Wolfsgate Read online

  “I’m glad you like it,” suddenly rolled out of her mouth. His lips curled into a trace of that familiar, devastating smile once more.

  “I do.” His voice dropped, the smile vanished, and his eyes closed. Only the splashes of the bathwater filled the silence between them.

  “Um, could you lean forward?” she asked. “Your back…”

  He leaned forward, and she rubbed the soapy cloth over his neck, sweeping it down over the long lines of his back. Another low groan escaped his throat. The loaded silence was crushing her. She scrubbed across his back once more.

  “Now I feel revived,” he murmured. He leaned back suddenly, the water sloshing around him. He gazed up at her face.

  Justine swallowed hard. He was so very handsome, every bit as handsome as she remembered him, but she had not paid too much attention to it back then, had she? He had been an older brother figure to her, and she had valued that and liked it tremendously. William had hardly been the kind, warm sibling she had hoped he would be.

  She had been thrilled to be a part of their family. After Justine’s father had died suddenly in a coach accident, sadness, apprehension, and uncertainty had defined her life. A year later, her mother had married Richard and suddenly Justine became part of a family. She had an older brother and sister who had an impressive house in town along with a titled uncle, aunt, and cousin who owned a beautiful country estate.

  Brandon was her elder step-cousin. Oh, for God’s sake, he was her husband now.

  That sensuous half-smile faded from his lips, and his impenetrable stare bored a hole through her. Droplets of water dripped from his slick, raven hair down his forehead. On an impulse, she reached out and wiped at one with her fingertips. He grabbed her wrist with his hand and yanked her close to him. She let out a gasp as hot, soapy water rushed down her arms soaking her sleeves.

  His eyes narrowed over her. “I’m still not sure if I can trust you, Justine.”

  She held his gaze evenly. “That is for you to decide,” she breathed.

  “Yes, it is. Well said.”

  Brandon drew her hand to his mouth and kissed the back of it. She wasn’t sure if that kiss signaled an entente or if it was the sophisticated gesture of a predator softening its prey before the kill. He brought his fingers to her jaw where his thumb stroked her lower lip. Heat jabbed through her. He seemed to like doing that.

  She liked it too.

  “Tell me,” he asked. “I’m not ruined?”

  “No, you are not ruined.” A smile lit up her face, and she wiped a tendril of hair from her eyes.

  He reached out to smooth back another unruly lock of her hair. His fingers lingered on the edge of her ear tickling the delicate skin. “Why would you do this for me, Justine?”

  “What do you mean?” Her eyes searched his. “Why would I not?”

  “Not many people would. Selfishness reigns in our day and age.”

  “Brandon, your life and your family’s legacy were in jeopardy. I couldn’t be a part of your destruction. Yes, I did play a role in their plan, but not willingly.” She shook her head and her voice dropped. “I could never harm you intentionally. You were always kind to me, and your father was very good to me. He was more a father to me than I have ever known.” She twisted the cloth in her hands. “How could I allow for you and Wolfsgate to be destroyed?”

  “My father obviously trusted you.”

  “I loved Lord Jeremy,” she said, tears pricking her eyes. Brandon’s thumb stroked the soft skin of her jaw. Her cheeks flushed, and he sighed and took back his hand. Justine bit her lip and dipped the washcloth in the water again and scrubbed his knee with it. He stretched the leg out and leaned his foot against the rim of the tub, and she brought the washcloth down his calf.

  Justine went to the other side of the tub to wash his other leg. She felt a rivulet of perspiration trickle down her chest as she leaned over and scrubbed his thigh, bringing the cloth down his leg to his foot. He let out a low chuckle then leaned forward, plucked the washcloth from her hand, and brought it all the way up his thigh under the water to his pelvis. Justine shot up and turned to fill another bowl with hot water. She held it out to him, and he poured it over his head groaning as the warm waterfall streamed down over his body. She stilled, the image burning into her brain. He handed her back the bowl, and she gripped it tightly.

  “It’s such a huge relief to know there is money in the estate,” he said. “This changes everything.”

