her. She told herself it was only natural that being stared at in such a dogged manner would pull her gaze back to his, no matter how diligently she steered it elsewhere. She just stood and stared at him while her parents and her future father-in-law conversed about things in general. When he’d finished his ale he got to his feet.

‘Thank you for your hospitality. I must be going.’

‘You are most welcome to stay and share our meal,’ Margaret offered, hoping he would accept.

‘Thank you. Your offer is most generous, but I must be on my way.’

Simon and his wife walked with him to the door. Jane followed, holding back. On the threshold Guy turned and, taking her hand, drew her forwards. He bowed his dark head and pressed a kiss into her palm. His skin smelled faintly of spices. She felt the warmth of his lips on her flesh and saw the softness of the hair that curled at the nape of his neck. Raising his eyes to hers, he folded her fingers over, as if to keep his kiss safe.

‘It was a pleasure meeting you again, Mistress Lovet.’

He looked down at her entranced face. When he had first met her, he’d considered making her his mistress—even though deflowering a gently reared virgin who was to wed another violated even his relaxed code of honour. Nothing had changed. Until today, she had merely been the delightful object of his lustful thoughts. But on witnessing her on the point of being attacked in the forest by the very man she was to wed—a man with a distasteful and violent reputation, who was not unknown to him even though they had never met—that had changed. Jane had inspired his compassion for her position. Seeing her distress had touched a tenderness, a protectiveness, within him that he never knew existed.

Guy had seen enough of the world to know that sometimes, out of desperation and despair, people found it necessary to act in a manner they would not otherwise have contemplated. Maybe Jane was desperate. Or maybe she despaired. If, after making enquiries into her situation, what Cedric had told him was true and that she was willing to sacrifice her own happiness for her family’s welfare, then he hoped Simon Lovet would refuse to let the marriage go ahead when he had informed him of the true nature of Aniston’s character.

The effect this would have on Richard Aniston didn’t concern him. The man wasn’t worthy of consideration.

He bowed to Jane and her parents and turned and walked through the heavy door and out into the sunlight.

Jane watched him mount his horse and ride away. How quickly, how suddenly she was becoming aware of the violent passions of men. The last hour would always stand out in her mind as the time when she had awoken to the strength of her feelings.

Observing the look of concentration on her daughter’s face—and something else she did not dare put a name to, as her gaze followed the Earl of Sinnington’s departing figure—with a concerned frown puckering her brow, Margaret moved to her side. ‘Sir Guy was very attentive to you, Jane,’ she remarked quietly. ‘Don’t let your head be turned.’

Jane turned her burning face to look at her mother. ‘Mother—I hope you don’t think …’

She smiled, but the frown remained. ‘I don’t think anything. But let me give you a bit of pure wisdom. There is more to a man than a handsome face or a pair of broad shoulders. Think on it, my dear, should you happen to meet the Earl of Sinnington again.’

Jane looked again in the direction of the departing figure. There was a lingering scent in the hall, of a spicy cologne, and for an elusive moment the blue eyes flicked through her mind and hinted at what the strong, straight lips had not been wont to speak. Her mind conjured up an image of his dark face all but hidden by his black beard and she shivered at the memory of those eyes as they’d looked into hers.

Today in the woods his eyes had been the angry darkness of a stormy sky—but there had been a moment, when his eyes had settled on her mouth, that the expression in their depths had changed, and that indefinable change had made him seem more threatening than ever. It was his beard, she told herself. Without it he’d look like any other man. Or would he? she asked herself. No, he would still look alarming. It wasn’t just his beard. It was his daunting height and build, and his strange, deep blue eyes.

She closed her eyes to banish the vision. When she opened them she chided herself at the meanderings of her mind.

‘You need not be concerned, Mother.’ She smiled somewhat ruefully. ‘With a reputation as black as his, I shall never be taken in by the likes of the Earl of Sinnington.’

Arriving back at the castle, Guy strode into the great hall with long, purposeful strides, his brow furrowed by a deep frown.

Cedric was seated by the fire with his feet resting on one of the logs in the great hearth, a tankard of ale in his hand. He regarded Guy attentively. Without saying a word, he stood staring absently into the fire. His body was tense, the tendons in his neck corded. ‘Well?’ Cedric said at length. ‘It’s clear you have something on your mind. Out with it.’

‘I have decided. I must have her. I mean to make Jane Lovet my mistress,’ Guy said, making no effort whatsoever to conceal his intention.

Cedric stared at him, his tankard, halfway to his mouth, arrested in his hand. ‘And you assume that she will naturally consent and fall into your bed without objection?’

‘Why not?’

‘Why not, indeed, when the whole district is waiting on tenterhooks and expectation for the wedding between Mistress Lovet and Master Aniston to take place.’

