by Julia Kelly
When finally he stopped moving about, he called out, “May I dim the lights?”
She wetted her lips, forcing calm into her voice. “Please. Thank you.”
The room became darker and a few moments later she could hear him lie down.
“Sleep well, fair maiden,” he said with a sigh. “Rain or no rain, we have a long ride ahead of us tomorrow.”
Jane lay there, stiff and alert, until she heard his breath slip into the regular, steady pace of one asleep. It was only then that she was able to bring her shoulders down from around her ears.
He was right. She did need rest, and the more she thought about it, the more she realized just how tired she was. Between the long hours in the saddle and the brandy before their meal, her eyelids were drooping.
Jane rolled onto her side and curled her body around a pillow, trying her best not to dream of knights in shining armor.
Chapter Five
Sleep came easily to Nicholas—hardly a surprise given how much they’d ridden that day—but staying asleep was another matter entirely. No more than an hour after he’d slipped into slumber his eyes snapped open, and he knew why before he even remembered which village he was in.
Jane.
She was just feet away behind a flimsy curtain he’d erected in hopes it would preserve some of her modesty and remind him that under no circumstances was he to cross over to her side of the room no matter how tempting the thought was. He’d built a tower of cloth to protect her from an ogre. Him.
When she’d opened the door to their shared room that evening, his hand had clenched so hard around the brandy bottle’s neck that he’d risked shattering it. She’d let her hair down and it had begun to curl as it dried. Lit from behind by the glowing fire, she’d been angelic with rosy cheeks and full lips that were half open in invitation. She’d looked like a dream.
He’d managed to control himself through supper, but the dark hours of the night were a different matter. Every time he heard her shift in her sleep, that image of her warm and inviting bubbled up in his memory. He’d finally gotten up and deliberately walked to the table, pouring out some more spirits just because he was looking for some distraction for his hands.
As he sat there clutching his glass, his mind played out the scene he wanted more than anything. He’d stalk across the room, push back the curtain, and find her sitting up in bed. Jane’s eyes would thrill as he climbed over her. Then her head would fall back, neck stretched long and lips open, and he’d kiss her hard. He could almost feel the crush of his lips over hers, the softness of her hips through the thin layers of whatever she was wearing to sleep in. In his heated imagination, he’d settle between her legs, pressing the hardness of him to her sex, fueling the ache that rolled through them both. He’d strip them until there was nothing between them except a thin sheen of sweat of skin against skin and the promise of pleasure—
And that’s exactly where he slammed the lid on that fantasy each and every time. Miss Ephram needed his protection, not his licentiousness. If he broke his promise to be a gentleman, he’d be nothing more than a cad. He’d looked after the well-being of his sisters for too long to stop the fiercely protective streak that ran through him now. On the road Miss Ephram was his responsibility. End of story.
But all of this duty and honor had done nothing for his mood, and he’d been stormy ever since the early morning when Miss Ephram announced from the other side of the curtain that she was decent once again. He must have been a bear, because she’d left him alone with his thoughts through breakfast and saddling the horses. Of course, his thoughts were exactly the problem.
“Whatever it is I’ve done, I apologize,” she said when they were two hours into their slow slog through muddy roads that were only just beginning to drain.
He twisted in his saddle. “What do you mean?”
“You’ve hardly said a word since we left the inn. I thought—”
“You’ve done nothing wrong,” he said with more bite than he intended.
To her credit, Miss Ephram didn’t flinch. Instead, she raised an eyebrow and looked at him from underneath the shallow brim on her little black bonnet.
“I’m sorry. You haven’t,” he said, trying to make it sound more believable this time.
Her brow arched higher. “If you say so.”
He pushed a hand through his hair that was—as usual—already falling out of place despite his having combed it with water just a few hours before. He couldn’t tell her that this was all about his growing annoyance that she was quite possibly the most intriguing, desirable woman he’d seen in a very long time. No, he needed some small excuse—just a little white lie that would set her at ease.
Finally he settled on “I was thinking of my sisters. I dislike having to leave them on their own.”
She cast him another one of those doubtful looks but then nodded as though willing to play along with this little game. “Effie and Helen, I think you said.”
This time his own brows quirked up. “You have a good memory.”
“Remembering young people’s names is what I’m paid to do.”
“My sisters can’t be much younger than you. Effie is nineteen and Helen just turned seventeen last month.”
Miss Ephram gave a little smile, but her eyes dropped to the reins clutched in her gloved hands. “You flatter me. I turned twenty-eight in February. What are they like?”
“Who?” he asked, far too distracted by the way she played her thumb over the leather straps.
“Effie and Helen.”
“Of course,” he said with a shake of his head, trying his best not to conjure up images of her thumbs stroking over him. “Well, Effie runs all of our lives. She’s been mistress of Madeley House since my mother died two years ago.”
“Is she bossy?” she asked with a laugh.
