Bath was out of the question. Her cousin Fiona—and her school friend Mary Little-Finch—lived there, and they’d return home after they left Courtland Hall today or tomorrow. But Esme would not prevail upon either to shelter her from the storm of ridicule that would rain down on her. Even sanctuary with Aunt Elizabeth was a temporary solution.
She needed bread and cheese, a mug of strong tea and milk, then she’d have a clearer head for the business of finding a new place to live. She needed to befuddle her father, canny as he was about her, for as long as possible. She could never refuse her Papa anything, but now she had to stay away from home. Had to remain mysteriously absent. And as for Giles…
She had to elude Giles for at least four weeks. It was four more weeks until the special license expired, wasn’t it? Good God, she couldn’t remember. But whatever it was, she had to hide away from Giles. Of course, he could get another license, but that would take some explanations, wouldn’t it? And why ask for a second one when the bride had not wed you when you had the first? Wouldn’t that be humiliating?
Giles. She had humiliated him today. He so disliked notoriety. He and her parents would be frantic with worry. Giles might never forgive her, either. And her parents were disgraced.
They would forgive her. They always had. And didn’t all wounds heal with time?
But could she forget Giles? Ever? The prospect gripped her with sorrow and she refused to shed the tears that sprang to her eyes.
Instead, she headed down the front stairs. No one was about. Had all the guests of last night left the Inn?
Esme took a seat on the rough wooden bench near the kitchen.
“Mister Watts!” Ida appeared at the door to her brewery and beckoned her husband. “A new guest’s come. In the stables!”
“I’ll be with him in a minute, Ida. We’ve tea steeping in a pot. That or coffee for ye, Miss?” he asked Esme.
“Tea. Bread and cheese, if you will, please, sir.”
“Call it done, Miss. Yer father’s not with ye this time. Does he well?”
“He does, sir. Quite well indeed.” Except yesterday, he may’ve suffered a major shock.
The portly innkeeper winced, then scratched his gray stubble. He disappeared in the back room and emerged with a pewter mug of tea that he set before her. “No maid with ye this time. Where do ye go?”
Without forethought, she said, “Marlborough.” My father’s lodge.
“A ways that is. Do ye need a lad, Miss?”
It took her a second to understand he meant to inquire if she needed a male protector. “No, Mister Watts. I am capable.”
He shook his head. “Ye do na look like it.”
He cocked his head, listening to his wife as someone climbed the back stairs to the rooms. He turned back to her. “I don’t like a young woman out and about on her own, Miss.”
Esme wanted to counter that she had her gumption and her gun, but to most men such affirmations raised only alarm. Her father and Giles who would never say such things of her. But oh, how would they ever forgive her this scandal?
She took a drink of her tea. To fight her melancholy, she switched the subject. “I say, sir, how goes your Mabel?”
Their daughter was Esme’s age. Two years ago, Mabel and she had struck up a fine conversation about horses, beer and men. “I like strong brews of each,” Mabel had confided and they’d laughed together like ten-year-olds.
“She wed, she did.”
“When was that?”
“Last June.”
“Congratulations. Who is the fortunate groom?”
Someone strode about in the rooms above. Odd hour for more travelers to appear, but Esme could not fault the Watts’s hospitality.
Ida appeared in the door to the stables and gave Esme a piercing look. That surprised Esme. Ida had liked her years ago. If she now eyed her charily, Esme suspected that the news of the Courtland runaway bride had spread as quickly as she herself had ridden away.
“Our Mabel? Ahhh,” said her father, proud.
“She married the wheelwright from Marlborough.” Ida sailed into the gathering room. “A fine man. Ten years her senior, but earns a goodly sum. She’s to birth her first in a few weeks.”
“Big as this inn, she is!” William joked.
Ida gazed at William, her eyes wide with some secret message that Esme had often seen pass between married couples like her own mother and father. Whatever they implied, Esme would never know.
