The Stolen Bride

by Brenda Joyce

  “Whatever it is that you want…I cannot give it to you now. Stop looking at me!” he cried desperately.

  “I can’t. You must know how much I missed you and how much I love you.” The moment she had mistakenly confessed her feelings, she flushed.

  His eyes went wide, half fury, half surprise. His voice became a croak. “Go back to Sinclair… Eleanor…. Your future is in England. Your future is with him.”

  “Now it’s not. It’s with you, in America, or wherever it is that you decide to go!”

  He was shaking, but so was she. “You’re so stubborn…headstrong…a brat! I’d forgotten how impossible…you can be.”

  “And you are wasting your time trying to convince me that you are some kind of criminal, some kind of terrible man!” But his words had hurt her immensely. Did he really see her as a spoiled brat? Had she deluded herself into believing that he saw her as a woman—a woman he wanted?

  A hard cold mask settled over his face. “But I am a criminal…I am a murderer…an outlaw.”

  She shook her head. “Why are you doing this? Do you want me to be afraid of you?”

  “You should be afraid of me,” he said, his gaze slamming to her mouth, his entire body shaking.

  And then there was simply no more room for doubt. His look was male, potent and hot. It was crude and base, but clear. And now she understood his tremors—they were the tremors of desire. She didn’t think, but reacted, reaching for him slowly, taking his hand, raising it to his face, his mouth. “I don’t care that soldiers died because of you. I don’t care that you were in prison and that you escaped and are a fugitive now. I will never be afraid of you, Sean.”

  “Then you’re a fool,” he said harshly. He pulled her hand away from his mouth but held it tightly between them and her knuckles brushed his chest. “When will you understand? Sean is gone. But I’m here. You can call yourself Elle…or Eleanor, I don’t care. I’ve been locked up for two years. Tempting me now…is not a good idea. You need to be afraid of me. You need to be afraid of me now.”

  It was a moment before she actually understood his meaning. And because his eyes were blazing, and she saw the wild lust there, she shrank. “Oh my God! Are you trying to tell me that you have no feelings for me—that you simply need to use a woman, any woman, right now?”

  He stared and then, his mouth firming, his eyes hardening, he nodded. “Yes.”

  His cruelty cut her like a knife. “I don’t believe you,” she gasped. He could not have changed so much. “You would never use me. You would die before using me.”

  His grasp on her hand tightened painfully and for one moment, she was in shock. Had he turned into a complete and frightening stranger after all? But all he did was slide his gaze over her dark brown riding habit as if stripping it away from her body. “Sean would die first,” he said softly, his meaning clear.

  “No.” She didn’t try to pull free from him because every instinct she had told her that she would not succeed. “You may be a traitor but you are not a monster. I don’t know why you want me to think otherwise, but I refuse.”

  He released her and gave her a hard, angry look.

  She turned and walked away from him, more shaken than he could know. She couldn’t breathe—but she would never believe that Sean would hurt her. He had been her protector, her savior, her friend. But he had changed, after all. The question was, how much, and how irrevocable was it? She leaned against a tree, panting. For a moment, if she dared to be honest with herself, she hadn’t been certain what he would do. She wanted Sean O’Neill to desire her, to make love to her; she always would. And she was determined to get rid of that felon who had taken Sean over.

  He was suddenly standing behind her.

  Eleanor tensed but did not move.

  An interminable moment passed before he spoke to her back. His breath feathered her nape, her ear. “I meant it. You need to be afraid…and you need to go.”

  She fought for air. She fought for him, for them. “I am not afraid of you, Sean. And if you want me that way, it is because I am both Elle and Eleanor, not because you are a felon in dire need of a woman.”

  He made a harsh sound. “You need…to give up.”

  She turned and found them face-to-face, his chest inches from hers. “I am not giving up on you.”

  His eyes flickered.

  But it still took courage to lift her hand. She caressed the scar on his cheek to prove to him that he had not succeeded in chasing her away. “You don’t bite, after all. I know you better than you know yourself.”

