by Isobel Carr
His breath rattled out of him as he came. He loosened his grip, but Beau gave his cock one last earth-shattering stroke. He caught her wrist, and she let go, falling back against the opposite seat. “You’re still hard.” Her gaze fastened onto his still swollen cock.
“Give the boy a moment to realize he’s done for.”
CHAPTER 9
A dangerous swirl of horses and men flying in all directions greeted them at Neville’s Cross. The busy yard had nearly a dozen coaches loading and off-loading passengers and baggage and swapping teams. Beau stepped out of the coach, only to flatten herself against it as the mail swept past, close enough that the wheel brushed her skirt.
“Damn it all,” Beau said more loudly than she intended.
“I told you to stay in the coach.” Gareth spun about and stepped over to brush ineffectively at the bits of mud—and worse—spattered across her petticoats like a foul sprigging.
“I need to use the privy.”
Gareth glanced around the busy yard, eyes tracking the chaos. “Be quick about it and hurry back.”
Beau clenched her teeth and wove her way through the throng that seemed to have filled the inn’s courtyard to the bursting point. She stepped into the taproom to ask directions to the privy, and a harried-looking maid thrust a rough stoneware cup of tea into her hands.
Beau drank it without hesitation. Lord knew when Gareth would see fit to feed her next. He’d refused to stop to eat or sleep, paying extra for a new team to push on through the night. They’d changed teams again just before dawn, but all she’d got was a cup of ale and a stale muffin without so much as butter or jam.
She finished the tea, scalding her tongue in the process, and got directions to the inn’s privies from a group of female passengers. Once the call of nature had been answered, Beau stepped out and hurried toward the back door of the busy inn. A harried woman with a child in tow passed her, scolding the child under her breath.
The door of the privy snapped shut behind them, and Beau was suddenly hauled off her feet. Her scream was cut off by a large, gloved hand covering her mouth. Beau wrenched her head to one side and bit down. The man cursed, wrapping his arm more securely about her waist.
Beau flailed, catching him a glancing blow with her elbow and a more solid one with her heel. His grip slackened, and she pulled loose. She threw a fleeting glance over her shoulder as she rushed inside. Nowlin. Not one of her brothers. Thank God.
Heart in her throat, Beau pushed through the crowd and into the busy yard. Sandison was impossible to miss, pale head shining above the rest. His brows drew sharply together as he spotted her. Beau fought the tears that she could feel building behind her eyes.
A groom ran past, leading a steaming bay, and she lost sight of Sandison for a moment. Beau forced herself to stand calmly. To wait. Sandison was right there. With a flick of its tail, the horse was gone, and Sandison was striding toward her.
He swept her across the yard, arm wrapped protectively about her. “I think one of your brothers has just arrived, so best hurry. No one’s stepped out of the coach yet, but I swear that’s Sampson on the box.”
Beau’s stomach turned over, and her hands went cold. “Mr. Nowlin as well. He tried to grab me.”
“Here?” Sandison glanced hurriedly around. “Whatever happens, I promise you”—his voice dropped, the tone turning dark—“Mr. Nowlin will be dealt with.” His grip tightened, the pressure welcome and reassuring. “Don’t you dare vomit on my boots, brat. We’ll brush through this. Thankfully the yard is still overrun. We should be able to slip away if we’re quick about it.”
Beau held her breath and ducked her head. Please let it not be Leo. Please let it not be Leo. The single thought burned through her like a prayer.
As Sandison thrust her into the coach, she heard her elder brother’s voice, loud and brusque. “Get the team changed. I’m going inside to look for her.”
Sandison stepped in, the door closed, and he knocked hard against the roof to signal the coachman to set off. “Glennalmond,” he said. “I don’t think he saw either of us.”
“He wouldn’t,” Beau replied. “Glennalmond’s looking for what he’s found before: a trail of wreckage, woe, and blood, leading to a man who’s rapidly coming to the realization that he’s made a profound mistake.”
