No, that was unfair. He wasn’t the sort to permit a rape even of a fallen woman or a prostitute. Still, if he recognized her… Her face grew hot at the thought. She thought she might die of shame, which made no sense, as she had done nothing wrong. She peered out the window, clutching a guinea. It was too dark to see well, but they must be nearing Bunbury Place.
A dreadful thought occurred. Sir Reginald’s coachman must have heard her give Mr. Brownley’s address. They might go to warn her uncle. Worse, they might follow, might get to Bunbury Place ahead of her, might even abduct her successfully this time. She mustn’t approach the house unless she knew it was safe.
She rapped hard on the roof of the coach. It lurched around a corner into darkness broken only by the glimmer of the hack’s carriage lamps and stopped.
She put down the window. “How far are we from Bunbury Place?”
The jarvey got down from the box and slouched against the coach, a nonchalant shape with an impertinent voice. “Not far, love. Changed your mind, have you?”
“I have not changed my mind. I am merely asking for information.” She put her hand through the window, proffering the guinea. “I trust this suffices. Kindly open the door and point me in the right direction. I shall walk the rest of the way.”
He didn’t take the coin. After a brief, horrid silence during which she concentrated on thinking of him as the jarvey and not her once-and-never-again lover, he said, “Can’t do that.”
“I beg your pardon?” She pushed on the door, but he had moved forward to block it.
“It’s not safe for a lady alone at night. This, er, Number Seventeen, Bunbury Place—it’s where you live, is it?”
How dare he? “Where I live is none of your business.” She shrank away from the door and kept her hood well over her face.
“So it’s not where you live. Who does live there, then?”
Why couldn’t she have just told him that yes, she lived there? Must every man in the entire country try to order her about? “Let me out at once.”
“Sorry, love. When I rescue a lady from deathly peril, I see her home safe and sound.”
Some shred of common sense deep inside her told her this was extraordinarily kind of him, but it made her want to slap his craggy, insolent face. Home wasn’t safe for her anymore. Nowhere was safe, and meanwhile Matthew Worcester was playing stupid games.
“Cat got your tongue?”
She exploded. “Damn you, Matthew! Stop playing at being a jarvey. It makes me positively ill.”
There was another ghastly silence. It stretched and stretched. Good God, what if he actually was a jarvey? Surely he hadn’t come down that far in the world. A different shame—a valid one—swelled inside her.
“You recognised me,” he said at last. “What a surprise.”
* * *
“Of course I recognised you. How could I not?”
“You might have said something to that effect.” He mimicked her proud voice. “‘Good evening, Matthew. How do you do?’ Friendly-like,” he added, lapsing into the role of jarvey.
“After I’d almost been abducted and then called a whore?” Her voice shook.
In spite of himself he took pity. “Sorry, but that was before I realized who you were. Respectable women don’t wander about by themselves at night.”
She opened her mouth as if to say something cutting, but shut it again, flapping a hand as if he were irrelevant. Which he was, in the ordinary course of Arabella’s exalted life, but she was stuck with him for the moment. He’d been contemplating whether to stop and question her when she’d banged on the coach roof. “Who lives in Bunbury Place? Your…” He got his mouth around the word. “Fiancé?”
“No, my trustee lives there. My supposed fiancé is the man who tried to abduct me.”
“What the deuce?” He opened the door and was about to climb inside—perishing cold out tonight—when he caught the sound of hooves. “Hold on a jiff. Stay there.” He slipped behind the hack and ducked back to the street. Sure enough, that same coach—her fiancé’s coach?moved quickly past.
Supposed fiancé, she’d said. So she wasn’t really engaged? Absurdly, relief bourgeoned inside him. He returned, bumping into her as she rounded the hackney, and grasped her arm to steady her. A big mistake, for even in the chilly air her unique aroma reached out to him, lured him to the edge of lunacy. “Didn’t I tell you to stay put?”
