A woman without a gun could be a challenge. One with a gun was an unpredictable animal.
He reminded himself of that for the hour or more that it took him to don his clothes and clean his boot to some reputable shine…and lack of fragrance. The journey from The Drunken Crab to Marlborough was short, another hour. The directions that Ida and William Watts gave him to their daughter’s and son-in-law’s wheelwright shop on the high road were direct. He arrived at the small limestone Courtland lodge within minutes of leaving the town.
Valuing his life and limbs—and not certain of her accuracy of shot or shortness of temper, he planned to make himself known to his runaway bride long before sundown. He didn’t want to scare her. But he would cajole, barter and beg to get her to sit quietly and talk with him. In case that did not seem possible, he’d purchased from the wheelwright a four-foot length of hemp rope. Rough, yes, it was—and he’d be judicious in its use, but hell. What else was he to do but tie her down if Esme would not sit still to listen to him?
He’d be careful not to mar the delicate skin he yearned to kiss and tame and tingle. She was stubborn and not often as wise as he’d credited. But now that he was here, he doubted he’d use the rope. Force was simply not part of his character. Finesse was. So he desired minutes, long enough to tell her what had happened with his father, the land along the River Ouse and the marriage settlement. After he said it all, if she still did not believe he’d done everything he could to have her and to love her, he had to let her go, didn’t he?
So when he arrived at the lodge and settled his horse in the small stables adjacent, he left the rope there. He wanted her willing. Always.
He predicted she’d hear him and cock her pistol. He didn’t think she’d come out to confront him. But that is what she did.
She stood silhouetted upon the threshold as the sun set behind her. In her male clothing, she looked small, almost frail, though he knew she was not. This time, her hands were empty. “Go away, Giles. This won’t do any good. I’ve set my mind to this.”
He put one foot upon the stoop, his gaze frank, his mind clear. “It seems you’ve forgotten your weapon.”
“I acted impulsively. I apologize for that. I’ve vowed to reform my usual ways but I failed. Again.”
“I do like you as you are, Esme.”
That got her attention. She stood taller. “I cannot marry you, Giles. Go away.”
He circled his arms around her, picked her up, pushed open the rough wooden door and carried her inside. One kick of his foot and the world was closed from them.
Shocked, she fought him. But he had anticipated that and curled her arms behind her back. In one glance around the room, he saw that the great room was just as he expected. Huge fireplace, settle table and benches, gun cupboard, a few over-stuffed King William chairs and one huge wooden postered bed. Good. Just what he needed.
He chuckled.
She whirled on him.
But he flipped her over his shoulder, one hand to her very firm derriere.
“Nothing to laugh at here, Giles.” She pummeled his buttocks. “You cannot make me marry you.”
“True. Nor would I want to.”
She sucked in air. “Let me go!”
“No.” He carried her toward the chair, sat and dumped her into his lap like a bag of wheat. Face-to-face, he smoothed errant tendrils from her flushed face as he gripped her wrists in one hand. “I am here to talk, Esme.”
She glared at him. “Do it then and leave.”
“My solicitor arrived yesterday morning, as bad timing would have it, soon after you had departed. My father did sign the papers. I told you at the ball that I had sent him another proposition and that I expected him to agree to it. He did.”
“I don’t care what it is. I won’t allow you to beggar yourself to him for my sake.”
“Good of you, my darling, but I didn’t.”
“You gave him money? Argh! Your own.”
“You are not listening. No. I did not.”
A flicker of hope passed over her lovely heart-shaped face. “Explain that.”
“My new agreement with Brentford is done. It is mine alone and I am happy with it.”
She set her teeth. “Well, whatever it is, three huzzahs for you that you are happy. I however am not. I will not allow my marriage settlement—my father’s hard-earned money to go to your father to pay his scurrilous debts.”
“They won’t.”
She went still. “How is that?”
He traced a fingertip over each of her brows. “You are frowning, my dear.”
“Careful. I may bite your finger.”
“I thought you wanted to be less impulsive?”
“Oh!” She huffed and crossed her arms. “On with this!”
“Argumentative, too. Tsk-tsk. This is no way to begin our marriage, with you in a brown study.”
“If you prefer, I can show you black.”
He arched a brow. “No need. I am in need of an agreeable woman who listens to reason. Will you be that for me?”
She scowled at him. “For myself, yes.”
“Good.” He went on and took up stroking the backs of his fingers along her cheek and down her throat.
She shivered but did not object.
“I advise my father on uses and improvements to his lands. One piece he owns along the River Ouse in Kent is favored by the Earl of Dalworthy and by Baron Bridges. They wish to improve it. They need either acceptance by my father, who owns the land outright, or they wish him to sell it to them. I have persuaded him of a third path.”
She appeared intrigued. “Go on.”
“They wish to shore up the banks against flooding and build a dam. I told them I would persuade my father to throw in with them to do a survey and improve the farmland, then build the dam.”
“Your father has never spent for the benefit of others.”
“So true.” He drew her closer. The rise of her breasts as she breathed in the man’s linen shirt was a gentle heave that had him longing to remove the thin cloth. “But he did this time.”