Lord Leonidas Vaughn stood rooted beside his horse, rage and betrayal crawling up this throat to choke him. Glennalmond had missed Beau entirely. Leo had very nearly done so himself. It hadn’t been the woman in the ill-fitting gown who had caught his eye. It had been the tall, familiar figure of his closest friend.
Sandison. The man he’d left in charge of keeping an eye on Beau. A man he’d trusted without question. His sister’s frightened face peered back over Sandison’s shoulder as he shoved her into a somewhat battered coach. Leo swallowed hard. Nothing scared Beau. Whatever Sandison had done to make her look like that, Leo was going to make sure that he regretted it.
Leo caught the arm of an ostler and shoved the reins of his hack into the man’s hands. “Saddle me a fresh horse. There’s a crown in it for you if you’re done by the time I get back.”
With the man’s “Yes, sir” ringing in his ears, Leo waded through the crowd and into the taproom. He found his brother, cup of ale in hand, surveying the room.
“No sign of her,” Glennalmond said.
Leo let his breath out in a sigh and tried desperately to keep his temper in check. “That’s because she just left.”
Glennalmond swallowed wrong and spat ale onto the floor as he coughed. Leo thumped him on the back, plucked the glass from his hand, and finished the ale in one gulp.
“With Gareth Sandison,” Leo added. Just saying the name brought a rush of renewed anger that flooded through him until even his fingertips throbbed with it.
“Sandison?” Glennalmond sounded as though he couldn’t quite grasp what Leo had said. “But she and he—”
“Don’t get on at all. I know. You should have seen her face. Stricken. Frightened. I’ve never seen Beau look like that. Not even when she stole grandfather’s hunter and went on a cattle raid with Sean McDermid when she was ten.”
Glennalmond’s face turned beet red. “I’ll kill him. Earl’s son or not, I’ll strangle him with my bare hands.”
“Not if I beat you to it,” Leo said.
CHAPTER 10
Beau hugged herself, trying to rub away the prickle of gooseflesh that wouldn’t abate. That had been close. Too close. On every front. If Nowlin had held on, she’d be Lord only knew where by now, and if Glennalmond had caught up to them already, Leo and her father couldn’t be far behind.
“Can we go to ground somewhere?” she said, horrified by how pathetic and frightened she sounded. “Just disappear until they all give up looking?”
“I’ve been thinking the same thing,” Sandison replied, his tone as grim as his expression. “You’re not to leave my sight. Your Irish suitor will have to go through me if he’s to lay so much as a finger on you ever again. As for your family, we could attempt to lose ourselves in Leeds. Put up in one of the smaller inns for a week or so. They couldn’t possibly search them all.”
“Or we could leave the main road,” Beau said, twisting her petticoat in both hands. “We could turn off at Wakefield and go west. Or head east to Scarborough and follow the coastal road north.” Anything. They could do anything and that would have to be better than following the prescribed path.
A look of disgust seemed to have settled permanently onto Sandison’s brow. Beau’s eyes burned, and she furiously blinked away the onset of tears. Was he starting to reconsider their plan? To regret it?
Beau bit her lip. “If you’ve changed your mind, you could leave me at the next posting inn. Glennalmond will find me, and no one need ever know…” She let the statement trail off.
His head snapped up, blue eyes piercing her. “Have you?”
Beau shook her head. No. She hadn’t, but guilt rather than blood seemed to be p
umping through her veins. She was selfishly ruining his friendship with her brother. Perhaps forever.
One side of Sandison’s mouth curled into a smile. Beau’s pulse steadied. She relaxed her hands, startled to find how tightly they’d been clenched. She knew that smile. It was the one he wore when teasing her, or torturing one of his friends with some prank.
Thank God.
“Then we’ll turn at Wakefield and head west,” he said, still smiling. “We can pick the road to Gretna back up at Manchester. Hopefully everyone else will continue north toward Newcastle Upon Tyne before cutting over.”
Beau felt the tension drain out of her. Whatever happened, she trusted Sandison to keep her safe. Foolish as many would consider such conviction, it was true all the same. Though Leo would never forgive him, Sandison would do it for his sake as much as for hers.
“Abducting heiresses is a great deal of trouble,” she said, poking Sandison in the shin with her toe.
