“Certainly not I—at least not until I woke to find myself tied this way.”
“Oh. He took you in your sleep?”
“Not sleep,” he said shortly.
“Ah.” Her fingers tugged and pushed and nudged and he felt perhaps the slightest loosening. “So, Andrew and James.”
“Yes.”
“Do you think they are the masterminds of the plot, or is there a ringleader?”
“Lord,” Godric said, “I hadn’t considered that. Who the devil would come up with the idea if not them?”
“I can think of one or two people,” she said grimly.
“Please, enlighten me.”
“How long have you been in this carriage?” she asked, ignoring his question.
“Since they took me from Cross Hall—three days by my count.”
“Hmm, they made good time.”
“Ha! It certainly didn’t feel like it from where I sit.”
She snickered.
“How did they get you in here?”
“What? You mean other than James manhandling me?” she sighed. “He told me there was a man in the carriage in desperate need of money who was looking for a buyer for his stud.”
Godric laughed.
“I’m glad you think that is amusing.”
“It’s like luring a baby with sweets.”
“Perhaps you would prefer to spend the duration of your time in this carriage with your hands bound?”
“Oh, God, Eva—have mercy. My arms feel about ready to fall off.”
“Hmph.” But her fingers resumed their labor.
“What do you think is the aim of this abduction?” she asked after a few moments of silent work.
“I should think that was obvious.”
Her fingers stopped. “You don’t think they are going to try to take us all the way to the border?”
“I have no idea.” He hesitated and then said, “I do know that your James wrote Andrew to tell him you were engaged to marry— in a few days, if I recall correctly.” As if the date isn’t emblazoned on your brain, Godric.
“You read Andrew’s mail?” she asked in horror.
“Not on purpose.” He grimaced. “Hell, that’s a lie. He left it in my pile of correspondence and I’d read a quarter of it before I realized it wasn’t for me.”
“So then you read the rest of it.”
“Have your laugh; I’m sure you’ve never invaded anyone’s privacy.” Again her hands stopped. “Are you actually getting anywhere back there?” he asked.
“Perhaps you wish to untie it yourself,” she snapped, falling for his diversionary tactics just like a baby rabbit wandering into a snare. “And what did you mean with your snide reference to invasions of privacy?”
So, not a baby rabbit, after all.
Godric sighed. Why keep lying? Being in this carriage with her is a bloody gift—even if it feels like ripping a bandage off a still raw wound.
“I know you were listening at the door in the inn that day.”
This time her hands disappeared entirely, as did the warmth of her body. Godric turned to find her back on her seat, her face flaming before she grabbed the drapes and yanked them shut, plunging the carriage back into near darkness.
“Why are you telling me this now?”
“Because I regretted saying the words I said as soon as they left my mouth that day.”
“Then why didn’t you come to me and apologize?”
He ground his teeth. “Because I thought I was doing the best thing for you—giving you a gift by getting you away from me.”
Bitter laugher filled the darkened space. “You have an odd sense of what constitutes a gift, Godric.”
“I was a bloody fool, and when I read about your marriage to Byer—well, I behaved like an even bigger fool.”
“Explain.”
He was grateful for the darkness, because his face must look like a flaming torch. “I did not do well after I returned to Cross Hall. Andrew was concerned for me. He brought in a doctor—”
“Were you ill?”
Was that concern he heard? A glimmer?
“Godric, please don’t make me drag this out of you piecemeal.”
“I was drinking so that I could sleep; I was drinking so I could forget. I wanted to forget you, Eva.”
Small hands landed on his chest and shoved him back against the seat. “Why are you telling me this now? Do you think I’m so stupid as to believe you’ve had a miraculous turnabout? Who told you, Godric? Is that why you’re here? Is this all some elaborate prank?”
Godric inhaled her scent deeply into his lungs. “Told me?” he repeated stupidly.
She shoved him hard enough to make his head smack against the wood above the squabs.
“Ow! Dammit, Eva.”
“Who told you?”
“Told me what?”
“Who told you about the child? I will not be lied to and manipulated. You can answer me honestly, or I will open the door and shove you out of the carriage, I give you my word on it.”
His heartbeat thundered in his ears and his entire body broke out into a sweat. “Eva, darling, I don’t doubt you for an instant, but—”
“Don’t call me that,” she snapped.
“I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “Don’t go, Eva,” he begged when she began to pull away. “Please, don’t go.” Braving a broken nose, he leaned toward the dim outline of her face. “Are you pregnant, Eva? With my child?”
She pushed him away in an instant. “This is my child, and if this entire farce was concocted to—”
“Eva.” To his surprise, she stopped. “I knew nothing about any child. You have my word.”
“It makes no sense,” she said after a long moment, her voice thick. “Why would you say you regret what you did? If you didn’t know about the baby, why would you say—”
“Because I love you, Eva. I love you, and I’m a liar. I lied to you that last day and I lied to you on those few, oh-so-precious days we were together.” Godric stared into the darkness, desperately wishing she could see him, even though it would expose his shame to her eyes. “Pull back the curtains, Eva.”
