* * *
“Jasper,” Thomasina said, her voice muffled against Jasper’s wrinkled shirt, muted by the pounding of his heart as he lay across her body, trembling.
He didn’t move and she pushed gently. “Jasper,” she repeated.
He looked down at her, his eyes widening. All his fear was plain on his face then. But so was his love. He’d said he loved her, a sentence shouted in the heat of the moment, perhaps. But now that she looked into his eyes, she knew it was true.
“Are you unharmed?” he asked as he rolled off of her, pushed to his feet and helped her up. She stretched and smoothed her hands across her body, checking herself for injury and finding only a few bruises from hitting the floor.
“I’m fine,” she reassured him, but then the reality of what had just happened hit her. She relived that awful moment when Maitland had fallen and the gun had fired. “He could have shot you,” she whispered, and fell against his chest.
He smoothed his fingers through her tangled hair. “But he didn’t, love. You saved me. We saved each other. I’m fine now, please don’t cry.”
She lifted her head from his chest and stared up into his beautiful face. “I didn’t know he’d be here. I thought I was safe when I came down to look at the trunks. I thought it would keep you from having to relive more unhappy memories.”
He nodded. “I know. And why would you know? How would you possibly think that Maitland would return to search this place again? He must have been truly desperate.”
She sucked a breath. “He was. Not mad, but there is more to this story than we know. He’s not what I expected. And Jasper, I don’t think he knows where my sister is. When I asked about Anne, he said something about the last time he saw her, like it had been a while.”
“Then she might have escaped him,” Jasper said. “That would partly explain his reaction. His plan was falling apart.”
She clutched her fingers against his chest. “She might try to come home.”
“I hope so,” he said, and put an arm around her to guide her out of the building. Reynolds was coming down the path, and Jasper lifted a hand. “Anything?” he called out.
Reynolds shook his head. “He had a horse waiting. He was gone through your gate before I could mount to make chase. Luckily the guard was coming in just as I began my exit. I turned them back to follow him, but he’s long gone, I think.”
“Go manage them then. We’ll be up in a moment,” Jasper called out. When he had disappeared over the hill, he turned her to face him in the path. “I want to talk to you about what happened a moment ago.”
She flinched. He was talking about his confession of love to her, said at the most heated of moments. It was possible he wished to take it back, even if he meant it. To rebuild those walls he constantly kept up to protect himself. But she couldn’t let him. Not ever again.
“Please don’t say you didn’t mean those words,” she said, lifting her gaze to him. “Because I love you, Jasper. I have loved you probably from the first moment I met you all those months ago. Even when I knew I shouldn’t, even when you were my sister’s fiancé, I loved you. And today I came painfully close to losing you. So I won’t ever hold my declarations back again and I hope you won’t either.”
He stared at her, blinking in what seemed like utter shock and disbelief. “You—you loved me all along?”
“Of course I did,” she said with a laugh.
He shook his head. “I suppose after spending most of my life either watching love be twisted into something ugly or avoiding the pain it might cause, I am not adept at recognizing it. I never dared to hope that you could love me from the beginning.”
“Well, I do. I know that love is frightening to you. I know why it would be so, considering what you went through. But you can’t run from it all your life. It is too powerful and lovely and beautiful to avoid.”
“You think I’d like to avoid it?” he asked. “Avoid what I declared to you?”
“Under duress, and now you might be trying to think of a gentlemanly way to take it back, even if you might mean it deep in your heart.” She touched his face.
“Now it is you who is blind to the truth.” He turned into her hand and kissed her. “What I was going to say, wife, was that the last way I wanted to admit my feelings for you was in a moment that might have been our last together. But I knew I would say those words to you. I’ve known for some time, actually, that my heart belonged to you.”
Her mouth dropped open at that easy confession, not hindered by drama or withholding or fear as she’d thought it might be. “You have?”
“Yes. And like you, it probably began happening the moment I was introduced to you. You have become the greatest light in my darkness, the path that leads me home, the person I wish to see first in the morning and last before sleep steals me. You are my heart and my life. And that has nothing to do with duress. It is just the truth. You have bewitched me and I have never been so happy to surrender to a spell in my life.”
She blinked. “I am having such a hard time with this. I thought I would have to fight you and draw you to me and convince you that love is worth having and sharing.”
“Well, you could still do that if you’d like.” He smiled. “I would very much enjoy being the recipient of all your focused lessons on love.”
He leaned down to kiss her. The kiss was brief and shockingly chaste, but no kiss before had ever been sweeter. No kiss had ever been so powerful. Because no kiss had ever been given or received with the knowledge of her heart and of his. So it was like the first kiss, and he reveled in it before he drew away.
“We must go back to the house now. There will be the guard to manage and the household to calm,” he said. “We will be expected to be the earl and the countess now, but I want you to know two things.”
They began to walk and she rested her head on his shoulder with a content sigh. “And what are those?”