“Being abducted by them seems every bit as much work to me,” he replied with perfect seriousness, though this smile had grown into a full-fledged grin.
“I did not abduct you.”
“Didn’t you?” His dark brows rose in the center, mocking her.
Beau narrowed her eyes at him, knowing that he’d still see the smile pulling at the corners of her mouth. When you came right down to it, she had, hadn’t she? And she’d do it again.
“I rescued you,” he continued, “but here we are fleeing your brothers and running toward the border. One of us must have abducted the other. And since it most certainly wasn’t I…”
“And it is my family after all which has the reputation for outrageousness?”
“It is, isn’t it?” He sounded almost cheerful at the thought.
“As well you know, sir. Fine, I give in. I abducted you. What are you going to do about it?”
Sandison stretched out his legs and propped his booted feet up on the seat. “Sit quietly and pray for deliverance?”
Sandison leapt down from the coach, but before he could turn to assist Beau out, he was thrown back inside. Beau cracked her head against the far wall. Sandison’s weight crushed her into the floor, her petticoats indecorously high about her knees.
Backlit by a rising moon, her brother Leo stood framed in the small doorway. Beau froze, heart squeezed into a tiny, nonfunctional ball. Leo reached in, took hold of Sandison’s coat, and hauled him out. Beau tumbled out after them, tripping on her skirts and landing in a crumpled pile.
She hadn’t seen Leo this angry since the night he’d found her at a courtesan’s masquerade at Vauxhall. “No, Leo!” She scrambled up and grabbed her brother’s arm, clinging to it like a terrier with a rat when he tried to shake her off. “It isn’t what you think.”
Leo stared down at her, eyes blazing. Beau rapidly reassessed her opinion. She’d never seen him this angry. Never.
“Go inside, Beau.”
Beau squeezed tighter onto his arm. “Leo, I swear to you—”
“Inside!” He peeled her fingers off his coat sleeve and shoved her toward the small inn. “Now, Beau!”
Beau took a step back and glared at him. He had to understand—had to be made to understand. Sandison was holding his jaw, waggling it back and forth, as though testing to see if it were still in one piece.
Leo glared back. “Glennalmond will be along in the carriage soon enough. Until then, wait inside. I’ve a parlor already hired for your use.”
“Do as he says, Beau,” Sandison said, the sound of his voice breaking the silent detente between Beau and her brother.
Without a word, Leo launched himself at his friend. Sandison blocked the first blow, but the second rocked his head back, and the third doubled him over. He wasn’t going to fight back. Wasn’t even going to try to defend himself.
Stupid man. Honor didn’t demand that he allow Leo to beat him senseless. Or if it did, she wasn’t about to stand by and watch.
Beau waded in and pulled her brother out by the skirts of his coat. Sandison pushed himself upright, wiping blood from his chin.
Leo spun toward her, yanked his coat from her grasp, and took one awful step toward her. Beau could feel her temper eating away at her self-control. She and he were very much alike when it came to that. Very much like their mother. But if she gave in and hit him, he might just be angry enough to hit her back.
“I said get inside.” Leo’s words were clipped, enunciated with awful precision. “If you choose to make me drag you there, so be it. But one way or another, you’ll do as I say, Boudicea.”
“Fine,” she spat out, bracing herself.
When she didn’t move, she could see the realization dawn on her brother’s face that she meant fine, drag me, not fine, I’ll do as you say. One side of her mouth quirked up. She couldn’t help it. It was fine if he dragged her, but she’d be damned if she gave up and let Leo order her about. And she wouldn’t stand by and let him punish his friend for something that she’d done.
Leo closed the gap between them and caught her by the wrist. Two steps, her heels leaving furrows in the damp earth of the yard, and they came to a halt as Sandison placed himself between them and the inn.
Tousled, bloody, his coat ripped and muddy—he still looked like a hero. Her hero.
“Let go of her,” Sandison said in a tone that seemed designed to provoke her brother into retaliation, just as her smile had been. Leo’s grip tightened. Beau bumped against him, jostling him, forcing him to look at her and not at his friend.