A moment passed before one of the curtains opened halfway. Her face was tear-streaked and agonized. “I don’t understand you,” she said, her voice pulsing with pain. “Why would you say such a thing if it wasn’t true? I have never, ever felt the way I did for—”
“I said it because I was a coward.”
She slumped back against the bench, clearly—and justifiably—overwhelmed by his insane reasoning.
“I told you I had a wife, but I also had a child.”
Her eyes opened slowly.
“He died along with his mother. I was too late to save either of them that day. You accused me weeks ago of having the war hysteria. I believe you were right—but not just from years on campaign. I think I became mad from the losses that came so fast, so relentlessly.” He cleared his throat and stared up at the roof of the carriage, blinking rapidly. “You would think losing two people at once would cause a single pain, but it doesn’t: it’s not all of a piece, it is two overwhelmingly huge pains that buffet you ceaselessly. I became lost in my agony and received an injury thanks to my inability to focus. And because I was in the hospital, my family came to see me. And because my family came to see me—”
She crawled onto his lap, straddling him, and wrapped her arms around his body.
“And then it wasn’t two deaths I mourned, but nine, Eva.”
Nine. Eva tried to imagine losing nine people she loved. That would be everyone; Godric had lost everyone.
He pressed his face against her hair. “I hoped I would die, but I couldn’t kill myself—why not die in the cause. But then I made it through the worst battle in the war without a scratch.” He gave a hollow, humorless laugh. “And as time passed, the inconceivable happened, I began to get better. What kind of heartless, soulless beast could not only survive such destruction, but begin to thrive?”
>
Eva had no answer and was bitterly relieved when he did not expect one.
“So I thought I could avenge my family. When that was done, my life would be over, one way or another. But of course you came along and, thank God, foiled my plans.” He dug his chin into her shoulder as if to pull her closer, reminding her that the poor man was still bound hand and foot.
“You are like some magnificent, formidable force of nature, Eva, like a comet or a shooting star in human form. I saw what was happening to me as if I were an observer in my own body, watching myself become captivated by your fire.”
Eva swallowed with a noisy gulp, her arms tightening until they hurt.
He kissed her jaw, cheek, ear—anything he could reach. “Oh, my love. I thought I could not live through all of it again, Eva. I thought I could not bear having one more person to love. How could I ever want one more person whom I could lose? But when you were gone, I realized that living without you—most especially because of my own idiocy and cowardice—was far worse than the fear of one day losing you.”
Eva squeezed him tight, her eyes streaming. “You are no coward, Godric. You are the bravest man I know. And you are the only man I’ve ever loved.” She pulled away just enough to capture his mouth with hers.
He groaned as she assaulted and invaded, tongues and teeth clashing, the taste of copper mixing with salty tears.
* * *
Meanwhile . . .
Andrew turned to James as the postilions slowed their teams to a trot. “Give it another listen, will you?”
“It’s only been a quarter of an hour,” James said.
“Yes, but you said things were sounding, er, rather violent. Perhaps it would be wise to check.”
James shifted his considerable bulk and angled his body so he could look around the side of the carriage.
“They’ve closed the curtains again.”
“Is that good, do you think?” Andrew grimaced. “Or did she close them to hide the body?”
James laughed as he sat back.
“I’m pleased you find it amusing, but it is my fault he’s in there with her.”
“It’s my fault she’s in there with him,” James countered.
“Yes, but she is not in any danger.”
James nodded. “Aye, reckon you’ve got a point there.”
“Listen again,” Andrew ordered.
“Why don’t you?”
Andrew narrowed his eyes and James laughed again, a deep, infectious sound that made Andrew feel inexplicably happy, regardless of their current situation.
“All right, all right,” James said, “I won’t make you release your grip on the guard. I don’t know how you sat up here for so long,” he mused as he shifted once again so that he could lay his ear against the roof of the chaise.
“I felt too guilty sitting inside,” Andrew admitted, and then lapsed into an anxious silence as he waited for the other man’s verdict.
Andrew didn’t want to say anything against James’s mistress—he liked Lady Eva, after all—but he feared for his employer’s health. He’d not even needed to lay his head against the glossy coach to hear her yelling earlier.
She was an exceptionally small woman, but she was fierce—the way some small animals could be ferocious and frightening well beyond their size. Like a weasel. He suspected she wouldn’t like that comparison. But still, it was apt.
Andrew believed that he would never forget, if he lived to a hundred, the way she’d taunted Flynn the day of the fight. She’d glared up at the huge highwayman—easily twice her size—and not backed down. If the robber had even twitched a hair, Andrew was certain she wouldn’t have hesitated to shoot him. Of course, that day her anger and fury had been used to protect Lord Visel, who’d been in no shape to protect himself. Today that anger was likely being used against the poor man. And although the earl was conscious this time, he was also bound hand and foot, which left him rather vulnerable, to say the least.
“Well?” he prodded James, unable to bear the suspense.
James cut him a sideways glance and then pulled away and sat back, shrugging his massive shoulders, the action rubbing against Andrew’s livery-clad body. “Nothin’. It’s quiet in there—well, except . . .”
