The Reluctant Bride Collection Read online

  Elinor remembered the reference his mistress had written for him.

  He is all that he promises. Or was eight years ago. God knows what India has done to the man.

  Elinor stood. “I would like to see Mr. Sinclair.”

  “I’ll send him right up.”

  “I wouldn’t want to disturb the man,” she said dryly. “I will go to him.”

  If he was allowed downstairs in her kitchen, then so was she.

  The housekeeper grimaced at her tone but led the way. Elinor had been down to the kitchen before. . . Of course she had. Hadn’t she?

  But when she descended the tight staircase and entered the room, the laughing blue eyes that looked at her from across the heavily scarred wooden table were more familiar to her than the room.

  He sat on a little stool, looking more comfortable than he should have, and he smiled at Elinor.

  Her dogs had already found him and they sat at his feet, at attention. Jones was telling Mr. Sinclair that Lady Haywood had arrived and was upstairs in the drawing room if he would be so good as to join her.

  Sinclair smiled around the butler and his first words of welcome were, “I can take Anala out if you’ll call off your dogs.”

  “Why are you in my home, in my kitchen?”

  “The dogs?”

  She raised her eyebrows and he said softly, “I wanted to welcome you home before your brother could. And I thought the easiest way to do that was to arrive before you.”

  “How accommodating of my staff.”

  “They have been. Yes.”

  Jones turned, not quite blushing at the impropriety of a guest down in the kitchen. He cleared his throat.

  “Mr. Rusbridge has been making a nuisance of himself. I was not sorry to have some strong company around during your arrival.”

  “If we need more staff, Jones, hire them. A burly footman or two.”

  Sinclair said, “Or three. The door is locked tight, Jones?”

  “Of course, Mr. Sin–”

  Elinor interrupted angrily. “Excuse us, Jones. Mrs. Potts.”

  They left after a look between them, and Elinor shut the door when they left it open.

  She did not slam it.

  She turned back to the smiling man she’d spent two weeks in the country to get away from, only to find him here, in her home, when she returned, and he said, “I had a long, frightening conversation with your brother in front of your house this past week.”

  “That is the only kind of conversation my brother is versed in.”

  Sinclair nodded. “I had thought to have a street urchin alert me when you returned and then had the heart-stopping thought that your brother would do the same.”

  He was still in his greatcoat, although he’d dispensed with his hat, and she thought he must not have been here long despite how cozy he looked sitting in her kitchen.

  A cup of tea sat before him and Elinor realized just how Mrs. Potts had been ready so quickly at her arrival.

  She said, “I do not like the thought of my staff befriending every Tom, Dick, and Harry who wanders in while I’m away.”

  “They hardly did. I’ve been welcomed by you before and even then, they wouldn’t have let me in the door if they hadn’t already been worried about Rusbridge. Mrs. Potts has seen him loitering in the mornings when she’s gone to do the shopping.”

  “And she just came out and told you that?”

  He narrowed his eyes. “Are you really more worried about loose-lipped servants than about your brother?”

  “I have quite enough experience to know how to deal with my brother. This,” she waved her hand at him and then toward the upper floors, “is new.”

  “I will endeavor to not turn your servants in my favor.”

  “How kind of you.”

  “It is. Yes.”

  Elinor’s anger melted, the laughter threatened. She kept it under control though, despite how tired she was from her long journey.

  She wanted a bath and her own bed.

  She wanted Mr. Sinclair gone.

  And as long as she was wishing, her brother as well.

  He said, “I thought an extra pair of eyes, hands, and paws would not be unwelcome tonight. Just in case.”

  It is unwelcome, she tried to tell him. You are not welcome here, she tried to lie.

  But he ran a hand through his hair and laughed and said with as much satisfaction as any man could, “I introduced him to my dear Anala and was looking forward to a repeat.”

  “Don’t tell me. The Pomeranian.”

  “In my pocket. I will introduce her to you if you’ll call off your dogs.”

  She called off her dogs and Sinclair relaxed. Elinor was surprised he didn’t melt into a puddle on the floor.

  He pulled out of his pocket a small red and white ball of fluff. The puppy, quite obviously a she, barked and yapped away in his hand, and Elinor’s dogs jumped up and joined in.

  The sound reverberated in the small room until Elinor signaled for them to be quiet. Mr. Sinclair fed his puppy a treat.

  “Hmm. I’ll have to think of some way to tell her not to bark when I pull her out.”

  She looked at him, watched as the little ball of fluff with a huge white bow around its neck licked and loved him. As he cuddled her to his chest.

  Tears pooled in her eyes and she looked at the ceiling to keep them from falling. As emotion, want and despair, flooded her.

  She heard him rise, felt his warm hand wrap gently around her wrist and hold on to her.

  He held the little dog up to her and it squirmed trying to get to her face. She reached for it before it could fall, trapping it against her chest and tilting her chin down so its rough little tongue could bathe her face.

  Sinclair pulled at Elinor’s wrist and when she came willingly, didn’t fight, he wrapped his arms around her. Tucked her tight against him and warmed her from the outside in.

  He said softly, “We are glad you are home, Elinor.”