“Did you say you go to Marlborough?” William asked as he stacked beer barrels against the far wall.
“I did,” she said.
“If ye need a room there, ye could go to our Mabel. She and her Tom do have one to let.”
The glare that Ida threw her husband could have lit forest fires. But her husband seemed totally confounded and shook his head.
“Thank you for the suggestion, Mister Watts.” But I’ll keep to my father’s tidy little box.
“Good, you’ll go to ‘er then. She’d like it. She liked you.”
“And I in return, sir.”
Ida sidled over to her husband and gave him a strong elbow in the side.
“Wha?” He took offense and rubbed his ribs with two hands.
She tossed him a look that would sour milk.
“I’ll be leaving you in a few minutes. My great thanks for your hospitality.” She had to leave before Ida Watts ran her out.
Were runaway brides now the scourge of every country inn? Esme sniffed. It wasn’t as if she had brought a lover here…or stolen goods…or…
It didn’t matter. She wasn’t welcome.
She strode over to William and stuffed a pound note into his hand. “My thanks for your shelter. And at an odd hour of the night, too.”
His expression went to wonder as he noted the size of the note. “Too much. I’ll not take it.”
“You will.” She put her hand over his and curled his fingers over the paper. “I appreciate your help and your friendship.”
His wife came to stand beside him and uncurl his fingers. Whatever her previous misgivings about Esme’s nature, she showed her nothing but delight at the money. “Too grand.”
“Not at all,” she said. “Excuse me.”
She took the front stairs at a run and threw open the door to her room.
The light through the small grimy window threw the tall figure before it into silhouette.
But the height, the breadth, the folded arms, the tilt of the head told her who it was.
His clothes were rumpled, stained with dirt from his ride. His thick curls were blown back from the wind and some rain and his own raking. But he gazed at her with curiosity, more than anger.
That took her aback.
“Good morning, Esme. Needed fresh air, did you?”
It was all he could do to stand still and not crush her in his arms. Christ! He’d been so frightened that she’d come to harm. An accident, a highwayman, a wrong turn on the road at night—any one might have meant her demise. His visions had been ghouls that drove him on to her aunt’s and then here. Fortuitous were all of Courtland’s and his conclusions about her destination. Lucky, too, that he’d run across her Great Aunt’s gardener who told him Esme was most likely headed to this inn.
She lifted her chin, brave woman that she was, and met him eye-to-eye. “I had to leave. I could not bear that you would pay prices for marrying me. My father, too, would pay prices he never intended. Never should have to pay.”
“I hated the prospect too.”
She let out a breath. “So you understand.”
“I do. You don’t.”
“What?”
“You are wrong about a few things.”
“Such as?”
He stepped toward her. God in His Heaven, she was so lovely in the svelte trousers, waistcoat and Hessians. “He’s been squeezing me for money for years. He lives beyond his means.”
“For years? But he…he put it out in gossip sheets that you deserved more than a v
iscount’s daughter. He wanted an earls or duke’s girl.”
“The man has said many things over the years. The one consistent theme was money. He needed more of it. That was his reason to refuse to sign. Your dowry is so rich, I would have thought him at my door demanding the full of it the day my solicitor told him I was to wed you.”
Giles ran his hands up her arms, over the linen shirt sleeves, to her elegant throat. She was warm, alive, her pulse beating beneath his fingertips. He had to hold her, assure himself she was no apparition. For years to come, he’d not let her out of his sight. “He cares not for your status, only your extreme wealth. He held out for more and more money. It’s the only thing he’s ever wanted.”
“But everyone believed he wanted a girl of blue blood for you.”
“But that was never my desire.” He stroked her cheek with his thumb. “You are.”
She swallowed so loud and hard his own heart broke. And he stepped nearer to cradle her against him. In her spare clothes, without layers of silly silk and whalebone between them, she rested against him.