“First, that I will put every resource into uncovering your sister. I’m certain she must be trying to get back to us. I’ll send for you father and Juliana. They’ve probably only just reached Gretna Green and they need to be on the lookout for her if she’s trying to go home by road. Hell, I’ll go to Scotland myself if I must, and knock door to door on every path that might lead Anne to us.”
“You would do that for the woman who left you almost at the altar?”
He glanced down at her. “No, for the woman who met me there instead.”
She turned her face to his and brushed her mouth to his cheek. “And what is the second thing?”
“That once we clear all these interlopers out, once we start all my resources onto the task of finding Anne, I plan to take you upstairs and prove my love to you. Without words. For as many hours as we can both stand.”
They had reached the top of the hill now, and he was correct that the drive teemed with strangers and servants all talking at once. Looking for a leader. Looking for her husband.
“I cannot wait,” she whispered as they moved toward them. “And to prove the same to you.”
Chapter 27
Two Days Later
Thomasina looked up from the brimming plate of breakfast delights and smiled as her husband entered the room. An expression that fell when she saw his long face.
“What is it?” she asked. “Word from Reynolds?”
“No,” he said, and set a slim folded sheet of paper before her. “From Anne.”
She yelped out a cry and jumped to her feet, tearing open the seal. She scanned the words and then read them out loud:
My dearest Thomasina, Juliana and Father,
I must start by saying I am unharmed. I made a foolish mistake in believing the words of a charlatan, but I have been punished for it, I promise you. I am safe now and will be returning to Lord Harcourt’s estate by Tuesday. I hope I will be welcomed. I love you all so much.
Your Foolish Anne.
She handed the letter over to Jasper as she clutched her hands to her heart in
relief and joy. “She is coming home!” she burst out. “My sister is unharmed and she is coming home!”
Jasper frowned as he folded the letter. “And it seems she has a tale to tell. There is no direction on the envelope, so I cannot take you to intercept her. But Tuesday is tomorrow—we will see her soon, assuming she will be on time.”
“And Juliana and my father will be here this afternoon, so we will all be here to greet her.” She blinked at tears. “I cannot wait to touch her and know she is real and whole.”
He reached out and brushed her cheek with his fingertips. “I understand entirely.”
She stepped into his arms and held him as her joy overflowed within her. Joy that Anne would be home safely soon. Joy that she had found so much love in the midst of chaos and helplessness.
“Reynolds did send word earlier,” he murmured into her hair. “He has lost Maitland’s trail. He’s still out there. But I promise you I will keep you safe.”
She pulled back enough to look up into his eyes. “We’ll keep each other safe,” she whispered. “Forever.”
“Forever,” he repeated, and then he kissed her.
Epilogue
Ellis Maitland stood in the copse of trees at the western edge of the Harcourt estate, watching as two horses entered the long drive toward the house in the distance. He recognized one rider immediately and his stomach clenched. His cousin, Rook Maitland, was in the lead. And the other was Anne Shelley.
So his plans had been foiled, though he couldn’t say he was entirely disappointed. Taking Anne had been the most unpleasant bit of trickery he had ever pulled off. Seeing the terror of her sister a few days before made it clear what a villain he was.
But he needed the treasure Harcourt had. He needed it. If he didn’t find it, others would be harmed. Just as innocent. Someone would die and it would be Ellis’s fault. So as distasteful as he found the entire endeavor, he couldn’t stop.
He wouldn’t stop.
Not until he had the prize that would free him from a prison of his own making.
Excerpt of A Reckless Runaway
The Shelley Sisters, Book 2
Preorder Now - Available February 4, 2020
Anne’s hands shook, but she gripped them into fists as she reached the end of the dock and what seemed like a very small boat. An older gentleman was sitting in the back near the oars. He had a glowing lantern on a hook mounted beside him, and he was glaring at her and her new companion through the fog as if he had schedules to keep and they were intruding upon them.
“Good evening,” she squeaked in his direction.
He glared harder and she dipped her head as terror overcame her. She was in danger. That was clear. She had been in danger from the moment she slipped from the warmth of her fiancé’s home and took off on this madcap adventure.
Perhaps she’d been in danger even earlier than that, when she’d first agreed to meet with Ellis even though she knew it was wrong to do so.
And now here she was in God knew where, watching a handsome stranger with an odd nickname get onto a rickety rowboat. He set her bag down none too gently and then pivoted back to stare at her. He extended a hand slowly to help her on board.
She glanced back down the dock, toward where she’d last seen Ellis. Somehow she’d thought to find him in the milling crowd, watching to determine she’d safely gotten on the craft. But he was gone.
She shuddered and turned back to the boat, staring at Rook’s extended fingers for a moment. That rough hand, big and calloused from work, could be attached to a murderer for all she knew. He could be a great many terrible things and have a great many terrible plans in store for her. And yet what choice did she have but to go with him?
“Stupid girl,” she admonished herself beneath her breath as she took the hand he offered.
She wasn’t wearing gloves, she’d forgotten them in her excitement to escape on this adventure gone wrong. When her palm touched his, she felt a thrill of something, a hiss of awareness that shot up her arm and through her body.
