‘We are well suited and, while I possess more years than the expected suitor, I have a willingness to care and provide for you.’
She swallowed an anxious rush of trepidation as she stood. The situation would be laughable if it wasn’t so dire. Her father meant to force her into marriage with Lord Muller. Lord Tucker wished to court her without inclination. And all the while she yearned for Luke. How foolish to believe she could escape with her emotions unscathed. Her fingers fluttered against her skirts in nervous anticipation. She couldn’t incite the man’s temper.
‘Thank you. You are very kind.’ The only way to avoid the pursuing conversation was to feign compliance. ‘I will need time to consider your flattering proposal. Marriage is a serious commitment.’ What she once thought necessary deception had returned to her twofold. She angled her steps as she headed towards the door, wary at how easily he allowed her to leave.
‘I understand.’ He stood and followed. ‘You have certain reservations. I assure you I wish you nothing untoward.’
‘Then you should call upon me tomorrow. In the afternoon, please.’ She interrupted and cast an unsmiling glance over her shoulder. A voice inside warned she need advance with care.
‘I’m afraid that won’t do.’ Tucker grasped her shoulder in a firm hold that ceased her steps. ‘I would prefer if we did this without agitation. Even in a small village, servants gossip at the slightest raised voices.’ He jostled her to gain her attention and dragged her backwards. ‘Do not mistake my intent. I have a carriage prepared and a vicar awaiting our arrival.’
‘What? You can’t mean to force me into marriage.’ She spoke the words aloud to jar her brain into motion, but the very idea struck her as insane.
‘I can and I shall.’ He appeared unaffected by the ludicrous proposition. ‘Who will stop me? Who even knows of your idyllic existence here in Coventry?’ He snorted with some kind of humourless appreciation. ‘You’ve created the isolated situation and it proves convenient above all else. Do not mistake me, we will be wed.’ He reached out and stroked a finger across her cheek and she withdrew in fear. ‘Perhaps you require an effort of encouragement, that’s all. If not, I will explain it away to the vicar. He will understand your misgivings neatly embellished as a lover’s spat, disgruntled fiancée, or could it be a bride’s jitters concerning the wedding night? A plump purse in his hand will solve all problems.’
Momentarily dumbstruck by Lord Tucker’s firm hold and preposterous suggestion, she struggled for release too late, a determined gleam in his eyes. Fighting would prove the wrong decision. She could appeal to the vicar, though, or find the opportunity to escape once they arrived. If she fought now, sequestered in his home, all would be lost. She would need to bide her time, but it would involve summoning courage along with a Herculean effort.
Her soul was composed of cowardice. That particular chastisement trumped all others as she stepped into the private carriage before Lord Tucker took the boot and held the reins. Leaving Coventry had always played into her plan. Assuming the role of governess, melding into the bucolic countryside and perpetuating the fraud had provided a release, a short-lived escape, though reality had chased her down, forced her hand and required she come to terms with an unavoidable future.
She dropped her head to the bolster and closed her eyes against the impaling sharpness of heartache. If forced to marry Lord Tucker, she would not only fail herself but her family as well. Her choices to this point had been poorly made. All except one.
But Luke seemed as far away as the moon now. He could serve as the single antithesis to her bereaved heart, though.
She summoned memories of his dimpled smile, adoring caress and soul-searing kisses. She loved him with a depth she’d not believed possible. Why couldn’t their lives become intertwined so tightly a future proved inevitable? She scoffed, practicality too strong a component of her personality and unpossessed of the indifference of her father or insecurity of her mother. She hardly kept the guileless optimism of her sister. The most adventurous and daring action of her life had been running from a fate already prescribed in a codicil. A child’s game of spinelessness, lacking bravery, nothing more.
Luke boasted of his shameful birth. She, a genteel lady, despaired at the disadvantage of her entitled lifestyle. All choice had been stolen from her. Her soul ached with the depressing rationalization. Luke was the one out of reach. Luke and his gleaming grey eyes, seductive voice and tender touch, proved above her station. Fantasies of any future between the two of them were ludicrous. Hadn’t she wasted enough time on indulgent sulking?
