by Isobel Carr
Gareth took a seat by the wholly inadequate fire in the taproom and nursed his ale, trying—entirely unsuccessfully—to keep his very active imagination away from what was taking place upstairs. The Pig and Whistle’s ale was bitter, but the bite was welcome. It slowly pushed the cold out of the pit of his stomach.
Upstairs, Lady Boudicea was no doubt even now sitting by the fire wearing nothing but his nightshirt. The erotic thrill of it was almost more than he could bear, more than he could face. Temptation incarnate.
If he were wise, he’d send fat Martha up for his greatcoat and spend the night here in the taproom, but there was no lock on the door, and an inn full of hedge birds on a wet night was too dangerous a place to leave Beau alone.
He dropped his head into his hands and massaged his scalp. If he’d taken a carriage rather than riding, he’d have had a way to push on despite the foul weather. If it weren’t pouring rain, they might have journeyed on as well. If. If. If. What was it his grandmother always said? If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.
Gareth pushed his hair back from his face and propped his feet up nearer the fire. As the leather warmed, steam drifted up from his boots in thin trails. His toes began to ache as circulation returned.
They were at least two days from anywhere that she might be safe: London, her brother’s country estate, even his family’s seat, if he were fool enough to take her there and subject her to the machinations of his father. And that was two days in good weather. In the condition the roads were in at the moment, they’d be lucky to make any of those journeys in twice the time.
And what would he say when they arrived at whatever destination they chose? Good morning. So happy to have been of service. Please allow me to restore your sister to your protection.
Her brother would rip his head from his body.
A tiny voice in the back of his mind pointed out that this was all the more reason to simply keep her for himself. Why bother returning her when the punishment would likely be the same? Why bother returning her when it was the very last thing he wanted to do?
His brain ran in circles, the wicked voice prompting him to take what he’d always wanted getting louder by the minute, drowning out common sense and decency. He knew that voice. It was his father’s. Any action could be justified if one were a Sandison of Ashburn. Even if one was only a spare Sandison.
Martha swept by carrying a tray. He rose and followed her up the stairs. They would eat and talk over Beau’s predicament, and then he’d roll himself up in his coat and sleep across the doorway like her dogsbody.
He stepped past the inn’s maid and opened the door. Beau was seated by the fire, combing out her hair. The dull glow was thankfully not enough to turn his nightshirt sheer. The obvious points of her nipples through the fine linen were trial enough.
She pushed her hair aside, curls tumbling down to cover her breasts, droplets of water slowly falling from the tip of each curl to bloom darkly on the linen.
“You can call me up when you’re done, or I can get the dishes back in the morning, sir.” Martha bobbed a quick curtsey and hurried out of the room as the innkeeper bellowed her name from the bottom of the stairs.
Gareth eyed the food on the table. “Looks like some kind of meat pie, mashed parsnips, a very hard loaf of bread, a few small apples, and pitcher of ale.”
Beau stared at him, silent and still, her hands clutching the ivory comb in her lap. Was she afraid of him? That would certainly be an unprecedented first, but then so was everything else about the day.
“Come eat. We’ll muddle through this. I promise you.”
She let her breath out with a slightly giddy laugh. “Of that I’m sure.” She caught her lower lip between her teeth, released it, and sighed. When she stood, he realized that he’d been mistaken about the coals. They provided exactly the requisite amount of light to turn the nightshirt to gossamer.
Gareth sucked in a strangled breath, blood surging through him thickly, pounding in his ears. She was beautiful. Always had been. But the sight of her in his nightshirt infused his blood with a possessive undercurrent that boded ill for his carefully leashed self-control.
Beau swallowed hard, throat working. Panic bubbled up. She could do this. How hard could it be to get a rake such as Gareth Sandison to tumble into bed with her? He was always one small step away from a carnal slip, wasn’t he? She met his gaze and held it, stepping toward him.
She’d make him happy. She’d keep him happy. Whatever it took.
