Proving Herself Page 16

  Collier frowned, though his eyes sparkled like champagne. "I am not taking my wife into a saloon!"

  She scowled at him.

  "Especially not tipsy. Every temperance lady in the state would be beating down this door by morning, with good cause."

  "And Papa," she guessed with a sad sigh.

  "We do have certain appearances to uphold," he reminded her, sounding as prim as Audra for a moment, and she nod­ded.

  "Mustn't ruin our appearances," she agreed. "Goodness knows how important the way things look is."

  "Are you quite all right?" He cocked his head to look more closely at her. "Other than being tipsy?"

  She nodded.

  "Just in case." He took the champagne bottle with him. "I'll be right back with playing cards."

  She wondered if he would kiss her good-bye. Their being married and all. But instead he went to the door. "Right back."

  She nodded. With one last look he left—with the cham­pagne.

  There was still some left in the goblets. If she were home, maybe she wouldn't like this floating, spinning, so-very-relaxed feeling. If something went wrong with the horses, or a wildfire lit, or a bear attacked, she would be in a bad place, floating and spinning. But stuck here at the inn for the whole evening... the whole night...

  She needn't worry about anybody needing her, even her­self.

  Once she'd emptied her and Collier's goblets she stood and wove her way to the gabled window to look out at the quiet blanket of snow. Sheridan's street lamps glowed in the darkening evening, only a mile or so south of the inn. The mountains loomed to the west. In town, her family was likely in the living room, maybe listening to Audra play piano or Victoria read out of the paper. She wondered what Uncle Benj and Lady Cooper did of an evening.

  Then she wondered if they thought of her; would they think she and Collier were ... becoming one?

  Body and soul, Mariah said. She'd made it sound nice. In fact—Laurel went to the stretch of wall that hid the Murphy bed and, grasping the brass-rail handle, pulled it down just a few inches to peek at its neat muslin coverlet. How many married couples had been in this room, and done ... that?

  It was like a whole new part of the world that she'd never really considered before.

  When she heard Collier's step outside the door, she let the bed close again and leaned against the wall, innocent as she could be. Babies, she reminded herself firmly, thinking again of Mariah and Stuart. And then, England.

  Babies were one mistake she did not intend to make, no matter the fun of floating and spinning.

  Collier had brought the champagne bottle back with him, as well as the cards. "I trust nobody got the wrong idea," he admitted, his smile quirking one dimple. "It is early yet."

  She nodded and came back to the table to watch him open the deck. The cards looked brand-new. He pulled out her chair for her again, then sat and shuffled the deck with sur­prisingly deft hands. "Whist it is," he said, but his eyes were dancing.

  Then he smiled more devilishly. "What shall we play for?"

  Get Laurel Garrison—rather, Laurel Pembroke—tipsy, and she became a lot more fun to be around. It wasn't long before Collier had set about corrupting her at cards, too.

  Whist would have amused them for only a short time.

  "They're all red," she insisted, showing him her cards.

  He tipped the hand back at her, barely looking at it. "But some are hearts, and some are diamonds. It's a flush only if you have all five of one or the other."

  She scowled, as if she suspected him of cheating her out of an anecdote—the only thing he'd talked her into wagering.

  A terrible card player, she had already told him about her sister's marriage to MacCallum, the time she saw a grizzly, and the cattle drives she'd once ridden on as a small child.

  Collier had no intention of cheating. At least, not to win.

  She had a cute scowl. "How do I know you aren't simply changing the rules as is convenient to you?" she demanded.

  "You cannot win with all one color. My word as a gentle­man."

  She looked none too convinced—and, he thought, not just because they'd both had far too much champagne.

  "Oh, ask your uncle Benj, you silly get," he muttered, an­noyed by her distrust. She was the one immediately benefit­ing from this arrangement of theirs, after all. He'd arranged for ten head of cattle to be transferred into her name, and tomorrow they would move into her "claim cabin." He, how­ever, might need to spend months, even a year pretending to be respectably married before he reaped any true benefits.

