by Merry Farmer
That was only the beginning. With his fingers still thrusting inside of her, he positioned his thumb to rake across her clitoris. Within seconds, Marie came apart in a burst of light and pleasure. She sighed loudly at the sensations that throbbed through her, then realized Christian was groaning with triumph as well. He’d done that to her, and she had never been more overawed in her life.
As if he had a sixth sense for timing, he shifted his body over hers, nudging her thighs open, then thrusting inside of her while she was still transported by the pleasure of her orgasm. He was so quick and decisive that the moment of shock her body experienced at his invasion felt like nothing more than a bump in the road, easily forgotten as the journey continued.
“Oh, Christian,” she gasped as he moved inside her. “That’s…that’s….” She lost the ability to form words entirely and let out a long sigh as she moved with him.
“Marie,” he gasped against her ear as his motions sped up.
It was a revelation. Marie gripped his back with her fingertips, wrapping her legs around his hips as he thrust harder and harder, until his whole body tensed and he let out a shattering sound of pleasure. Warmth and affection filled her as he spilled himself deep inside of her. It was the most amazing sensation she’d ever felt, and in echo of what he’d said earlier, she didn’t ever want it to end.
But the hazy contentment that settled over them once it was done was almost as good as the act itself. She’d never felt closer to anyone in her life. Christian pulled out of her and settled at her side, then kissed her with a new, protective kind of affection that made her feel as though the sun had come out after a stormy day. She wrapped her arms around him and kissed him back, paying no mind to how sweaty and overheated they both were. There was nothing in the world better than feeling so connected to the man she knew she would move heaven and earth to spend the rest of her life with.
“Are you all right?” Christian managed to squeeze out a few minutes later. “I didn’t hurt you much, did I?”
“You didn’t hurt me at all,” Marie laughed. “You can do that again whenever you’d like.”
Christian laughed, snuggling against her side as though he would settle in for a nap. “With any luck, once we explain to our families what we’ve done, they’ll let us continue on like this forever.”
Marie hummed in approval at the thought, but she couldn’t keep her eyes open. Neither could Christian, apparently. They drifted off into a contented sleep.
Of course, that contentment vanished in a snap when they awoke more than an hour later.
“Thank God I wound the clocks when I stopped by yesterday,” Marie said, leaping out of bed and going to check the clock on her mantel to confirm the time. “We’re going to be so, so late for our own party.”
“If the party happens at all,” Christian laughed, climbing out of bed behind her. Marie took a moment to drink in the sight of him. She could appreciate his naked form even more now, knowing what he was capable of. “Hopefully my little sabotage worked.”
“Hopefully,” Marie repeated.
Half an hour later, they discovered that Christian’s prank had worked, but not as he’d intended. They’d washed and dressed in a hurry, fetched Marie’s bicycle, and sped back along the road to Dunegard Castle. The ride was even more uncomfortable for Marie on the way back than it had been before, but just as she was close to complaining about it, she spotted something in the distance that stopped her words and her breath in her throat.
“Oh, no!” She gestured for Christian to stop the bicycle, and they both dismounted. “No!”
Ahead of them on the road and scattered for several yards to either side were broken and twisted pieces of black-lacquered, splintered wood and twisted metal. Two horses writhed and screamed in the grass as the inhabitants of a second carriage got out to check the wreckage of the first. Along with the carnage of the wrecked carriage, Marie spotted four broken and splayed bodies.
Chapter 6
The edges of Christian’s vision blurred and his stomach lurched as his mind attempted to adjust to what he was seeing spread out across the road in front of him and Marie. He hardly felt Marie’s hand grip his arm or the bicycle beneath him as he stared at the wreck of his father’s carriage. For a moment, he was frozen, unable to hear Marie’s cry of alarm or the shouts from the people from the second carriage that had stopped behind the wreck. A farmer’s wagon was also speeding toward the scene, and the driver of the second carriage ran to meet it. But all Christian could see were the bodies spread through the wreckage.
