Bogus Bride

“The last time we danced together was on my sixteenth birthday. You trod on my gown. Remember?”

Samuel closed his eyes to the memory. The hotel ballroom seemed to ebb and recede, a surging in his ears wreaking havoc with his balance. He stumbled, and Caitlin took his arm.

“Are you sure you’re all right?”

Samuel looked at her. She stared into his face, her eyes huge and liquid, their green turned dark as the forest. Her long lashes threw tiny shadows into the soft hollows of her face. He merely nodded.

“You’re an imprudent man, Samuel Jardine.”

Her tone managed to convey both a solicitous care for his well-being and a repressed anger. His expression darkened. She was probably riled both about his neglect and his inebriated state, but it couldn’t be helped. Samuel skated swiftly over the thin ice.

“It’s late. We should turn in.”

“You’re right.” Caitlin slid her arms around him, leaning her cheek against his chest. “You’re always right.” That was a lie, but no one wants to make a false start, she thought.

“Right.” He took a breath that momentarily lifted his chest. “Let’s go,” he said, the words a thick, hot jumble in his mouth.

A silence heavy with significance stretched between them as they slowly made their way to their room. Caitlin felt his fingers moving across her flesh, saw that languid, lustful look in his eyes that made her melt inside. A burst of happiness exploded inside her. She would tell him that she cared, and how much.

At the door, going up on tiptoe, she began to kiss him. Her lips parted as he angled his mouth to hers. His kiss was wide, wet and demanding. He tasted of whiskey, not a bad taste. One arm came up, enfolded his head, stroking.

Samuel felt her body, strong and supple against his, the ripple of her breathing, the warmth of her breasts and belly. He touched her cheek, the side of her neck, the hollow of her collarbone, the flat planes of her shoulder. He put his lips against her neck.

Everything should have been rosy. He was young and strong. His blood howled and leaped through anguished veins. A liquid heat rushed up his body. Trouble was, the world kept sliding out from under him on an oblique tangent, away from now, toward what he couldn’t, shouldn’t, mustn’t, remember, so that he was no longer sure of anything. Except that she was his wife. Completely, unequivocally.

Chapter Three (#ulink_6e45acd6-6e1f-5dd7-aa5b-6d776ed739fc)

The usual confusion prior to departure from the wharf at Saint John was in full swing. There came a clang of a bell from the shallow-draft riverboat. The sound ricocheted under the iron roof of the pilothouse and echoed across the poop deck and along the quay.

People descended the gangway to the squat and powerful craft in a rapid stream, and a flood of mingled French and English reached Caitlin’s ears. From her vantage point on the poop deck, she watched a dozen men stringing in from the road, bearing bundles and bags and rolls of blankets.

They were big, burly men, unshaven, flannel-shirted, with trousers cut off midway between knee and ankle so that they reached just below the upper of their high-topped, heavy laced boots. Two or three were singing. All appeared unduly happy, talking loudly, with deep laughter.

It dawned on Caitlin that these were loggers. They were a rough lot—and some were very drunk. The men began filing down the gangway to the bulwark amidships. One. slipped, and came near falling into the water, whereat his fellows howled gleefully.

Caitlin shivered, glanced up, and found Samuel watching her. He raised a well-defined auburn brow, managing offense and amusement at the same time. Her mouth compressed. “It’s plain folly employing such ruffians, picturesque though they be.”

He shook his head slowly. A grin eased up along one side of his sculpted mouth. “A strong back and a good sense of humor is all that’s required in a lumberjack. Comeliness is not a requisite.”

Caitlin felt hot blood go to her face at the mild rebuke. There was an edge to his voice that disturbed her. She felt as if he had dealt her a light but very decided buffet in the face. Again it struck her that Samuel had changed in some indefinable fashion.

Perhaps it was simply the aftereffects of the liquor he had consumed last night? While she must make allowances for the excitement of getting married, she must ensure that he did not indulge in such intemperate behavior on a regular occasion.

The Samuel she thought she knew was not a drinking man, and manifestations of liquor were most inconvenient, especially when it came to marital intimacies. Her eyes, refusing to obey her edict of caution, drifted downward, taking in the long, muscular line of his thigh, outlined by his breeches. She swallowed, wanting nothing so much as to reach out her hand and touch him right there.

Caitlin touched her upper lip with her tongue, excited and a little perturbed at the shocking drift of her thoughts. She saw Samuel’s eyes flicker to her mouth at the movement and linger there.

He was very close, so close she could see the pulse beat in his throat. She released a shuddering breath. He swallowed hard. Then he cleared his throat and shifted his feet.