She stepped into the boat and snatched her hand away as she settled onto one of the hard benches in the middle of the boat. Rook Maitland took the one facing her. He was so big, his knees pushed into her space and their legs almost touched no matter how far back she tried to tuck them. She huffed out a breath at this new invasion and tried with all her might to make her mind go somewhere else. Anywhere else but here.
Only it wasn’t so easy. Not when her mind kept taking her back to her family. She had to assume that Thomasina would have returned to her chamber after the ball. She would have found the letter Anne had left. The one filled with hopes for a future with Ellis that now seemed so faded and far away and foolish. What would her sister have thought? What would Juliana think? Would they be able to manage their father’s outrage together? Would Harcourt’s fury lead to untold punishments against them?
She bent her head as the consequences of her selfish action washed over her like the bouncing waves that occasionally crested over the edge of the boat as they rowed farther into the heart of the Irish Sea. In the dark.
She lifted her head and found Rook Maitland watching her. He was hardly more than a shadow outline in their captain’s lantern light, but his dark gaze glittered as he held it on her.
“How far must we go?” she asked as the sea bobbed heavier.
He was silent for what felt like an eternity, but at last he grunted, “It will be a few hours, yet. It’s a long row to Scotland.”
Her eyes widened. Scotland? She had thought that idea was abandoned when Ellis sent her off with this man. But if they were crossing the sea after all, perhaps that meant Ellis wasn’t the villain he had seemed to be. Perhaps he would return for her after all and this could be resolved just as she’d planned from the beginning.
She clung to that hope and nodded. “What town?” she asked.
“You have a great many questions,” her companion said softly. “Why didn’t you ask Ellis about his plans for you, as he is your love?”
She bit back the retort that she didn’t love Ellis and shrugged. “I thought I knew the plan,” she said. “So I didn’t ask. And here we are.”
He nodded slowly. “Yes. Here you are.”
She realized he hadn’t answered her question about the town, but she was too exhausted to ask again. She would find out soon enough, she supposed. And if he was reticent to share with her, perhaps that was for the best. He wasn’t going to be her companion for very long. It was probably best that an unmarried lady didn’t attach herself too strongly to a very handsome cousin of her intended. People would talk, wouldn’t they?
God, people would already be talking. She knew that. Her running away was too big a secret to keep, especially with the wedding planned for less than a week from now. When she didn’t appear for it, when it was all canceled, there would be no stopping the tale that would rip through Society.
“You look like you have some regrets, Miss Shelley,” Rook said.
The little boat careened into a wave and Anne gripped at both sides of it, clawing to retain purchase. “No,” she lied. “Of course not. I know what I’m doing.”
But she heard the lilt in her tone, the terror and the pain. His expression didn’t change. If he heard it too, it was clear he didn’t give a damn. But why would he? He’d been sent here to collect her, and he didn’t seem particularly pleased by that.
She wouldn’t give him any more reason to be annoyed, nor to judge her more a fool than he clearly already did. She sat up as straight as she could and did her best to focus on a point just behind him rather than at his handsome, frowning face. Of course that point was the disappearing light of the distant town, of England vanishing into the fog.
And she gritted her teeth as moments bled to almost an hour of rowing through the endless night. At last she shivered as the air pierced her thin wrap and tugged it harder around herself. The boat rolled endlessly on the waves as their captain rowed on, seemingly unfazed by the cold sp
lash of the sea water or the blowing wind that caused the spray to soak her face and hair and clothes.
She would not cry. She would not, even as the fog swirled around her, making her colder than ever.
Rook had been silent during the time they rowed, his gaze fixed behind her, toward whatever their mysterious destination was. But now he suddenly moved, shrugging out of his great coat in one smooth motion. The action revealed a crisp linen shirt beneath that seemed to strain against broad shoulders and chest.
He held the coat out. “Here, you’ll catch your death otherwise.”
She blinked at the offering. His coat, which had just been around him. It seemed very intimate to accept the offer. Too intimate.
His brow wrinkled. “Take it before it loses its body heat.”
Body heat. She inwardly groaned, but it was too cold to argue. She took the woolen coat, sliding her arms into the sleeves and fastening it around her waist. It dwarfed her, for he was far bigger than she was. The sleeves came over her hand by at least a few inches and it was more like a shapeless cloak around her shoulders than a fitted coat like it had been on his.
But it was warm. He was right about that. She felt his body heat curl around her like his arms were there. And his scent lingered on the woolen fabric. It was a nice scent. Something woodsy and clean and masculine.
Once again her stomach clenched with an awareness she shouldn’t have felt, and she bent her head as she muttered, “Thank you.”
He didn’t respond, but nodded, and his focus shifted away from her again. She glanced at him now that he wasn’t looking at her. He had a hard line to his very defined jaw and an equally tight quality to his clamped lips. They were full, though. She could tell that despite the annoyance that lined his face.
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