She came to a stop close enough that she could feel the heat of his body through the fine linen of his nightshirt. The eyebrows that she loved so much flexed and rose, the only part of him that hinted at escape.
She put one hand on his chest, fingers splayed out over his heart, curled them in over the edge of his waistcoat, holding on tight. If she let go, she’d lose him. She could feel the tension in him, the way his body coiled for flight.
But instead of pulling away, his hands gripped her hips. His thumbs circled on her hip bones, pushing and pulling the fabric across her skin. Heat flooded through her. She felt warm for the first time in days.
“What are you playing at, brat?” He sounded dazed, not confused but disbelieving.
She opened her mouth to speak but found herself pushing forward, reaching up to kiss him instead. Her hands slid over his shoulders. His locked across the small of her back. Action was almost always the best choice, and if any situation in her life had ever called for boldness, this was it.
His mouth took hers, hot and savage, a forlorn hope of a kiss. She pulled him down to her, one hand locked in his hair. She’d been kissed before, but she’d never been devoured. Had certainly never wanted to respond in kind.
His grip on her tightened, and he dragged his mouth away from hers. “Your brothers will kill me.”
She leaned in, cheek to cheek, lips touching his ear as she spoke. “I won’t let them.” She pressed closer. She could feel his—her mind went blank for a moment, and she forced herself to find the right word—his manhood… his… his cock swelling against her belly. A blush burned her cheeks even as a triumphant thrill worked its way down her spine. His protest was nothing but bluster.
“If you don’t want me, you should have left me to Nowlin.” Lord knew that should goad him into action. She kissed Sandison’s jaw, dragged her teeth along it, bit his lower lip softly. “In for a penny, in for a pound. I’m ruined either way.”
Sandison pulled his head back, twisting his face to one side, but his hands didn’t leave her. “Not if I get you safely back to your family,” he said, each word coming out as though it hurt.
“There’s no safe return.” Beau pressed her advantage. “Not this time. Nowlin snatched me from Pall Mall in the middle of the afternoon in full sight of half a dozen members of the ton.”
His breath hissed out of him. Beau cupped his cheeks in her hands and held his gaze with her own. “You can put me on a coach to London in the morning or you can run with me to Scotland.”
“So I can play the villain or the scoundrel?”
A smile forced its way out, stretching her mouth in a grin that she couldn’t even hope to mitigate or hide. “You’d be a secret villain. No one need ever know you had anything to do with my escape from Nowlin.”
“You’d know.” His voice was tinged with anger. “I’d know.” For the briefest moment, she thought she’d lost the gamble, and then his hands flattened over her hips, fingers dipping to touch the dimples that bookended her spine.
Beau pulled loose the knot of his cravat while he stood frozen, as still as one of the standing stones at Avebury. She let the scrap of linen slip through her fingers and fall to the floor.
“Scotland?” Beau held her breath, waiting for his reply.
“Scotland.” The word ground past his teeth like an animal clawing its way out of the earth. His mouth took hers with frantic need, lips and teeth clashing, tongue dancing, teasing. Beau locked her arms around his neck and kissed him back
.
He was hers.
CHAPTER 7
She was his.
Gareth fisted his hands in the fabric of his own nightshirt and dragged her to the bed. He might be damned as a villain and scoundrel both, but he just couldn’t bring himself to care.
Beau caught her hands in his coat and shoved. He shrugged out of it, letting it lie where it fell. She clawed open the buttons of his waistcoat and yanked his shirttails out of his breeches. He broke off kissing her long enough to toss his waistcoat aside, push off his braces, and yank his shirt over his head.
She didn’t give him time to divest himself of his boots, let alone his breeches. She pulled him down onto the bed, hands roaming over his back, nightshirt already riding up around her hips, long, pale legs begging to be touched. He slid a hand up along her thigh until it came to rest where her thigh met the buttock. Sweet, impossibly soft skin rising to meet flesh that was softer yet.
