The house had eventually grown silent and she had realized that he was not about to ravish her in her bed. At that point, Kitty had slept. It was as much from exhaustion as preparation. She needed to be sharp, to have all her wits about her and use any opportunity for escape that presented itself.
Now, the following morning, Kitty was seated on the bed waiting for him to free her. When she heard the scrape of the key in the lock, she let out a shuddering breath. The door opened and he stood there, quite obviously still foxed from the night before. Clearly, there had been more to be had within the confines of their filthy abode than empty bottles. There certainly hadn’t been any food and she was starving.
“Get up. We need to go,” he sneered.
“I’ve been up. It’s you who slept the morning away… sleeping off your excesses it would seem,” she snapped back at him. Regardless of his threats, she’d made a decision not to be cowed him.
He sneered at her. “Not even married yet and already you have perfected the art of nagging. If you can get your crippled self down the stairs, we’ll be off. I’ve an aching head a need for more brandy.”
The quip had stung, far more than she wanted to admit. Even worse was the notion that she would have a lifetime of that to put up with. At some point, she would have an opportunity to escape him, she reminded herself. And he was clearly underestimating her based on her physical limitations. If he planned to spend the entire journey drinking, those chances would improve.
“Then let’s be off. Perhaps the carriage will crash and we’ll both be spared the misery of marriage to one another,” she said bitterly and preceded him down the stairs.
They had neared the bottom when he grabbed her upper arm, spun her around and pinned her forcefully against the wall. “You listen to me, Kitty Wyverne! You are lucky, do you understand that?”
His grip on her arm was bruising and the abrupt movement had caused stabbing pains in her leg that reminded her sharply of the disadvantages she currently faced. “Lucky? To have been abducted and forced into marriage with a drunkard?”
His hand flew back, but the blow never fell. He caught himself before actually striking her. Kitty stared at him, wide eyed and afraid.
“I can’t have my bride-to-be standing before the blacksmith in Gretna Green with bruises on her face, now can I? But I can hurt you, Kitty Wyverne, without leaving a mark. So don’t test me further.” With that, he dropped his hand from her arm and stepped back just a bit. As if he was seeing her for the first time, he reached out and took a lock of her hair between his fingers. “And drunkard or no, you’ll not make a better match. We both know that… no other man would have you even before I sullied your precious reputation beyond repair.”
With that, he strolled past her, down the few remaining steps and out the door to the waiting carriage. Kitty was left to follow. The implication was clear, of course. If she did not follow him, he would simply come back inside and retrieve her—by force if necessary.
Shaken, terrified by the violence and unpredictability of him, Kitty did as was expected of her. But as she made her way toward the door, she paused long enough to snatch up a knife from the table left over from the dinner he’d apparently enjoyed the night before. It was no longer simply a matter of escaping him. She realized that it might very well become a question of life or death.
Chapter Thirty
The inn yard at the Swan Hotel on High Street in Birmingham was a bustling place, even after dark. The mail coach that had carried them thus far was changing horses, a speedy process that allotted only a few moments to disembark. Jumping down from the box where he’d ridden next to the driver, Cornelius hoped that Primrose had fared better inside than he had out. Half-frozen, his clothes damp from the misting rain that had fallen for a good part of their journey, he knew the inside of the stage was not much better. Traveling at such breakneck speeds, the wind would have howled through the vehicle nearly as strongly as it did atop it. And he, at least, had been blessed with the ability to move in his seat, to reposition himself at times for comfort.
Inside, crammed into the small confined space with more than half a dozen others, that would not have been so for her. Opening the door, he spied her sitting stiffly on the edge of the seat, clearly anxious to be free of it.
“Is this where we get off?” she asked.
“It is,” he said, and held out his hand to her. Birmingham was far enough north that they should have gotten ahead of Samford and Miss Wyverne. It was near dawn, and they would not be stopping for long.
He watched as Primrose carefully extricated herself from the tangle of passengers, attempting to disrupt others as little as possible. There would be other passengers waiting to board presumably as there had been some changes at several of the stopping points along the way. With Birmingham being one of the more bustling posts along the way, it was a good bet.
Taking her hand, he helped her down just as the new team was fully fastened to the coach and a fresh driver was climbing atop the box, shouting for any passengers to board. The scene was chaos. Someone threw their bags down from the top of the carriage, slinging them into the dirt before them with such force that Prim jumped and Cornelius wondered how the cases did not simply split open. With a baleful stare at the overzealous worker, he picked up the bags, one tucked under his arm and the other in his hand.
“What are we doing now?” she asked.
“I’ll rent a private carriage, get us some food from the inn and we’ll be off,” he said.
She nodded, though it was a weary gesture.
“This was too much for you… too much and too soon following your own accident,” he said.
“It was my choice to come,” she said, stretching her neck from side to side. “I’ll not complain nor will I slow you down. Miss Wyverne does not have the luxury of waiting for me to feel better.”
“I’m going to procure a room for us for an hour or so. That way, you may wait somewhere privately while I make the arrangements for the carriage.” He would not have her waiting alone in a public room at a busy inn. Even covered by her cloak and with the hood pulled up, he didn’t feel she would be safe.