Studying him, her heart swelled anew with love and did a mad dance along her rib cage. The pose of polite calm was a facade. Underneath, he was as tense as she was.

Samuel’s eyes found hers at last. She lifted one hand a little toward him, and let it fall helplessly. The shadow of something came and went across his face. It was impossible to tell what he was thinking.

Caitlin’s mouth went dry, her palms damp. For a moment she wished she could look inside him, and just see for once what he was actually thinking.

There followed a long, tense moment when nothing happened. He did not smile. His brown eyes did not waver. But they were alive, hot—and hungry.

It came to her suddenly that he wanted to kiss her. Her heart did a little flip of anticipation. The blood surged in her ears, and her breath was in short supply.

But he did not.

There came a rumble and sputter through the boat’s side as the valves of the steam engine plunged into the pistons, and the steady thrum of its power reverberated through the wooden craft.

Samuel looked away. Deep creases formed in his forehead. He looked as if he were in pain. What was the matter with him? Perhaps he had the headache? Of course, that was perfectly logical, she told herself. After all, he’d consumed a considerable quantity of liquor the previous evening.

Caitlin’s initial rush of relief at this interpretation quickly started to fade. It was beginning to be followed by doubts. Samuel looked, if anything, a little annoyed. Maybe she’d been wrong about him?

After all, she had not had a great deal of experience with Americans and their strange ways. And her husband had been in this country for nigh on ten years, sufficient time to have assimilated thoroughly its culture and habits.

What was certain was that his virile handsomeness was quite different from the insipid, pale-faced young men she had known in Cornwall. Most likely, the foolish notion that he wanted to kiss her had been all her imagination, she counseled herself.

No, she realized, with dizzying relief. She had not imagined the way he looked at her, the tension, the desire that seemed to vibrate in the air between them as loudly as the engine.

Samuel was a considerate, genteel man—even if he was forced to associate with ruffians. He was trying to act with propriety. This was not the time and place for a gentleman to kiss his wife. He would wait until it was appropriate.

Caitlin swallowed the thick knot of love that pushed high in her throat, understanding what he felt, overcome that for Samuel it should be as splendid as it was for her. She slipped her hand around his upper arm and hugged him, leaning her head against his jacket. She could smell the deep, male scent of it.

“How true. It’s always best to be chosen on your merits, nothing else. Otherwise you’re just a player in a masquerade. All show.” She made her voice very cool, in order to mask her emotion.

Samuel did not reply. Perhaps he had not heard her. He stood, hands on the rails, idly watching a wagon from which goods were being unloaded. A motley array of passengers trailing around the wagon were forced to dodge barrels and casks as two men piled its cargo aboard.

Caitlin stood next to Samuel and took deep breaths, inhaling the crisp fragrance of the morning air. A small smile played around the corners of her lips as she fantasized life in the future.

There would be Samuel, a pleasantly ordered home life, and, of course, a variety of social activities. They would be delightfully happy. If she had remained in Port Isaac, except for the matter of being married, things would have moved along the same pleasant channels. But what else did women do in this country? she wondered.

And, abruptly, the thought triggered in Caitlin a doubt, a welling of uncertainty, of the mind’s apprehension, that she had allowed a girlish infatuation to trap her into the narrow, conventional mold that she had tried for years to escape from.

There had been a time when she thought Samuel had forgotten his promise, and she began helping Dr. Jardine. At first, she had washed bottles, folded linen, ordered supplies and sent out accounts.

Gradually, things had changed. She had a quick and eager mind, and Dr. Jardine, somewhat to his own astonishment, had found himself not only acquainting her with medical facts, but also initiating her into the practical aspects of medicine.

While she had not been permitted to go to Edinburgh and sit the examinations needed for formal qualifications, she’d been able to work with patients, instead of just learning theory from books. It had been many years since the sight of Caitlin Parr perched up beside the good doctor as he made his rounds raised eyebrows in Port Isaac.

What was her life to be? While marriage was all well and good, she hoped Samuel would understand that he had acquired a wife whose horizons had been broadened by none other than his own father.

The hush between husband and wife allowed normal activities to intrude on her thoughts—the creak and groan of the timbers of the sturdy riverboat, the shush of water beneath pilings and a man’s laugh. The clang of the ship’s bell brought her out of herself.

Caitlin looked around, catching sight of the drunken loggers. Their actions were theatrical—even melodramatic. They reminded her vaguely of a pantomime. Precariously they negotiated the slanting passage. All but one. This beefy, bearded, dirty-looking brute sat himself down on his bundle at the slip head and began a quavering chant.