She smiled. A bittersweet, gentle, worshipful grin. For all that she wished she had and knew she hadn’t. And she stayed that way for miles. Far longer than she stayed awake. Into a disorienting slumber she fell, aided by the rhythmic rocking of the travelling carriage and an utter sense of hopelessness.
The first note of alarm slapped her awake. She looked for Biscuit, realizing he wasn’t there, ears flattened and body tense at the ready to defend her. The horses drew to a jolting stop, so fast and abrupt she needed to brace her palm against the opposite banquette to prevent a pitch forward. The heavy jangle of the harness followed and she slid the velvet curtain aside, her eyes finding the night heavy, dark and unforgiving. What was happening?
There was an immediate scuffle or the scrape of something similar upon the box and she deciphered the sound of Lord Tucker climbing down for an unknown reason. Something was wrong, yet she dare not exit yet. If she kept a keen ear, she could escape when the opportunity presented itself. Impatience would lend itself to further complication. This was the chance she’d hoped to be offered. Into the night and none the wiser.
Cracking the window, she slid the glass less than a finger’s width in perfect time to hear the deep demand of a male voice, louder than her heart, which drummed in her chest, or pulse, which urged her to wait and at the same time begged her to act. So loud one would think it came from the heavens, that voice, the night’s voice, a knight’s voice.
‘Stand and deliver.’
No.
Decidedly not a knight.
The sharp bark of a pistol shot punctuated the command and she startled so violently she dropped from the cushioned seat to her knees on the coach floor. Her mother’s daunting pillory resounded in Georgina’s ears. Highwaymen perversely burgled, murdered, kidnapped and ravished with blind disregard and no particular reason other than sport and gain.
The carriage pitched to the right. She hardly knew what to make of it while a quaking silence as dreadful as her worst fears consumed all sound. Swallowing past the scream lodged in her throat, she waited as the outside world silenced with eerie dissension.
Seconds passed in a lethargic march of fretfulness until she could no longer remain, no matter the risk. She opened the door far enough to peer around the edge of the brass frame, directly in view of a single man too far away to be distinguished, cast in shadow but for a lone shaft of golden moonlight. The daunting form wore an ominous greatcoat and hood, an image from a nightmare, or worse, her mother’s childhood preaching. Lord Tucker was nowhere to be found, disappeared into the night in true spinelessness, a similar escape she considered herself.
Desperate to reclaim freedom, she eased the door wider. Now was the time to run for her life through forest and field, despite she had no idea where she was, the terrain treacherous and not meant for foot traffic. She would not draw the highwayman’s notice if she moved…
‘You there. Open the door.’ The rich tenor of the thief’s command rippled through her and for a fanciful moment she thought… no, that was trickery of the brain.
She fought back the threat of hysteria, her heart in a gallop to the point of bursting. The threatening scoundrel still held a pistol, though the weapon was no longer pointed in her direction. He stepped forward two strides, captured by a generous angle of pale moonlight to reveal a tall, broad-statured, masked man, his clothes as black as the deed he perpetrated.
A
combination of wariness and misplaced fascination at last overrode fear and she reached down to gain leverage without the extended steps, dropping to the ground and shutting the carriage with a quick manoeuvre of the door.
‘What do you want?’ A foolish question at best. Highwaymen desired money, jewels and, at times, feminine companionship, willing or not.
He didn’t answer and instead ventured closer. His boots upon the gravel crackled and crunched in kind to her resolve to behave with valour until he stood before her. The hood covered his head and concealed his identity except for two slits which allowed sight. A glint of silver twinkled through the eyeholes.
‘Georgina Harwood.’
She imagined the dimple in his smile.
‘Yes.’ Relief, joy and affection coalesced into a giddy sigh of breathless answer.
‘Stand and deliver, love.’
