The School for Heiresses

by Sabrina Jeffries

  “Because you think exaggerating your situation will enable you to talk me into helping you run away.”

  She looked genuinely appalled. “I would never—”

  “If your guardian is shirking his duties, you should be happy to speak to the magistrate. Yet you refuse. So I know you’re hiding something.”

  A guilty flush touched her cheeks. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “There’s another fellow involved, isn’t there? Your guardian whisked you away from the city to keep you from marrying a penniless nitwit who’s claims he loves you for yourself—”

  “Absolutely not,” she said with a sniff. “Mrs. Harris would skin me alive if I married a penniless nitwit after all her lessons.”

  Mrs. Harris. Where had he heard that name? Ah, yes. “So you’re one of her little heiresses. From her School for Ladies.”

  “Yes.” She eyed him warily. “What of it?”

  “That makes your tale even more unbelievable. Why the blazes would your guardian marry you to a stranger when you could have your pick of suitors?”

  “I said the same thing tohim ! But he claims I don’t even have enough money for a Season, much less my dowry—which is ridiculous, because I know Papa left me adequately provided for.”

  “So that’s what this is all about. You’re angry that he isn’t giving you a Season.”

  “No! That merely showed me that something is dreadfully wrong.” She cast him a pleading glance. “And there was another odd thing—my guardian told me that after seeing me in the park, his friend was smitten.”

  “And that insulted you?” he said, all at sea.

  “Blast it, no!” She looked exasperated. “Don’t you understand? My guardian never introduced me to this man. So if the suitor had been in town, why didn’t my guardian bring him to meet me?” Her eyes flashed. “I’ll tell you why. Because he’s some…horrible, decrepit fellow who has made a dastardly arrangement that my guardian refuses to reveal.”

  “Andthis is the tale you plan to tell your friends in London to gain their help. Well, perhaps your friends would indulge your whim, but I’m not fool enough to do so.”

  This was the sort of impetuous act his wife had regularly indulged in, which was how she’d ended up dead. He wouldn’t be a party to it. “I’ve heard enough. Give me your guardian’s name; I’m bringing you home. If you wish, I’ll speak to him on your behalf, but that’s your only choice.”

  “Oh, for pity’s sake, I don’t have to put up with this! You have no right to keep me here, no right to stop me—”

  “You were stealing my horse, remember? That means I have every right to haul you off to the local magistrate. He’ll know what to do with you.”

  Though her face went ash-white, she planted her hands on her hips. “I should like to see you explain to him how I ended up in your company in the middle of the night. Since you insist on believing me a liar anyway, I might as well take my ‘gothic tale’ to its extreme. When I finish wailing about how you accosted me in the woods near my home and dragged me back to your lair to have your wicked way with—”

  “What!” he roared. “You would dare to lie about a man’s good name?”

  “If I have to.”

  “You stubborn little troublemaking…” He forced himself to remain calm. “They’d never take your word over mine.”

  She arched one eyebrow. “Are you sure? My guardian would rather believe I was assaulted against my will than that I was shameful enough to run away.”

  Damn the chit, she was probably right. “Seeing you dressed as a boy will confirm my claims,” he said, grasping at straws.

  “Not if I tell them you forced me to wear a servant’s clothes after you ripped my own off.” She drew herself up, a determined glint in her eye. “I participated in amateur theatricals at my school, and gothic heroines were my specialty. I can even cry at will. Shall I show you?”

  She screwed up her face as if to cry, and he rolled his eyes. “Spare me, please.”

  What a mess! Taking her to the magistrate became less feasible by the moment. He didn’t actually know the magistrate…or anyone else in town. His new servants didn’t know anyone, either. He’d come to the estate in advance of his cousin and the hunting party so he could grow acclimated. Simon was to introduce him about Brookmoor next week.

  So if he took her into town and she did make spurious claims about his character, they might be believed. Her guardian might even be a prominent local figure. Despite Colin’s title and connections, the townspeople would still regard him as a stranger and a foreigner.