“Esme, listen to me.” He lifted her chin. Her lips quivered and he wanted them on his. But he would not seduce her. That would be so unfair to both of them. Reason was the only way out of this. “You are my darling, the dearest woman I have ever known. You are witty and wise, adventurous and bold. We have, among others, Aunt Elizabeth, to thank for that, I imagine. You. Esme, you are my sweetheart. No others have I ever considered to be my wife.”
She wrapped her arms tightly around him. “I never wanted to marry any of the others, either.”
Jealousy gave way to pride in his victory and he had to smile. “What others?”
“The men who offered for me to Papa.”
“Men.” He feigned a grimace. “How many were there?”
“Six,” she declared, and thought a moment. “Or seven. I cannot recall. But—”
“What?” He threaded his fingers through the curls at her temple.
“I didn’t want any of them. Only you.”
He took her mouth then. A claim and a caress, his kiss was all fire and relief and possession. When he drew away, her eyes were closed and he thought he’d won her over. “And I want you, Esme. You and no other.”
She pushed back. “I wish that were enough.”
Perplexed, he opened his arms. “What do you mean? Of course, it— Whoa.”
She pointed an elegantly wrought ladies pistol at him and stepped backward to the door. “I know how to use this. Never doubt.”
“I don’t.” He raised his hands higher. “When someone points a gun at me, I do give pause.”
“Oh, Giles.” She looked perplexed, then straightened. “I want you to sit in that chair.”
At the motion of her pistol to the right, he took her instructions and sat.
“Remove your boots.”
He snorted.
She stiffened. “I mean it. Boots. Off. Now.”
“Very well. Be patient.” He bent to the task. First one, then the other. Not easy.
“Good.” She bent near and grabbed one to throw it behind the folded screen. It clattered to the floor and crockery broke. “Sorry. I didn’t mean that.”
“What?” he asked, unable to see what she’d done.
“The chamber pot broke.”
“Oh.” He cringed.
She winced. “You might not want to wear that boot until it’s cleaned.”
He folded his arms. “Esme. Listen. I love you and I don’t care about my boots.”
She just stared at him, struck. “Why didn’t you say that before?”
“What? That I don’t care about my boots? Well, actually, I do but—”
“No! That you love me.”
He frowned. Muddled, he shook his head. “I’ve told you that!”
“No. You. Have. Not!”
“Well, what the hell?” He shot to his feet. “If that’s what you wanted amid all this—”
“It isn’t!” She aimed her pistol for his stomach.
“No? Then what are we talking about?”
“Sit down. We’re talking about money. And pride. And trust.”
“Money, I just told you is what my father got!”
“Yes! At the expense of my own father who worked so diligently to earn it!”
“No! That’s not true. It’s—”
“What?” Appalled she waved the pistol at him.
“Stop swinging that about, please! And that’s not the whole story.”
“Of course, it is! Now take off your frock coat.”
“Esme!”
“Do it!”
“And your waistcoat, your shirt, too.”
He stood again and stripped them off in red hot anger.
“And your breeches.”
Naked to the waist, he growled. He put his hands on his hips. “If your intention is to—”
“It is.” She waved the damn gun at him again.
Hell. He peeled down his very fine doeskin breeches and stood there, politely, quietly, in his silk stockings…with a very sizable and readily growing erection. Pointed straight at her, too.
Fine. He was not about to move. She could jolly well see what she meant to him.
She was so mesmerized, her lips parted and her eyes blinked. Then she gulped hard. Twice. “My goodness.”
He pursed his mouth and let her look her fill. Then he set his jaw. “I do love you, Esme.”
“You offer…that…that?” She used the gun to indicate his penis. “As proof?”
He snorted. “No. You asked for this as proof of your power. You have it. I say I love you and my proof is that I am here to explain it all to you. Because we must talk quietly, Esme. Without the gun and dare I say, with my clothes on.”
She got a wicked gleam in her brown eyes. “I dare say, I like you without them.”
