With This Ring

by Celeste Bradley

  He was so far past hungry. He was starving. He was an empty shell of a man, lost and aching and only the sweet, wet, silken grasp of her femininity could save him—

  He must have taken one tortured step forward, a single footfall, like stepping on a fallen branch in the forest and startling the delicate doe just as he was almost close enough to—

  “Mr. Hastings!”

  Now it was her wide, furious gaze that had him riveted in place.

  Oh, hell. Oh, damn.

  “What are you doing here?” she hissed.

  What was he doing here? What was he doing standing one step inside the forbidden fortress of a lady’s bedchamber, after all his years of treading the straight and narrow, of careful strides into an upright and virtuous life?

  His first brilliant defense came out something like, “Erk!”

  Then his brain doused his body with an icy shower of dismay and he found he could manage human speech once more.

  What would Hastings say? Aaron willingly let his insouciant manservant take over this dangerous moment.

  “Miss Elektra? What’re ye doin’ in me room?” He narrowed his eyes and folded his arms in disapproval. “I’ll have ye know, I ain’t that sort o’ bloke!”

  Hastings, now and then, was something of a genius.

  Elektra stopped in her tracks and gaped at him in utter confusion. Unfortunately, she had the presence of mind to gather up her dressing gown and press it over the front of her skimpy chemise. Well, a man couldn’t have everything. For the moment, he would have to be satisfied that, for a single instant, he could see her actually wondering if she had perhaps taken the wrong room!

  It was a cheap victory, but he would treasure the look on her face for years to come.

  Then, as her inner recounting obviously informed her, she realized that he was indeed standing in her room while she remained in dishabille.

  “Get out!” she whispered furiously. Coming toward him like a goddess caught in a compromising moment, she looked magnificent and ridiculous and utterly charming.

  I really shouldn’t drink. I think it makes me ever so slightly bonkers.

  Only a man with no sense of self-preservation or common sense would allow himself to be attracted to the lividly insane tangle that was Elektra Worthington.

  Or any man, really, or at least one bearing a pulse … although that mouth could probably persuade a dead man to give life another go …

  That mouth was raking him over the coals at the moment, castigating him thoroughly in a furious-wet-cat hiss.

  “Why are ye whispering?” he asked in a normal tone. “Isn’t anyone to ’ear ye but yer own cousin down the ’all. The whole inn is fast asleep.” Except for Siegfried, who still stood dreamily wiping the same section of the waxed countertop downstairs, casting himself in the role of rescuing adventurer in a tale of double damsels in distress.

  For a moment, Aaron considered the danger of Siegfried discovering his trespass into the sacred Chamber of the Virgin, and rather thought the stocky younger man could probably do painful amounts of damage to Aaron’s manly pride. He hadn’t been in a fistfight for a decade, after all. That was a long time to go without punching something.

  The scent of jasmine swept through his senses, and he closed his eyes against the wrench in his gut. A decade was a very, very long time to go without a lot of things …

  Elektra. You’d be worth a fight to the death, you would.

  “Well, the death part is accurate enough, I assure you.”

  Aaron’s eyes popped open as his belly turned to ice. “Did I say that out loud?”

  She had her dressing gown on now, neatly tied in front and covering her from throat to toes. It didn’t matter. She was still naked underneath.

  Nonsense like this tended to emerge when he breathed the same air as Elektra Worthington. The intensity of her effect on him was such that he’d likely get tongue-tied looking at her shadow on the ground.

  She tilted her head. “Have I ever mentioned that I have five brothers?”

  Aaron passed a hand over his face. Teasing aside, he ought not to be in this room with her, especially not in a state of lack of self-control. He’d been a bad sort of man once—a selfish, impulsive lout with more vigor than brains—and although he’d never crossed that particular line, he’d not veered far from it, either.

  “’M sorry, miss. I took a wrong turn down the ’all…” Backing up two steps, he put his hand back on the bloody dangerous latch that had led him so far astray. “Ye might ought to lock this.”