She put her nose in the air. “Where did you go?” Peremptory as ever, and yet no woman had ever fired his blood as she did.
“Looks like your, er, supposed fiancé hasn’t given up,” he said. “That was his coach, headed for Bunbury Place.”
He heard her sharp intake of breath, felt her fear. “I was afraid of that,” she muttered. “That’s why I had you stop. I daren’t go home. Oh, God, what am I to do?”
It was madness to spend another minute with her, but what choice did he have? “Obvious, isn’t it? You’ll have to come with me.”
* * *
Go with him? How she wished she could go with him, away from here forever. She shut that impossible dream into the coffin in her mind where she kept her memories of Matthew Worcester. There were so many; they’d been friends throughout childhood in their village in Surrey. Such good friends, but then they’d grown up, and the last memory overwhelmed all the rest, turned pleasure into pain, so she’d shut them all away. She’d never learned how to nail the coffin tight, but it stayed closed most of the time.
It wouldn’t after tonight. She envisioned months of repeating soliloquies from Shakespeare’s tragedies and passages from the Bible—but not the Song of Solomon—over and over every time she thought of him. Replacing those thoughts with words and more words; banishing those memories, the old and now the new.
“You needn’t look so appalled,” he said. “I’ll take you to stay with my mother.”
“You can’t possibly see the expression on my face in this pitchy darkness,” she retorted. “Does your mother live nearby?” Arabella hadn’t seen Mrs. Worcester for a number of years—not since her husband had died and she’d left Surrey to live with a relative.
“Not too terribly far. It’s not a tonnish address, but entirely respectable. Your reputation will be safe.”
She should be relieved, but on the contrary, she had to bite her lip hard to avoid bursting into tears. She’d assumed that someday she would have to meet Matt and speak to him again. A few years earlier, she’d seen him on a London street, but she’d been so unprepared that she’d cravenly ignored him. After that, she’d pictured how they might eventually encounter one another, thought out what she would say, planned how calm and composed she would be. After all, he was a thing of the past.
She hadn’t expected to find that the pain and anguish of seven years ago was nowhere near dead and buried, but had merely been biding its time.
As for the lingering desire, what was wrong with her? He’d abandoned her without a word. How dare the coals of that long-ago fire still smoulder inside her?
“Get back in the coach,” he said. “The horses are beat, but after I’ve stabled them I’ll take you to my mother.”
Arabella didn’t want to get into the coach. It was dark and lonely in there. “Let me sit with you on the box.”
He stared as if she’d gone mad, and chagrin swept over her. “No, forget it. It was a stupid notion.” He didn’t care for her anymore, didn’t even like her a bit. He was merely doing what he thought right. She stomped toward the coach.
“Not stupid at all, just surprising.” He paused. “It’s cold up there, you know.”
“It’ll be worse all alone in the dark.”
“Very well, then.” He boosted her onto the box and climbed up beside her. She shivered, as much from the memory of his touch as from the cold. They were in a little lane between two streets. He shook the reins, and the horses moved slowly forward, then more quickly after he guided them onto a street heading east, away from Bunbury Place. “They know I’m takin
g them home.”
“Is this—are these your horses? And hackney?” She shouldn’t have blurted that. They weren’t children anymore, saying whatever they wished to one another. Embarrassment swept over her at such a prying question. Such a demeaning one.
“No, I’m doing a favour for a friend who’s ill.” How could he sound so comfortable? Did he not mind being taken for a jarvey?
“That’s kind of you,” she said.
His shoulder moved against hers as he shrugged, and again his touch sent quivers of memory through her. “Makes a nice change.”
From what? she wanted to ask, but it was none of her business, or maybe she just didn’t want to know. He hadn’t been born to such low work. He’d been the vicar’s son but beneath her notice, or so her father would have said, had he known how much she’d wanted Matthew, always and forever, right from the very start. She’d believed Matt felt the same, until she’d found out the contrary.
“If you’re not really engaged, why was that announcement in the papers?”
