Shameless

by ROBARDS, KAREN

  His abandoned seduction had, in fact, freed her of the shackles that had kept her from fully living the life she wanted to live.

  The key, of course, as Claire had repeatedly told her, lay in finding the right man.

  “Neil,” she said softly into the silence that, disturbed only by their uneven breathing, had spun out between them, “thank you.”

  “Thank you?” He sounded wary.

  “Yes.”

  “You’re welcome. You should know that stopping when I did was damned hard. In fact, it’s probably one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life.”

  Beth smiled into the darkness. “Oh, I wasn’t thanking you for stopping when you did, although I do see now that it was probably for the best. But you’ve changed everything for me: if we get out of this alive, if by some miracle I am not totally ruined, if I can go back to London and my life continues on as before, I can actually marry the next gentleman to whom I become betrothed. That’s why I was thanking you: I see I need no longer avoid marriage for fear of—of the intimacies of the marriage bed.”

  “Oh my God.” It was a groan. “That is not what I needed to hear.” He moved restively, and Beth got the feeling that he was in the throes of doing battle with some inner demon. “I see why I’ve never acted the gentleman before now: it’s too damned difficult.”

  “Is it?”

  “Hell, yes. And you are not helping, and you know it. You think I don’t want to love you so much that denying myself is well-nigh killing me? ’Tis your well-being I’m thinking of here.” The rough edge to his voice sent a delicious shiver racing over her skin. “And then you go and tell me that I’ve made it possible for some other man to—”

  A sound from somewhere beyond their small prison made Beth stiffen. Even as her senses went on alert and her head swung questioningly toward it, a familiar, devoutly welcome voice pierced the darkness.

  “We be back! We brought ’elp!”

  “Thank God.” Eagerly, Beth turned over to face the cabin and raised her voice in answer. “Mary!”

  “Miss! Be ye and ’is worship all right?”

  “We’re fine,” Neil yelled. “Is Creed with you?”

  “No,” Mary replied, but before she could continue a strange male voice shouted cheerfully, “Mr. Creed’s away, but it don’t matter. There’s a group of us here, and we’ll get you out right and tight. From the looks of things, it’ll be takin’ some time, though.”

  “Who are you?” Neil called back. Beth thought she heard a hint of wariness in his voice, and a different kind of tension emanated from him now. Of course, they were no longer insulated from the outside world. Was it possible that the cheerful voice belonged to one of their pursuers from the castle? At the thought, Beth’s heart started to beat a little faster for an entirely different reason than before.

  “Name’s Tandy. We’ll be getting the others out first, a-cause you’re under a heaping pile o’ rock, and them, not so much. You just hang on, you and the lady, and leave all to us.”

  There seemed nothing else to do. Frowning out toward the cavern where she could hear faint thuds, as if of rocks landing after being flung aside, Beth heard a smaller, metallic sound directly behind her and glanced back toward Neil.

  “What are you doing?” she asked. Her voice was scarce louder than a whisper, and she realized it was because she feared being overheard by their rescuers. Which was ridiculous. She could hear none of their conversation or noise beyond those muffled crashes. Still, some atavistic instinct made her cautious.

  “Getting the pistols. I took them out of my pocket before I gave you my greatcoat and tucked them out of the way. They’re empty, curse the luck, but no one needs to know that. I’ve used empty pistols to back men off before.”

  Beth’s stomach tightened. “Do you think you’ll need to back them off? Who do you think they are?”

  “In all likelihood, honest men. But it pays to be prepared.” He reached out for her, hooking an arm around her waist and pulling her back against him. “From the sound of it, they’re not being overly careful. ’Tis safer here in the back against the wall, in case they should trigger another rock fall.”

  That was a frightening possibility Beth hadn’t yet thought of.