  He jerked his face away from her hand. “You’re crying…again.”

  She hadn’t realized. She let her hand fall to her side. “You’re hurting—and I hurt, too, when I look at you.”

  “I don’t want your pity!” he exclaimed.

  “I don’t pity you. I ache for you and all you have been through. And when you will let me, I will comfort you.”

  “I won’t be here,” he said darkly.

  Very carefully, she met his gaze. How could she reach him? Not the man he was insisting that he had become, but the man he really was? “Do you remember the first time I fell off that Welsh pony, the old sorrel?”

  Watching his face, she saw his eyes light up.

  He remembered, she thought, thrilled. “I was so insulted that he wouldn’t take that log. I wanted to show off my horsemanship but I was only four or five years old.”

  Sean looked away, his gaze blank now. “I don’t remember.”

  He had remembered—she knew it. “I tried to make him jump the log and instead, he was nasty and he stopped. I flew right over his head.”

  Sean walked away from her, his body rippling with his every step. Then he muttered, “I recall that pony. He was too old to jump a blade of grass, much less a log.”

  She had to laugh. “Yes, he was. I adored him.”

  He turned, his mouth suddenly soft. “Yes, you did.” He stopped.

  She just looked at him.

  He said, very deliberately, “There’s no point in discussing the past.”

  She disagreed. He had been smiling, maybe not visibly but in his heart, and she had felt it.

  “You used to call me Weed, which I hated, and you used to box my ears when I was truly annoying and chase me through the entire house.”

  “I don’t remember any of it,” he said, the muscles in his jaw flexing

  “Once, I hid in the attics. You couldn’t find me! Suppertime came and there was an uproar downstairs. Father was furious because I was missing.” She almost laughed. “He was furious with you, Sean, when I was the culprit. You were punished— I think he took your hunter away for a week. I was patted and stroked and hugged and kissed when I finally came out of my hiding place.”

  “You were six years old and you had everyone eating out of your hand.”

  “So you can remember the past, when you want to.”

  “But I don’t want to remember…any part…of it!” He was angry now. And his words were becoming thick.

  She went still. His anguish was obvious. “Let me help you.”

  “You have helped. You brought food…clothes.”

  “You have never needed me more,” she said with utter determination. “I will not abandon you now, when you are in so much trouble.”

  He suddenly looked sharply at her and she realized her choice of words had been too literal. Because she could feel all of his needs now. Having grown up with three very virile brothers, a virile stepbrother and Sean, she understood that a man’s needs were very different from her own—they were far more consuming. And a terrible plan came to mind.

  “Maybe I do remember calling you Weed. I also used to call you Brat.” He paced the clearing.

  “Now you are changing the subject.” She swallowed.

  “We can continue to rehash the past tonight. I had better return to the house before I am truly missed.”

  His face closed off even more. “It’s not the best of ideas…. I had better
stay in the woods…. I can travel by night.”

  She was alarmed. “No!” She rushed to him. “Sean, there is so much to discuss! So much has happened while you were gone! Don’t you want to hear about Tyrell’s marriage? And Gallant is a champion. Do you remember him? He was a gawky foal when you left! Sean—you can bathe. In hot, sudsy water. I’ve already arranged for a meal—there’s pheasant, ham and cod, salmon and roasted guinea hen. There’s a Burgundy wine you will love!”

  He was pale. “You think to bribe me?”

  “If that is what it takes,” she said grimly.

  “I am tempted…but my answer is no. I am leaving…and I am not coming back.”

  Very carefully, she grasped his hand. He started; she ignored it. She had never been more determined. “Did you mean what you said earlier? Have you really been celibate for two years?” she asked softly.

  He jerked away. “What the hell?”

  She felt thick and heavy inside of her body now. “I think you were fourteen when you had your first mistress. I know—I spied.”

  His face was rigid. “You would know…you were spying…as always.”

