by Anna Bradley
She eyed the entryway just below her. Every doctor, nurse, and servant in Oakwood Asylum seemed to be gathered there. She was obliged to wait for some time, one eye on the staff milling about and the other locked fearfully on the front door, dreading the moment when Ciaran would burst through it.
After a long, torturous, breathless wait, a bell rang. It seemed to be some sort of signal to the staff, because within minutes they’d all dispersed, some down corridors and others up the stairs. Fortunately, none of them spotted Lucy quivering behind a half-closed door.
Once the sound of footsteps faded, Lucy took a deep breath, threw her shoulders back…
And fled.
If anyone called after her, she didn’t hear them. If anyone chased her, she didn’t notice them. She simply ran, as fast as her legs could carry her, a muttered prayer on her lips.
Down the final set of stairs and across the entryway, her one stockinged foot slipping over the slick marble floor, and through the door. Once she was outside she skidded around the corner, heading blindly for the side of the drive where she’d last seen Ciaran, and…
Flew straight into his arms.
“Ciaran.” She hurled herself against him and clung to him tighter than she’d ever clung to anything in her life. She couldn’t speak, couldn’t look at him, could hardly breathe, but she pressed her face into his chest, dragging in great gulps of him, the dark, rich scents of wood and leather.
“Lucy. Thank God.” He didn’t say anything more, but he was trembling as he gathered her against him and buried his face in her hair.
She could have held him like that for hours, days, a lifetime, but the front drive of the Oakwood Asylum wasn’t the place to bare her heart to him.
They had to get away at once. Uncle Jarvis’s carriage still lingered in the drive. There was no sign of Bexley, thank goodness, but either of them could appear any moment. Lucy didn’t intend to be there when they did.
Ciaran seemed to come to this realization at the same time she did. Without a word he led her toward the trees and lifted her onto his horse. He mounted behind her and wrapped a muscular arm around her waist. “Lean back on me,” he murmured, his warm breath drifting over her cheek.
Lucy didn’t argue. Why should she? There was no other place in the world she’d rather be. So, she snuggled closer, her back pressed against his chest. Then she closed her eyes, and let her hero take her away.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Under the best of circumstances, it was a full day’s ride from Maidstone to Windsor. Two people on one horse, both of them dazed and exhausted, weren’t the best of circumstances.
Even so, Ciaran pushed on, riding for hours through the night until his thighs burned and Lucy was a limp bundle of shivering limbs in his arms. It was midnight by the time they reached Sevenoaks, but they only paused long enough to exchange their horse for a carriage. They followed a southern route from there, skirting around London to evade any pursuit by Jarvis.
Ciaran looked over his shoulder the entire time.
It wasn’t until they rode into Windsor that he was able to draw an easy breath. The sun had been peeking over the horizon for an hour or more before he found a tiny inn off the main road and led Lucy upstairs to a small but clean bedchamber tucked under the eaves.
Once again, he asked for one bedchamber only. It wasn’t any more proper now than it had been before, but there was no way Ciaran was letting Lucy out of his sight after what had happened with Jarvis. Even now the villain might be chasing them across Kent, determined to drag her back to that godforsaken asylum. Lucy wouldn’t be safe until they reached Buckinghamshire. He wouldn’t leave her alone until then.
Not even then, if he had his way.
She wouldn’t ever truly be safe from Jarvis until she married. Jarvis was her only male relative. If he got his hands on her again he could have her locked away, regardless of her age.
Ciaran didn’t say so to Lucy. There was no need. She knew the danger as well as he did.
So, he said nothing. In fact, they both remained strangely silent on the subject of a marriage between them. Ciaran wasn’t certain why. His love for her, his wish to marry her never wavered. A plea hung constantly on the edge of his lips, but he didn’t speak it aloud, and Lucy didn’t question him.
In his worst moments, Ciaran took this as a bad sign—proof that Lucy intended to refuse him again, and was building her strength for the inevitable battle between them. In his better moments, he was able to convince himself they were both simply too exhausted to talk.