  “Neil . . . ”

  “Worrying is a waste of time. At this juncture there’s nothing to be done but wait until they dig us out, then deal with what we find.” His arm was hard around her waist, and she could feel the slight rise and fall of his chest against her back. Then he moved, changing positions, taking her with him. Once again they ended up in the most comfortable position they could find, with him on his back with his arm around her and his chest pillowing her head. Lying against him, listening to the continuous low thunder of noise that now emanated from the cabin, Beth found herself craving fresh air, and longing for the moment when they would be freed from the claustrophobic space.

  And yet. . . and yet. . .

  “London seems a long way away,” she observed, thinking that if these were indeed honest men, she would be back there in short order, probably by the following night. “I must go home, of course, and I want to, just as soon as may be, but—” She broke off as it hit her that once she was back in her world he would be out of her life. “Once I’m home, I won’t be seeing you again, will I?”

  “Do you wish to see me again?”

  “I own, I think I do.”

  “That’s quite an admission.” There was an inscrutable note to his voice that made her frown and tilt her head in an instinctive bid to look up at him, which, of course, was useless in the dark. “Whatever happens, I doubt I’ll be disappearing from your life any time soon.”

  Beth’s frown deepened. “But . . . ”

  “Again with your troubled ‘but’s.” He silenced her with a kiss, to which she instantly, instinctively responded. As hot and hungry as it was brief, it drove everything else out of her head. “Aren’t you glad now I stopped when I did? We will both live to see another day, and you still have your damned virginity.”

  “I suppose I must be. But, you know, I find I quite like kissing,” Beth murmured reflectively. Her arms were looped around his neck, and her chin rested against his chest. Her eyes were open, but of course she couldn’t see him, or anything else. “Among other things. With you, in any case.”

  A moment of electrically charged silence followed her remark.

  “Fortunately for my barely surviving gentlemanly instincts, I find the presence of so many strangers just on the other side of these rocks most inhibiting,” he said at last, sounding slightly out of breath as he removed her arms from around his neck and settled her against him again. “Suppose you distract me further by talking to me. You can start by telling me about your childhood. What of your parents?”

  Though it cost her an effort, she had enough pride to rise above the dizzying effects of that kiss, and managed to reply with a creditable assumption of gentle raillery. “Oh, your origins are off-limits, but mine are to be explored?”

  “Exactly so,” he said, and she thought he smiled. Certainly the tension she had felt in him seemed to ease a little. As for herself, her heart pounded and the delicious melting feeling was back, but she, too, was conscious of their rescuers’ nearness. She was relieved to discover that under the circumstances she had enough proper feeling left to her that she was content to lie close and talk, and nothing more.

  “Unfair,” she protested, but then at his insistence proceeded to tell him what he wanted to know, starting with what little she had managed to glean over the years about her mother, a clergyman’s daughter named Elizabeth like herself, who had become the Earl of Wickham’s fourth wife only to die in an accidental fall when Beth was so young that she could not remember her. She spoke guardedly of her father, whose brutality toward and lack of love for his offspring she did not care to dwell on, even in her thoughts, and of her father’s friends, who considered making sexual advances toward the earl’s unwilling daughters a form of sport.
Gabby and Claire she described lovingly, the one as the mother figure who had raised her, the other as her dearest friend. Their husbands, Nick and Hugh, she spoke of with affection, both for their own sakes and for the happiness they had given her sisters.

  “Fond of Richmond, are you?” Neil asked. Once again, there was an inscrutability in his tone that she couldn’t quite account for. It struck her as peculiar for him to specifically mention Hugh rather than include both her brothers-in-law in the question, and with that Beth was reminded of the circumstances under which she had first set eyes on him.

  “Hugh’s been very kind to me, and he’s amazingly good to Claire. I love him, and Nick, too, as if they were my own brothers,” she said firmly. Then she added, “You know, you never did tell me precisely what you were doing in Hugh’s house the night we met.”

  “Did I not?”