‘We both know what Aniston is like, what he is guilty of. He should consider himself fortunate his head remains on his shoulders. Frankly, I don’t give a blessed damn.’

‘About the gossip?’ Cedric persisted carefully. ‘Or about Richard Aniston?’ When Guy didn’t reply, he leaned forwards and asked bluntly, ‘What are your reasons for wanting the wench—apart from the obvious?’ He chuckled low. ‘Heaven forbid your heart’s become afflicted and you’ve fallen for the wench?’

Guy turned a glacial stare upon his friend. ‘When has love anything to do with desire?’ he returned, deriding his cynicism. ‘Love is inconsistent. Desire is an honest emotion, at least. Love is the word given to it by moral bigots.’

Cedric laughed. ‘So speaks a confirmed rake—and I would say bachelor, if I didn’t know you were looking for a wife.’

‘I want Jane Lovet for myself,’ Guy said stonily. ‘I’ve given up trying to understand my reasons for the step I am about to take. I want her. That is reason enough.’

‘Forgive me if I find your decision somewhat hasty,’ Cedric remarked, taking a long draught of his ale. ‘My advice is for you to proceed with caution.’

‘I intend to. My mind is focused on not making sudden moves. There is no denying that the slow, gentling approach works miracles on skittish animals. I doubt women are much different,’ he said with the arrogant confidence of a man who believes he cannot lose.

With that he quit the hall, leaving Cedric gazing after him in amazement and alarm. After a moment, however, the squire’s expression cleared and he began to chuckle and then laughed out loud. ‘May God help him,’ he chortled. Not since Isabel Leigh had stolen his heart and then betrayed him with another had a woman managed to entrap his friend.

He glanced in the direction Guy had taken and raised his tankard in a salute. ‘To your future bliss, Guy.’ He grinned.

Jane loved to spend time in the parish church of St Peter, beaming benignly upon the sleepy town of Cherriot. On her knees she would confide all her hopes and fears and heartaches to the saints she had no doubt guided and protected her. The solace, the scent of incense blending with candle wax and the low murmurings of others in prayer were a great comfort to her.

Today was a working day so it was a quiet time in the church. It held an intimacy which was lacking on Sundays, when it was crowded and filled with the scent of humanity. It was the only time she was allowed out without a companion and she felt safe within the confines of the church.

She went to the statue of the Blessed Virgin and knelt on the prie-dieu before it and bowed her head over her hands holding her paternoster beads, her lips moving in prayer. The prayer in her heart was that some miracle would happen so that she didn’t have to marry Richard, but since that was unlikely to happen, she asked God for a blessing on her married life. It seemed a safe prayer and helped her set aside her feelings of frustration of marriage to a man she didn’t know well, a man she wasn’t sure she even liked.

The church door opened and closed. A shadow moved nearby. Male footsteps moved closer and stopped a few paces away. She didn’t recognise them. It wasn’t a servant, for the man had spurs that clinked. She didn’t look up, but glanced sideways. She saw mud on his boots. The spurs were silver and glinted in the light slanting through the windows.

With a shock, she realised whose boots these were. Her intruder was neither friend nor stranger. Caution and propriety dictated she left his presence immediately, but something else, something far less familiar, kept her on her knees. What strange power did this man radiate that a mere glance or a small curve of his mouth could set her senses reeling this way? The very sight of him should send an unmarried young woman scampering for the safety of her home, but she couldn’t move.

He came and knelt beside her. Folding his hands in front of his face, he bowed his head, but she knew he wasn’t praying. His head was turned and he was looking at her with bold, unguarded interest. She kept her head determinedly down, hoping he would go away if she kept quiet.

She held her breath. There was a long silence. Unable to endure the suspense any longer, boldly she raised her head and met his bright gaze. She felt it as a shock right through her body. She found him poised, taut and still and dark as ever. But his expression was guarded. Guy was clean shaven. This startled her, for it made him seem much younger, and she saw that his chin was square and had a cleft in it. His mouth, wide, curved and passionate, was drawn thin at the corners and his heavy eyelids seemed as though they would never wholly lift again to disclose the vivid blue beneath.

When the beautiful bass voice murmured, ‘Forgive me for interrupting your prayers, but I saw you come in here and I wanted to speak to you’, the memory of that silken male touch when he had cupped her chin, the like of which she might never feel in the future closing in around her, was enough to dispel her irritation at being interrupted in her prayers. Her pulses had leaped to the thrill of it, and her body had tingled with a delicious urgency to experience more of the pleasure a man’s touch could evoke.

‘I beg your pardon, but I fail to understand what you can have to say to me. Indeed, your time must have been so taken up with your homecoming that I imagined you had forgotten I existed.’

He bent his head closer to her. The soft scent of violets that she exuded overlay the scent of incense in the church. ‘I haven’t forgotten. Nor have I forgotten what occurred in the forest.’