In his best moments, his heart soared with hope.
The first of these breathtaking moments happened in Windsor, after they’d retired to their bedchamber. There was no chair this time, so Ciaran had made a pallet for himself in front of the hearth with a pillow and a few blankets from the bed. He was removing his boots when Lucy turned from the wash basin, frowning.
“What are you doing, Ciaran?”
“Going to sleep.” Ciaran made an awkward gesture toward the pallet. He certainly wasn’t going to crawl into bed next to her again. It would drive him mad to know her warm, sweet curves were a mere arm’s length away, and not be able to touch her.
And he damn well wouldn’t touch her. Not now, and not ever again unless she was his wife. There would be no gathering her into his arms, no covering her mouth with his, no tasting her soft whimpers and sighs with every breath between them—
“No.” Lucy met his gaze, her chin raised. “You’re exhausted, Ciaran. You’re not sleeping on the floor.”
“Yes, I am. Lucy! Stop it!”
Lucy had darted across the room and was snatching up the pillow and blankets. She tossed them onto the bed, then marched back across the room and took his hand in hers. “Come with me.”
Ciaran didn’t move. “This isn’t a good idea, Lucy. I—”
She quieted him with her fingers against his lips. “Please. I won’t be able to rest otherwise.”
Ciaran closed his eyes against the burning need to kiss her fingertips—take her delicate fingers into his mouth, one by one. He opened them again when she drew her hand away, his anxious gaze darting between Lucy and the bed.
It looked so soft, so tempting. She looked so soft, so tempting. “I don’t think—”
“Well, then there’s no reason to start now.” She tugged him across the bedchamber until his knees hit the edge of the bed, then braced her hands on his chest and gently pushed him down. “Stop being so stubborn, Ciaran.”
“You’re calling me stubborn? I wonder you can say that with a straight face,” he grumbled, but he stretched out on the bed, too exhausted to argue with her.
Too exhausted to do anything else with her, either. Or so he told himself.
“Hush. Close your eyes and go to sleep.” Lucy made her way to the other side of the bed and slid in beside him.
Ciaran’s eyes fell to half-mast, his entire body going hot and tight as she wriggled and squirmed and fussed with her pillow. At last she lay down and nestled into the covers, for all the world as if she’d never been more comfortable in her life.
He wasn’t comfortable. He felt like one of the burning logs trapped in the fireplace.
Hot. Rigid. Moments from bursting into flames.
But he didn’t touch her. He wanted to. God, he wanted to.
Every inch of him ached to gather her against the length of his body until her arms wrapped around his neck and her legs cradled his hips. Instead he lay on his back, arms at his sides, staring at the ceiling with wide-open eyes. His entire body was taut, attuned to her every tiny movement, her every breath and sigh.
Ciaran froze as Lucy turned onto her side, facing him. He could feel her gaze on him, burning every inch of skin it touched. Then she was sliding toward him, closing the slender gap still open between them. Ciaran’s breath caught as her hand landed on his che
st and she nestled her head into the hollow of his shoulder.
It wasn’t a seduction. Within minutes Lucy’s breath evened out and her body relaxed into sleep.
Ciaran’s didn’t. No matter how he tried to convince it otherwise, his body insisted it was indeed a seduction, and it behaved as any young, healthy male body tended to when a warm, inviting female pressed against it.
A warm, inviting female with whom he happened to be madly in love.
It tormented him.
Oh, God. It was the sweetest agony he’d ever experienced. Her soft body molded to his, her hair tickling his chin, her breath on his neck, her scent enveloping him, drowning him. He’d never fall asleep like this, might never sleep again just from the memory of this.
Don’t touch her.
But he was already moving. He wrapped one arm around Lucy and pressed her tightly against him. It wasn’t until he had her in his arms that he slept. Slept, and dreamed. The most tender, heartbreaking dream where Lucy promised to be his, and he spent every night forever after just like this one, with her cradled safely in his embrace.