  Confound her to hell. How could he have a peaceful life in the country if she put him under a cloud of suspicion from the start?

  “So you see,” she went on, “you’rethe one with no choice, unless you want to be carted off to prison for assaulting a poor innocent.”

  God, he hadn’t even considered that possibility. “They wouldn’t take an English peer to trial on the basis of your fabricated tale,” he said uneasily.

  “Perhaps not, but they could make you marry me.” Her eyes narrowed. “That would certainly solve my dilemma, so if you’re eager to take a wife—”

  “You? Never.”

  A flush touched her freckled cheeks. “You don’t have to be insulting.”

  “Forgive me, but I don’t want a wife whose favorite pastime is dressing in men’s clothing and stealing horses. What I want is peace and quiet. And I daresay any husband of yours would have to give that up.”

  She tipped up her chin. “If it’s peace you want, you should let me go.” Shoving her hand into her coat pocket, she pulled out a wad of pound notes. “Since you won’t drive me to Honiton, at least rent a horse to me.”

  His temper flared. The idiot meant to traverse England alone with a fortune in her pockets and a disguise only a blind man would believe. And she was mad enough to try blackmailing him into letting her do it.

  What if she tried such foolishness with an unscrupulous innkeeper or coachman? In the two days it took the mail coach to reach London, she could be robbed and assaulted half a dozen times, for God’s sake!

  Fine. She wouldn’t tell him who her guardian was, so he’d have to scare her into it. It was time he showed the woman exactly what she risked.

  “You’ve just threatened to ruin my character—do you think I’ll let you gonow ? You’ve given me no choice but to keep you locked up as long as it takes to silence your lying tongue.”

  That certainly got her attention. She blinked at him like a cat caught in candlelight. “Wh-what do you mean?”

  He stalked toward her. “I can’t have you voicing false accusations or forcing me into marriage. So what’s it to be? A few nights in my attic while I starve you into compliance? A week in the dungeon? I’m told there is one, although a cellar would suffice.”

  At least she had the good sense to back away. “If you’re attempting to play the villain, it won’t work,” she said with a nervous laugh. Yet she darted around the heavy baroque sofa to put it between her and him. “You would never lock anyone in an attic. And you aren’t the sort to bully a woman.”

  “How would you know?” he asked as he prowled along the sofa.

  “I heard all about your brave exploits in India from Louisa.” She quickly moved to evade him. “Your reputation for heroism and fine deeds has preceded you, and I can’t believe you’d tarnish it by hurting—”

  “You forget that no one knows you’re here. Not your guardian, nor my servants. I could haul you into the woods, shoot you, and bury you so that no one would ever find you.” Ifthat didn’t frighten the little fool, nothing would.

  “You could.” Her gaze flitted about the room as if in search of a weapon. “But you wouldn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you’d have to catch me first.” Grabbing one of the cushions, she threw it at him and darted for the door behind her.

  Confound the woman! He leaped the sofa to capture her, and tossed her to the floor. With th
e wind knocked out of her, she couldn’t stop him when he threw himself on top of her, pinning her beneath him.

  For the first time since he’d found her in the stable, sheer panic showed in her face. “Get off me!” she cried, shoving against his chest.

  “Do you see how easy it is? How quickly a man can subdue you?”

  “Only if I let him,” she spat, lifting her hands to scratch his face.

  But he caught them and pinned them to the carpet, too. “Now what?” He glowered down at her. “You’re well and truly trapped, admit it.”

  She struggled against him, but it took ridiculously little effort to keep her restrained by her wrists and to clamp her thighs between his so she couldn’t move.

  When she stopped her futile struggling, he continued his warning. “Nowdo you understand what I could do to you if I had a mind to it? I could rip your clothes off, and you couldn’t do a damned thing to stop me. I could ravish you…”

  “Oh, for pity’s sake, you’re worse than any gothic play.” Her expression had turned mutinous. “If you’d meant to ravish me, you would have done it in the stables the second you discovered I was a woman.”