This was safer ground, or at least less of a quagmire. She explained, haltingly at first, then in a veritable torrent of indignation. She’d forgotten how easy it was to talk to Matthew. “How dare he?” she cried. “How dare they?”
His cool, matter-of-fact voice reminded her that they hardly knew one another now. “Greed does strange things to people. So does lust.”
Yes, she remembered lust. It had driven her to utter folly.
And yet at the mere mention of lust in the proximity of this man, the coals of desire glowed and flickered into flame. Fool that she was, she’d longed for him and loved him, while he’d merely given in to his male instincts with her—a natural reaction of a male to a female and nothing more, as his subsequent behaviour had made perfectly clear.
She envisioned a snuffer extinguishing that foolish flame. There. All gone.
But not really, so she hastened into the safety of speech. “My uncle must be desperate to get the house, to have connived with Sir Reginald in such a dreadful way. Perhaps he has debts, or maybe he finds the terms of the trust intolerable. I know I do. We dislike each other intensely, and since my aunt died it has been worse. Why should we have to wait years and years to go our separate ways?”
“That’s no excuse for what he and Sir Reginald did. They deserve to be soundly whipped.”
“You treated Sir Reginald very roughly.” She clenched her fists. “I wish I could do the same. I wish I could see them both mortified and shunned. Instead, I shall be the one to suffer. I have avoided the marriage, but I shan’t escape the scandal.” She summoned a weak little smile. He’d been a wild boy, the despair of his family, but such fun…. She’d felt safe with him and entirely free.
But she’d left that Arabella behind long ago. When her mother had died, she’d still had her father and Matt. But then Matt had gone away, and a few years later her father had died, and after that her aunt, an insipid woman who’d at least meant well. She’d learned that she could count on no one but herself. “You never cared about scandal, so you wouldn’t understand.”
“That doesn’t mean I don’t care what happens to you,” he said.
“Thank you, Matt,” she said. “It’s good to know I have one…” She stumbled over the word. “One friend left in the world.”
* * *
“That bad, is it?” Matt said. Now you know how it feels. Aghast at his own bitterness, he clamped his mouth shut. At least he hadn’t said it out loud. She was a nob through and through, but she didn’t deserve this predicament, while he had to some extent merited his own. He was a beast to let his own pain worsen hers. Something of his anger must have come through in his voice, for she turned sharply away, shivering in the wind.
“Sorry, love,” he said, longing to put an arm about her and pull her close. It took all his control to keep his hands on the reins where they belonged. “I don’t mean to sound unsympathetic.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said stiffly.
“Yes,” he said, “it does. I understand better than you can imagine.” She sounded as desolate as he’d felt seven years ago.
“How can you possibly understand? You’re a man.”
“A man can be alone and friendless, too.” He didn’t want to discuss himself. “You’ll stay with my mother as long as you need to, and everything will be fine.”
“That’s most kind of you, and I’m extremely grateful—”
“I don’t want your gratitude, damn it!” He moderated his voice. “I’m trying to help. Isn’t that what friends do?”
She stared silently down at her hands. He couldn’t see clearly in the darkness, but were her fists clenched? Yes—after a while he caught the movement as she opened them again. Did she loathe the thought of his friendship so very much?
She took a deep breath and said, “I shall love to see your mother again, as she was always most kind to me, but going to her will only solve my immediate problem. I shall put a notice in the papers, but people won’t believe the announcement was an error. A ruptured engagement almost always reflects badly on the woman.” She sighed. “Perhaps I’ll go live on the Continent. The pin money allowed by the trust should be enough to support me there with perhaps one of my servants.”
Matt shook his head. “You don’t want to do that.”
“Of course I don’t!” she snapped. “But it would be better than remaining here to be ridiculed and possibly shunned.”
“Can’t say I think much of your friends,” Matt said.
“They’re not so bad,” Arabella said. “They’re obliged to protect their own reputations.”
