by Julia London
He’d live, then, which was more than he could say for that tree of a man. He wasn’t sure where the bullet had struck him, but there had been enough blood for Roan to know he wouldn’t come back for more.
He glanced to his left, and his gaze landed on Prudence curled onto her side, her back to him, the gun still in her hand. Her golden hair spilled around her. He leaned closer, squinting—she had leaves in her hair. He wondered idly what had become of the bonnet with the bothersome feather.
Roan watched her sleeping, the slow rise of her chest, the gentle fall.
Now he felt something else, too. Desire—pure, hot and urgent. He put his hand on her hip.
Prudence came up with a gasp, rolling onto her back, waving the gun about. Roan caught it. “It’s all right,” he said.
When she saw that it was he who had disturbed her sleep, she let go, sighed sleepily and pushed herself up to sit beside him. “You’re alive.”
“I can’t tell from the tone of your voice if you are pleased or not.”
“I’m relieved. I keep hearing noises, and I think it’s them, come back to rob us.”
Roan winced again, but this time at his inability to have provided her with the slightest bit of security. “We’re safe,” he said. “Our bags are the only thing of value. They won’t be back.” Even if they did return, Roan had no doubt he could and would squeeze the life from them with his bare hands in spite of his battered body. He gave Prudence a sympathetic smile. “I know you will defend me most ardently,” he said. “I like that about you, Prudence Cabot.”
She clucked her tongue at him. “I was terrified,” she said. “I thought they were going to kill you.”
So had he, but Roan didn’t like to think about that. It reminded him of a time he was in Canada, set upon by some men over a card game. He thought he would die that night, too, as the men had come seemingly from nowhere for him and Beck, brandishing sticks. It was a miracle that he and Beck had emerged from that encounter alive—and able to walk. They’d lost their horses, however, and had it not been for the kindness of a widow and her very lovely daughter, well...
Roan didn’t want to think of that now. He was glad that he hadn’t met his demise tonight. Very glad, indeed.
“You must be thirsty,” Prudence said, and began to pick herself up.
“I’m all right,” he said, and smiled reassuringly. “Americans are a hardy lot. I refuse to allow a few English brutes to beat the spirit out of me.” Even if that was exactly what the Englishmen had done. “Why don’t you sleep?” he suggested to her. “I’ll keep the eye that’s not swollen open.”
Prudence smiled wearily. With the weak light from the embers, she looked even younger than he’d originally thought. How old was she? Twenty years? Younger? He got up, put wood on the fire and stirred the embers beneath it.
She rubbed her temples. Her hair, which in this new light looked even more spun of gold, had come completely out of its pins. When she noticed him looking at her she said, “I hope you can forgive me.”
“Forgive you?”
“For this,” she said. She drew her knees up under her gown and wrapped her arms around them, resting her chin on her knees. “If I had joined Dr. Linford as I was supposed to have done, you would have been on the public coach and never would have encountered those wretched men.”
“What’s done is done,” he said, wincing as he moved his back against the tree once more, settling there. “No point in dwelling on it. We can only go forward from here.”
She idly played with a stick beside her foot. “Admit it. You wish you’d never laid eyes on me.”
“I will admit no such thing because it is not true,” Roan said. “But satisfy my curiosity, will you? Why did you really avoid Linford? Were your sisters’ actions really so awful?”
She groaned. “It’s really too mortifying to confess.”
“It can’t be more mortifying than sleeping on a riverbank, can it?”
She smiled. “That is a very good point.” She pushed locks of golden hair from her face and considered her stick a long moment. “I suppose it all began when my stepfather, the Earl of Beckington, contracted consumption,” she said. “Augustine—he’s my stepbrother—was to inherit all. He’s very generous, but his fiancée did not fancy sharing the family fortune with four stepsisters who were not married and had no current prospects.”
Roan winced again, but this time, it was in sympathy for the man who would have a wife and four unmarried sisters. He could not imagine the amount of money that would be spent on shoes alone.