Her brown eyes flashed, wary. “Why? How?”
“I told him he must either sell the land to them and let them do what they will alone or keep the land, contribute his share to the financing of the improvements, and earn a percentage of the profits from the crop production each year.”
“And he agreed?”
“He did.” He removed her pins from her glorious golden mien and fanned her curls around her shoulders. Her pins weren’t doing a very good job of containing her hair anyway. She’d been too busy today running from him. Plus she’d left her valise with her toiletries at the Crab, too.
“Why?”
“Because I told him he must agree to one of those plans or face public disgrace.”
“Oh, but you hate gossip. You would never disparage his name to others.”
“No. But I told him I was finished giving him any monies at all. Never again will he receive anything from me. He had to sign our agreements or I would ensure that the Ouse River project would go on without him. I would contribute to it myself and give him no share of it.”
“It was his only recourse?”
“Exactly. It’s what I should have done long ago, but I was too bound up in hatred of public scandal that I failed to see the possibility.”
“So that means he has an income—”
“Whatever it amounts to—”
“From this project, thanks to you.” She stared at him with pride and pleasure dawning on her face.
“Thanks to Dalworthy and Bridges, more like.”
She cupped his cheeks and ran her fingers though his hair. “Oh, Giles!”
This smiling woman was the one he adored, the one he had to have as his wife.
“I am so proud of you,” she said. “Grateful too.”
Gratitude was not what he wanted from her. And the frustration of it had him growling. He rose up in the chair, his arms full of her, and he strode to t
he bed to plunk her on it. In a heart beat, he rose over her. “I don’t want your thanks.”
“No, no. But you have it in any case.” She grinned at him.
He settled beside her. “There is the matter of trust.”
She blinked. “What?”
“You don’t trust me.”
She had said that.
“Why not?”
“It is true. Where have you been? Where do you go when you disappear? Weeks after we met at Lady Wimple’s. Then after you asked for my hand. What do you do? Because if you have a mistress, I won’t st—”
He kissed her. Kissed her. Kissed her once again. Until she had her arms around him and he moved nearer. She pulled him close and circled her thighs around him. Cradled in the vee of her body, he had to find some sanity or he’d take her then and there. He broke away. “I have no mistress. I have had in the past. But not in more than a year.”
She put a palm to his chest to hold him off. “No occasional encounters lately?”
“None.”
And she paused.
“Believe me.” He brushed his lips across her warm ones. “Now I want only regular encounters…with you.”
She rolled her eyes and laughed.
He cupped her nape and kissed her quite thoroughly again. She met him, ardor for passion, her lips crushing his as she moaned her need.
Christ. Who was kissing whom here?
But she broke the spell. So much for no impulsiveness. “Tell me where you go so often? Why are you so mysterious?”
“I work—worked—for the Foreign office. Here. In France. Spain. Vienna. I’ve been everywhere. Discreetly. And now my work is done. I’ve resigned. Louis does not listen to me anyway.”
“Louis?”
“And Richelieu.”
Pride shown in her eyes and she flung her arms around him and drew him down again. This time, she kissed him with all the fervor he desired from her. “Oh, Giles.”
He loved the way she surrendered and called his name. But he had to prove to her that other last fact that would either make her his until the end of time or end their relationship forever.
She unfurled his cravat and with both ends, tugged him closer to kiss him again.
He stilled her hands. “No.”
She worked at the buttons of his waistcoat and frock coat.
“I said no, Esme.”
She paused, sad, the corners of her mouth drooping. “But Giles.”
“Do you think I would allow more of this if you do not love me?”
Her mouth fell open. She was dumbstruck.
“How could we make love here without benefit of vows if you do not love me?”
“But I do.”
“How can you? You left me. Proclaimed for all to see that you do not care for me.”
“But I do. I do! Forgive me. I was rash but I ran because I wanted to save you from your father’s demands and save my own father from despair. But you? I have never loved anyone else.”
That helped but it did not solve the entire problem. “But you don’t believe I love you.”
Her lower lip trembled. “Giles.”
“You said it, did you not?”
“I did.”
He rose to his elbows, his knees, and he left her there. Beautiful woman, she would not learn from him the intimacies that might be the making of them both. But if she did not believe he cared for her, what good would all the techniques of love-making do for her? Or him?
He stood by the bed. “I love you, Esme Harvey.”
She marveled at all he had accomplished and how he’d changed their fortunes. She wanted him in her arms to kiss him again. And to do more.
But he stood beside the bed. Solemn, he reached into his inside waistcoat pocket. He extracted a small half-sized parchment paper, a document of some sort with printing and someone’s scribbling, too.
She frowned, suspicious. “What is that?”
“Our license.”
She stared at it, then at him. The sorrow on his face incited fear to race through her bloodstream.
“I want you to be happy, my darling. I will take you home and afterward, I will issue to the papers a statement that you are blameless in this matter. That you decided not to marry me. And that you bear no stain upon your name…or your person.”
She froze.