  She frowned at him. “Mr. Hastings, have you been drinking?”

  He let out a sigh. “Indeed I ’ave, miss. Sorry to disturb ye.”

  He moved to close the door.

  “Wait.” She held up one hand and stepped forward.

  Didn’t she know that she ought to move away from the wild beast in the night? Didn’t she have a single shred of common sense in her wild, deadly swift mind?

  Apparently not, for she not only approached him but licked her lips uncertainly.

  Don’t do that. Really, really don’t do that.

  Unfortunately, this time he didn’t speak it aloud. She continued to come closer, until he could see the color of her shadowed eyes.

  “Mr. Hastings, this door does not lock properly … and … that big fellow down in the dining room kept looking at me!”

  She was asking him for protection. Him? He stood before her sporting an erection that only the dimness of the room could hide, with her scent in his nostrils and her voice in his ears and—

  “Don’t laugh.” She put one small warm hand over his on the latch.

  He yanked his hand away as if she’d burned him.

  She fluttered her fingertips in apology and went on. “If I asked one of my brothers for this, they would guffaw. I’m the fearsome one. I’m the one who isn’t afraid of anything.” She blinked and looked away. “Do you know I’ve never been anywhere without my family around me? I’ve never been alone, not for one single minute.” She looked back at him then, her eyes large and liquid.

  “Except in the manor ruins,” he reminded her, his voice grating in his throat. When she’d kissed him as if her life depended upon it. When he’d driven his tongue hard into her sweet, hot mouth as she’d squirmed on his rigid lap.

  She frowned slightly. “Yes. Of course. I had quite forgotten.” Then she smiled. “That doesn’t count, of course. You were there.”

  Aaron’s lust gave a last despairing wail and fell beneath the wheels of his honor.

  “I’ll look out for ye, miss,” he managed in a choked whisper. “No need to worry.”

  Now, firmly and steadily, he reached for the door latch and pulled the door shut with a decided click.

  Then he put his back to it and slid down it until his arse settled on the hard floor of the hall, where it would remain until dawn, needlessly protecting the Misses Worthington from the utterly harmless Siegfried … simply because she had asked him to.

  No wonder they hadn’t needed more money.

  Aaron closed his eyes and leaned his now-pounding head back against the hard wooden door, careful not to make an alarming thud with his skull.

  The bloody stable would have been more comfortable.

  * * *

  Back at the Green Donkey Inn, Hastings—the real Hastings, whose illness had been one part exhaustion, one part lousy head cold, and two parts duplicity to make the damned sod slow down!—had thought himself settled into the luxury of the inn quite nicely, with a soft bed, a staff of pretty girls at his beck and call, hot soup and brandy as needed, and no more midnight rides through the damned rain.

  It was all a bloke could ask for.

  Until he took a turn for the worse. Now his body throbbed, chills convulsed him, and his lungs felt as if they were filled with wet clay. The soft bed might as well have been filled with jagged, broken rocks for all the comfort he felt. The pretty girls were a blur of bustling bosoms (as seen from the level of the pillow) a
nd cold hands. He couldn’t stomach the brandy; the hot soup was the only thing he could keep down, and even then it was a near thing.

  He felt quite comfortable blaming bloody Lord Aaron Arbogast for every miserable moment, and did so loudly and at length. This alarmed him in his saner moments, for he feared he’d given away the plot and would be turned out forthwith, but it seemed that the inn staff took the nobility speaking of themselves in the third person as nothing odd in particular.

  Luckily, he never slipped in his posh accents, not once. Then again, he could run a scam drunk or sleeping—and occasionally both!

  So the staff took his madness in stride, except for one, the dark-haired girl with the luminescent skin and the deep, black eyes of a sorceress of old. This was no misty English beauty.

  Edith.

  She came from far Cornwall, she told him. He had laughed at that, her thinking Cornwall was far.

  He wasn’t laughing now. He was shivering and his tongue felt thick and dry in his mouth and he cursed bloody Lord Aaron to hell and back.