Leo glared down at her. Beau searched his face. No tenderness. No forgiveness. She put her free hand on his chest. She had to make him understand. “Please, Leo. Just listen to me for a moment. One moment—” The clatter of hooves and the jingle of harness cut her off.
Beau stood frozen in place as her family’s second best coach rolled into the yard, Sampson on the box, her footman Boaz beside him. Glennalmond leapt out before it came to a full stop. Leo shook his head, his expression hardening, and tossed her to their elder brother. Glennalmond caught her and held her tight, one massive arm locked about her waist.
“Take her to Dyrham,” Leo said, not even looking at her. “If you drive all night, you should get there by morning. I’ll follow when I’m done here.”
Gareth checked his teeth with his tongue and spat. The coppery tang of blood remained. At least his nose didn’t appear to be broken. Not yet, anyway.
The Vaughn family’s servants stared down from the box of the coach, expressions as grim and unrelenting as their masters’. Beau’s personal footman was fingering the blunderbuss in his hands as though he’d love to be given permission to use it.
Glennalmond was gesticulating widely with his one free hand, pointing repeatedly at Gareth. Leo was arguing back, his voice low enough that Gareth couldn’t quite make out the words. He didn’t need to. They were clearly arguing over which one of them got to kill him. Did being the eldest trump being the best friend of the villain?
Gareth choked down an utterly inappropriate laugh. This was one argument that Leo wasn’t going to lose, and that was for the best. He’d be tempted to defend himself against Glennalmond, and he deserved what was coming.
If Beau had been his sister, he’d have wanted to kill him too. Leo turned, said something to Beau inside the coach, and then Glennalmond climbed in and slammed the door shut behind him. Leo nodded at the coachman and the carriage slowly turned about, circling him, the armed footman glaring at him under his powdered wig the entire time.
The scene was unfolding with all the absurdity of a staged farce. The thwarted lovers. The avenging brothers. The ever-present witnessing chorus of servants. The entire benighted cast was present and playing their roles to the hilt. Except perhaps for Beau, who clearly had no intention of being the quaking ingénue. If his world weren’t caving in around his ears, it would have been damn funny.
Leo stood, still as a monolith, and watched until his siblings disappeared around a bend in the road. Once they wer
e gone, he turned slowly back to face Gareth.
The silence stretched. Excuses swarmed Gareth’s head. He opened his mouth and then shut it with an audible snap of teeth. What was there to say? No excuse was good enough. Even the truth wouldn’t wipe the look of betrayal from Leo’s face. And the whole truth—a true confession of his motives—would make things far, far worse.
“If you were anyone else,” Leo said, “I’d kill you where you stand, Beau’s reputation be damned.”
Gareth nodded, not quite sure where that left them. Leo’s expression was bleak. There would be no forgiveness, whatever the outcome.
“I’ve no doubt you can explain how it’s all Beau’s fault,” Leo said with a hint of bitterness. “I’m sure this escapade happened by her express design—when did anything not?—but no matter what you have to say, it will merely be an excuse. She’s my sister, Sandison. My baby sister. And I left her in your care.”
“And I failed you both, but I swear to you, I didn’t abduct her.”
Leo shut his eyes for a moment, shaking his head. “When the girl is willing, or God forbid, actually complicit, it’s usually called an elopement. I’ll grant you that much. No, don’t say another word. You can save your explanations for my parents. I don’t think I can stomach to hear them.”
Sandison swallowed down the urge to defend himself, to defend Beau. “Are your parents in London?”
“I imagine they’ll be joining Beau at Dyrham as soon as Glennalmond’s note reaches them. I’d advise you to do the same. Two days, Sandison. In two days, you’d best be at Dyrham, or I’ll hunt you down and shoot you on sight.”
CHAPTER 11
What do you mean ‘her brothers have taken her home’?”
Padrig Nowlin flinched as Granby shot to his feet and his chair toppled back onto the floor with a reverberating crack.
“Just that, sir. She was snatched away from me at gunpoint, and before I could get her back, her brothers arrived.”