“My mother was very little help to us, unfortunately. That was the same time she began to first exhibit the signs of madness.”
“She’s mad?” Roan asked, uncertain if Prudence meant it in the literal sense of the word.
“As a cuckoo bird,” Prudence solemnly confirmed. “We tried to hide it, for we all knew that once society discovered it, things would be said. Gentlemen would fear that madness might somehow run in our blood and be introduced into their children through any daughter of hers.”
“Do you believe that?” he asked. He’d never really thought of it before now. But then again, he very rarely thought of marriage.
Prudence shook her head. “My mother’s madness began with a carriage accident. There’s no history of it otherwise, but it hardly matters. No one among the Quality would risk it. Added to that, we were without our stepfather to provide a proper dowry. Suddenly, everything looked quite impossible for us.”
“So that’s the scandal,” Roan said. “Your mother’s madness. That’s why you said your sisters were married unconventionally. Someone not in keeping with your situation, is that it?”
“I wish that’s all there was to it,” Prudence said, sighing. “The scandal began with my older sisters, Honor and Grace. Once it became clear that the earl would die, and Augustine would marry Monica Hargrove, and our mother was mad, they had these perfectly ridiculous ideas for how to gain offers of marriage.” Prudence sounded perturbed by this. “Their idea was to marry before anyone discovered our woes. They reasoned that if they hooked a rich husband, they’d be able to help my mother, as well as Mercy and me when we were cast out of society,” she said with mock darkness.
Roan shrugged. “Sounds oddly reasonable.”
“Perhaps in theory,” Prudence agreed. “But in practice, it was scandalous. Honor proposed marriage quite publicly to a wealthy man of illegitimate birth, and Grace attempted to trap a man into marriage and did so very successfully—only she trapped the wrong man.”
Roan laughed.
Prudence did not. “All of this is well-known in London and the Quality, you know, and as a result of their actions, and my mother’s madness, and our lack of dowry, Mercy and I are not considered a very good match. Mercy hardly cares—she is quite talented with her art, and she is determined to be an artist of note. She swears she will never marry. Lord Merryton paid a dear price to have her admitted into a prestigious school to study, and Mercy is beside herself with joy. She says she is perfectly content to travel the world and create beautiful art. She doesn’t concern herself with society and advantageous marriages.”
“Do you?” Roan asked.
Prudence’s shoulders slumped. “I don’t know. I suppose I do. It’s been four years since Grace trapped the Earl of Merryton into marriage. No one has shown the slightest interest in me since that time, and I think I will die of tedium. And to make matters worse, I’ve resided at Blackwood Hall for the past two years, which is as remote a place as this,” she said, gesturing around her. “I care for my mother. I am occasionally invited to this evening or that, but I have no society to speak of. I am only two and twenty and I am destined to be put on the shelf.”
“That can’t be true—”
“But it is,” Prudence said. “You can’t possibly understand m
y situation, I think, but that is why I put myself on that coach today. I wanted...” She paused and drew a deep breath. “I wanted to know what it feels to live. I’ve always been good and decent and I’ve followed all the rules, and it didn’t matter. Honor and Grace are married, and they love their husbands and they have beautiful children. Mercy has set her sights on something else entirely. All I ever wanted was to marry and have a family of my own, and it appears I can’t have that. Now all I want is to know what life feels like outside the walls of Blackwood. I want to know adventure. I want to feel excited about something. I want to know all those things I’ve lost since I’ve been shut away.”
Roan didn’t know how to assure her. He knew nothing of the way marriages were made in England, but he understood her. In New York, they’d had a time of it settling Aurora on one gentleman who met with their satisfaction of being worthy of her and their business interests, so he could see how something like this might affect a woman like Prudence. Even he was prepared to sacrifice for the sake of his family’s prosperity and standing.
