Yet he hadn’t moved, not from the moment she had climbed into the bed, more than half an hour ago.
At least it felt like half an hour. Had it been only minutes? She could hear his breathing, as unsteady as hers. Every inhalation and exhalation sounded deafening in the stillness.
He shifted his weight, and she heard not only the creak of the bed ropes but the soft rustle of his garments against the rough blanket. She could feel the heat of his body radiating toward her. And his scent—a spicy, heavy muskiness mixed with the freshness of the rainwater he had splashed himself with earlier. He seemed to fill the very air she breathed.
She shut her eyes and tried to stop trembling. How was it that he managed to play on her nerves without even saying a word? Blast the man!
After everything she had endured this day—after being carted through the countryside, tossed down a hill, shot at, and run ragged by this scoundrel chained to her ankle—she should be dead to the world by now. Every bone, every muscle, every bruised and aching inch of her body cried out for the healing relief of sleep.
She tried to tell herself there was no reason to feel tense. He hadn’t made any move toward her. Hadn’t so much as touched a single hair on her head.
Still, her fingers tightened reflexively around the knife in her right hand. She had quietly slipped it from her skirt pocket before getting into bed. The hilt felt cold and solid and at least a little reassuring against her palm.
And he couldn’t be much of a threat at the moment…could he? After all, he had been bruised, battered, shot at, and run ragged today too. Not to mention the fact that he’d been wounded, lost a great deal of blood, and had a bullet dug out of his shoulder. He was hardly in any shape to…to…
She opened her eyes again. Her stomach felt queasy. Perhaps it was all the honey she had eaten earlier, but she didn’t think so.
It was the fact that she had never slept beside a man before. Ever.
If not for the accursed shackles, she wouldn’t be sleeping beside one now. The chain wouldn’t reach far enough for her to sleep on the floor. She had tried. Then she had suggested rolling up the blanket and placing it between them, but he had only laughed at her again.
Blackguard.
Staring into the darkness, she knew it was ridiculous to think that a blanket would protect her virtue. If he wanted to make any unsavory advances, a tattered length of wool wouldn’t stop him.
Nothing would stop him.
She clutched the knife tighter, her throat closing off as the memories sliced through her. A place where she had thought herself safe. A night when the lock on her door hadn’t been enough to protect her, when her Uncle Prescott had forced his way inside, had very nearly…
No! Digging her nails into her palm, she forced herself to forget. Uncle Prescott was in London. She would never let him close enough to have another chance to touch her. She would never let any man hurt her that way again. Never.
If the rogue so much as placed a hand on her, she would fight to her dying breath.
She wasn’t a naive girl of sixteen anymore. She was older, smarter, armed with the truth about men and their lust. Armed with a knife—and the many tricks she had learned while living in the streets for six years. She could protect herself.
Closing her eyes for the third time in the past hour, she tried to put her troubling memories aside, tried to find the sleep she so desperately needed. But the late summer heat made the cabin sultry, even in the darkness, and no breeze, not even a whisper of fresh air, managed to slip through the fabric tacked over the windows.
The uncomfortable warmth made her all the more aware of the rough iron shackle around her ankle, binding her to this man.
Just when she despaired of ever getting a moment’s rest, a soft sound came from behind her.
A snore.
Finally. The object of all her worry and dread was peacefully asleep. She frowned, not sure which she felt more—resentment or relief. For the moment at least, she could relax her guard.
Still, she could sense his very large, very male presence so close. Too close. By all the graces, when she awoke this morning, she had certainly never expected to end the day in bed with a man!
A man whose name she didn’t even know. A powerfully built, dark stranger with eyes that had seen too much and hands that could kill too easily. She shivered despite the summery heat. The sooner she got away from him, the happier she would be. They would find some way to get the shackles off. They had to. And then she would go straight to her flat in Merseyside, grab her hidden cache of money, and leave the country.
For six years she had saved every shilling she made. Whenever she finished her work in a particular district, she visited Merseyside and added to her stash. Two hundred pounds wasn’t much to show for all the risks she had taken as an outlaw.
And it wasn’t nearly enough to get her where she really wanted to go.
But it would be enough for passage to one of the colonies. Or perhaps France. She would just have to be practical. Settle for what she had. As before, as so often in her life, the choice wasn’t hers to make. It had been made for her. She had to leave England as quickly as possible. Marshalmen had been killed, and the law wouldn’t rest until the culprits had been tracked down.
She had to run and keep running and just be grateful that she was still alive.
Exhaustion—or perhaps it was despair—began to pull her downward toward unconsciousness, and she finally let it take her. But even as her eyes drifted closed, she wondered whether she would ever find peace.
Would she ever be safe? Would she ever be able to stop running?
A moment later her muscles began to go slack.
And when the knife slid from her hand and hit the dirt floor with a soft thud, the sound did not wake her.
Nicholas groaned, pulled awake by pain…and by a soft scent nearby, like sun and rain, like delicate honey sweetness and lush earth.
Her scent.
Opening his eyes, he found himself unable to see her or anything else. Impenetrable darkness still filled the cabin. How long had he been asleep? A couple of hours? All night?