He buried his face in the crook of her neck. Dragged his open mouth up to the sensitive spot beneath her ear, where he bit down lightly. She gasped and arched, fingers gripping his shoulder blades as though she might rip them from his body.
Her earlobe beckoned, and he obligingly took it between his teeth, hand sliding over the top of her thigh, knuckles grazing the exquisitely soft flesh where leg met groin. Damp curls. Slick folds. The sensitive peak at the top of the cleft that ruled a woman’s pleasure.
Gareth swirled his finger, and Beau made a strangled sound in the back of her throat. He continued the caress, fingers sliding between her thighs, down to the entrance to her body. Her flesh was hot, damp with her own juices, but the delicate web of her hymen was unmistakable.
Icy reality hit him full force. For all her wit, experience, and bravado, Beau was still very much a virginal daughter of the aristocracy. Gareth took a deep breath, cursing silently as the scent of her flooded through him, making his cock pulse and ache. He forced himself to break off the intimate caress, to thrust both hands safely into the blanket beneath them.
Her arms locked about him, preventing him from rolling off her. “Don’t stop now. You can’t possibly stop now.”
The pleading note in her voice nearly broke him. “I can’t possibly continue, brat. The fact that I trespassed as far as I did is bad enough.”
Beau struggled out from under him. She pushed her hair back from her face and stared at him with dawning horror. There it was: sanity reasserting itself.
“You don’t want me. Oh, God.” She sounded sick, heartbroken. Gareth’s own somewhat-damaged heart skipped a beat.
“Not want you?” The words raced out of him of their own accord. “You’ve no idea how badly I want you, Boudicea.”
Beau’s head snapped up at the use of her full name. Her damp eyes met his, passion sparking deep within them. She reached for him. Gareth caught her wrist and held her off.
“I chose Scotland, and I meant it,” he said, willing her to understand. “But if, for any reason, we somehow failed to reach it, were prevented from marrying, your falling pregnant would make everything a thousand times worse. If your family—if Leo, damn it all—were to catch up with us…”
“You’d want to be able to assure Leo that I was untouched.”
“I know you have a plan, and I’ve agreed to it, sweetheart, but your family might have an alternative. If you’re carrying my child, if there’s even a chance of that, then you’re trapped.”
“And you’re trapped with me.”
She said it flatly, as if it were the worst option in the world rather than a fate he wished for with every fiber of his being. “I’m not trapped. As you said, I could put you on the mail coach back to London in the morning if I chose. But when your brother and I meet again, I have to be able to tell him honestly that you married me of your own free will, not because I’d left you with no choice. Do you understand, brat?”
Beau nodded, but her expression remained disgruntled. She caught her lower lip between her teeth, an unmistakable glint of mischief lighting up her eyes. “I can’t fall pregnant if all you do is touch me, can I?”
The look of dumbfounded disbelief on Sandison’s face was priceless. Beau held her breath and waited. His touch had been far too pleasurable. She wanted more. Needed more. And she wanted him to push himself close enough to the brink that there would be no turning back, even if in strict honesty, he could tell her family that she was still a virgin.
“You’re going to be the death of me,” Sandison said as he reached for her.
He rolled her beneath him, his mouth hotly covering the pulse point just below her ear. He yanked the nightshirt up and his hand slid back between her thighs, long fingers splaying her open, circling and teasing until her breath caught in her throat and her limbs tingled.
Sandison caught her earlobe between his lips, the hint of teeth causing her to shiver. “Do you ever touch yourself?”
Beau bit her lips to keep from grinning. “Anyone who says they don’t is a liar.”
His palm slid roughly over her, dragging across the aching, sensitive peak between her thighs. His fingers circled the opening to her body, the tip of one pressed for entrance, slipped into her, and delved carefully deeper.
“Do you ever touch yourself and think of me?”
Beau caught a strangled breath and didn’t answer. His finger slid in until his knuckles lodged against her. He curled his finger within her, and she gasped.