“That’s unnecessary. I’ll stay with you,” she said.
“Primrose, I have to go the stables and procure a driver and a coach. At this time of night, there could very well be a very unsavory element about. I don’t want to risk it.”
“And if you don’t return?”
Cornelius paused, considered his options and then decided that, once more, telling her the truth was best. Opening his great coat, he revealed the sword strapped to his thigh, the pistol tucked into the inner pocket and another blade hanging from a belt at his waist. “I did not come unprepared.”
She blinked up at him. “I should say you did not. Were you so heavily armed even during our wedding?”
He had been. They had left immediately following the ceremony, not even bothering to have a wedding breakfast as was the custom. Instead, they had left the church, taken a hackney to Ludgate Hill and caught the next departing mail coach. “I’ll get a room for you where you can rest for a bit and refresh yourself. I’ll return for you before the sun is fully risen,” he promised.
“Please be careful.”
“I will not leave you here penniless. There will be a way for you to get back to London and to your sister if something should happen to me!”
Her jaw dropped, lips parting in what appeared to be shock, before drawing tight in a firm line of disapproval. “Do you honestly think my concern for your welfare is because I’m afraid of being stuck here?”
“I hope it is not,” he admitted. It was wrong of him to want her to worry for him, but that she might gave him hope. “I would like to believe that you have a care for me, at least a little. But now is not the time to discuss such things. Right now, Primrose, I need you to promise me that if I do not return to fetch you within an hour, you will get back to London and abandon any efforts on Miss Wyverne’s behalf. You are no ma
tch for Samford and I would not have you be so bold and reckless alone.”
“I do care for you… and I would see you come back safely regardless of what happens with our efforts to save Miss Wyverne.”
Cornelius became aware of two men leaning against the building watching them. He was only too well aware of how men reacted to her beauty. Reaching for her, he drew the cloak tighter about her and pulled the hood up so that it concealed her face. “We have drawn attention to ourselves here… unwisely. Let us get inside.”
Ushering her into the hotel, he quickly arranged for a room. Key in hand, they went up the stairs and located their chamber. It was large and comfortably furnished.
“Rest while you can,” he said. “I’ll be back as quickly as possible. Do not open this door to anyone but me. There were some unsavory characters outside and I do not feel good about this.”
He’d turned to go, his hand on the door handle when she called out, “Cornelius!”
“Yes?”
She moved toward him in a rush and wrapped her arms about him. “Please be careful. I can’t help feeling that something awful might happen and I am so afraid for you!”
“I’ll be well and cautious,” he vowed. Of their own accord, his lips found hers. It wasn’t a kiss intended to incite passion, but rather to seal the promise he’d just made her. But like all good intentions, it failed in the face of such temptation. Holding her close, feeling the softness of her full lips crushed against his own, it would have taken a stronger man than he was to deny his urges.
*
The kiss swept her away. Her exhaustion, the pain from being bounced and jostled in the mail coach, all of it fled at his touch. Everything else seemed to vanish and only the points of contact between them were real and tangible. The hard press of his chest against her, the way his lips moved over hers, the thrill as his tongue teased her own, the crush of his arms around her, holding her tightly—those were the only things that existed for her in that moment.
It was both terrifying and sublime. In so many ways, he was everything she’d ever feared—a man so compelling and so irresistible to her that she might lose herself. But she was coming to realize that she feared losing him more. Somehow, he brought out her true self. His very presence forced her to acknowledge her fears, to face them.
Clinging to him, her arms about his neck, Prim slid her hands over the breadth of his shoulders, then down his back. He made a sound of pleasure, a low growl in his throat that raised gooseflesh on her skin and made her shiver.
He broke the kiss. “We cannot do this, Primrose. I would not have our marriage consummated in a hurried encounter in a bustling inn.”
“Where would you have it consummated then?” she asked. “We are alone and we are married.”
“And you wanted to wait,” he pointed out.
She had said that. Because she feared all the things he made her feel, because she feared the awareness of him that had settled upon her like a cloak. “I’m tired of being afraid of who I am, Cornelius, of who I might become. Do you understand that?”
“Better than you realize… but you are not your mother and I am not my father. When we have real privacy and not just the illusion of it in a place such as this, when we have the time for me to make love to you, Primrose—because that is what I mean to do—then we will indulge our desires. But I won’t see you cheated by some hurried coupling in a rented room. And I won’t cheat myself that way either,” he insisted.
“Maybe I am my mother, after all,” she said.
“Because you feel desire?”
Prim’s hands clenched together in front of her as the shameful admission tumbled from her lips. “No. Because I’m willing to forgo everything else to see that desire fulfilled. Because it was my idea to come haring off to Scotland and rescue a girl we don’t even really know, and now, I could wish her to the devil just to be alone with you.”
He smiled at that. “But you won’t. And I won’t. Because without you insisting this was the right thing to do, I would have already abandoned Miss Wyverne to her fate. If nothing else, this should prove to you that we are better together than apart.”
“Hurry back. And be safe. I still feel… dread, for lack of a better word. I worry that we’ve been foolish in this.”