Ciaran woke much later, and for one groggy moment he thought his dreams had come true. Lucy was beside him, still wrapped in his arms.
Hours had passed. The one window in the tiny room was dark. Ciaran blinked at it, confused, until understanding dawned.
They’d slept the entire day.
He glanced down at her. She was clinging to him, her head on his chest, a handful of his shirt clutched in her fingers. Her face was turned up to his, her eyes wide open. “I wondered when you’d wake. Your stomach has been rumbling for half an hour now.”
She gave him a sweet smile, and Ciaran’s heart melted. Unable to resist, he leaned down and pressed a lingering kiss to her forehead. “Are you hungry?”
She nodded, but she made no move to pull away from him. She seemed perfectly content to remain in his arms. She did loosen her grip on his shirt, then dragged her fingers over the cloth, smoothing it. She did this for a long time, and Ciaran remained as still as he could, hypnotized by the soft stroke of her fingers. He would have stayed with her like this forever, but then one of her fingernails scraped lightly against his chest. He caught his breath, and her hand stilled, as if she’d only just realized she was stroking him.
A flush spread over her cheekbones, and then she did pull away from him.
“Lucy.” He tried to hold onto her, his fingers tightening over hers, but she swung her legs over the side of the bed and rose before he could stop her.
“I’ll ring for a servant.” She escaped to the other side of the room, beyond his reach, and pulled the bell. A serving girl appeared after a short time, and Lucy asked for the fire to be tended and a supper tray brought up.
After the door closed behind the girl, an awkward silence fell.
Lucy wandered aimlessly around the room, darting anxious glances at him, glances he returned with anxious ones of his own. They seemed not to know what to say to each other. There was too much to say, and neither of them knew how to begin.
Or maybe they both knew once they did begin, there would be no going back to who they’d been on that beach in Brighton, when they’d sworn to be friends.
Friends. The idea seemed ludicrous to Ciaran now. He should have known from the start he’d never be able to settle for mere friendship with Lucy. That he’d grow to want her with a soul-deep ache he’d never be free of. He’d already been half in love with her by the time she left Brighton; he just hadn’t known it.
And he’d thought Markham was the oblivious one.
He and Lucy dined in front of the fire, the scrape of their forks across the plates the only sound in the room. It wasn’t awkward, precisely—he and Lucy had spent many moments on the beach in comfortable silence—but the space between them was heavy with unsaid words.
He half-expected her to banish him to the pallet for the night, but when he spread the pillow and blankets across the hard floor in front of the hearth Lucy fetched them back again and returned them to the bed. She didn’t insist he join her—she simply curled up under the coverlet and waited, her dark eyes on his face.
Since there was nowhere else in the world Ciaran wanted to be than tucked into a warm bed beside her, he also didn’t say a word. He simply crossed the room, climbed into the bed, and held out his arms until she nestled against him with a soft sigh, her cheek pressed to his chest.
* * * *
The next morning, they left Windsor before sunrise and pushed relentlessly toward Aylesbury, stopping only briefly to dine and change horses.
It was an eleven-hour journey. By the time they reached Huntington House, the sky had gone dark. Lucy should have been exhausted. Perhaps she was exhausted, but at the same time she was wide awake.
Wide awake, and panicking.
“There’s no reason for you to look as if you’re facing the gibbet, Lucy.” Ciaran frowned as his gaze roamed over her face, lingering on the marks she’d bitten into her lower lip. “My family will welcome you here. They won’t credit any of the rumors about your father, if they’ve even heard them at all.”
“My father?” Lucy had been staring out the window at the grand estate spread out before her, but now she jerked her gaze to Ciaran and a despairing groan left her lips. “I’d forgotten all about that! As if it weren’t bad enough a strange lady appears out of nowhere on their doorstep in the middle of the night, but now there’s a mad father thrown into it, too!” Why, the Marquess of Huntington would likely send her back to Oakwood Asylum without so much as a by-your-leave.