  He couldn’t believe his ears. She was pinned to the floor completely helpless, and instead of acknowledging the danger, she was even more stubborn.

  She actually had the audacity to taunt him! “It would have been far wiser, you know. Less messy—you wouldn’t have spilled any blood on the furniture.”

  “Spilled any—” He let out a vile oath. “I swear, you’re the most maddening female I’ve ever met! Don’t you realize what trouble you’re in?”

  “Yes, I do. That’s why I won’t let you take me back to my guardian.” Her eyes glittered up at him. “You won’t murder me. If you won’t risk having me falsely accuse you, you certainly won’t risk a murder investigation.”

  Christ, how far must he go to intimidate the stubborn woman into revealing the truth and giving up her mad scheme? Clearly, farther than he had. “Perhaps not, but that won’t stop me from making good on my earlier promise.”

  “What promise?”

  “To strip your clothes off piece by piece until you tell me what I need to know.”

  At last he got the reaction he wanted. Uncertainty flickered in her face, and she bit down on her lower lip. Her pretty coral lip, plump enough to devour—

  He swore under his breath. Having her beneath him, with her lush hair spilling about her face and his groin flush against her soft flesh, was beginning to affect him. He’d better finish this while he could still control himself.

  Clasping both her wrists in one hand, he dropped the other to her borrowed waistcoat. With a dire glance, he flicked a button loose. “We’ll start with this.”

  “Stop that,” she whispered as he opened another.

  “Tell me your guardian’s name,” he said, pausing.

  She thrust out her impudent little chin. “It’s Peter,” she said sweetly.

  He jumped on that eagerly. “And his last name?”

  “Pumpkin-Eater. He lives down the road in a pumpkin shell with his wife—”

  “Damn it, this is not a joke! Tell me his name!”

  “I don’t remember.”

  With a foul glance, he worked loose another button, then another.

  She glared at him. “Let me see—it was Jack something. Jack Sprat? Little Jack Horner? Look in the corner and see—”

  “I swear, it won’t be the corner you’ll be sitting in if you don’t tell me your guardian’s name and where he lives,” he warned.

  “I’m not going to tell you.”

  Eyes gleaming with threat, he released the last few buttons, then reached for the ones at the collar of her shirt. “You think not, do you, Eliza?”

  Though her breath came more quickly and her delicious lower lip trembled, her pretty eyes still shone resolutely. “As long as you’re calling me Eliza, I shall call you Colin. Itis Colin, isn’t it? Colin Hunt?”

  “Colin, yes.” He caught himself. “It doesn’t matter what you call me, confound it!”

  “It certainly does. If you’re about to see me entirely naked, then I should at least call you by your Christian name.”

  He froze. Damn her for putting that image in his head! “Have you no sense of danger, you little fool?” he exploded as he bent close. “No idea of how you tempt fate every time you open that reckless mouth of yours?”

  “Not where you’re concerned,” she shot back. “Perhaps you alarm others with that black scowl, but I can tell a gentleman when I see one, and you—”

  He cut off her words with a hard kiss.

  He’d meant it to shut her up, to shock her. Unfortunately, it did far more than that. It made him conscious of her as a woman. A desirable woman. Whom he’d secretly lusted after from the minute he’d felt her curves beneath her cloak.

  She wasn’t helping, either, for she didn’t struggle, didn’t even turn her head away. She lay there frozen, letting him kiss her, taste her.

  Desperately reaching for sanity, he lifted his head to stare at her, hoping to see fear or alarm or anything on her face that might bring him to his senses.

  Instead, she was watching him with wide, astonished eyes. With a sinking heart, he saw in them the same awareness of him as a man that he’d felt for her as a woman.

  And in that moment, he knew he was done for.

  Four

  Colin’s second, rougher kiss stunned Eliza. Especially when he slid his tongue between her lips and inside her mouth.

  Lord save her. The girls at school had whispered of such outrageous kisses, but she hadn’t known…she hadn’t expected…He seemed to be trying to violate her mouth the same way he’d threatened to violate her body, but it didn’t feel like a violation. It felt…amazing. Blatantly erotic, blatantly enthralling.

