by Deborah Hale
Except for those few sweet hours after he’d rescued her from the highwayman, Lady Lyte had made it abundantly clear she wanted neither his advice, his assistance nor his company. Why could he not wash his hands of her, as any rational man would?
Until recently, Thorn had prided himself on being a rational fellow. Then he’d stared into Felicity Lyte’s incomparable green eyes and lost himself.
At the moment, that vibrant green looked rather washed-out, while the rosy springtime hue of her complexion had blanched and chilled.
“What’s the matter, my dear?” He caught her icy hand in his. “You look dreadful.”
“And you have a great deal to learn about being a lady’s man, Mr. Greenwood.” Wrenching her fingers from his grip, Felicity looked as though she longed to slap his face with them.
“Of course I look dreadful. Why shouldn’t I? Woken out of a sound sleep to trundle over the countryside in the middle of the night. Accosted by a highwayman. And now with the prospect of chasing the length of England after my ungrateful nephew. I’d probably shatter a mirror if I looked in one.”
The other inn guests were casting inquisitive glances their way. Thorn detested few things worse than being an object of curiosity. He drew Felicity off to a little alcove by the main staircase.
“That’s not what I meant, and you know it. You’re as lovely as ever. Only, you look wrought up…or ill.”
Before she could fire off a retort, he held up his palms in mock surrender. “Both of which you have good cause to be, I admit. For once, hold your tongue and listen to me. You need proper rest and food, as do your servants and the horses. I’ll arrange that with the innkeeper. Then, while you’re recovering from last night’s journey, I’ll hunt up someone to take that outlaw off our hands.”
For a wonder, Felicity did not interrupt him. She waited until he’d finished before asking, “What do you propose we do after that?”
Thorn tried to hide his surprise. He’d expected more of a battle from her. “After that we must talk. To decide on our next move.”
“Very well.”
“Do you mean it?”
The old verdant sparks leapt in her eyes once again, igniting an answering flame in Thorn’s formerly rational heart. “What manner of question is that? Do you think I oppose you for amusement?”
“Of course not,” Thorn lied. “I only meant—” What could he say that wouldn’t dig him deeper into trouble? “Never mind.”
The other guests, having settled their bill at last, departed with a maximum of noise and commotion. Thorn found himself glad of the distraction.
Once they had gone, he approached the innkeeper. “We will have to be on our way before nightfall, but in the meantime, Lady Lyte, her driver and her footman all need rooms in which to rest.”
The innkeeper’s eyes lit up. No doubt he relished the prospect of hiring out the same rooms twice in one day. “Always delighted to oblige her ladyship, sir.”
“The horses will need tending, as well.”
“I’ll make certain the hostlers know to take special trouble with them, Mister…”
“Greenwood. Hawthorn Greenwood.” Thorn steeled himself against the fellow’s meddlesome scrutiny. “I’m an old friend of Lady Lyte’s. Her nephew’s…er…bride is my sister.”
“Indeed, sir?” The innkeeper beamed, as people tended to do when speaking of Ivy. “A lively little creature. Not one I’d have picked for a serious young scholar like Mr. Armitage if I’d had the ordering of it. But love often goes by contraries, then, doesn’t it, sir?”
“Perhaps so.” Did that explain his own intense, wayward feelings for Felicity? Thorn wondered. “By any chance, did my sister or Mr. Armitage mention where they might lodge once they reached Gloucester?”
The innkeeper’s smile widened further. “As it happens, sir, they asked if I could recommend any place that might offer them a warm welcome even if they arrived at a late hour.”
“Did you?” Thorn strove not to sound as desperately interested in the information as he felt.
“I should say so, Mr. Greenwood. The wife’s cousin keeps an inn in the old part of town between the cathedral and the shirehall. It don’t get as busy as the big posting inns on the roads to London and Bristol. I told Mr. Armitage it would be a rare night he and his fair bride couldn’t find a bed there, no matter what hour they knocked.”
“I appreciate your advising them.” Thorn fished out a shilling from his card winnings. He offered it to the innkeeper, who made a token show of refusing before sliding the coin into his own pocket.