He lifted his head, shifted his weight—and instantly regretted it, gritting his teeth to bite back a curse as pain burned a hole straight through his shoulder. By hell, it felt worse than before. Probably because his muscles were stiff from a night on the thin mattress.
At least he hoped that was why.
He lay down again, settling into the same position, on his side. He hadn’t been able to sleep on his back or stomach, not without some part of him touching some part of Miss Delafield, which seemed guaranteed to send her into fits.
The lady had the damndest knack for causing him pain and suffering, he thought with a frown in her direction. Sometimes she managed it without even trying.
After a moment, the fiery agony in his shoulder subsided to a dull throbbing, provided he remained still. So he did his best to remain still. Dawn would come soon enough, and he would have no rest after that. Better to steal as much of it as possible before then.
He lay listening to a breeze that rattled the cabin’s broken windows, to the rustling of the trees outside…to the soft breathing of the woman beside him.
He sighed, irritated at the way she reclaimed his attention so easily. Obviously he had been without a female for far too long. That was the only logical reason for this one to seize his awareness so completely.
He didn’t dare allow his thoughts to drift, since they seemed to keep drifting in one direction, so he resolutely turned his mind to a more useful purpose, the puzzle he had been trying to unravel for weeks now: who the devil was blackmailing him?
He had lain awake more nights than he cared to count trying to find an answer to that. But now it seemed more pressing than before—because the blackmailer was closer than before. Whoever the bastard was, he was here, in England. Somewhere.
But who?
Nicholas could name a score of enemies who had once wanted him de
ad, but most of them were six feet under. Including his two most hated adversaries, Eldridge and Wakefield, the men he had sought vengeance against for fourteen years. They were burning in hell. Sent there by his hand.
And anyone who knew him, even his enemies, would know that he didn’t have fifteen thousand pounds. In fact, anyone even passingly familiar with the realities of piracy would know that.
So it had to be an outsider, a stranger, someone either so naive he didn’t realize that Captain Brogan might show up to silence him…
Or so powerful and protected that he didn’t care.
Perhaps, as Masud had said, it was someone hoping Captain Brogan would show up.
Which led Nicholas right back to the beginning: if it was a ruse, a trap, it could be anyone.
He stared into the darkness, willing an answer to come, only to find more questions instead.
If this cove wanted his blood, why go to the trouble of blackmail? Why not just come to South Carolina and kill him? Why alert the quarry that someone was on the hunt? Merely for sport?
What kind of twisted mind was he up against?
Unfortunately, that didn’t narrow it down at all. He had known his share of twisted minds in his day.
Who the devil was it?
He would get no answers until he reached the pub in York. If he could get there—traveling on foot, wounded, chained to a stubborn female, with half the lawmen in England hot on his trail…
And he had to get there by September twenty-ninth. Which gave him a little less than a fortnight. He’d been in England four days now. At least he thought he had. It was all starting to blur together in his mind.
He grimaced. If he were a gambling man, he wouldn’t bet a single shilling in his favor. The odds were a hundred to one at best.
Then again, he wasn’t a gambling man.
He was a washed-up ex-pirate with nothing to lose.
At that thought, his grimace slowly curved into a sardonic grin. To hell with the odds.
He rolled onto his back, deciding that Miss Delafield’s delicate sensibilities could go to hell too. If his shoulder stiffened up any further, the injury would slow him down come daybreak—and he and his charming companion would find themselves in more trouble than they needed. He would barely be able to walk, never mind run, much less carry the heavy pack of supplies.
A wave of hot needles stabbed down his back and arm as he moved, but he shifted his weight until he found a relatively comfortable position, easing his shoulder up onto the pillow.
He closed his eyes and let his body go slack, gingerly flexing his arm until the stiffness and burning ebbed. The wound still pained him and would for some time, but he could live with that.
However, the bed was so narrow that his right shoulder, arm, and side now pressed against Miss Delafield’s back…and he wasn’t sure she could live with that.
But she remained deeply asleep, her breathing slow and even, her body warm against his.
Warm…and soft. Softer even than the honey-and-rain scent that clung to her skin. He could almost taste that fragrance with every breath he drew, instinctively turned his face toward it. He couldn’t see her in the darkness, but he could feel her hair, tangled across the pillow, a tickle of silk against his bearded cheek.
At the same time he was aware of the long, sinuous curve of her spine, the feminine roundness of her bottom against his hip…
The heat pooling in his gut.
An instant later he no longer noticed the ache in his shoulder.
Damnation. He clenched his teeth to stop a groan. His body hadn’t responded to a woman so swiftly since he’d been a randy lad chasing doxies in Jamaica. All it took was one breath of her scent, one brush of her body against his and he was hard as steel. Aching to have her.
Even fatigue, whiskey, and a bullet wound weren’t enough to quell the longing he felt—for a treacherous, troublesome lady thief. A woman who would sooner scratch his eyes out than grant him a single kiss. The feeling made no sense. It was a hunger that went beyond reason.
So why not satisfy it?