“It’ll be fine. I promise.”
He left the room and Prim locked the door behind him. She felt bereft without him. Not in the needy way that her mother had pined over every man to ever abandon her, but rather as if she’d sent him out to face his doom. It had been her idea to rouse a rescue for Miss Wyverne, but it was Cornelius who was facing all the danger while she remained locked away inside the safety of their temporary lodgings. But she’d told him she’d remain there and much as it pained her to do so, she would.
Worried, her own thoughts tormenting her and a dozen scenarios playing out in her mind, all of them seeing her new husband coming to a very bad end, Primrose began to pace the room. There would be no rest for her. Not until she knew he was safe.
Chapter Thirty-One
“I can carry you and your missus to Carlisle, but no further. But I know a fellow that can take you from there on to Gretna Green if need be.”
Cornelius nodded at the driver in agreement to the terms. “My hope is not to have to travel beyond Carlisle. Can you tell me if another gentleman has come through here to change horses? It would have been in the wee hours at the very earliest. Dark-haired man? He would have had a young woman with him who walks with a slight limp.”
“No. Not seen anyone like that, m’lord. Sorry to say. I take it he’s a bad man?”
“He’s done a bad thing to be sure,” Cornelius agreed. “This young woman is an heiress and he has determined that he should marry her regardless of whether she consents to the match or not. Is it possible that you could get word out to the other stables in town to be on the lookout for him?”
“I can, m’lord. What’s his name?”
“Lord Samford.”
The stable master’s face shifted into an expression of pure disgust. “I know him well, m’lord. Everyone in town knows him. He left this town owing a lot of money to a lot of people, m’self included. And ruined several of my horses in the process. He won’t be stopping in Birmingham, nor in Walsall for that matter. Likely he’ll head on to Stoke-on-Trent. He’ll find no welcome in between to be sure.”
“We’ll stop and check there then. Thank you for the information.”
“I hope you catch up to him, m’lord. He’s a bounder through and through.”
Cornelius left the stables, still mulling over the information just imparted to him. He’d secured a carriage, quality horseflesh and a driver. All that was left was to gather some provisions for the trip from the hotel’s kitchen. It would be an hour or so until they departed and he hoped that Primrose was taking advantage of that time to sleep.
As he rounded the corner to head back to the hotel, he stopped abruptly. He spied two men there, the same two he’d seen eyeing Primrose in the yard when they’d disembarked from the mail coach.
“I say, that was a mighty fine looking girl you was with, sir.”
“My lord. You may address me as my lord,” Cornelius said.
“Lords don’t ride the stage, now do they?” the first man asked.
“They do if they are in a hurry,” Cornelius replied. “And I am still in a hurry, gentlemen, so I’ll ask you nicely to remove yourselves from my path.”
The second man chortled but it was not a sound of cheer. Menacing and ugly, it showed only too clearly that they were spoiling for a fight. “Well ain’t you high and mighty? I think I’ll help myself to that coat you’ve got on and start calling myself a lord, too.”
“You’re welcome to try,” Cornelius replied.
The first man laughed loudly. “You’re a game one, that’s for sure. I’m more interested in that bird you had with you. Only ever seen faces like that in paintings at the church… not that I go all that often.”
&nbs
p; “I’m more interested in what she was hiding under that cloak,” the second man said. “She’s got a fine arse, don’t she?”
“You’ll not speak of my wife that way.”
“Wife! I don’t think so. Men like you don’t marry women like that… she’s as baseborn as the pair of us. And lord or no, you’re still a toff,” the first one added.
“It ain’t nice to lie… who is she? And how much for a few minutes alone with her? We’ll be gentle like,” the second man added, a chilling smile spreading over his cracked lips.
Despite the anger that suffused him at such a suggestion, Cornelius kept his composure. With one quick movement, he withdrew the pistol from inside his coat with one hand and the blade that had been strapped to his thigh with the other. “There is no inducement that would be effective. Now step aside.”
“There’s no call to be like that now! We’re just a bit of fun, ain’t we, Harry?” the first man said.
“Aye. Fun,” the second man agreed. Neither made any effort to move and clear his path.
Cornelius continued, “Regardless of your disbelief in my claims, I am a lord… Lord Ambrose as a matter of fact. You will not be the first men I have killed. But you will be the killings that cause me the least inconvenience. I have but to claim attempted robbery and wash my hands of the entire mess. I would not even have a trial. Do you really want to test it?”
As if realizing they had chosen a mark that would not be as easy or compliant as they had imagined, the two men mumbled and turned away, heading away from the hotel. Regardless of their seemingly easy capitulation, Cornelius remained wary as he crossed the remaining distance to the hotel. They might have left, but that didn’t mean they would forget about him. It most certainly didn’t mean that they’d forget about Prim.
Entering the hotel, he climbed the stairs to their small room and hoped that she had done as he suggested and taken advantage of that time to rest. It hadn’t escaped him that their room looked out over the yard and would have provided her a perfect view of the exchange he’d just had with the two would-be brigands.
The Awakening of Lord Ambrose (The Lost Lords Book 6) Page 19
