The Unmarriageable Collection (Books 1–3)

by Lancaster, Mary

They opened wide in shock and he took full advantage, kissing her with deep, blatant sensuality. And God, she tasted divine, her lips warm and soft and sweet. She yielded as his arm closed around her, but he didn’t fool himself that it was more than astonishment. She wasn’t immune, but neither did she respond like the temptress she was pretending to be. He wasn’t surprised.

  He slipped his tongue into her mouth, heard her gasp, and then he released her lips and, without warning, threw her into the saddle. Instinct made her cling on rather than slide back down. Before she could think of it, he leapt up behind her, held her firmly in one arm, and kicked the horse into a gallop.

  *

  Apart from the time she had been abducted—not a remotely amorous situation—Cecily had always been in control. In certain social circumstances, she liked the fun of flirting, especially with witty men who made her laugh. And, if she was honest, she rather enjoyed her power in keeping her admirers at arm’s length. From instinct, observation and quick thinking, she had always been able to evade rakes and ruiners, and if she had occasionally allowed a secret kiss, from sheer curiosity, it had been on her terms. Something quick, disappointing, and ultimately forgettable.

  She had never encountered a man like Lord Verne, and she had certainly never been kissed like that. She hadn’t known a man’s mouth could be rough and tender at the same time. Exciting and sweet, it was an assault on her senses as much as her dignity. His earthy yet clean male scent enfolded her, thrilling her.

  Although astonishment had at first stopped her fighting back, her fury was swiftly drowned in a surge of heat and fear and secret pleasure. She recognized the smell of brandy on his breath, tasted it in his mouth, and for the first time, wondered if he were foxed. She didn’t want him to be.

  And then, somehow, she was on the horse, his arm like steel around her and she was galloping away into the night. Into the unknown.

  This was carelessness. This should not happen to a lady twice. Stupidly, she had forgotten the lesson she had learned only a month ago—don’t stand too close to a dangerous man. She could have been forgiven for not understanding the threat of her first captor, but Verne… she had sensed his danger at once, but like a child touching a flame, she could not resist. She had been too sure of her own control. And of his. He was her brother’s friend. Now for the first time, she seriously doubted he was affected by such trivial considerations.

  “You can’t do this,” she said intensely. “Take me back to the inn at once.”

  “I’ll take you back in the morning,” he said without apparent interest. “Or you can go yourself in a couple of hours.” His eyes glittered as they briefly focused on her through the darkness. “If you still want to.”

  Instinctively, she pulled away, but his arm tightened at once, holding her immobile. She could not even hit him, for he held one of her arms imprisoned next to her body, and the other was trapped between them.

  But there was a more immediate danger. He was galloping at full speed in the dark, without a light of any kind, apart from the sliver of moon which occasionally emerged from the clouds.

  “My horse knows the way,” Verne said, insanely casual, “and will slow when he has to.”

  “I don’t believe you,” she said flatly. From the deeper blackness ahead, they were leaving open fields and about to enter a wood. “My one hope is that you are knocked from the saddle by a very large branch.”

  “It will make no difference. He’ll still take you to Finmarsh. I shall merely limp in a little later.”

  She stared at his averted face. Impossible to see his expression in the dark. “Then your servants have orders to imprison any lady who happens by your… er… lair?”

  “Oh, I barely have any servants. But where else would you go?”

  As he had promised, the horse slowed, swerving to avoid branches in its path while it continued at a fast trot that bumped her against her captor unmercifully.

  She eyed him with dislike. “I would rather take my chances wandering blindly around the countryside than enter your house.”

  “Liar.”

  “I’m the liar?” she gasped in outrage. “Do I need to point out that you promised not to abduct me to your evil lair?”

  “No, I didn’t. I merely asked if you thought that was my intention.”

  A surge of fresh fear drowned her natural outrage. “You are making a huge mistake,” she managed. “Take me back before my aunt raises a massive hue and cry.”

  “Oh, I doubt she will do that.”

