But as deserving as these men were, she wasn’t a killer. She’d been careful to shoot all three in areas where a bullet would incapacitate but do the least amount of damage. In other words, they should all live.
Whirling back to where Winter had already disarmed Vittorina, Isobel huffed a breath as Cain unsheathed a rapier and made to slice at the marquess’s back.
“Winter!” she shouted, forgetting in her haste to address him as Roth. “Look out!”
The marquess dodged Cain’s blade, but his attention was split by the tiger who, unlike the coachman lying in a heap, had evaded Creighton’s fists. Cursing under her breath, she flung the spent gun with all her might at Cain, trying to distract him.
Isobel couldn’t help noticing that Vittorina had scrambled back toward the coach—perhaps in search of more weapons—but Creighton managed to restrain her. Now that she was without a weapon and in the clutches of one of Winter’s men, there was real alarm on her face. But Isobel couldn’t worry about her. Cain was rushing toward her with his rapier held high.
She reached for the footpad’s discarded sword and held it aloft. While her shooting skills were sound, her fencing skills were adequate at best. But she had no time to dwell on form, using all her strength to counter Cain’s down swing. The blow made her bones rattle, but she fended it off and then parried with a strike of her own. Fencing was like a dance, her instructor had once told her—all fleet footwork and lightness of feet. Despite Cain’s larger size and strength, she had the advantage of speed. She just had to figure out how to use it.
The strikes came hard and fast, and it was all she could do to keep up her defense. Sweat poured into her eyes and her legs felt like jelly. Isobel heard the sounds of the scuffle behind her and knew that it’d only been a few furious minutes at most, though it felt like she’d been fighting for hours. Her arms shook with the strain of holding the sword up—she was accustomed to wielding a much lighter rapier. This match would not be won by strength, she knew. She had to use her brain, catch him off guard.
“What makes you think Lady Roth will ever want you?” she asked, keeping her voice low. “You’re a disgrace.”
His face darkened with rage. “Who do you think you are, boy?”
“I know who I am,” she said with a short lunge and then danced out of the way of his return strike. “But you apparently don’t know who you are. A disgraced, discredited peer. No more of a noble than me.”
“Watch your tongue!”
Anger made him clumsy, and as he dove at her, she ducked and spun as fast as she could to shoot her blade out so it caught him on the torso. He staggered back, clutching at his wound and staring at the blood on his fingers in disbelief. “You little brat, I’ll slit your throat for that.”
“Promises, promises, Earl of Codswallop,” she taunted. “That has a nice ring to it, don’t you think? How about Earl of Twaddle? Earl of Almost-Had-It-All?”
Edmund Cain used to be handsome, but the past three years had taken a toll on him. Where there had once been muscle, there was now a layer of dissipation that was easily evident around his middle. His face now sported the first sprouting of a pair of pasty jowls.
“I’m going to take great pleasure in killing you.”
“You always seem to count your chickens before they’re hatched, don’t you?”
His eyes narrowed as they circled each other. “Have we met?”
“Sadly, I don’t run in the same circles as cowardly criminals.” She channeled Clarissa as she let her insolent stare rake down his body, stopping at his hips. “On second thought, maybe Earl of Insignificant Things might suit better.” Isobel laughed. “I’ve heard about you, you know. You’re that earl who likes little girls. One wonders why…”
Though they sparked with rage, his eyes fastened on her. “Do I know you?”
“Me? A lowly groom? I think not.”
“Take off that mask.”
She shook her head, quickening her steps. “But I’m badly disfigured, Lord Little. My face is enough to inspire terror in the most stalwart of men.”
“You speak well for a groom.” He advanced with a short stab of his rapier. “Who are you?”
Quick as a snake, he lurched forward and it took all her strength to jump out of the way. Despite his wound, he kept coming, and once more, Isobel found herself on the defensive. There was something else driving the earl now—a desperate need to find out who she was. And she couldn’t let that happen. Narrowing her focus, she fell back on the lessons from her fencing master, letting her body remember the movements.