“I wouldn’t say you’re strange. A little unconventional, yes, but not strange.” Ciaran tried a tentative grin, but when he saw the expression on her face he sobered again.
“Are they even expecting us? That is, I know they’re not expecting me, but did you send word you were leaving London?” Lucy asked, twisting a fold of her cloak between her fingers.
Ciaran shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Well, no. That is, there wasn’t time to—”
Lucy closed her eyes and fell back against the seat with another groan. “This couldn’t be worse, Ciaran!”
“Lucy.” Ciaran plucked her wrinkled cloak from her fingers and took her hand in his. “It’s going to be all right, I promise you. Do you truly think I’d bring you here if I didn’t think it would be?”
“I—no. No, of course not.” Lucy clutched at his hand, trying to absorb his warmth into her chilled skin.
Ciaran let her pet and squeeze him as the carriage made its way to the end of the long drive and stopped in front of a set of wide, stone steps. Lucy had regained some of her courage by then, but it fled again when the front door opened and a small group emerged, astonishment plain on their faces.
Lucy gaped at them. Her heart stuttered in her chest, then shuddered into a frantic pounding. There were four of them, and they were…glorious.
Well, not quite that, perhaps, but they were certainly an impressive-looking quartet. The gentlemen were both exceptionally tall and more than exceptionally handsome. The taller, darker gentleman resembled Ciaran. The two ladies were fair-haired, blue-eyed, and both of them far more beautiful than any one lady had a right to be.
Two exquisite china dolls and their majestic giants.
“It’s nearly midnight!” the first giant spluttered. “Who the dev—”
“Hush, Finn.” The lady at his side quieted him with a hand on his arm, then came down the steps and peered into the carriage. “Ah, I thought so! It’s Ciaran!” Her blue eyes lit up, and her lips curved in a delighted smile, but it faded into a puzzled frown when she noticed Lucy. “Ciaran and a…er, a young lady.”
The other three exchanged baffled looks, then hurried down the steps to crowd around the carriage. “What young lady?” The darker-haired giant demanded, poking his head through the carriage window. His eyes widened when he s
aw Lucy. “Well, I’ll be damned. It is a young lady.”
“What sort of young lady?” The younger of the two blondes rose to her tiptoes and tried to see over the giant’s shoulder.
“For God’s sake.” Ciaran rolled his eyes, an expression of affection and exasperation on his face. “If you’d give us room we could come out of the carriage and you can all see for yourselves. Get off, Lach,” he added as he swung the carriage door open and leapt down onto the drive.
Lucy peeked out the window at the circle of strange faces and for one shameful, cowardly moment she shrank back against her seat. But then Ciaran’s face appeared at the open door, and he held out his hand to her with a breathtaking smile that made her heart squeeze inside her chest.
She took his hand. His warm fingers wrapped around hers, and Lucy realized, with that peculiar sort of clarity born from anxiety and exhaustion, that whenever Ciaran offered her his hand, there’d only ever be one choice for her. Since the first moment she’d laid eyes on him, there’d only ever been one thing she wanted to do.
Take it.
He drew her gently forward until she was out of the carriage and standing on the drive. “This,” he said, his blue eyes soft as they caught hers, “is Lady Lucinda Sutcliffe.”
There was no mistaking the pride and affection in his voice, or the way it dropped to a husky murmur when he said her name. Lucy stared at him in wonder, her heart fluttering madly.
One of the gentlemen cleared his throat, and offered Lucy a polite bow. “Lady Lucinda.”
“My brother Finn, the Marquess of Huntington,” Ciaran said, then introduced the rest of his family one by one.
They welcomed her warmly, but Lucy could see they were all astonished at her sudden appearance among them. Still, she gathered her wits and managed proper curtsies for each of them. “How do you do?”
After the introductions they all stood staring at each other. The silence stretched until they were all fidgeting, then finally the marquess asked, “You and Lady Lucinda are betrothed, Ciaran?”