  “And from that moment on, there were so many light skirts.” She was hoarse. Her pulse had slowed. “Two years? I can’t imagine you being without a lover for so long.” She had stepped outside of herself. Somehow, she was a seductress with the most ancient allure of all.

  He was flushing now and he was also rigid. “Why are you doing this?”

  “How did you manage? Did you dream about a lover?” she whispered, her cheeks hot. “At night, could you feel a woman’s touch, her soft body?”

  He just stared at her, but his silver eyes burned.

  “Maybe it was my body that you dreamed of, my touch,” she murmured.

  He flinched.

  “You know how I feel about you,” she whispered.

  “So come to the house tonight, Sean, because I will take care of you.”

  And she knew she had succeeded, because his hunger was there between them, huge and rising.

  CHAPTER SIX

  SEAN HAD THE SAME DREAM every night. He’d had the same dream so many times that he knew he was dreaming the instant it began, but that did not decrease his panic, his fear, his horror. Paralyzed, he could only watch the events of that bloody night unfold, helpless to prevent the massacre of the villagers and the murders of his wife and her son.

  Peg smiled at him, but the question was always there in her faded eyes: Why don’t you love me, Sean?

  He wanted to go to her and beg her forgiveness and tell her that he did love her, even though it would have been a lie. Circumstance had dictated that he marry her and they had both known it.

  “When will you give me my boat back?” Michael appeared, his skin oddly gray, his hair, once crimson, almost black.

  Sean had punished him that night for being rude to his mother by taking the carved toy away. It had been a gift from his father, a sailor who had disappeared at sea. The small toy remained in his pocket now, even as Sean slept. He was not given a chance to reply.

  The mob of angry villagers appeared and he knew he had to stop them from marching up the road to Lord Darby’s estate. He knew what would happen if they appeared at those iron front gates. He knew it because he had been there, not just three years ago on that bloody night, but as a child, the day his own father had led a similar mob against the British. He tried to tell them that no good could come of this but his voice wasn’t working—he couldn’t get the words out. His panic escalated. He tried to seize the arm of Boyle, Peg’s father, but he didn’t seem to notice. He tried to seize Flynn, but he vanished before his very eyes and the estate was burning, the soldiers were there, and he was there, his dagger in the gut of a redcoat, a boy really, and then the boy looked at him, meeting his regard, the question there unspoken, why? And when Sean laid him down he was looking up into the blazing blue eyes of a British officer. Colonel Reed was staring at him with hatred.

  Sean understood what Reed intended. He tried to chase him, but the officer was galloping away and he could not catch up. The days passed by him and he was still running madly to the cottage where he was hiding his family, and even as he ran, he knew what he would find and he was sick with dread and desperation. Too late, he was there, but the house was an inferno, too late, he screamed for them both, but Michael was nowhere to be found and when he found Peg, he held her as she lay dying….

  Sean cried out, sitting up, sweat pouring down his body.

  For one moment, he was somewhere else, in the midlands in a small, starving village just a few miles from Kilvore. For one moment, there was smoke and fire, shouts and retreating hoofbeats and he choked, sobbing over his dying wife and their lost child. He gasped for air.

  Sanity returned, and with it, reason and reality. He was not back in Kilvore. He was not beside the burning inferno where his wife had died. He shoved to his feet. He was standing alone in the woods. The horse he had stolen yesterday in Cork was grazing some short distance away, hobbled so he could not wander.

  Sean was trembling violently and he knew he could not stop it. He could only wait for the tremors to pass. He walked to the edge of the glade, knelt and vomited.

  He sat back on his heels, closing his eyes, recalling that he was at Adare. His home—the home where he had been raised from the time he was eight years old—was on the other side of the woods. In that huge house was the earl, whom he loved as a father, his mother, his brother and stepbrothers.

  He stood. Elle was there, too.

  But she wasn’t Elle anymore. His gut tightened, his heart lurched. The panic came, and it was so huge that he couldn’t even try to deny it to himself.