“In the best way. She has the ruthless discipline of a general and the attention to detail of London’s best hostesses. She needs the right sort of man for a husband because she’s never suffered fools lightly. The right man will appreciate that there’s no one like Effie.”
“And what of Helen?”
He couldn’t help but grin at the sound of his younger sister’s name. “The baby of the family. She’s one of the merriest girls you’ll ever meet. There was never a person Helen couldn’t charm into eating out of her hand. She’s also got a mischievous streak. I spent most of her childhood pulling her out of trees and fishing her out of the pond around the back of the house because she refused to stay seated in the rowboat when I would take her out on my school holidays.”
“Are the three of you still very close?”
All at once, the warmth of his memories cooled a little. “Not as much we used to be.”
“Why not? Oh—” She stopped herself. “Unless of course you don’t wish to tell me. I understand that some things are best kept between family.”
He turned her question over in his mind as he carefully chose his words to reflect the complications of being patriarch, provider, and protector all while also being a brother.
“There’s a significant gap in our years, but we were close until my father died. Then I came home from Oxford to stay and in one night assumed the responsibility of securing both their futures while also figuring out a way to save Madeley. It had suffered under years of my father’s mismanagement and was in a sorry state. It still is, if truth be told.”
“What did he do?” she asked.
He sighed. “It’s more what he didn’t do. He was a good man, but he was always swept up in the latest craze in agricultural invention. He’d buy anything, try any new theory for working the land. The problem was he never saw anything through. When he died he had nothing more than a haphazard mess of ruined fields and falling-down buildings.” Nicholas reached down and stroked a hand over his mount’s neck. “There is one area where I’ll give the man
credit. He had a good eye for horses, even if he bought what he couldn’t afford.”
“And that’s why you need Merlin back.”
“I can send him out to stud and continue breeding him on the estate as well. There’s money to be had there if I’m careful and have a bit of luck growing our stock. And maybe Merlin will sire a foal that will make a splash at Ascot in a few years’ time. Then everyone will want a Hollings Thoroughbred.”
“The son righting the wrongs of the father.”
She said it so simply and with such sparkle in her eyes he could almost believe his last-ditch desperate plan might work.
“But what about you?” he asked, happy to turn the conversation around and away from him.
“What about me?” she asked with surprise, as though no one ever thought to ask her about her own story.
“You told me that your father died when you were young.”
“My mother too,” she said.
“And then what happened? How did you come to be riding down the road with me?”
“It isn’t a very interesting story,” she hedged.
“But I’d like to hear it if you’re willing to share it with me.”
Miss Ephram pursed her lips as though weighing where to start—or how much to tell him.
Everything. Tell me everything.
She fascinated him with her willingness to bend or break the rules to do what she deemed was right. That was what this entire insane race to Gretna Green was about, wasn’t it? Pulling a young lady back from the brink of ruin and doing the right thing.
“I suppose it can’t hurt to talk about,” she said. “My father was a vicar in a small village near Oxford. I was seven when he and my mother died of typhoid. Two kind ladies in my father’s parish took care of me for a week, but no one seemed to know what to do with me except to pack me off to Brighton, where my mother’s sister lived. The only problem was that my aunt and uncle had four children of their own to provide for. My uncle’s import business wasn’t what it once was, and they could hardly afford to take me in.”
“What did they do?” he asked, knowing he was bound to dislike wherever this story was going.
“They took my small annuity and used it to send me to Capesthorne.”
“What’s Capesthorne?” he asked.
“A school for girls for whom no one in the world has any expectations.”
“Why do I feel as though I’m about to relive Helen reading Jane Eyre out loud?” he asked. The levity of his tone masked the whiteness of his knuckles and the bunch of his shoulders. If he learned that Miss Ephram’s aunt and uncle had sent her off to one of those horrid schools that mistreated young girls, he’d turn his horse around and ride straight to Brighton.
“Capesthorne is nothing like Lowood School,” she said with a laugh. “I promise. They weren’t cruel to us, although the dormitories were always frigid in the winter.”
“Most of England’s frigid in the winter,” he said.
“Hot-water bottles were a great commodity.”
“What did they teach you at this place?” he asked.
“English, French, German, music, arithmetic, needlework, painting . . . Sometimes it felt like we learned everything and nothing. We were meant to become just talented enough that we might take a position as a governess or companion. Some of the students would stay on and fill the spots of our teachers as they grew too old to stand in front of a classroom. It was all very practical. The headmistress would keep us year-round if our families wished so that they didn’t have to bother with the expense of fetching us at Christmas.”
It might not be as cruel as the Brontë novel, but her schooling still sounded dreadful and stifling to someone who’d run wild for his first ten years and been sent off to Rugby for his eleventh. This Capesthorne place wasn’t where he’d have imagined this vibrant, adventurous lady would’ve hailed from.
“When I turned eighteen, I was given a stack of advertisements to answer,” Jane continued. “I wrote to each one, as I was told, but I only sent one.”
“To Lady Rawson?” he asked.