  “Money always does.”

  His eyes darted up at her. “William and Richard are not yet aware of your deception?”

  “Good God, no. They believe the only source of income now is what little they have allowed Davidson to generate on the estate.”

  “And you’ve kept up this masquerade for some time? Over a year? That’s why you’ve continued on without servants or new clothes or much upkeep around here?”

  Justine bit her lip. He had noticed that she wore the same two dresses over and over again. “Yes,” she said.

  His somber gaze settled on her. “That all changes immediately.”

  She wasn’t sure what that meant, but her heart skipped a beat as she opened the bath sheet for him. He stood up from the tub and took the cloth from her, a small smile forming on his lips. With their gazes locked on each other, he dried his upper body with the cloth. Finally, he wrapped the linen about his waist and climbed out of the tub with his warm hand clamped onto her shoulder for support.

  “Leave the tub for tomorrow, Justine, and help me to my chamber. I want a proper bed tonight,” he said as he headed for the door.

  Her eyes bulged.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked. “Do I no longer have a room?”

  “Of course you do, it’s just that I haven’t had a chance to prepare it properly.”

  “I thought that’s what you were doing today, banging away up there.”

  Her cheeks reddened. “I was annoyed with you, so I left it, and took more time with Richard’s old room instead. Yours has no bedlinen or…Stop laughing, Brandon.”

  “I am a very clean boy right now, Justine.”

  “Yes.” Her gaze swept over his gleaming skin, his contoured form looming over her. “You are.”

  “And I’m very tired and somewhat drunk, and I’m getting cold standing here debating this with you. Take me to your room.”

  She froze. “What?”

  “Your room,” he said. “I’m sure your bed is pristine and fresh. Anyway, I’ve already lain in your bed, haven’t I? Come on. Let’s go.”

  “But—”

  “Yours.”

  She walked before him on the staircase, gripping the brass candle holder, her knuckles white. The light cast its soft glow on the paintings of Graven ancestors hanging on the walls of the grand staircase. The stern light-colored eyes of Brandon’s grand-father and great-grandfather seemed illuminated in the light, following their steady progress up the stairs.

  Justine’s favorite was of Lady Caroline as a young mother, her hair long, full and flowing, the same rich dark color as her son’s. She held the hand of a three-year-old Brandon, who was pressed at her side, a blazing, satisfied smile lighting her lips. It was Brandon’s smile, his mother’s, the one he rarely wore any longer. Justine had caught him staring at the portrait the other day when she had been rushing up the stairs, but he had turned away immediately without a word and tramped out of the house.

  His bare feet padded on the stairs behind her now, his clean soapy scent drifting over her like a fine cologne teasing her senses, sounding an alarm. They walked down the long landing towards the last door on the right. Her fingers clasped the handle tightly as she pushed open the door to her room. Brandon immediately peeled off the bath sheet from his body, tossed it on the floor, stripped the quilted cover from her bed, and flung himself facedown onto the mattress.

  “Wonderful.” He let out a groan.

  Justine’s eyes flared at the sight of a naked Brandon on her bed. What a beautiful
rear he has. A current sparked through her insides. She put the candle down carefully on her dresser across from the bed.

  “Where are you?” his deep voice rolled through the darkness.

  “Here, I—”

  “Come to bed.”

  “Brandon—”

  “Come to bed, Justine.”

  She untied her robe with cold fingers, shrugging it off her shoulders and flicking off her slippers. She took heavy steps to the bed and climbed in, the linens cool against her heated skin. He turned his head on the pillow, and his eyes studied her in the dim light. She was hardly breathing. Her brain worked overtime to convince her this arrangement was perfectly ordinary, they were husband and wife after all. Any minute now she would relax, breathe again, find sleep.

  Impossible.

  Might conversation help?

  “Brandon, remember when I first came to Wolfsgate and there was this terrible storm full of howling winds and thunder and lightning? And all of us were so very frightened? The walls were practically shaking with the thunder. Nanny had gotten us all into one big bed together and—”

  “And told us mad ghost stories and sang old Cornish ditties she really shouldn’t have shared with children?” He chuckled. “Yes, I remember.”