  She had become a beautiful woman, a woman he barely recognized. But she was still stubborn and fearless, even if the skinny child had vanished. He could insist to himself that it was natural for him, in his celibate state, to be responding to her body, her beauty. But he hadn’t really noticed any of the women he’d passed on the streets in Cork. Even the cobbler’s pretty daughter had evinced only a vague and passing interest.

  He had meant every word when he had told her that she should be afraid of him. He wanted her to fear him, his lust and the British who were after him—he wanted to chase her away. He hated the way she looked at him. He hated that she seemed to love him still, perhaps more so than ever. But she had refused to be frightened and she did not seem to be running away. Worse, she had offered him her bed.

  Maybe he was the one who was afraid of her.

  She had offered him her body.

  But he would never accept her offer, even though the mere thought of it increased his arousal. He was not going up to the house tonight, because her offer came with strings. He could try to convince himself that Elle was gone, but she wasn’t. She still worshipped him, and he saw her love every time he looked into her eyes. She might be prepared to give him her body, but she wanted his heart in return.

  And that was never going to happen.

  Even though he was certain Sean O’Neill was dead and buried, some part of him remained, because he couldn’t use her, even if he desperately wanted to. And it was only in part because she now belonged to another man. He did not want to hurt her more than he already had.

  Besides, he was leaving and she was marrying the other man. God, he hated Sinclair! Yet he had known from the moment he was old enough to understand the politics of dynasties that Elle would marry a title and, if possible, a fortune. And he felt as if he might explode out of his skin. He had the frantic urge to stop the wedding. Worse, his body raged to accept her damnable offer and take her to bed. He could not understand himself anymore.

  Instead, Sean fought the inexplicable anger. It was a very good match, in spite of Sinclair being an Englishman. He was going to America anyway. And there was no possible way that she was coming with him. Because they would chase him and if he were caught and she was there, she might suffer the same fate as Peg.

  He knelt and vomited aga
in.

  Where had that notion come from? He wondered, feeling dizzy now as he leaned against a tree. He wasn’t taking Elle with him because he wasn’t rotten enough to make her a mistress and he would never take another wife. He wasn’t taking Elle with him because she deserved her titled heir and his fortune and a future filled with peace.

  I am coming with you.

  I want to go hunting, too!

  Sean tensed. A memory he did not want to entertain threatened him.

  IN BRAIDS AND DRESSED for riding, she was glaring and stomped her foot. He sighed. He had known this would happen if she ever learned that they were going hunting for two days. He had begged Tyrell not to mention their hunting expedition to her. This particular week he hadn’t been able to shake her from his trail for more than a few minutes. “You’re nine years old and you are a girl, even if you seem to wish you were a boy. You’re not coming with us,” he said firmly.

  “Yes, I am,” she said, stamping her foot again. “And so what if I wish I were a boy? Being a girl is stupid! I hate dolls. I like hunting! I like fishing! I like worms! I’m not too young— Father took you hunting when you were nine!”

  “How would you know? You were a baby then.” Annoyed, he turned and started to leave his room. She followed.

  “I asked him, and he told me.”

  He stopped in his tracks and she crashed into his back. “Has anyone ever told you that you are too clever for your own good? You’re not coming, Elle. If you’re not careful, you might turn into a boy—and then you will die an old maid!”

  She began to cry. “I hate being a girl! I hope I turn into a boy so I can be just like you.”

  There was no reply to make to that. Worse, he was feeling sorry for her and guilty for being cruel, so he rolled his eyes and left. Amazingly, a few hours later, as the hunting party set out, there was no sign of Elle. He wondered if it was possible that she had given up, but he highly doubted it. Was she sulking in her room? Was she still crying? His heart stirred. Her tears were usually a matter of theatrics, but he hated it when she cried anyway.

  A few hours later, they were many miles from Adare. They had stopped to rest, water the horses and take some refreshments. Sean had actually forgotten about Elle as Cliff was regaling them with the story of his latest conquest—the lady being half a dozen years his senior and the bride of one of Father’s elderly friends. But then Elle’s fat red pony wandered into the makeshift camp and he was without his rider.