The words shot through his head like a bolt of lightning, unexpected and white-hot.
Why not seduce her?
Aye, she was haughty and distant and all but dripped disdain for him. She acted as if merely breathing the same air as him would give her some dreaded disease. Even in sleep, she held herself distant, stiff, unyielding.
For all he knew, she might even be a virgin.
But none of those were true obstacles. Not to a man of his experience. He knew what women liked. A smile or two, a couple of caresses, a few words he didn’t mean, the right kiss…and he’d have her in the palm of his hand. All of her.
So why not?
The heat in his belly began to spread, burning through his blood. It had been far too long since he had given in to his natural male needs. Back in South Carolina, he had only rarely visited the brothels in Charles Towne, always coupling in the darkness and leaving before dawn, to prevent anyone from seeing the mark on his chest that revealed his past.
But he didn’t need to conceal the brand from her. She’d already seen it. With her, he could indulge in pleasure as he hadn’t indulged for years.
His heart began to beat harder, images sweeping through him like a fever. The two of them together. Her slender body responding to his touch until she melted in the same fire that seared him. Those ripe, full lips opening beneath his. Her sharp cries of need. Or would she utter soft whimpers of pleasure?
He didn’t know. Wanted to know. Needed to find out. All he knew, instinctively, in a way he could not explain, was that she would be different from any woman he’d ever bedded. Never in his life had he dared contemplate having a lady like this—not only beautiful, but exquisite as rare porcelain. Elegant and precious and fine. Perhaps even untouched.
So why not?
The fire consumed him, need blazing into decision. He lifted his hand to touch her.
Just as dawn slipped in.
Daybreak glimmered around the edges of the windows. He froze, his hand an inch from her cheek. The meager light barely penetrated the fabric he had tacked over the glass, illuminating the pitch-dark cabin only to dusky gray. Yet it struck him like a jarring blow. Stopped him. Slapped him awake.
What the devil had he been thinking?
The light carried the answer to the question why not? Because there wasn’t time. He had to leave this place. Run. Stay one step ahead of the law.
As the light grew stronger, it also brought back his reason. What the hell had he been thinking? He couldn’t let himself get distracted. Not even for a minute, never mind hours. He had to keep his mind clear. Concentrate on staying alive.
And bedding her would change things. He’d never met a woman yet who could accept that sex was merely a simple, natural act. They always wanted to turn it into something complicated and “meaningful.”
And the last thing he needed right now was more complications.
He could see her in the gray light, a soft outline beside him. So close…impossibly far. His body still afire, his hunger unabated, he moved his hand, tracing just one fingertip over her cheek, regretting what could not be.
She jumped as if he’d struck her and came awake in a burst of movement, jamming an elbow backward, straight into his ribs.
He grunted in surprise and pain. She shouted a wordless cry of protest and leaped out of the bed—apparently forgetting for a critical moment that they were shackled together.
The cuff yanked hard against his ankle. Cursing, he stood just as the shackles brought her up short. The chain went taut and she went tumbling. She landed on her shapely backside.
“Don’t touch me!” She lashed out with her free foot, trying unsuccessfully to scramble backward.
“I’m not coming anywhere near you,” he assured her in an annoyed growl. “Calm—”
“Stay back!” Somehow her little knife had ended up on the floor. She grabbed it and struck out in a swift, slash
ing arc.
Aiming toward a particularly vulnerable spot.
Dodging the blade, he swore vividly. “That’s bloody well enough of that.” He reached for her, grabbing her wrist. “What the hell is wrong with you, woman? I wasn’t doing a damned thing to hurt you.”
“Blackguard. I knew I couldn’t trust you!” Rising to her knees, she struggled against his hold. “Let me go!”
“As soon as you stop trying to slice me in half.” He squeezed her wrist with just enough pressure to send the knife clattering to the floor.
“No!” She was gasping for breath now, almost hysterical.
“I’m not going to hurt you—”
“Don’t touch me! I don’t want you to touch me!”
Before he could muster any kind of reply that might quiet her, he heard a sound in the distance. From somewhere deep in the woods.
“Shh!” He put his other hand over her mouth and went utterly still, listening.
She kept struggling. His palm smothered what he knew must be a colorful string of curses.
Then she froze too as the sound grew louder, unmistakable—a pack of hunting dogs, baying in full voice. Coming this way. Straight toward the cabin.
They’d been found.
Nicholas uttered a short, vicious oath. He instantly released the girl and turned to scoop up his pistol from beneath the bed. He grabbed the fishing creel he had packed with supplies.
The girl remained frozen, wide-eyed as the barking of the hounds echoed through the forest. “Maybe they’re hunting deer,” she suggested tremulously. “Or fox.”
“Hunters only come into Cannock Chase after one kind of prey.” He slung the fishing creel over his good shoulder. “Outlaws.”
“But we don’t know that they’re after us.”
“Do you want to wait here and ask?” He shoved the knife that he had reclaimed from her into his boot. Then he took her arm and tugged her to her feet. “Move, your ladyship.”
Escape with a Scoundrel (Escape with a Scoundrel Series Book 1) Page 11