  Another fear hit her like a blow in the chest. “Oh, dear God, you have not hurt her?”

  His gaze came back to her, just as the pale moon cast a shred of light across his face and vanished. She thought he was frowning. “Of course, I have not. When would I have had the time, let alone the inclination?”

  “Your inclinations baffle me, sir,” she retorted.

  “I’m inclined to talk to you,” he said. “Well, if we are being honest, I’m inclined to do a lot more, but I will settle for the talk if you wish it.”

  “I have no desire whatever to talk to you!”

  “Then why were you skulking outside my parlor door? And watching me, I suspect, from your bedchamber. I presume it was your shutter twitching?”

  God, he had seen even that. She began to think the rumors about him were true, that he was some kind of sorcerer.

  “I may have looked out at the sea,” she said with dignity.

  “I like you,” he said unexpectedly, just as the horse picked up pace again.

  “That’s a matter of indifference to me since I most certainly dislike you!”

  His breath caressed her ear, making her shiver with more than fear. “That isn’t the impression you gave me earlier.”

  Her body flamed with uncomfortable memory. “You are mistaken. Take me back or let me go.”

  “After our talk,” he insisted.

  “If I tell you who I am, will it make any difference?”

  “At this point? No. Later, it probably will,”

  Later? Another surge of fright kept her silent, though even then she wondered why she wasn’t more afraid all the time. He was a much scarier proposition than Cornell, despite the fact he did not wave pistols around. Nor had he bound her. But there was no Charlotte to rescue her this time. She was depending still on his friendship with Alvan… and her probably silly belief in her own ability to twist men around her little finger. He was just a slightly more difficult victim, surely?

  “Plotting?” he asked sardonically.

  “Worrying,” she answered honestly. For even if she could somehow keep him at bay, if it ever came out she had spent a night under his roof without so much as a maid, her reputation would be ruined beyond repair.

  She felt his attention on her, had the impression he was frowning. Certainly, there was a long pause before he said, “Play by my rules and neither of us need worry.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, I don’t even know what that means!” she raged. “Will you just let me down or take me back to the Hart?

  He laughed. “No.”

  There was no more talk between them until, suddenly, they rode over a hill and there below stood a dark, sprawling and forbidding house. Beyond it, the dark earth seemed to glisten, as though it were built on the edge of a marsh.

  Cecily’s heart beat so hard it seemed to rise up her throat. But she had one chance, and she meant to be ready to snatch it. Without urging, the horse picked its way down the hill to a path that met what looked like the main drive to the house. A faint light burned inside, showing in the glass above the door.

  The horse came to a halt right in front of it. Cecily tensed. But he did not dismount first. She did not mind much, for she doubted the horse would have obeyed her had she tried to flee on its back. Verne shifted her by the waist and let her slip to the ground.

  And this was the moment she’d been waiting for. As soon as her feet touched the ground, she darted like a hare for freedom. To her relief, she heard no
hoofbeats behind her. Perhaps, he had decided just to let her go…

  He hadn’t. Within seconds, his arm slammed around her waist, spinning her back round the way she had just come.

  “Don’t be such a bad guest,” he complained. “We agreed to talk first.”

  “You agreed!” She struggled against his compelling grip. “I have nothing to say to you.”

  “Well, don’t run off here. There’s a lot of dangerous marsh, and if you don’t know the land, you can easily come to grief.”

  For the first time in her life, she felt utterly helpless and without choices. All she could do was try to keep the galloping fear at bay.

  As he urged her back to the house, a manservant with a lantern emerged from the front door. He didn’t look remotely surprised to see his master with his arm around a strange female, which told Cecily rather more than she wanted to know.

  “See to Jupiter, will you?” Verne said cheerfully and swept her through the open door, across a large, shadowed entrance hall to a door on the right.

  He closed it behind them and finally released her to turn up the lamp already lit there, and light more candles from the spills on the mantelpiece. She watched him in silence, trying to quell the trembling of her limbs.