Parry, strike, shift. Repeat.
“You fence well for a groom, too,” he panted.
“I do a lot of things well, Lord Beaumont.”
Suddenly, the earl pulled back, his face going hard, and Isobel wanted to kick herself for using his old address. Something in the way she’d said it, some minor inflection must have caught his interest, set off a memory. He stared at her. “I know you.”
“I hate to disappoint,” she replied. “But you don’t and you never have.”
“Show yourself.”
Isobel smiled beneath her mask. “No.”
Taking advantage of his hesitation, she darted in, bringing her sword down onto the hand that held his rapier. It clattered to the clay-hardened grit of the street, and she used the advantage to drive hers toward him, the tip of it pressing into his belly. “Yield,” she commanded.
In a fit of rage, he reached forward and ripped off the swatch of fabric covering her face. Isobel saw the moment he recognized her, even dressed as she was with dirt caked into her skin, his eyes going wide with incredulity. “You!”
Thankfully, her back was to the others, but she still couldn’t resist replying. “Me,” she said in a low voice. “I believe my sister told you once, Edmund, no means no. Surely a man of your intelligence would have learned that lesson by now.”
His eyes glittered with lust and malice. “When we get to Italy, I’m going to punish you in ways you can’t imagine, little one.”
“I’m not sure you understand your predicament here.”
She wasn’t prepared for him to push against the blade and then knock it to the side. Its sharp edges tore through the fabric of his coat, but he paid it no mind. Before he could get a hand on her, Isobel did the only thing she could—she let the sword clatter to the ground, grasped his shoulders for purchase, and then brought her knee up as hard as she could between his legs. He fell back like a sack of shit, cupping his privates and howling.
“Iz, did he get you?” Winter said from behind, and Isobel braced herself.
She drew a breath, not knowing how he was going to respond. Likely, it would not be pleasant, given the danger she’d placed herself in. Not that it was any different for Iz, but the male sex tended to view defending female helplessness as a measure of their own masculinity. It didn’t matter that she could fight or shoot as well as any man. She was a woman and by default, delicate. Hogwash, if you asked her, but such was the way of their world.
But before she could quite drum up the courage to turn around and face him, her eyes met Vittorina’s, who was standing off to the side in Creighton’s grasp. The woman goggled, her mouth falling open in disbelief and then reforming into a hateful sneer. She screamed like a banshee, tearing out of the porter’s hold and sprinting toward Isobel, fury in her gaze.
“You’ve ruined everything!” she shrieked. “You stupid bitch!”
Isobel sucked in a breath, planted her feet, and waited until Vittorina was in range before drawing her arm back and letting a full-on punch fly. It connected right in the woman’s jaw. For a moment, they stared at each other in silence and then Vittorina’s eyes rolled back in her head and she crumpled. Isobel moved to stand over her, the pain in her fingers unbearable, but damned if she would let an inkling of it show.
“I’m not spine
less,” she said. “And I’m not stupid.”
“Fucking hell…Isobel?”
She swallowed hard and rotated in slow motion, meeting the incredulous eyes of her husband. Fury was quick to light their silver depths as recognition and understanding hit, but she bit her lip and stood her ground. “There’s a good explanation, Winter, I promise.”
“There better be,” he said, “because there’s a good chance I’m going to put you over my sodding knee.”
Even covered in blood and filth and God knew what else, the sound of his husky voice made every nerve-ending in her body come alive. Isobel gave him a cheeky grin. “Promise?”
As his eyes darkened from silver to slate and a growl broke from his chest, it occurred to Isobel that it might not be the right time to provoke the beast.
Too late.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Avoid coitus on a staircase. Notwithstanding the ludicrous speculation of having a child born of such a union with a crooked back, the bodily injuries are not worth the trouble. Do the deed outside instead.