“I’ll just see to the rooms for Lady Lyte and her servants, Mr. Greenwood.”
“One more thing, if I may?”
“Aye, sir. What might that be?”
“We ran into a spot of trouble on the road from Bristol—a highwayman.”
“My life, sir!” The innkeeper’s eyes grew wide. “No one hurt, I hope. That scoundrel’s been making a right nuisance of himself all spring. You’re not my first guests to have been molested by him.”
“I hope we may be the last.” Thorn nodded toward the door. “We fetched the bounder along with us to give an account of himself before the magistrate. Whereabouts should I dispose of him?”
“I’d fetch him over to Berkeley, Mr. Greenwood.” The innkeeper cocked his thumb in a direction Thorn took to be northeast. “They can deal with him there and be obliged to you for the taking of him, I should think.”
As the innkeeper bustled off, Thorn turned back to Felicity, who had sunk down onto a nearby chair. He knew better than to comment on how she looked, but a qualm of guilt rolled low in his belly. She might have slept better stretched out on the carriage seat opposite him than awkwardly nestled on his lap.
He knelt before her and took one of her hands in his. It had warmed a little since he’d touched it a few moments earlier, but not much.
“The innkeeper tells me they can deal with our highwayman over in Berkeley. Will you be all right until I get back?”
“Of course I will.” Felicity sat up straighter. “I’m neither a child nor a tottering old dowager, Mr. Greenwood. I do not need a keeper. You’re quite welcome to cart that awful creature off to London for all I care. I can manage quite well on my own.”
The gall of the woman! Dismissing his concern for her as if he held no higher standing in her life than her driver or her footman.
The notion sent Thorn leaping to his feet again. “As well as you managed last night on the heath?”
Felicity shot him a withering look. “Ah! Here is the lecture you’ve been saving since last night. I doubt it will taste any less bitter, warmed over for breakfast.”
He had never seen this unpleasant side of her character during their time together. Thorn cursed himself. He’d been a fool to let himself fall under the spell of her wit, her spirit and her passion. Any man of sense might have guessed that such a vibrant rose could not lack for thorns.
Well, he was feeling the sting of them now.
“Last night you as good as owned you deserved a reprimand.” Thorn struggled to suppress the memory of Felicity burrowing into his embrace, sweetly repentant. “I tried to show a little forbearance, believing you’d already learned your lesson in more forceful terms than any words of mine could match.”
Felicity surged to her feet, a welcome color returning to her face. “Why, you pompous…How dare you scold me as if I was one of your flighty little sisters?”
“My sisters have more sense than—” Thorn choked back the rest of his words as another party of inn guests descended into the posting hall.
He forced himself to pitch his voice lower, though his anger had not abated. “We can resume this discussion in private when I return from Berkeley. In the meantime, I suggest you rest and take some food.”
“I told you, I’m quite capable of looking after myself.”
If he stood there a moment longer, Felicity’s stubborn opposition might goad him to shake her. Worse yet, her nearnes
s and the strange stirring friction between them might make him sweep her into his arms for a kiss so fierce and brazen it would fuel juicy gossip at the King’s Arms for years to come.
As Thorn Greenwood executed a crisp pivot on his heel and strode away from her, Felicity struggled to subdue the storm of emotions that raged inside her.
How could she have taken the man into her bed night after night without ever guessing his true character? She’d thought him quiet, gentle and amiable, not the sort to demand more than she could give him or make a nuisance of himself in her life.
That was part of the reason she’d chosen him as her lover over a number of other candidates who had far more to recommend them. How could she have guessed Mr. Greenwood’s accustomed mild manner masked an iron will that vexed her beyond bearing even as it excited a grudging respect?
The only thing she detested more than being bossed and bullied was being manipulated.
Perhaps some good had come of Oliver’s foolish elopement if it had opened her eyes to aspects of Thorn Greenwood’s temperament that she had either overlooked or willfully ignored. Now she could cast him off without any troublesome qualms of guilt.