  “Hush, now. Hush,” soothed sweet Edith of the soft warm hands and the only voice that didn’t rasp his tender ears. “You mustn’t say such hateful things to yourself. It isn’t proper. You’re a fine man, a lord even. Be proud of yourself and your accomplishments.”

  This made Hastings want to giggle like a madman, but he thought it might frighten any sane person from his vicinity and he truly, deeply wanted Edith to stay and spoon hot soup to his lips and stroke his forehead when she thought he was asleep or too incoherent to know, like right now.

  He stopped ranting, because she asked him to. He lay still and breathed as deeply as he could, because she asked him to. Unfortunately, this had the effect of her gathering up her tray and preparing to leave him to his rest.

  That wouldn’t do. If he had to stay here and not curse and rave and toss, then he wanted his Edith by his side.

  He must have said it out loud, for she blushed and tried to slip her delicate hand from his grip. He’d taken her hand? When had he done that?

  Oh, well. Now that he had it, he thought it a fine acquisition and didn’t plan to return it anytime soon.

  “If you leave,” he wheezed, barely remembering to keep Lord Aaron’s well-born tones, “I shall go back to raving at the heavens. Only if you stay with me can I rest.”

  She drew back at that and gazed at him warily. It seemed he was not the first man to request her continued presence in an inn room. Seeing her suspicion, he released her hand at once. He would never be the man to put that look in sweet Edith’s eyes again. Never.

  “I apologize. I meant nothing untoward.” It was a good thing Lord Aaron was such a prig. Hastings had a thousand such phrases at hand! “I only meant that I do not feel well at all, but that I do feel somewhat less horrid when you are nearby, Miss Edith.”

  Stay. Stay and stroke my brow and feed me soup and let me pretend for just a moment that I am a different sort of man.

  I am a scoundrel. She is an angel.

  He wasn’t a fool. He’d been all over the world. He knew such things never amounted to much.

  So why did he have the unshakable feeling that this quietly pretty Cornish maid would haunt his dreams for the rest of his life?

  “Stay,” he wheezed. “Please … stay.”

  She stayed.

  Chapter Eleven

  Up at just past dawn, with her bag packed and her inn-room tidied, Elektra tucked a last strand of hair away into the smooth knot she’d created and brushed her hands down her skirts.

  She would be home later this morning! As maddening as her family could be at times, she adored them all and worried for them when she couldn’t monitor their doings. Had Lysander had another nightmare? Was Mama using the teapot to store her turpentine? Was anyone making sure Attie didn’t go about armed?

  She shook off her worries. There was naught she could do from here, and she’d be home very soon. Ready, she checked herself in the mirror.

  Her traveling dress was getting wrinkled and a bit dusty, though she’d sponged it most carefully last night in that long painful delay of sleep. She had done every little thing she could think of to avoid blowing out her candle!

  She felt a bit silly about it in the light of day. Goodness, she stayed in a perfectly respectable inn, frequented by respectable people. There had been no reason to think the faulty lock on her door was anything but a simple malfunction. She ought to have pushed a chair before the door and closed her eyes in peace!

  She simply hadn’t been able. Every creak of the structure was the footfall of a vandal! Every sigh of the wind was a faraway scream!

  It seemed she was only practical and pragmatic when surrounded by dreamers. Take her from the bosom of her imaginative family and she became as inventive as the rest of them.

  If Mr. Hastings hadn’t stumbled into her room, she might have stood there brushing her hair endlessly into the night, keeping the candle lighted and the heavy pewter candlestick at hand. He’d been quite gallant, really, in a drunken sort of way. A bit distracted by something, but he’d seemed sincere in his desire to help.

  She buttoned her spencer with a wry twist to her lips. He’d likely tiptoed off to bed a few minutes after that promise, but he had at least enabled her to ease her fears long enough to fall asleep.

  When she placed her hand on the faulty latch, the thing gave at once, leaping from her hand. The door flew open as if pushed from the other side.

  Mr. Hastings fell into her room and landed on his back on the floor at her feet. His eyelids parted slightly, and he winced.