So she did desire him. One point won. He grinned. “Marry me, my darling, and I’ll prove to you how I love you every minute of our lives.”
She scooped up his trousers in her hand and threw them over her shoulder. “That day is gone, Giles.” Tears spilled over and ran down her cheeks. “Adieu.”
Chapter 10
She controlled herself all the way to the cross road to Marlborough.
At that turn, she sat and had a very commendable missish cry for herself. Sniffling, it took some doing but finally she got her gumption in hand and congratulated herself on her swift use of the pistol.
But she was happy too, she hadn’t fired it or that it hadn’t misfired. Always a terrible possibility. But she did recall with a salacious grin (that she was delighted no one saw) how she’d stripped him to his skin.
Oh, the sights she’d uncovered! Impressive, certainly. Almost as impressive as watching a stallion cover one of Papa’s mares. Ahem! And no doubt that Mama’s explanation of how ‘this fit in there’ required not just imagination about varying sizes, but how one accommodated the other if kisses were the only means of…what? Ease? Excavation? The meeting of lips had nothing to do with the location of any of his attributes or her own anatomy. Unless lips were meant for…
She narrowed her eyes. Closed one. Meant for kissing there?
She clapped a hand over her mouth and hooted in laughter.
She had to wipe those tears from her eyes.
Oh, my.
Well! Whatever the mechanics, she was bereft with jealousy for the other lucky lady who would one day enjoy the fruits of Giles’s vigor. She let Admiral poke along as she thought about the tremors of delight that dashed through her when Giles (previous to his glorious unveiling) had touched her. Caressed her arms or throat or cheeks. Her nipples even now beaded at the memory and her stomach knotted with heat.
She squirmed in her hot and unsatisfying saddle.
He’d been kind and tender. Loving. And she had insulted him. Hurt him. Reduced him to his…rather marvelous essence, for heavens sake. And humbled him.
Although…come to think of it. He didn’t look red
uced when he stood naked before her. He looked…proud and needy. And very…large!
She wanted him that way!
Oh, what was wrong with her?
She desired him! He should have been her lover. But now would never be. Now he’d become someone else’s husband. Someone else’s grand passion. Just not mine.
As the old market town came into view, she pushed back her sorrows. The sight of the familiar warm blue and red brick shops smartly faced with blue-black flint, brought solace to her heart. Her sorrow faded as she planned how to survive alone in the forest where her father’s hunting lodge sat. She’d stop at the green grocer’s and buy a few victuals. She’d go to the baker’s for bread and perhaps, a small cake. One always needed cake to improve one’s point of view. While she shopped, she’d take Admiral to the stables at the inn on the wide market lane and pay the ostler to feed and water the horse. She had to be prudent and care for herself and her mount. At the lodge, she had no worries for Admiral’s welfare. Her father had equipped the tidy house well with one free box stable and another, larger one with four stalls. She’d use the free one for Admiral who like to roam inside. She’d cared for her own mounts since she was ten and Admiral had often cheerfully conspired with her.
Those in town knew her and some might disapprove of her attire. Nonetheless, dressed as she was, she girded herself for their stares. Nothing for that, but her own courage, alas. She repeatedly congratulated herself that she’d had foresight to leave Giles’s breeches with Ida.
The woman could not believe her eyes when Esme folded them into her arms.
“His lordship is upstairs and if you could do me the favor to not give them back for a few minutes, I’d appreciate it.” She headed for the stables and Admiral. Too bad, she’d left her little valise and necessaire in the room, but it couldn’t be helped. “I’m sorry to say, I’ve made a mess of one of his lordship’s boots, too. A broken chamber pot, I’m afraid. Help him clean those, would you, please?”
The woman had chuckled then shooed Esme on her away.
Aunt Elizabeth was not the only lady with a few good laughs at the expense of haughty, prideful men.
Miss Harvey's Horribly Lovable Fiancé: Four Weddings and a Frolic Page 9