  Although he would enjoy sending on to England the wed­ding portrait they had taken before coming out to the inn.

  "What's a get?" demanded Laurel.

  He scowled. How terribly declasse of her. "Where did you hear that word?" He'd had quite a bit of champagne himself.

  She laughed a gaspy, uneven laugh. "You just said it, you ... you get!"

  Oh. Now he laughed, too. "It's an insult, like calling some­one a bastard. Not something one says in polite company."

  "Oh." She upended the champagne bottle, frowning when the very last splashed out. "Am I not polite company?"

  By the standards to which he'd been raised, not really. Especially not sitting alone in a hotel room with him, pickled. But for Wyoming, she was perfectly acceptable.

  And they were married.

  "I sound lower-class when I drink," he explained. "Because I generally go to lower-class places when I do."

  "Like where?" She sounded fascinated.

  Collier had already loosened his cravat; now he unbut­toned the top two buttons of his shirt. For a moment he

  looked at his cards—one pair of fives. He couldn't remember who'd gone last, anyway. So much for poker.

  Putting down the cards, he pushed back from the table, stood unsteadily, then went to the wall and, with a firm pull, drew down the bed. Rolling onto it-felt much better.

  Lower class places, eh?

  "Taverns, mostly," he clarified, staring woozily at the ceil­ing. "When I was at school we would sneak out to this horrid little place called the Boiled Hog, and we would spend our allowances on terrible ale, god-awful stuff really, just to be refractory. Some of my friends paid for female companion­ship as well, but I never got so drunk as to take that risk. Not at the Boiled Hog, thank you. And a good thing. Percy got the pox from one redhead there." He frowned. "A shame, really."

  "Smallpox?" asked Laurel, and he turned his head on the bedspread to see if she really didn't know.

  She really didn't.

  "It's a sickness one gets by bedding someone who is al­ready diseased," he explained. "Molls are particularly prone to it."

  "Molls?"

  He considered all the many euphemisms they could use— fallen frails, soiled doves—then just went with the plainer word she'd once used herself. "Whores."

  Laurel considered that, seeming uncomfortable. Well, if she did not want to know, she ought not have asked. His gentlemanly side protested, true. But he could usually silence his gentlemanly side with enough alcohol.

  He'd agreed to partner her, not parent her.

  "You know quite a bit about... iniquity, don't you?" she mused. "For a high-class British gentleman."

  What she did not understand about high-class British gen­tlemen loomed so powerfully that Collier laughed. Loudly. "A fellow needs a few hobbies," he defended.

  She laughed too, then leaned over the table, scattering cards. "So you were sent away to school?"

  "Mmhm," he agreed, remarkably sleepy all of a sudden.

  "Weren't you terribly lonely?"

  He'd missed his mother at first, and his siblings, and their nurse. But not his father the viscount. Being ignored hurt far less from a distance. "Not terribly. This is worse."

  "This?"

  "America," he clarified. "At least at school people spoke the same language as I. knew that, in case of an emergency, I could send for someone. Here ..."

  "We
speak the same language here," she protested.

  He grinned. "Not really, no."

  "Oh." She thought about it. "I guess it must be lonely at that, being sent away from your own country."

  "At least I have a wife now," he teased, unwilling to wallow in self-pity for once.

  "Just don't get used to it," she teased back.

  "Nor you," he agreed.

  "If we had more champagne, we could toast to our plans again." She sighed, clearly disappointed.

  "Since we've not, shall we call it a night?" He was sleepy.

  "Where are you going to sleep?" Her question surprised him.

  "Perhaps the bed?" He winked conspiratorially. "That's what I should do in England. You won't make me homesick, will you?"

  "Oh." But her expression did not admit agreement.

  "Oh?"

  "I... it just seems rather rude, is all. But I can sleep on the floor. I'm tough." She said this last with some pride.

  "On the floor? Hardly!" He hoped she wouldn't require he actually sit up to argue this. "It is a very large bed."