  Justine smiled, her muscles finally relaxing. “I didn’t understand the ditties.”

  “No, of course you didn’t.”

  “But Annie explained them to me later.” They both laughed.

  “Good God, nothing escaped that girl,” Brandon said. “The last time I saw you was when I left for Jamaica, wasn’t it? You had brought me one of my mother’s roses to say goodbye. You had petals in your hair.” He wound a strand of her coppery brown hair around his finger.

  Justine’s scalp tingled. “You and your father had been fighting. You were so upset. I thought if I brought you the rose you would, I don’t know, be less upset, I suppose. I was a young girl then, what did I know?”

  “You understood how I was feeling. And you tried to do something to make it better. How old were you then?”

  “Sixteen.”

  “Not so very young.” He released her hair and folded his arms under his head, the firm contours of his shoulders visible in the waning firelight. His heavy eyes remained on hers. “This was your bedchamber back then too, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “And now we’re all grown up, and here I am in your bed,” he said in a low, rich tone which quickened her pulse. “I have to get to know the girl I left behind years ago,” he whispered. “That girl who is now my grown-up wife.” His eyes drifted closed, and his breathing deepened. He was asleep.

  She pulled the coverlet higher around them. Justine remained awake for a long while, studying her husband’s relaxed face.

  Brandon’s hand sifted through her hair which slid like thick ropes of silk through his fingers. He had woken to find her head on his chest, her hands curled into her body at his side like a child’s, her legs bent by his waist. He pulled the bedcovers over her shoulders in a sudden surge of protectiveness.

  Just moments ago he had been gripping Justine’s waist, crumpling her nightdress in his hand, his lungs squeezing for air. Fragments of another dream had awoken him. Luckily he hadn’t woken her. He smoothed the thin garment down over her warm skin and then sank his fingers back into her mane of thick hair letting out a sigh.

  How she bewildered him.

  “I’m still not sure if I can trust you,” he had said to her earlier during his bath.

  There had been no pleading on her part, no teary-eyed imploring, no batting of those beautiful, long eyelashes. None of the usual feminine tricks that were catalogued in his memory and no attempt at a seduction with him naked in a tub under her very hands. No, no typical feminine maneuvers whatsoever. He had waited for the signs, yet they never came. She had even answered his accusatory questions with genuine frankness.

  His head sank back into the pillow. Even as a young girl Justine had been guileless, and he and Annie had always been protective of her. Now he was lying in her bed next to her, feeling something other than brotherly protectiveness, something vibrant, and fervent, and dark. He exhaled, his hand stroking over his painful erection.

  Annie had always said they couldn’t fool anyone with Justine around, who often unwittingly spoiled many of the schemes she frequently planned against the rest of them. ‘It’s a gift Justine, don’t ever change. Dissembling has become second nature for us,’ Annie had once said hugging her stepsister close.

  Brandon had laughed as well because it was true. Any sort of lying or pretense had always been a challenge for the young Justine. ‘You’re shy,’ he had told her once when he had sensed her irritation with herself. ‘But that simply means you’re sensitive. You see and understand things others don’t.’

  His father had trusted her straight on his deathbed, hadn’t he? Lord Jeremy was not a man easily fooled. He had certainly kept his brother Richard, a weak character whom he barely tolerated, at bay for years, making sure his visits to Wolfsgate were few and far between. That was probably why he had agreed to let Justine stay at Wolfsgate for longer patches after her mother had died. He had offered the innocent girl a respite from a stepfather and stepbrother who obviously never gave too much of a damn about her and much preferred London society to the country. And now years later, this orphaned, abandoned girl had saved his bloody life, nursed him back to health, and protected his inheritance all the while.

  One artless, unworldly young woman.

  Well, not too artless, for she must have had guile to pull off some sort of scene at the hospital to get him released. He would have liked to have seen it. She had even used a borrowed wedding ring to play her part. And the cryptic accounting with Davidson behind William and Richard’s backs? No, this girl had done a lot of growing up over the years out of grim necessity. His finger coiled a springy curl of her hair.