  Oh, what was wrong with her? She mustn’t let him do this, even if hewas just trying to frighten her into letting him cart her back to her uncle’s.

  Frighten her, yes—the way the pistol digging into her thigh was meant to frighten her. This was not areal kiss. She must pay it no mind, even though her heart hammered in her chest, and the thrusts of his tongue did funny things to her insides, making her want to open her mouth further, tangle her tongue with his—

  He jerked back with an oath. “For God’s sake, what are you doing?”

  “I-I don’t know,” she answered honestly. “Whatever it is, I don’tmean to do it. It’s just that no man has ever kissed me like that before, and you…that is…”

  She was babbling, blast it. She couldn’t help it—the way he looked at her unsettled her. Excited her. Good Lord.

  It only got worse when she chewed nervously on her lower lip. His eyes darkened to a smoky black, and he uttered a heartfelt groan.

  Then he kissed her. Again. And she let him. Again.

  By tomorrow, she might very well be hurtling toward Cornwall, so she had to know what might lay ahead. That was her foggy reasoning, anyway.

  This time he still took possession of her mouth like a hungry, marauding army, but gone was the roughness, the insolence. He kissed her like a man who meant it, his tongue delving inside with slow, sleek strokes.

  So this was what it felt like to be thoroughly kissed: hot and heady and too tempting for words. Even his whisker stubble scraping her soft cheek and the threat of his pistol merely reminded her he was a man, and not some local lad trying to steal a kiss at a picnic. Every inch of the body plastered to hers was firm, muscular, demanding…the way a man’s body should be.

  Oh, Lord, she could never do this with just anyone, certainly not with some suspiciously secret friend of her uncle’s. Never! No matter what it took, she would make sure that the only man she kissed this intimately was a man she desired.

  A man like Colin.

  She groaned against his lips. Had she lost her mind? Colin meant to cart her back to her uncle! And he’d made it clear he had no interest in marrying her.

  Not that she would marry t
he stubborn ass. He refused to believe her, and he ordered her about, and…and…oh, blast, he kissed like something out of a gothic play. A verygood gothic play. His mouth enticed her, and the press of his very masculine body against hers roused forbidden urges in her breasts and belly.

  When he suddenly released her wrists, her arms slid automatically about his neck as if drawn there by a puppeteer. With a sigh of pure pleasure, she buried her fingers in his thick, silken hair.

  He slipped his hand inside her open waistcoat to cup her breast through the thin linen of her shirt.

  Good Lord, what was he doing? This went too far. And yet…

  It felt so good. Shocking and appalling and absolutely marvelous.

  “We must end this,” he choked out even as he trailed kisses along her neck, and his thumb swept her nipple with a delicacy that made her breath catch.

  “Yes,” she breathed, though his hand now kneaded her breast, sending delightful chills along her spine.

  “Tell me who your guardian is, sweeting,” he murmured, a hint of desperation in his voice. “Tell me where he lives.”

  The question cut through her sensual haze like a knife of ice.

  Blast, another few minutes of this, and she’d tell him everything he wanted to know! And then she’d be doing this with her uncle’s horrible friend, whether she wanted to or not.

  No, never. She jerked his hand from her breast. “Stop that,” she whispered.

  He pushed himself up, looking as dazed as she felt. At least she hadn’t been the only one caught up in their touching. Though that proved hollow comfort when his scowl turned black as the devil’s. “What game are you playing, Eliza?”

  “Me! You’re the one who’s playing a game, touching my body and trying to distract—” She broke off. She didn’t want him to know how close he’d come to succeeding, or he’d use that to his advantage. Forcing nonchalance into her voice, she said, “If you’re trying to teach me the dangers of ravishment, it’s not working.”

  “Damn it, I’m not playing!” He thrust his lower body against her, pressing something thick and rigid into the flesh between her legs. And it wasn’t his pistol, either. “Thisis what happens when a man is aroused. Shall I show you what happens when he satisfies that arousal?”