  “No. I assumed you were there to rob us, but—”

  Before she could finish, a cheer went up from the cavern, distracting them both. The sounds that followed made it clear that Nan and Jane had been successfully rescued. Beth heard their joyful cries thankfully. Moments later, a series of thuds far closer at hand than any they had heard before was their first indication that now it was their turn. Relief and anticipation mingled with apprehension as she realized that their hours of imprisonment would soon be at an end. She wanted to be free in the worst way, of course, but she had no idea who awaited them in the cavern, or what circumstances they might find themselves in once they were freed. And Neil had said he wouldn’t be disappearing from her life, but she wasn’t foolish enough to think that once she was home in London things between them would be the same.

  “Shifting this bloody enormous pile o’ rocks is lookin’ like it’ll take us all night, or more,” Tandy announced from what sounded like just outside their prison, his raised voice making it clear that he was talking to her and Neil. “I’ve a better plan: We’ll be putting a bit of a lever under this great slab that’s lying against the wall like, and lifting it. Then we’ll pull you out beneath it quick as can be, with the lady coming out first, o’ course.”

  Beth felt Neil’s sudden tension, but after only the briefest hesitation he yelled back, “All right.”

  “Make ready, then.” Tandy’s shout was accompanied by a loud, metallic grating. “When we’ve got the thing up, you’ll need to move fast.”

  “Do you think we can trust them?” Beth whispered as, at Neil’s urging, she scrambled into a crouching position near the slab. Beside her, she could feel him making movements that she thought meant he was thrusting the pistols into his waistband for easy access if needed. Apprehension made her stomach flutter. She wet her suddenly dry lips.

  “We have no choice. We sure as hell can’t stay here.” Neil’s voice was grim. A glimmer of light between the ground and the slab suddenly appeared, seeming to Beth to shine bright as the sun. As she blinked at it, dazzled by what seemed like the sudden brilliance, it widened. Then without warning Neil’s hand slid around the back of her neck and he kissed her, quick and hard.

  “Get the lady in position,” Tandy yelled. Neil let her go, and Beth, heart pounding, glanced rather dazedly at the crack to discover that it now formed an angle that was nearly a foot wide and growing at its widest point. The shaft of light beaming in was almost as blinding as the darkness had been.

  “I’ll be right behind you,” Neil promised.

  “Now!” Tandy yelled, and two meaty male hands appeared through the opening, fingers outstretched as he reached for her. “Lady, you grab on to my hands.”

  With a lightning glance back at Neil—she could see him now, just barely, as a dark, crouching shadow beside her—she grabbed Tandy’s hands.

  “Go,” Neil cried, his hands on her waist as he added his impetus to Tandy’s fierce yank. Ducking her head, she found herself being whisked out beneath the precariously balanced sheet of rock.

  Quick impressions—dazzling torchlight; armed men in numbers sufficient to practically fill the cavern, all with their weapons pointing at the wedge of space that had just been opened up beneath the tower of rocks; Mary, Nan, and Jane in a huddled group, seemingly under guard—hit her even before she was all the way through.

  Her eyes widened. Her mouth popped open. Her heart lurched.

  Dear God, I have to warn Neil. . .

  But before she could make so much as a sound, a hand clapped down hard over her mouth and she was hauled to her feet, to be restrained by a pair of tall, solidly built men who each clutched one of her arms. They weren’t dressed in military uniforms, and their faces were hard and etched with years, but the impression they gave was of military men.

  “Don’t you be afeared, milady,” the rough voice of the man whose hand covered her mouth whispered in her ear. “If that murdering dog who kidnapped you so much as breathes wrong, we’ll kill him out of hand. We was sent by His Grace the Duke to find you and take you back home again.”

  Even as the last word left her captor’s mouth, Tandy was reaching under the slab, one end of which, Beth saw, was being held perhaps two feet off the ground by four sturdy men wielding iron poles. A half dozen men armed with rifles moved silently into position around him, ready, from the look of them, to shoot Neil on sight.