  "You really mean for both of us ..."

  There she went, thinking he meant to get into her bloomers again. Not that he would mind. He'd rather come to like her sun-warmed edges, and she did clean up quite nicely.

  Seeing her in that wedding gown today, he'd had a hard time reminding himself that it was all a charade.

  "I promise to keep my pants on," he told her. But from her expression, she suspected even that. Bloody hell. With great self-discipline, Collier sat up. "Lorelei," he said.

  "Stop calling me that."

  "We are married. Even if we do not consummate it, we will spend time alone. We will have to learn to trust each other."

  Still she hesitated. Likely she'd been warned men were after only one thing. Not completely wrong, as far as warnings went. But he was no stranger, out to ruin her.

  Not that he doubted he could seduce her, if he tried. If he really wanted to. But really. He had promised.

  Being drunk, he wondered how important his promise was. He had a package of "French letters"—what the box called crepe rubber condoms. He would not sire what could yet be the future heir of Brambourne. Certainly not in godforsaken Wyoming.

  Then something else occurred to him: he had promised to respect her virtue numerous times. She had not.

  "Or perhaps it's not that you distrust me," he guessed aloud, delighted by the thought. "Perhaps Laurel Garrison ... Pem­broke ... does not trust herself!"

  "Don't be a ... a get," she said.

  "That's it, eh? You fear that if you lie down in the same bed with me, you won't be able to keep your hands to yourself."

  "Cole!"

  He nodded wisely. "It's understandable, really."

  Humor lit her eyes, despite her exasperation. "You may be pretty, Mr. Pembroke, but you're not so irresistible as that!"

  Pretty? In fact, he challenged it. "Pretty?"

  She flushed, but did not recant. "As if you didn't know."

  "Girls are pretty," he protested. "Gardens can be pretty. Me­diocre sunsets, a full moon, flowery china service." He flung out one arm, to encompass all the fragile, effeminate things that the word might describe, and as he began to fall forward anyway, he went ahead and stood. "Men are not pretty."

  She did not say, Well, you are. Her scowl said it for her.

  He went to the table, planted a hand on either side of her, and suggested, "I'm ... handsome."

  Arching her back to better see him, she shook her head. "Beautiful, maybe." Then she blushed. But she did not look away.

  He leaned so close his nose almost touched hers. "You," he admitted, "are pretty."

  Her eyes widened, as if she'd not expected a compliment. Well, she was pretty... in a wild, Wyoming way. When her lips parted slightly, more as if to taste the air between them than in invitation, Collier considered proving that.

  "But I did promise," he told her now, and turned stoically back to the bed. He enjoyed falling back onto it. Good bed.

  She simply sat and scowled at him. Her eyes were begin­ning to droop. She was tired too.

  The part of him that was drunk insisted that this was her problem. But the rest of him remembered the vows he'd just taken. "Please come to bed," he said, suddenly wondering how many other bridegrooms made the same plea on their wedding night.

  The thought amused him.

  "You promise not to try anything untoward?"

  "I doubt," he admitted, "that I am in any condition. But I shall leave my clothes on, just in case. Except perhaps for my shoes." Besides, to disrobe he would have to stand again, and he did not see that happening soon. But it could not hurt to claim an extra measure of shining British integrity.

  "It's been a long day," admitted Laurel. "And I am tired."

  He waited.

  "Move over to the far side," she decided, and he groaned. More moving. But she glared, so he complied.

  "You, however, may turn off the lights," informed the part of him that was drunk.

  Since she had to stand anyway.

  She rolled her eyes at him, stood, and wove as far as the doorway to turn off the electric switch. The room fell into darkness, broken only by faint light through the gabled window, likely the inn's lights reflecting off the snow.

  He felt the bed sink as Laurel crawled onto her side. "If you forget our bargain, I will kick you," she announced.

  "You could just say, 'Get off of me,'" he pleaded wearily. "I promise, that would be enough for any honest gentleman."

  Even drunk. Even from his wife.