Glancing out the window, Felicity spied the highwayman. Now that she got a good look at him in the belittling light of day, she could see he was no more than a spotty-faced youth. Damn his callow hide for giving her such a fright!
His hands were tied and bound to the pommel of his saddle. He appeared to be pleading with Thorn not to turn him in.
Quite against her will, a twinge of pity tugged at Felicity. The lad would almost certainly hang for his petty crimes—mischief that had probably sprung from some rash devilment of youth with no pause to consider the consequences. Just the kind of impulse that had propelled her to the altar with Percy Lyte at that age.
At least she’d survived her youthful mistake and learned from it. Felicity forced herself to look away. She gave a start when she discovered the innkeeper hovering nearby.
“We have a room ready for you, Lady Lyte.” He beckoned her toward the staircase. “Nothing grand, but it’s a quiet one at the back of the house. If you mean to rest, you’ll not be disturbed by noise from the road.”
“Thank you, Mr. Mobley.” Felicity smothered a yawn. “I could do with a nap.”
Even before she’d set out from Bath last night, she’d found herself unaccountably weary during the day. Now she could scarcely keep her eyes open.
“A very agreeable gentleman, that Mr. Greenwood,” the innkeeper remarked as he led Felicity up the stairs. “You’ll be pleased to welcome him into the family, no doubt.”
“Family?” Were her feelings for Thorn that transparent?
“Aye, ma’am. With your nephew wed to his sister.” The innkeeper glanced back at her with a knowing grin. “Did you and Mr. Greenwood contrive the match, by any chance?”
Felicity resisted an urge to laugh. “Quite the contrary, Mr. Mobley.”
Either the innkeeper missed her meaning or he pretended to. “A love match, was it, then? Can’t say it surprises me to hear it. A body could tell just by watching the way she hung on his every word.”
Just as she had once paid such rapt attention to Percy Lyte? The thought made Felicity wince. It also made her wonder what had drawn the vivacious Miss Greenwood to a quiet young man like her nephew, if not the fortune he stood to inherit.
“Here we are ma’am.” The innkeeper halted before the last door along the passageway and pushed it open for her. “Shall I send the wife up with a tray of breakfast for you?”
Just then the scent of food drifted upstairs, sending Felicity’s stomach into rebellion. “Tea and rusks will be fine. I never sleep soundly after a full meal.”
“Tea and rusks.” The innkeeper chuckled to himself, shaking his head. “The wife lived on ’em when she was breeding.”
When he realized what he’d said, the poor man went as red as a radish. “Tea and rusks. Tea and rusks, indeed. I’ll have them sent up directly, ma’am. Be sure to ring if you need anything else.”
“I’m sure I’ll be quite comfortable, Mr. Mobley, as always.” Felicity found herself only slightly less flustered than the innkeeper.
She ducked into the room, barely resisting the urge to slam the door behind her. “He didn’t mean anything by it,” she whispered to herself as she wilted onto the bed. “He can’t possibly have guessed.”
Though she knew it was true, the innkeeper’s offhand remark had unnerved her all the same. In some curious manner, it suddenly made her condition more real to her.
A baby was growing in her womb—the child she had longed for and despaired of ever bearing. In some ways this would be even better than if she’d borne Percy’s child, for this little one would not carry all the dynastic ambitions of the Lyte family. It would be hers, and hers alone, to raise and to love. To nurture and protect.
The intense conflicting emotions of the past few days slowly loosened their grip on her as Felicity pictured herself launching a toy sailboat with a small boy, holding a little girl on her lap while they played a duet on the pianoforte. She would finally know the untainted joy of childhood that had eluded her during her own youth.
Then her dream child turned its sweet young face toward Felicity, lavishing her with the tender, earnest gaze of Thorn Greenwood.
Chapter Six
Felicity’s eyelids fluttered, then slowly opened.
On his seat by the door, Thorn fought to keep his own eyes from sliding shut. He had stolen into this room at the King’s Arms some little while ago to let Felicity know he’d returned from his errand in Berkeley and to advise her they ought to set off for Gloucester soon.
