Charles arched a brow at Deverell.
Subsiding beside his wife on one chaise, Deverell said, “I’ve already sent a messenger to Royce to report that Logan’s reached us hale and whole, and with his scroll-holder still in his possession. However, Logan was late in to Plymouth, so Royce has already sent us our orders for the next leg. We’re instructed to reach Oxford by the evening of the nineteenth, traveling via Bath, where we’re to stay at The York House. Further orders will await us at the University Arms in Oxford. Our ultimate goal is Royce’s house, Elveden Grange, just short of Thetford in Suffolk, but he’ll want us coming in on a specific route, on a particular day. Presumably we’ll learn which route and what day once we reach Oxford.”
Lounging beside Penny on the opposite chaise, Charles said, “Given the enemy knows you’re in England, and will almost certainly trace us to Totnes, I suggest we remain here in safety before doing a dash in the minimum number of days required to reach Oxford on the nineteenth.”
Deverell nodded, his gaze going to Logan. “We’re safe, here—it’s close to impossible to successfully attack this house.”
Logan inclined his head. “So what’s the minimum number of days on the road to get from here to Oxford?”
“Two,” Deverell replied. “With the days so short—and we certainly won’t want to be traveling through the night, inviting attack—then it’ll take us one long day to reach Bath, and then a shorter day’s journey to Oxford.”
“That should allow us some flexibility as to which roads to take,” Charles said, “although I assume we’ll stick mostly to the main highways.”
Deverell leaned back. “Unless we have reason to do otherwise, that would be my plan.”
“All right,” Phoebe said. “It’s the sixteenth today, so that leaves you tomorrow to make preparations and get everything arranged, then the day after tomorrow, you leave for Bath.”
Everyone nodded. Charles looked at Phoebe, then Penny beside him. “I still can’t believe Minerva invited you and the children—and the other wives with theirs, too—to join us at Elveden.”
“Minerva,” Penny stated, adding for Logan’s and Linnet’s benefit, “she’s Royce’s duchess, is an eminently wise and sensible lady. And she’s now one of the grandest of the grandes dames, so of course we can’t possibly decline the invitation.”
“Especially not when that invitation so perfectly aligns with your own wishes,” Deverell rather acerbically remarked.
Phoebe struggled to keep her lips straight as she patted her husband’s hand. “Indeed. Especially not then.” She looked at Penny. “If they’re leaving the day after tomorrow”—she glanced at Deverell—”and I expect you’ll be away at dawn?”
Resigned, he nodded. “We should leave at first light, if not just before—if there’s any surprise to be had, we want it on our side.”
“Well, then”—Phoebe looked at Penny—”I can’t see any reason why we couldn’t set off within an hour or so.”
Logan shifted, frowning as he imagined it. “If you can, it would be wiser to wait a few hours at least.” He met Deverell’s, then Charles’s, eyes. “We have to work on the assumption that the cult will locate us here, that they might be watching. If we leave, they’ll follow us, but it would be preferable that they get no hint that anyone else might be leaving shortly after.”
“In case they think to take hostages?” Charles asked.
“No point taking chances.” Logan looked at Phoebe. “Don’t start making preparations—any that might be seen from outside the Hall—until we’ve been gone for at least two hours. If there’s others waiting for us further up the road, those watching might mill about for a while when we leave, but if there’s nothing happening here, they won’t stay—they’ll fall in on our tail.”
Charles and Deverell both nodded emphatically.
“That’s what you’ll need to do.” Charles looked at his wife. “Where had you planned to stay on the road?”
Penny exchanged a look with Phoebe. “We’d planned to make Andover on the first night, which we still should be able to do.” When Phoebe nodded, Penny went on. “There’s a very large hotel there—what with our guards around us as well, we’ll be perfectly safe. On the second day, we’ll travel through London to Woodford.”
“Another very large hotel, again with lots of other people around,” Phoebe put in. “Which means we’ll reach Elveden easily on the third day. We’ll be there to welcome you when you get there.”