“I love you and I will spend the rest of my life loving you. I want you to find a man who’ll love you as you deserve…and be happy.”
With that, he lifted his other hand and put it to the paper.
“No!” She caught him by the wrist. “Don’t tear it up!”
“Esme, you must be free to have another.” He tugged at her hold.
She tugged him back. “I don’t want another. I want you for my husband, Giles! Only you.”
“That is not the same as—” He avoided her reach.
“I love you,” she cried, grabbing at the elusive paper. “I love you. Giles!” She snatched the paper from him and tucked it beneath her hips. “Come here, let me prove it to you.”
He shook his head.
“Infuriating man,” she bit off, then tugged him down with both hands. And when he was over her, she embraced him once more with her legs clamping his, her arms around his back. “Isn’t that better?”
His hazel eyes went bleak.
She couldn’t wait for his answer. Despair driving her, she cupped his jaw and put her lips to his. All their other kisses had been his to her, but this time she had to open his mind to her own desires. And so she brushed his mouth. “I love you.”
She dove her fingers into his marvelous soft hair and held him as she put her open mouth to his and invited him into hers. He’d tempted her a few times before with his tongue and she did that now to him. He caught his breath, pulled away to stare into her eyes and then crushed her close to explore the caverns of her own passion with his tongue. She wanted more.
But he would not give it and sighed, then made to rise and leave her still.
No. She would not have it!
His cravat hung loose and she grasped both ends, pulling him near to her once again.
But he shook his head. “Lust is not love, my darling.”
“What is a good marriage without both?” she asked him on a sigh and expected no answer.
He smiled, a pitiful thing, and would have gone but that she caught him with such force she rolled him to his back.
And so she made quick work of slithering off his cravat, capturing one of his hands, working a firm knot into the thing and tying him to the bedpost. His other hand she caught and trailed it down her throat, the opening of her shirt and beneath the thin fabric, the place where her heart beat.
He fastened his inquiring gaze on hers.
“You have solved all my problems as you solved your own, my darling Giles. Won’t you let me spend my life making up to you for the scandal I caused by running from you?”
He did not move.
So then. She had to repeat her words, didn’t she?
“I love you, Giles Beauchamp. I have quite desperately ever since you sparred with me in Lady Wimple’s parlor. I was enthralled, taken by you and feared you thought me simple or…at worst, wily. Most did. All my life. But you sought me out again and again for more of the same. Few friends and no man had ever searched for me merely for the enjoyment of…me.”
His features softened, even as his hand pressed to feel the heavier pounding of her heart.
She sat up, yanked at the linen shirt and tore it over her head. Then much as he had done when naked in the Crab, she let him look his fill. She took his free hand and gave him the fullness of her aching breast.
What he did not utter with words, he expressed with the reverence of his fingertips. He traced the circumference of her nipple. With a feathery touch, he drew lazy patterns over one breast and then the other. His eyes narrowed and his breathing increased.
Her eyelids drifted closed. Heat pooled in her loins and she rocked against his pelvis a
s he caressed her nipple. Then with a groan, he rose up, pulled her down to him and took her breast in his mouth.
Ohh, he was warm and sweet. His tongue was rough as he sucked her into him and laved her with such urgency, she melted into little pools of madness. He took her other breast and lavished such care upon it too that she swooned.
He rolled her to the bed. His hand cupping one breast, he nipped her and she yelped.
“You’re free,” she noted but so happy that she couldn’t scold him for his agility.
“You tie terrible knots,” he gruffed and worked at the buttons on her flies. “How many years have you owned these breeches?” he asked as he tugged them down her thighs and paused with them half down her calves, to yank off her boots. Then he threw them to the floor with two clunks.
She undulated on the bed, wiggling her bare toes, loving the new experience of being undressed by him. Let him see her. “Seeing what you’d get if you marry me, eh? A good idea.”
He sat on his haunches, his gaze on her eyes, her lips and traveling down to her two large breasts and exposed nakedness. “A good idea few men have the pleasure of doing before they marry. And in this case,” he crooned as he swept two huge hot hands over her ribs and down her hips to her inner thighs which he parted to let air cool her, “a worthwhile venture.”
She gulped, arms spread to her sides, counting the wooden beams in the ceiling, as he sat mute examining every element God had given her…and every one he’d not. The silence wore on her good intentions and she panicked.
“What say you, sir? Will you have me?” A question, a cry, a plea, a hope, it was each and more.
He loomed above her, two fingers to her chin. “To have and to hold from this day forward.”
Her breath caught. “In sickness and in health.”
“To love and to cherish, you are my beloved, Esme Beauchamp.”
She opened her arms and drew him to her lips. “You are my only love, Giles Beauchamp.”
“May I kiss my bride?” he asked with glee upon his handsome mouth.
“More than once, please, good sir.”
“Before I do, my sweet, you’d better roll over and let me have that license beneath your pretty arse. I want to marry you today…and that means we have no time to replace it.”
Miss Harvey's Horribly Lovable Fiancé: Four Weddings and a Frolic Page 10