  She appeared to be in a comfortable library. The walls were lined with books from floor to ceiling, while armchairs and sofas were scattered around the room. The remains of a fire still glowed in the grate.

  Surely, not an hour since, she had been safe at the Hart with her aunt, making up stories in her head about this man and French assassins. Now, it seemed, if she had not been right all along, he was something much more immediately dangerous.

  As he dropped a log on the almost burned-out fire, she realized she was cold, and held her shawl tighter about her shoulders. But she refused to draw nearer. She wasn’t even sure her trembling legs would carry her.

  He straightened and turned to face her.

  Oh yes, he was devastating to look at. Darkly handsome, mysterious, forbidden… and terrifying. Every rumor she had ever heard about him rushed on her with a vengeance. Murderer, Satanist, seducer—to call it no worse.

  With slow deliberation, he walked up to her. She tilted her chin in instinctive defiance, but he only took it between his finger and thumb and gazed down at her. The glitter in his black eyes might have been brandy, or it might have been lust. Behind it lurked a tinge of humor she was in no condition to appreciate.

  His thumb moved on her skin, softly caressing. “What is your name?”

  She swallowed. “I am Cecily Moore.”

  Chapter Three

  The appreciation in his eyes intensified. “Fustian,” he remarked. “But it’s a clever ploy.”

  She cast her eyes to heaven and irritably tried to brush his fingers away. But unexpectedly, they tightened. A frown had formed on his brow and he searched her face more seriously.

  “My God, you could be,” he uttered. “You look just like Alvan offended by the bad smell of an imbecile under his nose.”

  “I can certainly sympathize with the feeling,” she retorted.

  Laughter hissed between his teeth and turned into a groan. He let her go. “Oh well, who needs friends, anyhow?” He strode toward the cabinet, unstopped a decanter, and sloshed amber liquid into two glasses. He knocked the contents of one straight down his throat before refilling it. He walked to a sofa, “Come, sit down,” he invited. “You had better tell me everything.”

  She stared at him. “Everything about what? That you wantonly abducted the daughter of a duke, ruining the sister of your friend? Did I miss anything out?”

  “Yes,” he said ruefully. “Only friend. Dash it, am I really so bosky that I can’t tell the difference between a hussy and a high-ranking lady?”

  “Apparently.”

  He looked at the glass he hadn’t yet drunk from. “Well, you’d better come and take this from me then, or the shock may compel me to drink both. Don’t be frightened,” he added impatiently. “I won’t touch you.”

  “I am not remotely frightened,” Cecily returned at once. “But I have no desire to come anywhere near you.”

  “Can’t blame you for that,” he admitted. His eyes settled on her once more. “But we’d better think of a way out of this.”

  “Give me a horse,” she commanded.

  “Don’t be silly. You’ll never find your way back to the Hart in the dark. And you certainly don’t want to risk being seen with me—or my servants—in the middle of the night.”

  “But it was an acceptable risk on the way here?”

  “When I didn’t know who you were,” he said, frankly, “yes.”

  “It should make no difference at all who I am!” she exclaimed, starting impetuously toward him.

  “No, it shouldn’t,” he agreed. He held up the glass to her. “Here. It will warm you, if nothing else. What the devil—I beg your pardon—what on earth were you doing at the Hart?”

  She snatched up the glass and sipped the fiery liquid. “I told you.”

  “So that explains no servants. It might even explain why Lady Cecily fetched her aging aunt a glass of milk. Only it doesn’t explain why she was roaming about the inn at midnight, listening at my parlor door. With her clothing awry.”

  Cecily blushed fierily. It had never entered her head that he would notice such a thing beneath her shawl. But they had been very intimate both before and during the ride.

  She sat down abruptly. “I was preparing for bed,” she said with dignity. Then, throwing caution to the wind, she added, “When I saw you and your friends below and heard you speaking French. I was trying to set my suspicions at rest because I knew you to be a friend of my brother’s.”