Charles glanced at Deverell, grimaced. “I suppose, as neither of you will consent not to go, then the best we can do is surround you with guards.”
Penny smiled resignedly. “We’ll take however many you want to send, but if I might point out, we’re already resembling a royal procession.”
Charles grunted.
Linnet asked a question about Elveden Grange, and the talk veered into less fraught waters.
Leaving the three men reminiscing about the war and their respective parts in it, Linnet climbed the stairs with Phoebe and Penny, very ready to rest. The day had been beyond eventful; quite aside from recouping physically, she had a great deal to review and digest. Parting from the other two at the head of the stairs, she found her way to her comfortable chamber and what promised to be a very comfortable bed.
Undressing by the light of a small lamp some maid had left burning, Linnet let her mind range over all she’d learned that day—the true danger of Logan’s mission, the reality that she could, and now looked set to, play a part, in her mind as his guardian, his keeper, regardless of what he might think. The abrupt shift in her view of aristocratic ladies, the realization that, at least in terms of Phoebe’s and Penny’s world, she might indeed fit in; they thought like her, had so much in common, shared so many attitudes, and had no more patience with social pretense than she did. She had a shrewd suspicion that, given the circumstances, they could both be as bold and as brazen as she.
She found Charles’s and Deverell’s attitudes to their wives interesting, too. Revealing, intriguing—their marriages were definitely not the norm, or at least not the norm as she had previously understood it.
There was a lot to assimilate, a large number of her views to reassess and rescript in light of what she’d observed. Yet one topic, one piece of news, increasingly filled her mind, increasingly captured her thoughts. Increasingly commanded her entire attention.
Logan was an earl’s son.
What did that mean with respect to her?
In a nightgown Penny had loaned her, wrapped in the counterpane for warmth, she was standing by the window staring out at the restless sea and wrestling with that question when the door opened and Logan came in.
She glanced at him. “I wondered if you’d come. I’ve no idea which room you were given.”
With a quirk of his brows, he sat on the end of the bed and bent to ease off his boots. “I could tell you it was my superior tracking skills that led me to your door, but the truth is my room is two doors further along, and going down to dinner I passed this door and heard your voice.” Setting his boots aside, he looked at her. “Regardless, I would have found you. I wasn’t about to stay away.”
She faced him, but didn’t venture closer. “Wasn’t about to sleep alone?”
Logan studied her face in the lamplight; the set of her features was uninformative, her eyes shadowed. “No.” He had no interest in sleeping alone ever again, not if he could help it. “However, if you’re wondering if that was part of the reason I insisted you came with me, the answer is no—that consideration didn’t occur at the time, and weighed not at all in my decision. Yet now you are here, with me, I can’t imagine not lying with you, sleeping with you in my arms.”
She seemed to hear the truth in his words. Yet still she hesitated, her arms wrapped over the counterpane, her gaze on him.
Then her lips firmed, and her gaze grew sharper. “An earl’s son?”
The question was quiet, yet loaded with intensity. With intent.
> Mentally cursing his luck, he baldly stated, “My father was the Earl of Kirkcowan.”
“Was? He’s dead. So who’s the earl now?”
“His eldest son.” Standing, he shrugged off his coat, tossed it on a nearby chair. Started unbuttoning his waistcoat.
“From which curt description, I take it you’re estranged?”
He nodded. “I’m …” A bastard. “The black sheep of the family.” He had to tell her, and surely this was the perfect opening, but he hadn’t yet got all in place. He was too good a commander to charge in when his troops weren’t ready. Jaw tightening, he said, “You don’t need to worry about, my … elevated connections. In every sense, they’re irrelevant.”
“Are they?”
“Yes.” Laying aside his waistcoat, he turned as she came closer, but she halted more than a yard away, studied his face as, raising his chin, he unknotted, then unwound, his cravat.