Prudence was watching him, her luminescent gaze seeking reassurance, he supposed. He wanted to say something to soothe her. “Life is... It is what you make it,” he tried, the words sounding inadequate to him.
“Yes?” She leaned slightly forward, as if she feared she might miss a piece of valuable advice that might turn her life about.
How he wished he could give her that. “What I mean is that life doesn’t come to you. You can’t sit in some parlor and wait for it to appear at your door.”
Prudence nodded as if to agree with what he said.
“No matter what your circumstance, it is up to you to create the life you want to live.”
“Do you truly think so?”
“Of course I do.” Roan lived by those words every day. Yet he was keenly aware he would never offer such advice to Aurora. She was a year older than Prudence, and he would never give that girl as much as an inch, knowing that she’d take a mile. But here he sat, offering it to Prudence, essentially suggesting to her that what she’d done today was not only all right, but perhaps even justifiable given her circumstances.
Did Aurora have the same, unfulfilled desires as Prudence? Should he find her behavior justified? Roan was strangely uncertain.
Which made him a worse scoundrel than he’d realized. He knew as well as he knew the pain in his side that he advised Prudence Cabot to follow her desire because he liked her. He liked that she had boarded his coach because she’d found him appealing. He liked that she had been with him today, nestled tightly between his legs. He liked the way she’d fearlessly brandished a gun and shot that cretin, in spite of the fact she might have seen them both killed.
He had enjoyed this day of adventure with her. It had made him long for his own freedom of choice. Of course Roan had his freedom—he could do whatever he liked. But of late, he’d felt the weight of responsibility. Of needing to give his word to his father and John Pratt. To be fair, he hadn’t promised Susannah anything at all other than to return soon...but all else was understood. It was assumed by everyone he would formally propose marriage to her when he returned and had settled Aurora.
Both he and Aurora were bound to marry for the sake of the family.
He looked at Prudence with her hazel eyes and golden hair and plush lips and said, “I think you should live as you want.” It wasn’t a lie—it was everything that made him who he was.
Prudence’s response shocked him. Completely and utterly shocked him. Because the moment he uttered those words, Prudence half lunged, half fell across him, landing awkwardly against his chest, her lips finding his. Pain shot through him and he sucked in his breath, but Prudence was not deterred. She kissed him as ardently as he’d kissed her under the sycamore tree.
He hadn’t meant she was to seek this. He put his hands on her arms and pushed her back, grimacing.
“Oh!” she exclaimed at the sight of him, and stroked his face, her fingers trailing hot across his skin, touching his bruised lip and swollen eye. “Did I hurt you? I meant to... I thought I’d—”
“I know what you thought,” he said, and put his hand on her hip, pushing her to her side. “You thought to take advantage of a poor, disabled man.” He moved her onto her back, rolling with her so that he was on his side. “Never underestimate a man’s strength, no matter if he’s been injured,” he said. “And never doubt that every man is a scoundrel, no matter how he appears. Every last one of us is bursting with desire for women like you. Look at me now, Pru, look carefully, because this is how pure desire appears. I should leave you be. I shouldn’t touch you, but I am bursting with desire.”
He moved over her, kissing her, and when he did, Prudence made a kittenish sound that sluiced through him. Roan’s pain began to slough away—he felt nothing but raw want rising up in him. His blood began to percolate, even as he scolded himself for it. He was the man he despised. He’d made promises, given his word...but he was weak. He was as weak as a toddler with a jar of candy when a woman as beautiful as Prudence lay beneath him. The devil in him urged him on, encouraged by her lusty response.
Prudence’s arms went around his neck as she kissed him, her tongue twirling around his, her lips so soft beneath his. This was what he’d warned her of. “You want adventure, Prudence Cabot?” he rasped as he moved his mouth across her cheek to her ear, grunting a bit at the pain that sudden direction had caused him.
“Yes,” she whispered. “Yes, Roan, I do.”