“Except what? What?” Andrew pictured poor Lord Visel writhing on the floor at the spitfire’s booted feet.
James scratched his head. “I think I might have heard . . . laughin’, maybe?”
“Laughter? That could be good. Couldn’t it? I mean, depending on the laugh. Was it, er, happy laughter?” He swallowed. “Or was it of the maniacal variety?”
James shook his head. “I dunno. And it might not have been laughin’. Something, but not yellin’. That’s good, right?”
Andrew caught his lower lip in his teeth and worried it, his eyes locked with James’s.
“She wouldn’t hurt him too much? Not in a permanent way?” he finally asked.
James tilted his head and grimaced. “Permanently? No, likely not permanently.”
Andrew groaned.
James shifted on the bench which was clearly too small for his big frame.
“I don’t know how you managed to do this all the time,” Andrew said, shifting his own arse—much smaller and bonier—on the padded but narrow bench.
“Nah, not all the time. Not even much—just on that trip up north, mainly when I didn’t want to ride inside with the two of them.” He jerked his thumb back.
Andrew could certainly understand that.
“But you’re right,” James said, shifting. “I wouldn’t want to be a footman.”
“Me neither.”
James grinned down at him. “I reckon you’d be the smallest footman I’ve ever seen.”
“Very droll.”
“Where’d you get such small livery, anyhow? And it looks a bit, er, odd,” he added.
“I found it in one of the attics at Cross Hall.”
James leaned down and sniffed. “Ah, thought I smelled camphor.”
Andrew lifted up a velvet sleeve peppered with bare spots. “It has the look of the Baroque era about it.”
“Oh? And when would that be?”
“Late sixteen hundreds.”
“Ah, quite an old place, then? How are the stables?”
Andrew shrugged. “I don’t know. They’re, er, stables.”
James clucked his tongue. “Now you see, that’s the sort of answer that would get you in trouble with your new mistress.”
“If I still have a position after this. And if the two of them do what we hope they are going to do.” Andrew allowed all his worry to show as he looked up at James. “Were we mad to put them together like this??”
James’s mouth pulled up into that crooked smile Andrew found so comforting. “You mean like two ferrets in a sack?”
Andrew gave another moan.
“What time is it?” James asked.
Andrew pulled out the serviceable pocket watch he’d had to purchase after his uncle took his father’s watch. “We’ve still got another hour,” he said, returning the watch to its pocket and looking up.
“An hour,” James said, his gaze speculative.
“An hour,” Andrew agreed, and he turned in the uncomfortable seat, and they watched the countryside pass by in silence.
Chapter 27
It was Godric who drew back from their marathon kiss first. Of course he was also the one in pain—two kinds of pain, now. “Darling?”
“Mmmm?” She kissed his chin, his cheeks, his nose.
He shifted his hips and whimpered. “Pull the curtains shut,” he said in a hoarse voice.
She froze.
“Do it, Eva,” he repeated, using that voice—the one that had always commanded instant obedience from his men. Naturally Eva hesitated just long enough to make him worry it wasn’t nearly as effective on women. At least on one woman.
“I’ll make you glad you did,” he promised.
Honey, it seemed, really was more effective tha
n vinegar, and she quickly reached for the partially opened side drapes and pulled them shut.
“Close that gap in the front ones, too, sweetheart.”
He felt her slender body jolt, but she complied.
“Good,” he said. “Now take off your breeches—but not your boots,” he added swiftly.
“But—”
“Hush, just do it.”
“This won’t be easy,” she complained, but she moved to the back-facing seat and he heard sounds of compliance.
“Nothing worthwhile is easy, darling. Take you, for example.”
“Ha! You are quite brave for a man tied hand and foot.”
Godric laughed, waiting patiently as he listened to the sounds of struggling, grunting, and the occasional muttered complaint.
“There,” she said, her voice rather breathless. “I’ve got them off.”
Godric groaned at the image. “Tell me what you are wearing,” he ordered gruffly.
“You really are a naughty old man.”
“I know,” he agreed. “Tell me.”
He heard a heavy sigh and then, “I’ve got on my coats, but no breeches or, er, smallclothes.”
He had to swallow repeatedly to clear his flooded mouth. He was a filthy old man.
“And your boots,” he rasped.
“Yes, my boots.”
“Oh God.” He let his head fall back with a painful thunk. “I wish I could see you.”
“I could open the curtains.”
His head whipped up. “Don’t you dare.”
A low, sultry laugh filled the darkened coach.
“Now, untie my ankles.”
“You give a lot of orders for a man bound hand and foot.”
“Be a good girl, and I’ll let you unbutton my breeches when you are done.”
He grinned at the sound of boots scrambling on the chaise floor.
“This would have been a lot more comfortable if I’d done it before taking off my breeches.”
“Mmmm, but I like imagining you just the way you are.”
She gave an unladylike snort of derision, but Godric noticed her fingers worked with remarkable swiftness to loosen the knots.
“There,” she said.
He shifted on the bench seat and spread his feet, flexing his cramped leg muscles before positioning his arse in the middle of the narrow bench seat.
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