  “Grab on, then, sir,” Tandy yelled into the opening, sounding every bit as cheerful as before.

  Her mind raced as her blood turned to ice in her veins.

  Jerking free of the hand covering her mouth just as Neil’s head and shoulders appeared, she said in a cold, clear voice loud enough to be heard throughout the chamber, “He has pistols, but they are empty. Do not kill him, I order you in the name of my brother, His Grace the Duke. He will be extremely angry if you do, I promise you, because I would see this scoundrel hang.”

  Still prone but scrambling to get out from under the slab, his hands still grasping Tandy’s, Neil looked up sharply at that. Their eyes met for no more than a split second before a rifle butt crashed down on the back of his head.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  HIS HEAD ACHED LIKE BE-DAMNED. The nauseating pain was what made him aware that he was once again fully conscious. Suppressing a groan out of instinct—the same instinct for danger that had saved his life many times before—Neil stayed still and kept his eyes shut as he strove to get mind and memory to the point where both were functional. His first thought was, This time I’m in trouble. His second was to remember exactly how he had come to be so. Wherever he was, the temperature was cold enough to make him aware of the chill, cold enough to penetrate his clothes. He seemed to be fully dressed, at least to the point where he was wearing shirt, pantaloons, and stockings. His greatcoat was missing, which was not surprising considering the contents of the pockets, as were his boots. A pungent smell he couldn’t quite place teased his nostrils. The surface on which he lay prone was both soft and damnably prickly at the same time. His arms were shackled behind his back. He could feel the iron cuffs fastened crushingly tight around his wrists, along with the heavy weight of the chain looped around his forearms. His ankles were shackled, too, also painfully tight, with more chains wrapped around his legs. There was noise in the distance, raised voices, laughter. Strident female voices. Raucous male laughter.

  And—this was the detail that got his heart pumping—certain stealthy sounds much closer at hand made him think that someone or something was attempting to creep up on him, almost certainly to no good purpose.

  Not by the slightest rattle of a chain did he reveal that he was now aware, although it required all of his considerable self-control to remain unmoving, except for the opening of his eyes the merest slit. Dizziness immediately assailed him; he gritted his teeth and ignored it.

  It was night, and his surroundings were dark and full of shadows. He was in a stable, in a stall, lying facedown in a pile of straw, which accounted for both the prickliness and the smell. The wooden sides of the box were rough, with uneven boards, and from that he knew that this was a humble place scarce be
tter than a cow barn. The partitions between the stalls rose to only about shoulder height, so that he could easily hear the stamps and snorts of the horses occupying the surrounding boxes. All this he absorbed in an instant, aided by the flickering light cast by what was probably a lantern affixed to a nail in the stable’s center aisle.

  In that instant he also saw that someone was in the stall with him. Someone who was easing the door closed in the clear hope that no one would hear. Someone who was careful to stay too low to be observed by anyone who might glance her way across the tops of the stalls.

  Because it was a woman. Even before, bending nearly double, she turned to sneak toward him and the lamplight touched her bright hair, he had no doubt as to her identity: Beth.

  Some of the tension immediately left his body. He could not think she meant to harm him. Still, he regarded her narrowly. The last words he had heard her say before someone had most viciously struck him down replayed with vivid exactitude in his mind.

  Betrayal on every hand was no more than he had come to expect in this world, of course, but—Beth? No, she would not betray him. He was—almost—willing to bet his life on it.

  “Are you in league with my captors, then?” he asked, craning his neck to look up at her as her skirt—no longer the flimsy yellow silk, but some dark color and made of sturdier stuff—swept to within a foot of his head.

  She jumped, frowned down at him, and hissed urgently, “Hush!”

  “‘I would see the scoundrel hang’?” Discovering that besides the shackles confining his wrists and ankles, he also was chained to the wall in such a way that it precluded him from sitting up or rolling over, or, indeed, moving very much at all, added an edge to his voice as he threw her words back at her.