They were completely still.
He knew in an instant what had happened, knew it and felt he might be crushed by it. An odd, strangled cry sounded somewhere in the distance. Only after he felt it burn in his lungs did he realize that the sound came from him.
“Christian.” Marie’s voice cut through the thundering heaviness around him.
He turned his head slowly to look at her. Her beautiful face was pinched in horror. That was enough to snap him out of his shock.
He sucked in a breath, scrambling away from the bicycle and Marie. As fast as he could, he dashed toward the wreckage.
“Stand back,” the man who had reached the scene first warned him, holding up a hand.
Christian’s fogged brain was slow to recognize him as Lord Boleran, which was ridiculous. He’d spent the better part of the past fortnight socializing with the man. It was a bad sign that his mind was too fractured to see Boleran as an individual and not just another part of the nightmare unfolding in front of him.
“I mean it, my lord, stand back,” Boleran repeated.
“No.” Christian stumbled forward in spite of Boleran’s efforts to keep him away from what he knew he’d see.
The carriage was utterly destroyed, as though someone had fired a cannon shot into it. Even the metal of the axel had twisted and snapped in places. But that wasn’t what snagged his attention and wouldn’t let him look away. His father’s body lay curled sickly around a spoke from one of the wheels. His eyes were frozen open in shock, and already his skin was pale. Blood dripped from the corner of his mouth. Several yards to the side, his brother lay on his back, his neck bent at an impossible angle. There was no blood around Miles, but it was glaringly obvious that he was as dead as their father. The driver’s body was splayed far enough from the wreckage to suggest he’d been thrown with some force.
Dead. All three of them dead. Because of a carriage wreck. A wreck Christian had caused.
“My lord, come away.” Boleran was behind him an instant later, resting a hand on his shoulder.
“My mother,” Christian said, the words coming out in a croak.
“My lord, she’s—”
Christian shrugged Boleran off, dashing to the patch of grass several yards away where his mother lay in a crumpled heap, her formal gown like a pillow around her. “Mother,” he shouted, falling to his knees and reaching for her.
His efforts were met by the faintest of groans and a subtle shift from his mother. It was enough for Christian to cry out hysterically, “She’s alive! Somebody fetch a doctor. Fetch a doctor at once!”
He tried to gather her in his arms, but Boleran was on him again, holding his arms back. “Don’t move her, my lord,” he said. “She may have internal injuries. Moving her may kill her. Wait for the doctor.”
“He’s been sent for,” someone shouted behind Christian.
“I want my mother,” Christian wailed, struggling against Boleran and scrambling for his mother’s frail and broken form. “Please, please.”
“Let him hold her,” Marie’s shaky voice said from somewhere behind him. The joy he felt at hearing her voice quickly faded to guilt and misery. He was responsible for killing his father and brother—and perhaps his mother too—and he’d done it with Marie in mind.
“My lord, you really should wait for the doctor,” Boleran went on as Christian ignored him to hunch over his mother, cradling her as best he could while touching her as
little as possible.
Something connected in Christian’s mind, and he glanced angrily up at Boleran, dread filling him. “I’m not a lord,” he said. “I’m just Mr. Darrow.”
Boleran shifted anxiously, glancing to Marie for a moment, then over his shoulder at Christian’s father and brother’s bodies. “I’m afraid, well, that is to say, you…you’re the earl now,” he said awkwardly.
Christian swallowed the bile that rose to his throat, but it wasn’t enough. He let go of his mother and pushed away from her, rolling to the side and vomiting into the grass. Dear God, he was the Earl of Kilrea. Him, a younger son who was never meant to amount to anything. He’d murdered his father and brother for a title.
“Christian.” Marie’s voice was soft as she crouched by his side, smoothing her hand across his back. “Christian, this wasn’t your fault,” she whispered.
“Yes, it was,” he groaned, burying his face in the cool grass. “I killed them.”