– Lady Darcy
Winter’s entire body shook. Nodding to a watchful Creighton, who would see to the fallen Cain and an unconscious Vittorina, he throttled his anger. Too many pent-up emotions rioted through him, brought on by a combination of the fight and how much danger the brazen little minx had put herself through…pretending to be a groom, fighting men four times her size, so very nearly being killed. He was torn between fury, relief, fear, and desire.
His blood heated to dangerous levels.
Even as he seized his groom-turned-wife—the little hoyden had truly pulled one over on him—he was busily contemplating pleasurable ways to exact punishment. Putting her over his knee was only the start of it. Tying her up so that she could never leave the bedchamber was a close second. And having her on her knees was a distinct third.
The narrow alleyway he took them to was empty and clear of debris, but Winter would not have cared if it was covered in fifty layers of grime. It was private…and that was what he needed for what he intended to do. The moment they were safely out of sight, he tore off his ruined gloves and filthy coat, and wiped the blood from his face with the clean lining before tossing them to the side. Then he filled his palms with his wife, sliding over her shoulders, down her arms, and up again to cup her jaw before slamming his lips to hers.
She kissed him back with the same ferocity, twining her arms around his neck to tangle in his hair. His tongue dominated her mouth, punishing, punishing, punishing, and Isobel moaned her approval. Winter ground his hips against her body, hands dropping to her delectable arse and squeezing, before hauling her up so her legs wrapped around his waist. One step and he lifted her easily around a stack of empty crates, bracing her against the wall.
“Fuck,” he groaned when the heat of her core rested snug against his hard cock.
Bewildered, lust-filled ice-blue eyes shone up into his. “W-what are you doing, Winter?”
“I need you,” he muttered, going in for another kiss, this one no less ferocious than the first before he broke away panting. Christ, her tiny moans made his cock hard enough to crack stone. “Say yes, Isobel. Or stop me now.”
“Yes.”
With a rumble of approval, he sealed his swollen mouth to hers, swallowing her gasps and cries. She gave as good as she got, nipping and sucking, tugging on his hair. Wrenching her coat open, Winter’s hands trembled over the curves of Isobel’s body from that slender back to her nipped-in waist to those flaring hips currently clad in coarse breeches.
His fingers went between them to the front, fumbling for the laces. She moaned into his mouth as his palm slipped into the loosened waistband to fondle the fleshy globes of her backside. Winter groaned into the kiss. No man could ever mistake these for being male. She was all woman. Then again, it wasn’t as though he’d been looking at Iz as anything other than a boy. She’d fooled everyone.
God, the moment recognition had hit, he’d nearly buckled, emotions sweeping through him like a tidal wave. Iz was Isobel. He should have known. There’d been so many little hints along the way, but either he’d been unobservant or preoccupied with other things. The older groom, Randolph, had slipped up and referred to the younger groom as she. And Clarissa, too. In the salon when he’d asked if Isobel had taken her groom Iz, Clarissa had started to say she is and then broke off, catching herself at the last second.
Fury and lust roared through him as he unwrapped her legs to wrench those blasted breeches down, then fumbled at his own excruciatingly tight falls. His hard cock fell free and he fisted it. Isobel stared, eyes going wide at the angry-looking appendage, and then she licked her lips as if she meant to devour it then and there. His staff shuddered in his hand. Hell, he wanted that, too, but later. He had other plans for her in that moment.
“Last chance before I take you right here, right now.” The words emerged as a strangled growl.
A burning gaze met his. “Tell me what to do.”
“Bend over and hold on to the crate,” he whispered, biting her ear and moving behind her when she did as instructed. He dropped to his knees to kiss one round cheek of her delicious arse and then gave in to the temptation, biting and then soothing with his tongue, before reaching between her legs. Bloody hell, she was soaked…and more than ready for him. His fingers parted her slick folds, worrying the bead that made her writhe back against him.