From her stance, arms still folded, from her increasingly determined expression, from the frown tangling her brows, she was preparing for battle.
Sure enough …
“Originally you swore you’d return to me. Instead, you’ve managed to whisk me away with you.” Her green gaze locked on his eyes. “But you can’t keep me with you. You’ll have to let me go in the end.”
Meeting her challenging gaze with adamantine stubbornness, he started unbuttoning his shirt. “I am not going to walk away from you.” Stubborn witch. “I won’t be letting you go. Not now, not later. You’d best get used to that.”
The scoffing sound she made stated she was far from that.
“Just how do you see that working?” Temper snapping, Linnet swung out an arm, encompassing the pair of them and the bed. Inside her roiled panicky fear—and the fact she felt it scared her even more. The desperate fight in the narrow yard, the race through the maze with enemies in pursuit, the knowledge that those enemies were still there, lurking beyond the Hall’s thick walls to fall on him again … her reaction to that, and to what that reaction meant and might mean, shook her to the core.
She’d fallen in love with this stubborn, irritating, impossible man, and she’d never be the same again.
Her heart would never be the same again.
That didn’t mean she would let him trample it, cause her more pain—more pain than she would feel anyway when they came to part.
She stepped closer, locked her eyes on his. “I refuse to allow you to keep me with you. I will not be kept.” Raising a finger, she pointed at his patrician nose. “I will not be a kept, woman. I will not be your mistress, sitting waiting for you at your house in Glenluce.”
Something flared in his eyes, some emotion so powerful that her unruly heart leapt and her nerves skittered, but then he locked his jaw, reined it, whatever it was, in.
All but ground his teeth as, eyes burning darkly, he stated, “I don’t want you as my mistress.”
She held his gaze. “What, then?”
“I want you as my wife, damn it!”
Slowly, she released the breath she’d been holding. Commendably evenly stated, “Wife.” She’d assumed he’d meant that, but … “You never said anything about marriage. You didn’t mention a single associated word—like wife, bride, wedding.” Belligerently stepping closer still, temper rising as her emotions churned, even more out of control than before—God, how did he make her feel so much?—she deployed her finger again, wagging it under his aristocratic nose. “And don’t you dare suggest that me not jumping to a wedding-bell assumption is in some way a slur on your honor. I can’t read your damned mind—and it’s not as if scions of noble houses don’t keep mistresses. It’s a time-honored tradition for earl’s sons!”
The point that had been preying on her mind for the past hours. Folding her arms, a barrier between them, she glared at him from close quarters.
Somewhat to her surprise, he didn’t glare back.
Hands fisted at his sides, jaw clenched, Logan held his fire—because she was right. He’d spelled out his intentions to her men, but he hadn’t told her, not clearly. He’d sworn he would never give her up, had insisted that once he was free, he wanted to share his life with her, but he hadn’t mentioned marriage.
He’d omitted stating what to him had been the obvious. He’d assumed she had, as he had, come to see their relationship as something any sane man would seek to formalize, that, indeed, being a very sane woman, she would view it in the same light … but she hadn’t.
Clearly she hadn’t been thinking along those lines. Marriage lines. Vows and permanency.
Which was both a blow to his pride, and a sudden, jolting disappointment—more, a threat. A threat to what he now wanted, nay, needed his life to be—a threat to his dreams for the future.
Yet he couldn’t fault her—she’d always stated that in her view their liaison would inevitably end. She’d expected it to end in Plymouth. Instead, he’d all but kidnapped her, and now …
His eyes locked with hers, he dragged in a slow breath, filling his lungs, fighting to clear his head while he grappled with how to forge a way forward. Her description of a mistress sitting and waiting in a house in Glenluce … the vision had rocked him, pricked him on the raw as nothing else could have. The thought that he would ever subject her to that …
That had been his mother’s life. It would never be Linnet’s. Not while he breathed.