“You didn’t,” Marie went on. Christian couldn’t tell if she was actually speaking too softly for anyone but him to hear or if his mind was still playing tricks on him. “You didn’t mean for this to happen.”
“But I did mean for something to happen,” he admitted, too ashamed to turn his face to Marie.
“This isn’t your fault,” she repeated.
He pushed himself to sit, nearly knocking Marie over as he did. She’d hunched close to him. She still held him as he rocked to his haunches, then stood, shaking her off.
“Where is the doctor?” he asked, not looking at her. He couldn’t. The guilt was too strong.
“On the way,” answered a roughly-dressed man Christian didn’t know.
“We should take Lady Kilrea home,” Christian heard himself say in a commanding voice he hadn’t known he could possess. But after all, he was the earl now. “She shouldn’t be here, with this…this….” He dragged his eyes up to stare at the wreckage and his father and brother’s bodies, and the driver’s beyond. “She should be at home,” he finished on a sob.
“Wait until the doctor has come and examined her,” Boleran cautioned him. “It’s the best chance she has.”
“Here he is,” someone shouted in the distance. “Here’s the doctor.”
Christian glanced around, more aware of the scene as the reality of the situation settled around him. A few more carriages had pulled up behind the wreck—probably guests on the way to the engagement party. At least a dozen bystanders stood at the far periphery of the scene, looking horrified and clutching each other. A young woman who seemed to have no place in the middle of such tragedy came forward from the farmer’s wagon with homespun cloths of some sort to cover the bodies of his father and brother.
It was too much for Christian to handle all at once. He turned away from everything, burying his face in his hands, and wept.
It was the most painful thing Marie had ever witnessed in her life. Not the splintered wreckage of the carriage or the gruesome sight of Lord Kilrea, Miles, and the driver’s bodies. Not the frighteningly injured form of Lady Kilrea. Not even the poor horses that were no longer screaming in pain for reasons Marie didn’t want to think about. Watching Christian fall apart as he stood in the midst of unimaginable loss pierced Marie’s heart.
“Stand back,” Lord Boleran boomed, taking charge of the situation. “Let the doctor through.”
Marie had to give the man credit, even if he’d been on the verge of mercilessly marrying his sister off to Christian. He was savvy and compassionate enough to stand with his body shielding Christian from the startled onlookers, giving Christian a shred of privacy as his world fell apart.
Marie looked right past Lord Boleran, reaching toward Christian as she started forward. “Christian, it wasn’t your fault,” she said, or at least started to say.
Lord Boleran caught her by the shoulders before she could come within a few feet of Christian. “Stay back, my lady,” he told her.
“But Christian needs me,” Marie argued, still too broken by Christian’s misery to be offended.
She attempted to step away from Lord Boleran, but he held her fast. “Lord Kilrea needs to speak with the doctor and attend to his mother,” he told her.
Anger flared suddenly hotter than pity in Marie’s heart. “Let me go this instant,” she demanded. “Christian is my—” She snapped her mouth shut over the words. There was no reasonable way for her to complete the sentence. Christian was her lover? Yes, he was now, but admitting as much to Lord Boleran under such circumstances wouldn’t just be scandalous, it would be crass.
The doctor reached Christian’s side, rested a hand briefly on Christian’s arm, and spoke something Marie couldn’t hear. Christian sucked in a breath and seemed to pull himself together. He and the doctor rushed to where Lady Kilrea still lay in the billows of her gown. The two men knelt on either side of her, and the doctor went to work.
“Let me go,” Marie repeated to Lord Boleran. “I have to see if Lady Kilrea is alive.”
Lord Boleran kept his hands firmly in place on Marie’s arms but checked over his shoulder as the doctor worked. “She doesn’t appear to be dead to me,” he said.
“How can you tell?” Marie writhed and twisted, trying to get away from him.