  She leaned against him and stopped thinking. Stopped every little thought in her head except the one she didn’t want to stop. The one that was telling her how nice this felt.

  A loud bang from the door knocker upstairs made her jump and Sinclair tightened his arms.

  “I’ve instructed Jones to not answer the door tonight.”

  “Stop talking, Sinclair. I don’t want to hear anymore about you ordering my servants around.”

  He whispered, “What am I going to do instead of talk?”

  She whispered back, “Not that.”

  His eyes glimmered down at her. “Then a dance. Since I was not fortunate enough to procure the pleasure when you decided you had mourned long enough.”

  He took his little puppy from her, slipping it into his pocket, and Elinor wanted to pout.

  She must not have hidden it too well because Sinclair said, “I don’t want her accidentally stepped on. By us or your behemoth dogs.”

  She looked around the kitchen. “Are you planning a quadrille? A waltz?”

  “A waltz, Lady Haywood? My, but you are scandalous.”

  “And you have been gone longer than ten years if you think so.”

  He tugged at her traveling glove, slipping the material from one finger and then the next.

  “A waltz is always scandalous if done properly. Did you waltz that night you wore your dancing slippers? Just who was the lucky fellow who got to hold your hand, to hear your laugh, to dream of throwing life and limb to the winds for one marvelous year?”

  She didn’t bother to answer. She didn’t bother to remember.

  She watched as he flung one glove over his shoulder and went to work on the other.

  The knocker rang out again and all of Elinor’s dogs stood up.

  Sinclair murmured soothingly, “Ignore him,” and Elinor wasn’t sure if he was talking to her or to the dogs.

  She waited, to see if the dogs would obey his command like Jones and Mrs. Potts did, and when they stayed alert and at attention, she s
miled slightly.

  But she did try to ignore the knocking.

  She said, “You never wear gloves.”

  “I got out of the habit. Can’t be bothered to get back in.”

  “Because you’re still trying to figure out how to get back to India?”

  His bare hands cupped hers, the contact causing her breath to catch and gooseflesh to pebble up and down her body. He brought one of her hands inside his greatcoat, inside his waistcoat, to lay flat against the thin cloth of his shirt. His heat seared her, the skin of his palm rough against the back of her hand. Not trapping her, just holding her tight.

  With his other hand, he linked their fingers, and then twisted her arm gently behind her until their entwined fingers rested against the swell of her bottom. Until she was tucked into his side and his leg was cradled between her own.

  She was suddenly having a very hard time breathing, a hard time calming the racing of her heart. A very hard time hearing anything above the rush of blood in her ears.

  A very hard time remembering what they were doing down in the kitchen and not upstairs in her bedroom.

  She cleared her throat, tried to clear her head. “I’ve never seen or heard of a dance like this.”

  “No? Not with any of them?”

  He swayed gently from side to side, the muscles of his thigh shifting against hers with every movement, the tips of his fingers brushing against her bottom.

  She stared into eyes the same color as her own, but oh, so different, and he murmured again, “Ignore him.”

  Elinor hadn’t heard anything. She only felt. Felt the thumping of Sinclair’s heart under her palm, felt his chest rising and falling with hers.

  His head dipped toward hers and she whispered his name. A sigh and a prayer. Want and longing.

  “Sinclair.”

  His lips touched hers and she closed her eyes at the contact. He breathed, “Elinor,” against her lips and she opened.

  Opened for her name and his breath and his tongue.

  They danced slowly around the large table, swaying from side to side, bodies pressed tight. Lips and mouths and breath coming together.

  She wanted to touch him, run her hands over him, but they were trapped. She could only feel with her mouth and she traced his jaw with her lips, felt his rough stubble and then his smooth lips.

  She could only feel his body with her own, his legs hard between hers. She tried to get closer to him and he pulled against her bottom, bringing her in tight.

  He nuzzled her ear, breathing hotly into it, and she shivered.

  Sinclair mouthed her ear. “Cold, my Elinor?”

  Never. She’d never be cold again.

  He lightly nipped with his teeth and she tried to pull her hands out of his. She wanted to wrap her arms around his neck and have him lift her onto the table behind her so she could wrap her legs around him as well.

  But her hands were trapped in his and the harder she pulled, the tighter he held her.

  She pushed and she pulled, and he tightened his grip, squeezing her closer.

  She growled in frustration and Sinclair froze.

  He pulled away enough to ask quietly, “Was that you or the dogs?”

  She growled again, pushing and pulling, trying to free her hands, and he let her go.

  She didn’t know whether she wanted to shove him or pull him back in so she sniffed and said, “I thought we were dancing.”

  “We were.”

  “We weren’t moving.”

  “We weren’t?”

  They hadn’t been, not at the end.

  Alan was still knocking on her door, she could hear it now, and shouting.

  Sinclair said, “Ignore him, Elinor. He’ll go away.”

  She laughed, a short sharp crack. “Do you think so?”

  “Or he’ll lose his voice with all that shouting.”

  “I have neighbors, Sinclair. I can’t wait for that to happen. And I won’t cower, hide, in my own home.”