  He had to trust her.

  He wanted to.

  JUSTINE’S LIPS BRUSHED AGAINST A WALL OF WARMTH. She burrowed closer to the soft solidity surrounding her as she licked her dry lips. Her tongue swiped against something taut and smooth which pulsed under her touch. There was movement over her bare thigh, which was trapped in between two massive legs and…

  Justine’s eyes flew open and her breath stuck in her chest. The room was engulfed in inky darkness. It was still the middle of the night, and her body was entwined with Brandon’s. Justine tried to extract her leg from his as gracefully as possible, which proved to be impossible. Thankfully, he shifted slightly and his legs released hers. She twisted away from his very appealing, very naked, heat-saturated form never having been more grateful for the darkness. Justine eased back against her pillow once more.

  The mattress moved beneath her. Brandon let out a groan and drew his body up against the headboard, adjusting the pillows behind him. His fingers drifted across her bare shoulder then down her back. Her eyes flew open once more.

  “Justine? Are you awake?” His fingers swept the hair from her neck sending tingles skittering across her skin.

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me more of what has been going on here since I left for the Indies,” he said, his voice low, gentle.

  She turned over on her back. His face loomed over her, his loose, dark hair almost touching his shoulders. Clearing her throat, Justine pushed herself up towards the headboard.

  “Can you not sleep?” she asked.

  He rubbed his eyes. “I’m always dreaming, always waking.”

  “You need a bedtime story then?”

  “Yes that’s it.” He let out a soft chuckle. “Give us a fairytale, would you? Why don’t you tell me about our wedding?”

  Justine let out a laugh. The richness of it flowed over his weary muscles like warm oil. She drew her knees up to her chest and faced him. “That sounds rather bizarre doesn’t it?”

  “It does, but I think we should embrace it. We are living most peculiar circumstances. Tell me.”

&
nbsp; “Once upon a time a stepfather and stepbrother explained to a young lady that the prince of the castle, feared lost at sea in a horrible shipwreck, had been found in a hospital in the great city. He was, however, physically frail, scarred, and considered insane.” She drew out her voice as if she were recounting a horror tale. Brandon laughed.

  “They wanted her to see the young prince in his misery, so they took her to the dungeon where they kept him. He was in oblivion, muttering to himself, dirty and disheveled. He was so changed, so utterly different from the prince she had known. It frightened the young lady, made her sad. Then it made her angry.”

  “I remember the lady’s eyes, her voice,” Brandon murmured. “She made an oath, did she not?”

  “She did.”

  “Say it.”

  Justine took in a breath. “She promised the prince she would not leave him there alone, that she would come back for him, that she wouldn’t let them destroy him.”

  “You kept that promise,” he whispered.

  Her fingers curled into the bedlinen at his side, and she cleared her throat. “The doctor told the young lady that the prince’s heart was no longer strong. ‘See,’ they assured her, ‘he’s dying, you’ll be a widow in no time.’

  “Is that what they said?”

  “But she felt horrible for she knew agreeing to this would mean betraying the prince and the King. She pleaded with them, but they only laughed at the idea that procuring a wife for the prince was proving to be so difficult.”

  Brandon sighed. “Yes. Quite comical.”

  “They said if she didn’t marry the prince, they would find someone else for her, someone she would surely not like. They reminded her that they could have turned her out after her mother had died, but they hadn’t. They had taken care of her and allowed her to thrive at Wolfsgate Castle as part of their family. Therefore, she must do as they bid her.”

  “They returned to London where they purchased a special license to marry without the usual bans and arranged for a parson to officiate at the prince’s bed. The prince only mumbled something about velvet. The parson obligingly took that as an ‘I will.’ They put a quill in the prince’s hand, and he scratched on the registrar’s document with some assistance, then they handed it to the young lady to sign. Thus, the young prince and the young lady were married and became Prince and Princess of Wolfsgate Castle. The End.”