Chapter Twenty-Four
Luke searched Georgina’s face in the moonlight, anxious to quit his charade and capture her lips, but he would only do so once assured she stood before him unharmed. He’d stopped three carriages along the road leading from Coventry, the befuddled participants of each confounded when he’d sent them on their way without raiding their purses or burgling their jewels.
He would have intercepted a hundred more if the situation demanded. Travelling the main thoroughfare towards Coventry provided the convenience, though he was prepared to search the entire town if necessary. In the end, Tucker proved no trouble. At the glint of a pistol, the older man thrust his hands skyward, his feet fast-moving as he hied from the box so swiftly Luke worried the lord would hurt himself by way of escape.
But none of that mattered now.
Bloody hell, he was tired of being patient.
He dropped the pistol into the pocket of his greatcoat and tugged the dark hood from his head, lost to the dusty roadway for some other thief to steal.
‘Luke.’
Her one-word whisper pacified every concern, but he had no mind for talking and pulled her into his grasp, his mouth above hers before she could squeak an objection.
‘You are mine, Georgina Harwood. Did you think otherwise?’
Her slender brows lowered in a fetching vee and a frown replaced her previous grin.
‘If only it could be so easy.’
‘But it is.’ He locked her tight in the circle of his arms with a plan never to release her. ‘I’ll explain later. There’s a matter more pressing at the moment.’
‘Wha…’
He had every intention of being gentle. His lady had suffered enough already. He could only assume Tucker meant to steal her off to a vicar, or worse, drag her to Gretna Green. But best intentions were never his strong suit and the hunger he’d kept at bay for the entire time they’d been separated reared up and demanded notice.
Georgina didn’t object.
He never assumed she would.
He smiled wickedly. The sweet scent of her skin proved the cut to the fine thread of his control and, at last, he kissed her. A deep, yearning, open-mouthed embrace that he hoped answered all the perplexing questions swirling through her clever mind. He loved her. Did she realize? Did she know he would search the earth, the moon and beyond, until he made her his wife?
She whimpered, her body pliant and warm against his chest, and when he tore his mouth away his exhale was ragged with pent desire. He kissed a line across her jaw, down her neck, where her skin was tender and soft, to linger at the base of her throat, his tongue tasting her pulse, beating faster than a hummingbird’s wings. They stood in a country roadway in the middle of the night and he had greater plans than these.
‘I’m taking you to London.’ He drew apart, to catch his breath and control his ardour as much as share his plans. ‘You’re mine.’
Another woman might have protested at his selfish thievery but Georgina smiled.
‘What of Biscuit?’ She shook her head in the negative. ‘I can’t go anywhere with him left in Coventry.’
It was a good thing Luke loved her so thoroughly. He muffled a curse of impatience and with a whistle, sharp and loud, the thud of approaching hooves answered.
Snake Eyes appeared over the berm, his white coat a beacon as he approached the roadway. Without further discussion Luke mounted and extended his arm, hoisting Georgina in front of him on the stallion. He kicked the animal into a gallop as if the Devil nipped their heels. With his arm wrapped around her waist and his thighs around her bottom, he leaned closer and aligned his chest to her shoulders. A few strands of glossy silk caressed his cheek as he raced towards the cottage.
They arrived on wings, out of breath and flustered from the ride or perhaps more so the deliciousness of anticipation for the inevitable passion bound to occur. He hastily tethered Snake Eyes to a post in the yard while Georgina unlocked the door and then, as soon as the panel gave way, he rushed them inside, kicking the door closed with his foot as his thighs brushed against her skirts in his hurry to find her mouth again. They flattened against the wall, her hands pinned, their fingers intertwined and breathing in unkempt inhales. Biscuit’s bark was drummed silent by their pursuit of need and want.
He tore his mouth away and with a sidelong smirk lifted Georgina into his arms, moving backwards into her modest bedroom where he again slammed the door, shutting out the dog, the world, and all other intrusions that dare interrupt.
Setting her on the mattress, he lit one lantern, just enough to lend the room a romantic glow, and then, despite his urgency, he paused.