  She stepped away from him and opened the kitchen door. Her dogs raced out and up the stairs and she shouted after them, “Jones! The door.”

  So unladylike of her, and her father’s voice filled her mind.

  There is a difference between someone suspecting you are not a lady, Elinor, and someone having the proof.

  She pushed away her discomfort, pushed away her father’s voice. Let Sinclair think whatever he wanted.

  She turned back to the man still standing in her kitchen and didn’t shout, though she wanted to.

  “Sinclair. The door.”

  He stared hard at her for a long minute, then stomped past and up the stairs.

  Her dogs began barking and she could only assume Jones had finally opened the door, and she rushed after Sinclair.

  Her dogs were well-trained and normally listened to Jones, but her brother brought out the worst in them. She didn’t like them around him without her there.

  Not to protect her brother; she simply preferred that if they attacked him it was because she commanded it.

  Sinclair stopped suddenly on the stairs and she bumped into the back of him.

  She couldn’t decide if she wanted to shove him or kiss him again, and then he said, “Why did you go to the country?”

  “What?”

  “Why did you go to the country so suddenly?”

  To get away from you, she wanted to say. To stop wondering if a night, or a week, or a year in your arms would be worth losing all my dreams.

  He didn’t give her a chance to answer even if she could have thought of anything not stupid to say.

  He turned on the step above her, folded his arms and said, “I’m beginning to wonder if St. Clair is right. You’re playing the same game with a different opening.”

  It took her a minute to work through that statement, and when she did she wanted to shove him again.

  Instead, she batted her eyelashes. “Perhaps you’re right, Sin. Perhaps I’m trying to catch the fish of the season by running away to the country.”

  He shrugged. “Some men like to chase. Apparently, I’m one of them.”

  She didn’t know why Sinclair had been waiting for her tonight. She hadn’t expected it, and she didn’t think he quite knew what he was doing here either.

  Except that she could still hear her brother shouting, could see that all of Sinclair’s feathers were ruffled and that he was trying to block the stairs with his body.

  The look in his eyes wasn’t anger at her. He was listening, through the dogs and the shouting, to the danger upstairs.

  He was trying to protect her.

  He’d been worried about her.

  The widow.

  She said softly, “Apparently, you’re one of them.”

  He raised his hand to stroke her jaw. “Why not catch me? Throw me back when you find the right one.”

  The right one. The one who would marry her after she was carrying his child.

  “And what if you’re half of the right one, Sinclair, and you give me what I want before I have to throw you back?”

  His eyes were sad and his voice solemn when he said, “Elino–”

  She shook her head sharply, cutting him off.

  Don’t say it. Don’t say that she might never have a child and it won’t be true.

  “What if it was simply bad luck, Sinclair?”

  “You’ve been a widow for what, a month? I’m sure you could explain away a child.”

  Perhaps. Except it had been two months.

  And she didn’t want to explain away a child. She wanted a child and the husband to go with it.

  She wanted children. Because one would be lonely.

  “We can’t have each other, Elinor. But we can have this.”

  “It won’t be enough.”

  “It will be everything.”

  It would be everything. And then it would be over.

  Sometime while they were talking, the shouting had stopped. The dogs had stopped their barking.

  She s
aid, “He’s left. You can stop distracting me now.”

  His eyes crinkled as he smiled. His hand was still cupping her jaw and he stroked her bottom lip with his thumb.

  “If I leave tonight, we won’t get another chance.”

  “Go to your mistress, Sinclair. Let her take care of you.”

  “I have no mistress. I had one, eight years ago–”

  “And then you left her for India.”

  He wouldn’t leave Elinor for India. He would leave her for a virgin bride hand-picked by the earl.

  And Elinor couldn’t count on the separation of a continent and an ocean to help ease the sting. She would have to see him and them.

  She brushed past him, squeezing by in the narrow stairway.

  Sinclair followed her and when they entered the main floor, he took his hat from the waiting Jones.

  Sinclair nodded at the man and Jones reported that Mr. Rusbridge had departed, though the gentleman would want to be careful on his way home.

  Elinor decided she would need to sit her servant down and remind him who his employer was.

  It wasn’t her brother. It hadn’t been any of her five husbands.

  It wouldn’t ever be George Sinclair.

  Jones opened the door and Sinclair walked out.

  She said, not unkindly, “Don’t come back.”

  She said it because she wanted to say the opposite. She said it so she wouldn’t chase after him.

  He walked down the outside steps, donning his hat and saying over his shoulder, “Of course not. Why would I when we obviously detest the sight of each other, the feel of each other. When I came solely to make sure that you were safe and sound. . .”

  He turned when he got to the pavement, eyeing her, and she held her hands out wide. “As you see.”

  He smiled, taking out his dog to a chorus of ferociously adorable barks. He waved her little paw at Elinor and then turned away.

  Walked away.

  For good this time, because he was leaving and there wouldn’t be another chance.

  Elinor called after him. “Sinclair?”

  He stopped, didn’t turn. Just stopped and waited.

  She said, “You can’t keep a dog in your pocket.”

  He laughed and started walking again, and said loud enough for her to hear, “I think the earl would like you, Lady Haywood. I think he could like you a lot.”