“If you didn’t, you will now,” he said, sounding pleased and possessive. He kissed her, tongue delving into her mouth. Beau kissed him back, a whimper rising in her throat as her release threatened to crest.
“Shall I show you something you could never have done for yourself?” Gareth asked. “Something far better than hands and fingers?”
“Yes.” Beau’s thighs tried to clamp shut around his hand, and Sandison used his hips to keep them spread open. For a moment, she thought that he’d changed his mind about taking her maidenhead, but then he slid down, his hand abandoning her.
Beau gave a cry of protest, and Sandison chuckled. He yanked her to the edge of the bed, legs dangling over, one knee on either side of him.
He planted a hot, open-mouthed kiss on the inside of her thigh. Beau felt her legs begin to tremble. Another kiss, this one with teeth behind it, where her leg met her torso. Sandison’s hands slid behind her knees, pushed her thighs wide and held them as his lips took over where his fingers had left off.
Beau bit the heel of her hand to keep from screaming. His tongue swirled across her, and then his mouth locked over the already inflamed flesh of her clitoris, and her entire body throbbed and shook as she climaxed.
Sandison lapped the length of her secret folds. He dragged the flat of his tongue from the opening of her body to the bundle of nerves where her pulse hammered with unslaked demand for more.
Beau took hold of his hair with one unsteady hand and dragged him up. He kissed her hard, almost roughly. She could taste herself on his lips, sweet and salty at the same time.
Gareth swiped his jaw over hers, the stubble of his beard an oddly intimate caress. “We can do that as often as you like,” he whispered. “Even after we’re married.”
“If we can make it to Neville’s Cross, we can hire a coach. Or we could if three pounds and twelve shillings wasn’t all we had to our names.”
Gareth counted the coins again and swore. It wasn’t nearly enough for a coach, changes of horse, rooms, food, and stabling for Monty.
“Don’t forget,” Beau said as she sipped her tea, “we’ve got whatever Nowlin had in his purse.”
“You prigged it? Brilliant girl!”
Beau grinned back at him. “Clearly we’re both meant to hang.” She reached into her pocket and held up Nowlin’s embroidered pocketbook.
“Well?” Anticipation clawed through his veins as she opened it.
“Nowlin was certainly prepared,” Beau replied, pulling out a thick pile of bank notes. “I think we can afford to pay the piper here and stable
poor Monty somewhere decent.”
“And procure you a change of clothes.”
“Another shift at least would certainly be welcome.” Beau shrugged. “I know the poor make do with just the clothes on their backs, but looking like a shag rag hardly presents the image of a married couple who can afford to hire a coach.”
Gareth swept up the pile of bank notes and quickly counted them. “We should have more than enough to reach Scotland and return to London, even with your sartorial needs. In Neville’s Cross, we should be able to outfit you there swiftly and anonymously, as well as hire a coach.”
“Shall we go then?” Beau finished off her tea and bit into the last bun, tearing off a chunk with her teeth. “Between my brothers and Mr. Nowlin, I’d like to reach Scotland as quickly as possible.”
Gareth pushed a wave of guilt aside as he tossed the last of his things back into his saddlebags. Was there any way to explain things to her brother? Any chance of Leo understanding that, as bad as things looked, he really had done his best for her?
Beau finished off the sticky bun and licked her fingers. Desire flared. It was all Gareth could do not to drag her back to the sagging bed and repeat every delicious thing that he’d done the night before.
The true problem was that no matter how guilty he felt about betraying a friend’s trust, he knew deep down that even if Beau hadn’t stated flat out that marriage to him was the best of her options, he would still be dragging her to Scotland this morning.
Leo had every right to hate him.
CHAPTER 8
Sandison ran one hand down Monty’s neck and slapped the gelding on the shoulder. “I’ll be back for you shortly, beast.”
Beau bit her lips and clutched Gareth’s greatcoat around her. Leaving Monty behind felt wrong somehow. Like a betrayal. Monty shook his head, making a familiar, blustery sound as he blew his breath out his nose.