She nodded. “I wanted so badly to be in London, and I knew that a gentleman of Lord Rawson’s standing must keep a house in town. A few weeks later I found myself on a train.”
“Why London?”
She shot him a little smile. “Because it seemed so grand at the time. All I’d ever known was my aunt and uncle’s home and school.”
“And will you always be a governess?” he asked, before he could think of how obtuse he must sound.
Jane laughed. “I’m quite far into my spinsterhood, and I’m much too practical to hold out hope that anyone might marry me. Life in Lord Rawson’s home isn’t exactly conducive to romance.”
He hated the lightness with which she said that, as though she’d simply accepted it as her fate. A fate that had been decided for her when she was just seven years old. It was undeniably unfair that the mere chances of birth and death had landed her in this position.
“Of course, Mary has told me I can come live with her,” she added.
“She’s the countess, isn’t she? Why don’t you do that?” he asked.
“For the very same reason I imagine you don’t go around to your friends asking them if they can advance you the funds to reseed your fields and reroof the buildings.”
“Pride,” he said. It—along with responsibility—drove him and weighed on him every day.
“Besides, I’m not entirely sure—”
But he was never to know what she meant to say, because at that moment a thundering came up behind them. He whipped around in the saddle as a streak of black horse and a low, crouched rider in a cherry-red jacket blazed by. The rider tore between Jane and him, forcing Nicholas to pull up hard on his horse’s reins. A loud whinny split the air, but it wasn’t his gelding that had shrieked.
Jane’s horse, spooked by the careless sportsman, reared up and crashed its hooves back to the ground, bolting off the road and through a thicket of brambles to the open countryside.
“Jane!” he shouted, digging his horse’s flanks and taking off in fast pursuit.
He leaned in low to his horse’s neck, the blood pumping with urgency and fear. Even an experienced horsewoman would struggle to maintain control of a spooked beast, and Jane wasn’t experienced. He had to catch up to her and find some way to slow her mount before the animal threw her from its back or went lame and sent her tumbling over its neck.
He urged his horse on, gaining on her over open field. He could see that she was clinging to the reins, trying her best to slow the panicked animal, but it was no good. The horse was too far beyond the point of soothing.
Jane and her horse tore through an opening in a copse of trees that edged the field, and Nicholas prayed that she wouldn’t be swept off her mount by a low branch. He cleared the tree line moments after her, cursing as leaves whipped his face and neck. He had to get to her. He had to.
He was just a dozen feet behind her when Jane’s horse pulled up abruptly short of a small stream. Her head jerked back and he could tell that she was scrambling to hold on to her seat, but it was no use. She went top over tail off the animal’s back and landed hard on the ground.
“No!” he shouted, pulling up on his horse to stop as quickly as he could. He leapt down and sprinted over to where she lay sprawled out in the bracken.
“Jane!” He dropped to his knees and cupped her cheek in his hand. Her eyes were closed, but she was still breathing. “Jane!”
Her eyes fluttered open and focused on him. Relief washed through him. He smoothed a thumb over her cheek, his worry that she’d broken her neck ebbing away all while he still wondered about broken bones, twisted ankles, any little bump or bruise that might harm her.
“Jane, tell me what hurts.”
She blinked up at him. “Only my pride.”
She winced. “My dignity might be a little sprained too.”
A raw laugh caught in his throat. She had no idea that he was ready to lie down at her feet if only she would promise never to scare him like that again.
Instead, Nicholas gathered her into his arms and pulled her into his lap so he could hold her close. She was warm and soft and—most important—alive. Her bonnet had fallen off at some point in the mad dash, and he buried his nose in her hair that had begun to escape its pins. She smelled sweet and warm, like cinnamon, and because just holding her wasn’t enough, he pressed a kiss to her hair. Her hand that had slipped up over his forearm when he’d hauled her into his lap tightened, but she didn’t pull back, and so he kissed her forehead. Then her temple and the soft slope of her cheek. Her jaw was next and then the little spot next to her mouth where a dimple tempted him every time she smiled. And then, because he was still half mad with fear, relief, and happiness, he kissed Jane’s slightly parted lips.
At last.
Jane’s entire body relaxed into the strength of Nicholas’s arms. At last he was kissing her, and at last she was finally able taste him.
Divine. That was the only word for it. It should have been the press of skin against skin, but it was so much more than that. The low swooping in her chest like a swallow looping and diving in the early evening sent her soaring. Her skin seemed to sparkle with sensation. Heat built between her legs. She could feel herself growing wet as he stroked the line of her corset from her hip and up under her breasts.
Nicholas teased her lips open a little more, outlining them with his tongue before slipping in to stroke over her own. He tasted sweet and cool, just as she somehow knew he would. But it wasn’t enough. She could tell he was restraining part of himself, so she tangled her hand in his hair and kissed him back hard until a low growl rumbled in his chest. Then he pulled her closer to him, shifting her on his lap so that she felt the hardness of his cock against her leg and heard him moan low.