Forcing his fingers to uncurl, his jaw to ease, he slowly lifted his hands and gently closed them about her arms, simply held her and looked into her eyes. “You’re irritated, annoyed—and you’ve already countered any argument I might make that you ought to have guessed what my intentions were, any righteous assertion that as a gentleman I’d never have slept with you—continued to make love to you—if my intentions hadn’t been honorable—”
Eyes sparking, she opened her mouth—
“No—it’s your turn to listen.”
Reluctantly, all but smoldering, she subsided.
“You countered those arguments before I made them because you’ve already thought back and realized that, all along, I could have been intending marriage—you just assumed I wasn’t.” He held her gaze. “But I was. As God is my witness, I never thought of making you my mistress—I don’t want you as that. I want you in my bed, but I also want to have breakfast with you, to spend my days, my time, with, you. I want to dine with you, to follow you on your rounds and check the doors after you, and follow you up the stairs to your bed.
“I want that as my life, my future. I told you I wanted to share my life with you, but I didn’t say anything about marriage because the fact that I might die, or be too seriously wounded to have a life to share, precludes that. You saw what I’m facing—the cult is determined to kill me and seize the scroll-holder. Until we reach the end of this, I can’t—in the traditional, honorable way can’t—make any formal offer for your hand.”
He dragged in another breath. “But I can tell you this—you are the woman I want to share the rest of my life with, whether you consent to marry me or not. I won’t willingly let you go, and while, as you’re so relentless in telling me, I can’t force you to stay with me, I can, and will, do everything I can to change your mind.”
Still holding her gaze, he drew her to him, slid his hands slowly around the silky comforter in which she was wrapped. Quietly stated, “I want you as my wife, to have and to hold, and never release from the day we exchange our vows.”
She blinked up at him. Watched as he bent his head to hers, but didn’t pull back, away.
He sensed in her gaze, in the uncertainty of her stance—her uncharacteristic indecision over whether to sink against him or hold rigid in his arms—that she was caught in emotional turmoil, too.
Unexpected turmoil. Matters between them were not proceeding as, apparently, either of them had thought.
The realization lent a grim edge to his voice as, letting his lips cruise her temple, he murmured, “I want you. I want a life with you, a traditional, time-honored mar
ried life with you—and I would prefer not to settle for anything less.” He paused, his breath fanning her cheek, then added, “I’ve been a soldier, a commander, all my adult life, and I’m going to fight for you. And win. I will push to win. Because, for me, there’s no other choice.” He bent the last inch and his lips, brushed hers. “You are my future, the only future I want.”
He kissed her, pressed his lips to hers and caressed. Gathered her closer, inexpressibly relieved when she permitted it—more, when she came. When she sank slowly against him and let him settle her there, her hips to his thighs, her taut belly cradling his arousal.
Arousing him even more.
He wanted her with a power, a force, a raw need that ripped at him. A need their discussion, her miscomprehension of his intentions, had only whipped to more raging heights.
But this wasn’t a battle that could be won with force and might, not with power. Only with persuasion.
So he set himself to persuade, to hold all the power, the force and raw might of his need in check—let her see it, sense it, know it was there, but that it was, for her, held at bay.
Held back so he could show her, demonstrate and reveal how real and vital, how vibrant and deep, was his ardor. His passion, his desire, his fathomless need of her, something that welled from his heart, not just his loins, that lived in his soul, not just his mind.
Linnet sensed the difference, his intent. Felt it in the heavy thud of his heart beneath the palm she placed, braced, on his chest. Sensed it in the way his lips moved on hers, enticing, beguiling, not seizing, not taking.
Knew it in the strength, masculine and demanding, yet tonight not commanding, that closed around her, surrounding her, but gently.
All but reverently.
And yet the passion built, the heat and the flames, until her own need rose. Until their lips turned greedy, hungry and needy, until their bodies yearned.
He released her and shrugged out of his shirt. She dealt with the buttons at his waist, then, as he stepped back to strip off his breeches, she dropped the counterpane, quickly flicked the ties at her throat free.
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