  Elektra could only stare down at him. “You stayed? All night?”

  He groaned and wrinkled his entire face in an expression that said That was the worst night’s sleep of my life, then gazed blearily up at her.

  “I said I would, didn’t I?”

  “Y—yes, you did.” Elektra bit her lip, rather fiercely moved by his grumpy steadfastness. Her experience with asking male persons for irrational favors had led her to believe they would flight off at the slightest excuse, dismissing her needs with a laugh or, worse, mockery. Oh, she knew her brothers would die for her—but God forbid she ever ask them to protect her from imaginary nightmares!

  Lifting her skirts slightly, she lowered herself to a demure squat to gaze into Mr. Hastings’s sleep-smudged features. He looked absolutely awful. Dark circles ringed his eyes, his thick sandy hair stood straight up on one side, and there was a reddened patch on his face where the carved pattern on the door had pressed a design into his skin.

  Elektra gave him her very best smile—the one that almost no one got to see, the one she saved for her dear Iris and Attie. “Mr. Hastings, you are not an ordinary man.”

  “No, miss,” he agreed hazily. He seemed a bit gobsmacked.

  Poor fellow. Still smiling, warmed by his consideration and charmed by his lopsided hair, she rose to her feet. “Shall I order breakfast for you, sir? I should like to resume our journey directly afterward. Eggs and bacon?”

  He turned a little green and shook his head. “No, miss. No thank ye. I’ll see to the horses, straightaway.”

  Elektra took pity on him and pretended that she knew nothing about men and liquor and hangovers, although she’d hauled one or both of the twins off to their beds during their younger, wilder days, then poured hot black coffee and raw eggs down their throats the next morning.

  She smiled brightly at Mr. Hastings. “Excellent! I shall gather up Miss Bliss and we shall join you out front very soon.”

  He moaned something and wiggled his fingers good-bye at her, then dropped flat on the floor once more. Elektra stepped neatly over him and ventured down the stairs, where she knew Bliss would already be. Bliss, she had no doubt, was one of those people who was always precisely where she was supposed to be.

  All night.

  He’d watched over her all night long. She’d been far away from her home and family, all those brothers and father, too—and yet she felt so
safe.

  Just as she had in the ruins.

  * * *

  Aaron lay on the floor, knowing he looked ridiculous sprawled half in, half out of the room. That seemed to be a recurring problem with him. When his soul wanted out—as it had when Miss Worthington had requested his help to go home—his honor kept him in. When his soul wanted in—as it had when she’d stood so close to him dressed in naught but fine-spun linen and golden hair—his honor kept him out.

  Now, when all he wanted to do was to find his room—which he’d never even seen!—and sleep the morning away, she wanted him to help her on her way.

  Had any other woman in recorded history ever turned a man so inside out?

  Helen of Troy.

  Lady Macbeth.

  Guinevere.

  He’d have done it all over again, just for another glimpse of that smile. I am an idiot for that smile. He thought about the innkeeper, and poor lovelorn Siegfried, and every other fellow caught in the beam of that smile. I must remember that I am nothing special to her.

  He rolled—or rather, flopped—over onto his face, feeling the stretch of cramped muscles but also the welcome sensation of his numbed arse joining the party.

  I am not Alexander, or Macbeth, or Arthur.

  They had all lived their lives. He blinked at the carpet, which was much too close, and pushed himself up on his hands and knees. At this rate, he was definitely destined to die young.

  I just might be Achilles. He most definitely had a weakness.

  He made it all the way to the stables without his numbed legs giving way beneath him. He even managed to saddle his horse himself, although he gratefully accepted the groom’s help with Bianca and the pony cart.

  Therefore, he was impressively ready for action, despite the pounding in his head and the storm-at-sea feeling in his belly, when the ladies emerged from the inn, looking as fresh and rested as a good breakfast and a good night’s sleep can make one look.

  Aaron tried not to snarl as Miss Elektra thanked him prettily for his prompt attention to details.