“Believe me, my lady. I’ve seen death.” There was a morbid note to his voice that gave Marie a chill, particularly when he glanced to the other side, where the farm girl who had covered Lord Kilrea and Miles’s bodies was now sitting between the two of them, keening as though she were some sort of officially appointed mourn, or perhaps a wise woman charged with seeing their souls to the other side.
“I have to go to him.” Marie tried one last time to shake away from Lord Boleran.
“My lady, I’m so sorry, but your fiancé is dead,” Lord Boleran said.
Marie blinked and checked anxiously on Christian before she realized Lord Boleran was talking about Miles. She swallowed hard and stopped struggling in his grip. The thought that she had been released from her engagement after all turned her stomach instead of making her feel light, like it should have. But it also made her heart bleed more heavily for Christian.
“Please,” she begged Lord Boleran, her voice little more than a wisp. “Let me go.”
Lord Boleran sighed and released her. Marie thought about dashing around him and crouching by Christian’s side, but Christian’s initial bout of grief seemed to have passed. He was stony-faced and grave now—a look that didn’t suit him at all—as he spoke with the doctor.
“She’s alive,” the doctor said, directing the words to Marie and Lord Boleran. “She has several fractures to her arms and legs, and I fear she may have punctured a lung. There’s no way to tell what other internal injuries she’s sustained.”
“Will she live?” Christian asked, his voice strangely hollow.
The doctor sighed. “I don’t know. If there were a hospital nearby, I would urge you to take her there for whatever care they could give. But seeing as the closest hospital is miles away….” He shook his head rather than finishing his sentence. “I’m afraid the journey there would kill her for sure.”
“Can we move her back to Kilrea Manor?” Christian asked.
“Carefully,” the doctor said.
Marie could do nothing but sit back and watch as Christian, the doctor, and several of the men who had arrived on the scene moved Lady Kilrea to the farmer’s wagon. The wagon’s bed was cleared and packed with as many cushions and as much straw as could be found so that the journey home would be as painless as possible. Lady Kilrea didn’t regain consciousness, and the whole time the men worked to move her to the wagon, Marie feared the woman truly was dead but no one had realized it yet. She tried her best to reach Christian’s side, but every time she came close to him, someone pulled her away.
“I’m so sorry for your loss,” Lady Aoife said when Marie ended up by her side at the edge of the accident scene. “I know you hadn’t yet had time to grow close to Lord Agivey, but he was your
fiancé.”
It took Marie a few moments to catch up, not only to what Lady Aoife had said, but to the fact that she was there at all. “How…how did you get here?” she asked, too traumatized to think of anything better to say.
“Benedict and I were on our way to the engagement party,” Lady Aoife said. “We were within sight of Lord Kilrea’s carriage when the driver suddenly lost control.
Marie sucked in a breath so hard at that bit of information that it caused a coughing fit. Lady Aoife slung an arm around Marie’s waist and held her carefully. As soon as Marie recovered, she asked, “What happened? Did you see the wreck?”
Lady Aoife bit her lip, looking haunted. “I did.”
“What happened?” Marie repeated, pivoting in Lady Aoife’s embrace to grab her arms. “Please tell me what happened.” Perhaps there was a chance that the carriage hadn’t broken apart because of Christian’s prank after all. Christian had only loosened a few bolts. Surely, that wasn’t enough to cause such catastrophic damage.
“I don’t know,” Lady Aoife said, tears slipping from her eyes. “They were driving fast. Too fast. Then all at once, there was a twist. The horses broke one way and the carriage looked as though it had been rent in two.” She swallowed. “Its occupants went flying in all directions.” She finished with a wail, unable to go on.
Just like that, Marie was the one comforting Lady Aoife. It was the last thing she wanted to do, considering that more wagons had arrived and men from the nearest village had moved to lift Lord Kilrea and Miles’s bodies into another wagon. A second set of men lifted the driver’s body to a separate wagon. A few others were taking care of the poor horses as well. Something about the whole thing felt desperate and dire to Marie.