  “Do you not speak French?” he asked in surprise.

  “Of course, I do.”

  “I didn’t listen at your door.”

  “No, you merely abducted me and ruined me!”

  His eyes darkened. “Don’t tempt me.” He dragged his fingers through his unruly hair. “How bad is this? Are you contracted to anyone?”

  “No.”

  He cocked an intelligent eyebrow in her direction. “About to be?”

  “No,” she said with a little less certainty. The very proper yet amiable face of Lord Torbridge swam before her eyes and was dismissed. “Probably not.”

  “You can’t tell me there is no one. A girl of your charm and beauty, to say nothing of wealth and breeding, must have suitors haunting your front door.”

  “I do not care for any of them,” she said loftily.

  “Then why did you hesitate?”

  She sighed. “Well there is a gentleman my aunt is disposed to favor for me, and in truth, I like him better than anyone else, but he has not offered, and I am not convinced I would accept him if he did. You may take it that I am not engaged nor likely to be, though why that should make any difference to this current mess—”

  “There’s a way out of this for you,” he interrupted. “I just have to think what it is. Where is Alvan?”

  “Half way to Lincolnshire at the very least.”

  “No use, then. The only relatives either of us have within spitting distance are your aunt and my late brother’s mother-in-law…”

  Cecily couldn’t imagine he was on good terms with the latter, since the world believed he had murdered her daughter. He stared moodily into the flames, apparently deep in thought. Then, in one of his sudden, shocking movements, he finished his brandy and stood, striding to the desk by the window.

  He wrote busily, without pause, for a minute or two, then blotted the paper and folded it while he crossed the room and threw open the door.

  “Daniel!” he bellowed.

  Cecily didn’t know whether to laugh or invite him to use the bell instead. Perhaps it didn’t work. While he waited for “Daniel,” he paced back and forth in front of the open door until hurried footsteps sounded, and the servant she had seen outside appeared looking a trifle breathless.

  “My lo
rd?” he said without apparent surprise.

  Verne shoved the folded paper into his hands. “See that this is given to…” He swung on Cecily. “What’s your aunt’s name?”

  “Lady Barnaby,” she replied, warily.

  “To Lady Barnaby at the Hart Inn,” he told the servant. “It is to be delivered into her hands first thing. Make sure Villin understands that.”

  “Yes, my lord. I’ll send the boy.”

  “Good, then send Shilton to me.”

  Since she was well brought-up, Cecily did not argue with him in front of the servant, but as soon as the door closed again, she said uneasily, “What are you writing to my aunt? I don’t want her worried. I would rather write to her myself.”

  “It’s done now. We just have to hope she’s more sensible and discreet than either of us.” He walked back to the decanter, swiping up his glass on the way. As he poured more brandy, he glanced at her, holding up the decanter invitingly. She showed him her glass which still held at least half of what he had given her previously.

  “I shouldn’t be drinking brandy,” she observed. “It isn’t ladylike.”

  He shrugged impatiently. “Who makes such stupid rules? Besides, you’ve clearly drunk it before for it didn’t make you choke.”

  “Julius gave me some one day because he had no tea and nothing to eat. My aunt was scandalized.” She thrust aside the memory of visiting her younger brother in Oxford, and glared at her companion. “Though that is nothing to how she’ll feel about… this! You are not even related—” She broke off, brightening with the sudden thought. “Oh, but perhaps we are related! Surely, if we go back far enough, there must be some connection between your family and mine? We could be distant cousins.”

  “I doubt it. And even if we are, it must be very distant indeed! Certainly not close enough to weigh against my reputation, let alone the circumstances of your arrival, should that ever come out.”

  “If it ever comes out, I suppose Alvan will feel compelled to fight a duel with you,” Cecily said with satisfaction. “He will probably kill you.”

  Verne cast her a crooked half-smile. “I’m sure we all hope he may. Unfortunately, Alvan favors less comfortable methods of punishment. He is not really a dueling man.”