Free Ever His Bride by Linda Needham

She had caught up her
lower lip between her teeth, deepening the rose tint of her mouth
and lighting a spark in the center of his chest that burned an
instant path to his loins. He took a sharp breath as it hit, but
hid the sound inside a growl.
    “Where do you live, Miss Mayfield?” he asked
sharply, wishing away this damnable attraction to her.
    But she tilted a slender hip into her palm
and cocked her head in open defiance, tipping her bonnet off-center
once again. “I live wherever I please.”
    He didn’t like this all of a sudden. His
legal wife, let loose on the city without means. He could see the
headlines in the Times: “Hunter Claybourne’s wife found
sleeping in a dish crate in Hyde Park.” That wouldn’t do at
all.
    “Have you no rooms anywhere?” He hadn’t
considered the living arrangements between them. Hadn’t thought it
necessary.
    “Why should I pay rent all the month, when
I’m gone for days, weeks at a time? I live in a boardinghouse when
I’m in London and take my rent in kind when I’m traveling.”
    “In kind?” He was stunned by the implication,
imagined beady-eyed innkeepers and seedy bedrooms, sweaty hands
reaching for the private curve at the base of her breast. His own
hand ached for the same. “What the hell do you mean by ‘in
kind’?”
    She gave him a look of annoyance, as if he
were out of his league and she was too busy to explain. “Innkeepers
are quite happy to exchange meals and lodging for my favorable
listing in the travel gazette.”
    He hadn’t realized that he’d been holding his
breath until he blew it out of his chest in a storm. “You live by
that means? By barter? For mention in a gazette?” Good God, he’d
married a gypsy!
    “By bartering, and by selling my articles to
the Hearth and Heath. What did you think I meant, Mr.
Claybourne?”
    He frowned and led her out of the Bank into
the gray blanket glare of noon. They had just reached the bottom
step when a young man in a moth-eaten tweed suit rushed in between
them.
    “Felicity!” the man shouted, as he yanked the
woman into his embrace, causing the hair to bristle on Hunter’s
neck and a spot of coal-hot anger to blossom in his gut.
    “Adam Skinner!” Miss Mayfield hugged the man
even more fiercely in return. She finally pulled away from him and
stood back to gaze on him in too-obvious admiration.
    The Skinner person swabbed his hat from his
head and beamed at her. “You’re a sight for sore eyes,
Felicity!”
    “What are you doing here, Adam? Last I knew,
Mr. Dolan had sent you to Cardiff to report on the auctions.”
    “I left Dolan’s weeklies for the Times. I’m working here in Threadneedle now! Special
reporter to the Bank. Reporting on the great Hudson’s demise.”
    “Special reporter! How wonderful!” She hugged
the giddy-faced man again, and Hunter wanted to toss him under a
speeding dray.
    Instead, he reached down and separated them.
“You’d best be on your way, boy.”
    The man looked like a chicken whose feathers
had been stroked backward. “Who is this fellow, Felicity?”
    She sent Hunter a damning glare and fluttered
her hand as if she were explaining away a stray dog. “Just my
husband. Never mind him.”
    “Your, your what?” Skinner’s mouth sagged,
and he took a long step backward. “You got married?”
    “Well, I. . .” She seemed abruptly awkward
and unsure of herself, casting Hunter a stammering glance that
spoke of past indiscretions.
    “Enough, wife.” He’d have led her immediately
to the carriage, but he looked up from her wrathful displeasure
into the white-browed, laughing eyes of Lord Meath. Damnation, but
there were too many people about this morning.
    “What’s this I hear?” Meath said, his
forehead furrowed in genuine concern. “You’ve gotten yourself
married, Claybourne?”
    “Good to see you, your lordship.” Hunter took
Meath’s outstretched hand.
    “Is it true, Claybourne? Have you married at
last?”
    Meath was a member of the