  "Get off of me," she said quietly into the dark room, al­though he was a good foot from her. Practicing, he supposed. He wondered if she would need it. "Get off of me."

  Then she giggled and added, "You get."

  He considered the more delicious ways he could shut her up ... but fell asleep before he could enact a single one of them.

  Waking up was another matter.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Laurel woke deliciously, and on top of Collier.

  She'd pillowed her face into his neck. When she breathed, golden hair tickled her nose. Wrinkling it in protest somehow brushed her lips across his collar. His jaw scratched her cheek. For the first time since they'd met, Collier had stubble.

  He jerked slightly beneath her, as if she'd tickled him. His arms held her firmly against his broad chest, and one of his legs wrapped around her, shoe and all, heavy and confining but wonderfully warm and hard. And as far as hardness went, well...

  She was starting to notice something uncomfortably hard against her thigh, not quite in the right place to be his hip­bone. But she squirmed a little to shift off, because it was sort of jabbing at her. When she did that, Collier groaned. The sound rumbled through his body, and that felt nice, too.

  "Laurel." His voice sounded rough from a night's disuse. When he spoke, his breath tickled her neck. "Good morning."

  The words sounded as if he was smiling.

  It occurred to her that, delicious as it felt to wake up wrapped around Collier Pembroke, this was what they had agreed not to do. Well, part of it. "Did you do this?"

  And yet she could not quite force herself to pull away from him yet. He felt better than a quilt... except for the hard part. When she shifted again, he grunted. "Did I—Ah! Mmm. Did I do what?"

  "You were supposed to stay on your side of the bed."

  Now he took a deep, waking-up breath, which lifted her slightly. When he sighed it back out, she sank along with his chest. "And I believe I did just that."

  She looked at the shadowy room, and he was correct. She had moved onto his side. "Oh," she said, in a small voice.

  "I apologize, however, for not immediately putting you back in your place. Thus." And he rolled so that she found herself lying on her back—on her side of the bed—with him on top of her.

  When finally she realized that what she was feeling was not his hip, she felt very warm. "Oh!"

  "But
if I had, I may have felt the need to do this," Collier whispered down at her, and his beautiful face came closer, and then his lips touched hers, tentative, beseeching.

  And she liked that very much, despite how hot she felt.

  "And if you did not protest," he continued, the weight of him pressing her into the feather mattress, "I might have been tempted to do this." He kissed down the front of her throat, the morning roughness of his cheek chasing his soft, full lips.

  He even looked beautiful waking up, she thought, weaving a pleased hand into his thick, golden hair.

  "But, of course, I would realize how uncomfortable you must be," Collier whispered, "having slept in your street clothes. So it would only be gentlemanly of me to do this."

  And, to her pleasured amazement, he began to release the buttons down the front of her dress. She ought to protest. Call him a get, or kick him. Instead she closed her eyes and sa­vored the feel of a man's hand—Collier's—working down to her belly button, her release from her gown's bodice. She felt even hotter now, especially where Collier hadn't reached yet.

  Her stomach cramped in a surprisingly nice way.

  She felt very hot, for someone whose clothes were being opened. The steam-heating at the inn must be awfully effi­cient.

  "And, then, lady permitting," continued Collier, his rich voice caressing her even as his hands did, "I would do this." He straddled her, one solid thigh by each hip, the hardness in his pants pressing urgently in the middle. He cradled her face, then drew his hands down to her collar and off her shoulders, drawing her bodice with them, opening the front more fully to his view.

  Laurel was having a very hard time catching her breath in this heat, but she felt glad Collier was sliding her bare arms out of each sleeve for her, so she wouldn't be trapped by them.

  He leaned down to kiss her jaw, up to her ear, where his breath sent little hot shimmers of happiness shuddering down her. "Would you like to know what I might have done next?"

  She turned her head to kiss his neck.

  His sigh purred his approval, but still he waited for her permission. "I musn't overstep my place."

  "Yes, please," she whispered back, sacrificing air for a con­tinued demonstration.