When he’d found her fast asleep on the bed, all soft and loose-limbed, he could not bring himself to wake her. Instead, he’d subsided onto the one chair these modest quarters afforded and drunk in the delicious sight of her.
Now she opened her eyes and looked back at him.
In that first hazy moment of waking, her gaze fixed on Thorn with the promise of a thousand springtimes shining in her eyes. Some dry, wizened bulb, buried deep in the loam of his practical heart unclenched itself then, sending a slender green shoot straining toward the sun’s life-giving warmth.
If he hadn’t been half-asleep himself just then, Thorn would have known that soft look was a mistake, a passing fancy too sweet to last. Just like everything else about his romance with Felicity Lyte.
In the space of a heartbeat, her eyes widened and she sat up on the bed with a gasp.
“What are you doing here?” One hand raised to her bosom, as if to quiet a thundering heart. “How long have you been sitting there?”
Her tone, sharp with…hostility?…fear? sliced through the fragile sensation that had begun to blossom inside Thorn.
He might have barked out a sharp reply, but he was too weary. “Don’t look so alarmed. I was just watching over you while you slept. I haven’t been here above half an hour. I meant to wake you, but you looked so peaceful I hated to disturb you.”
He neglected to mention how hard he’d fought the urge to stretch out beside her on the narrow bed. If she’d woken to find him there, she might well have boxed his ears.
Perhaps it would have been worth it, though.
His soft answer did appear to turn away Felicity’s wrath. She rubbed her eyes and stretched, pulling the muslin bodice of her traveling gown tight against her breasts. The palms of Thorn’s hands and his fingertips tingled with the physical memory of touching her bare body.
He reached up to loosen his neck linen which had grown tight all of a sudden.
Felicity fixed him with a gaze that lay somewhere between her first soft look and the hard emerald glare she’d fired at him when she’d come fully awake. “Did you manage to get our juvenile criminal properly disposed of?”
“In a manner of speaking.” Thorn braced himself for a row he felt too tired to fight. “You got a good look at the young bounder, I take it. Barely old enough to shave.
His pistol wasn’t even loaded.”
“You let him go?” Felicity rubbed her eyes harder and stared at Thorn as if wondering whether she might be dreaming.
“Of course not.” How could she imagine he’d ever do such a thing? “The fool boy committed a serious crime, robbing and frightening people like that. All the same, I hadn’t the stomach to let him swing for it.”
“What did you do?”
“The local regiment was recruiting in Berkeley this week. I gave the young scoundrel a choice of being turned over to the magistrate or enlisting in His Majesty’s infantry. They need every man they can get if General Wellington is to put a stop to that troublesome Bonaparte fellow once and for all. The lad had sense enough to choose the army.”
Felicity sprang from the bed and flew toward Thorn. He prepared to defend himself yet again.
But what was this? Instead of the blow he’d expected, her arms went around his neck. She pressed her lips to his in a kiss quite different from any she’d previously given him.
The others—light and teasing, deep and sensual or fierce and hot—had all been exclusive to their lovemaking. This one had an intriguing air of innocence, beneath which Thorn sensed a greater depth of feeling.
A sweet, soft warmth infused him from head to toe, as though he’d tossed back a large snifter of distilled sunshine.
When Felicity finally let him go, looking almost as shocked as he by what she’d done, Thorn recovered his breath enough to ask, “What on earth was that for?”
As soon as he found out, he’d be sure to do it again.
“That…” She bestowed a gossamer kiss on his brow. “…was for being such a wise, compassionate man.”
If he’d been half as wise as Felicity seemed to think him, Thorn would have held his tongue. But something in her kiss set free the question that had throbbed in his heart for the past few days.
He reached out to graze the tips of his fingers against hers. “If I’m such a paragon, what made you so anxious to be rid of me all of a sudden?”
Flinching as though he had struck her, Felicity looked vulnerable in a way he had never seen her. The shadowy compound of wariness and regret that glistened in her eyes almost made Thorn wish he hadn’t spoken.