She could not have said anything more arousing to him; Roan growled as he nuzzled her neck. Prudence made a noise in her throat that sounded a bit like the cooing of a dove, and it only made his blood run hotter. He slowly, painfully, moved his hands down her body, finding her breasts and ribs, her waist.
Prudence grabbed his head between her hands and kissed him, nibbling at his lip. “Ow,” he muttered, and she quickly moved her feathery little kisses to his cheeks, his swollen eye. Roan dipped his hand into the bodice of her gown, his fingers closing around the warm flesh of her breast. He didn’t want to stop, never wanted to stop caressing her buttery skin.
He trailed kisses down her neck to her chest, pressed his mouth against the swell of her breast and thought he’d never tasted flesh so sweet. She was divine, as soft and pleasurable as any woman. The night was swirling around them, darkness and milky light spilling across her skin, casting shadows that moved and captured him. He slowly inched down, following the trail of moonlight on her, until he found the hem of her gown. He pushed it up, his hand finding warm, soft flesh beneath.
Above him, Prudence was breathing hard, her chest rising and falling with each full breath. Her hair was a wild tangle of leaves and curls. She was quite a mess, and yet he’d never been so aroused by the sight of a woman as he was by her on the ground under the tree.
He kissed the soft inside of her knee. He forgot his aches and pains, his mind having skipped ahead to thoughts of moving inside her.
Prudence sighed, long and soft and full of pleasure. The sound of her pleasure sent him barreling down some invisible slide, tumbling into a night that shattered around him. His hands moved on her body, one on her breast, which he’d somehow managed to free from her gown. Another hand skimmed her bare leg, sliding up, slipping in between them and into the slick folds of her sex. He heard his groan, heard the ache of want in it. He nipped at the flesh of her thigh now, while his hand caressed her. Her scent wrapped around his head, made his mouth water, made his body pulse with hunger for her flesh. He couldn’t bear it; he managed to rise up, somehow balancing on his arms above her, nudging in between her legs. She looked up at him with a lusty smile.
“I warned you of scoundrels, didn’t I?” he said gruffly.
“I don’t recall,” she said, and with the back of her hand, stroked his face.
Roan groaned and bent his head, taking her breast in
his mouth, then moving down her body once more, pushing her gown up to her waist, his hands sliding under her hips. Prudence’s knees came up on either side of him, and as he sank between them, and touched his mouth to her sex, she gasped, arching her back. She grabbed his hands, wrapping her fingers tightly around them as he plunged his tongue into her body like a starving man, then feathered her with little strokes, circling around, nipping and teasing her.
Prudence groaned with pleasure, the sound of it so primal and raw, that Roan worried he would die of the longing he’d never felt so deeply or intently as this. He was desperate to be inside of her, but just as desperate not to be the heathen who would ruin her on the banks of a brook. No matter how desperately he wanted to. No matter how desperately she wanted him to.
When Prudence cried out at the exquisite agony of his tongue, he closed his mouth around her, lightly nibbling her with his teeth, and then sliding his tongue across her again.
She sobbed with pleasure, lifting her hips to him, arching her back and her neck as she reached the pinnacle of her desire. Roan held her steady, determined that she would wring every last moment from this. Prudence whimpered once more, then came crashing back to earth. She threw her arm over her eyes and panted. “You really are a scoundrel,” she said, and groped for him in the dark.
“You really are beautiful,” he said. He gingerly made his way to her side, settling on his back.
Prudence rolled into him, her arm pillowing her head. “That was...that was astonishing,” she said. Her smile of delight seemed to radiate the night. “I had no idea,” she said, more to herself. She rested her head on his shoulder.
Roan tried to think of what he ought to say at a moment like this, at her awakening to the power of her sex over man. But as he could scarcely grasp how he felt about it, he couldn’t think of any platitude or words of warning that seemed to fit the occasion. As it turned out, it hardly mattered—Prudence was at last asleep, confident in the circle of his arms. So confident, in fact, she snored lightly.