She’d tumbled backwards on the bedding, her hair unravelled and tousled, the silky lengths against her neck dipped low into her bodice. Her cheeks were flushed, lips swollen and he growled with possessive want.
Clubs, spades, diamonds and hearts.
He’d finish before he had a chance to enjoy her. He’d withheld emotion so long he’d never known if could be like this. With a summons to control, he walked towards the bed and stopped within a stride. There he shed his greatcoat. It dropped to the floor and the heavy pocket hit with a metallic thud that mimicked the beat of his heart. With fingers that trembled, he worked loose his shirt tails and discarded each article that kept him from all her precious skin. In the sheen of the yellow-gold flame, he watched as she rose on her elbows to do the same. Clothing fell away, piece by piece, in a perfectly matched dance, until at last they were as bare as their feelings, strong and insistent.
For an instant, he didn’t breathe. A clock in another room chimed the hour and reminded not to waste another minute.
‘It’s so cold.’ She crossed her arms over her chest, her luscious breasts hidden from view.
‘Not for long.’ He stepped closer.
‘You’re beautiful.’
Her whisper surprised him for she’d read his mind and made his words her own. Her eyes met his and then traced over his chest, lower to his abdomen and at last to his cock. His body stirred with her bold attention. Climbing atop the rumpled covers he gathered her close and then all gave way. This was the dream he didn’t dare believe he’d possess. Georgina in his life every day, in his bed every night.
Somehow he’d beaten the odds.
Her lips parted on a sigh of pleasure as she molded her body to his, stealing his warmth as she pressed her breasts against his chest, her skin hot velvet and nipples erect. The slightest movement caused a wicked friction that threatened to ruin him. He kissed her down to the mattress, covered her body with his heat, and wedged between her thighs, unready to sacrifice another moment.
She opened for him with natural ease, wet and slick against the tip of him, and at last he embedded deep inside her tight heat. His breathing hitched as he absorbed the glorious sensation. Her eyes sparkled as she watched him and she pushed her fingers through his hair, pulled him down to her mouth and angled her hips, impatient and at the same time intensifying the pleasure.
He’d waited so patiently and now, now when he finally had her all to himself, his body betrayed him, unable to get enough of the tas
te, feel and sweet scent of her, and at the same time aware, each time he buried himself deeper, he ventured dangerously close to release. He splayed his fingers across her thigh and raised her leg high on his hip before he sank into her lush body again, his eyes focused for one last look at her in the throes of their lovemaking, tousled and tempting, unerringly beautiful.
How he loved her.
He needed to tell her, but he was long past words.
She arched and a ripple of pleasure shuddered through her into him. Another thrust and everything went wild and dark, his world fell apart, his groan lost against the sensual rub of her tongue twined tight to his as they fell into the abyss together.
Georgina cuddled closer to Luke’s chest, determined he not notice the tears she swiped from her cheeks. He wove an enchanting tale, promising they would be together, but how would that affect her family’s situation in London? She could hardly cast her sister into the fire to save herself.
Luke had fallen asleep directly after they climbed beneath the sheets. He’d ridden at breakneck speed, claiming he was driven by a besotted frenzy to see her, all the while unaware Lord Tucker attempted an abduction. At present, she couldn’t believe the old lord had planned the nefarious capture. Throughout her entire experience, from the moment she left London and began to live independently in Coventry, she’d misread people and trusted where suspicion should have ruled.
And Luke, she’d believed him a threat to her safety when in reality he’d proved the man of her dreams. Her eyes burned with fresh tears. This moment, cosied beside the man who held her heart, was how she’d envisioned marriage. A love match. Nothing less. She twisted free of the sheets and sat up, stealing the warmth from his body and using a corner of the linen to dry her eyes. Tomorrow they would return to London. There was nothing to fear from this night. Even if Lord Tucker chose to storm the cottage, Luke had the pistol in his greatcoat pocket. She held every confidence he would protect her from every harm. And Biscuit, of course, proved ferocious when necessary.
The Last Gamble Page 24