He wasn’t about to argue with this; to the nobs, reputation was king. From his beginnings, he could have gone up or down. When he’d been thrown out of home, he’d been forced to start from the bottom, but once he’d had a choice, for the most part he’d chosen down. “We’ll think of summat, Bella-love.”
Her wavering smile cut straight to his heart. He hadn’t the faintest what to do for her, but that glimmer of hope in her eyes meant he had to succeed.
He doubted she’d do much glimmering when she saw where he was taking her. They progressed steadily into more unsavoury areas of London. Judging by her rigid posture, she became more nervous as the minutes went by. Her erect head wasn’t held up by her stays. That was pride in the face of fear.
He took a dim view of pride, but if it mattered that much to her, he would do his best to help. If she left for the Continent, he would be obliged to accompany her. He couldn’t allow her to go jaunting off alone, even with a female companion. He wondered if she would take him as a footman.
No, he wondered how he was going to keep his hands off her.
She was shivering again. Damn.
* * *
“Hold these.” Matthew handed her the reins, undid the buttons of his cloak and removed it. He flung it over her shoulders. “Bundle up now, good and tight.” He took the reins again.
“What about you?”
“A little cold won’t hurt me. You’re the delicate flower of society who might wilt. Can’t have that now, can we?”
“I am not a delicate flower,” she said, nettled. “I may have been temporarily overset by events, but I do not intend to wilt.” He wasn’t shivering yet, but he soon would be. “Nor do I wish to be responsible if you catch your death of cold.” She squeezed close to him, spread the cloak wide, and put it over his shoulders as well.
He snickered, muttering something under his breath.
“What’s so amusing? What did you say?”
He shrugged, his shoulder shifting against hers, and settled the cloak around himself. This proximity with Matthew was shockingly familiar, as if not one day had passed since they’d been much closer, skin to naked skin, instead of almost seven years. Beneath the smell of the cold outdoors, she detected the warm, masculine scent of him. Nothing—neither the disdain in his voice nor relegation to the status of mere friend—could stop the traitorous thrills that rippled
through her.
She didn’t want to remember that day. She couldn’t afford to feel such sensations ever again. “Tell me.”
“If you’ve forgotten what happened the last time we were this close to one another,” he said, “I certainly haven’t.”
“I haven’t forgotten,” she said, knowing she sounded surly.
“Then you might want to keep your distance.”
“I’m devastatingly sorry if my proximity annoys you, but I don’t want your death on my hands.”
After a pause, he said dryly, “It doesn’t bother me.” Of course not, because he was male. He didn’t try to move away, and if he thought he could shame her into doing so, he had another think coming. She was only doing this out of necessity. Snuggled next to him like this, she was at least partly warm.
Oh, who was she fooling? She wanted to fling her arms around him and kiss him, again and again. She wanted him to kiss her back until she drowned in his kisses. She’d missed those kisses for years and years. Only pride kept her from resting her head on his arm and bathing her senses in their closeness.
A few minutes later they turned into a dark passage. To one side stood a stationer’s shop; to the other a tavern that, judging by the precarious slant of its upper stories, had seen far better days. Lamplight glowed from within. Boisterous voices swelled in song.
Warmth, she thought. I bet it’s warm in there.
He passed her the reins. “I’ll just be a jiff.” He leapt down, flung open the tavern door and shouted over the uproar. “Rufus! You in here?” The singing paused, someone spoke, laughter flowed and the song began again.
Matthew returned and put up a hand to take his cloak and help her down. She wished she needn’t touch him at all. She yearned to touch him everywhere.
That was impossible, of course. He felt nothing but pity for her. And amusement. Well, she was rather pitiful, wasn’t she? Still in love with a man she’d tried to forget for years, but she was damned if she would let him know. She got her foot on the step, trying to clamber off without his help, but he took her by the waist and swung her down. He set her gently on her feet. His hands lingered on her hips a little too long before he let go. No, that was wishful thinking.
To Rescue or Ravish? Page 2