“Winter,” she whimpered, her back arching in explicit invitation.
He stood, braced one arm around her middle, and notched himself to her entrance. With a groan, he slid in. One thrust was all it took for his wife to clench and erupt around him, her body spasming, her inner walls gripping him. Grasping her hips, he drove into her, grinding into her willing body until his brain went blank. He pulled her up flush against him, tilting her chin up so he could take her lips. One hand slid down to her wet sex while the other kneaded her breast.
“Come one more time,” he growled into her mouth.
“I can’t,” she moaned. “It’s too much.”
“You can.” He worked his fingers against her nub, pinching it between his thumb and forefinger. “Now, Isobel.”
With a soft cry of pleasure, she did beautifully, undulating around him, the standing position squeezing him impossibly tight. His ballocks tightened and lightning hit the base of his spine.
“Fuck, fuck!”
Pulling out of the hot clasp of his wife’s body, Winter’s vision went white as the wildest orgasm of his life crashed through him. Panting, he cradled Isobel’s quivering body against his while his brain returned from its journey into orbit.
Staggering back, he drew up his trousers and reached for a handkerchief from his pocket. Turning his wife to face him, he gently passed it over her sex and tugged up her breeches before cleaning and putting himself to rights.
“Are you well?” he murmured.
A snicker broke from her, her eyes crinkling and filled with humor. “You just had your wicked way with me in an alley in Covent Garden, Lord Roth. How do you think I am?”
“Sated?”
“Emphatically. Twice, in fact.”
Lips twitching, he grazed her bruised lower lip with his thumb, and then looked up at her ugly tweed cap. He pulled it off, watching as her long golden curls spilled free like a waterfall of silken wheat. Winter wound his fist into one long tress and frowned. If that hat had come off at any time during her foray into Seven Dials, she would have been exposed. He didn’t want to contemplate what could have happened in a place full of cutthroat criminals.
His amusement faded.
“Don’t ever risk your safety like that again,” he ground through his teeth. “You could have died.”
She stared up at him, eyes glittering like a cerulean sea. “So could you.”
“I’m a man.”
“And does being male make
your life worth any less than mine?” she shot back. “You were in danger, too, Winter. I couldn’t let you be alone, not when you were out here because of me in the first place.”
“You should have stayed at home.”
“Like an obedient, spineless, dutiful wife?”
Her reply was soft, dangerous, but Winter was too far gone to pay any heed. Anger and fear for her rolled into one. Things could have been so much nastier. Couldn’t she see that? She could have been killed. Or much worse.
“Yes, devil take it!” His throat worked as he reached for words. “I couldn’t countenance it if something happened to you.”
Like Prue.
He didn’t have to say the words; he knew his shattered expression made that all too clear. And Isobel was not one to miss anything. He adored that about her—that sharp perceptiveness tempered by compassion.
“I’m not her, Winter,” she whispered.
He knew that, of course. Isobel was like Prudence in many ways—in her empathy and desire to see the best in people, even him—but she was much stronger than Prue had ever been. The problem wasn’t either woman…it was in Winter’s inability to protect either of them. He’d been too late to save Prue, here in this very hellhole, and when he thought of what could have happened to Isobel, everything inside of him hollowed out with dread.
“I know, but—”
Her hand slid up to cup his jaw, her index finger sliding across the swollen seam of his lips and halting his protest. “But nothing, Winter. My choices brought me here to you. For you. I would make them again without hesitation.”
“Why?”
“Because I love you, damn it!” Her cheeks went scarlet at the admission, but she wasn’t finished. “And if you weren’t so blinded by your own pigheadedness, you would know that.”
Stunned, Winter gawked at her. His heart grew wings, beating wildly within his chest as though offered the gift of flight after being caged for so long. The faintest glimmer of hope hummed through his veins…daring him to fly. Fuck. Fuck. She loved him.
The Rakehell of Roth Page 25
