Sally MacKenzie Bundle (174 page)

“Don’t tell the others though. I’m sure enough people will notice that Sarah and I are both gone, but it might help if the ladies stay and act as if nothing untoward has occurred. You’ll see them safely home later?”

“Of course.” Robbie glanced worriedly at Sarah. “Do you think that bloody bastard did more than tear her dress?” he asked under his breath. Sarah didn’t indicate that she had heard him.

“I don’t know, but I will find out. Don’t worry. I’ll take care of her.”

James guided Sarah to the back gate. The moon lit a path down the center of the alley. She still hadn’t spoken, but he wasn’t worried. She was using all her energy to hold herself together.

John Coachman was waiting for them on the street. James handed Sarah up and then climbed in after her. She sat stiffly on the edge of her seat. He didn’t try to touch her but sat quietly watching her, waiting for the coach to make the short journey to Alvord House.

Wiggins met them at the door.

“Bring some warm water, cloths, and salve,” James told the butler.

“Yes, your grace.”

James hurried Sarah into his darkened study and settled her in his big upholstered chair. Then he went to the cabinet to get the brandy. He poured two glasses and brought one to her. Pulling up a footstool, he sat in front of her.

“Drink this, Sarah.” He wrapped her hands around the glass. “It will help.”

“Here are the items you requested, your grace,” Wiggins said from the doorway.

James kept his eyes on Sarah. “Thank you, Wiggins. Put them on the desk, will you?”

Wiggins paused. “Do you require any help, your grace? I’m sure Mrs. Wiggins would be happy to assist Miss Hamilton.”

James frowned. Sarah still had not taken a sip of her brandy. “No, Wiggins, we are fine. Just close the door behind you when you leave.”

James waited until he heard the quiet click of the door shutting.

“Drink some brandy, Sarah.”

She put the glass to her lips and took a sip. She sputtered and choked, but her eyes had more life to them.

“One more sip, sweetheart, and then we need to talk.”

Sarah swallowed another mouthful before James took her glass and gently pulled off her gloves. He held her hands in his. Her fingers felt like ice.

“Sarah, I’m sorry to have to ask you, but I need to know. You mustn’t be afraid to tell me.” James forced down the fury that rose in him as he looked at Sarah’s face. If Dunlap were in the room now, he would be dead. But Sarah had had enough violence tonight. She did not need to hear anger in his voice. He spoke quietly. “Did Dunlap rape you?”

“No!” She shook her head frantically. “He, he grabbed me. He t-tore my dress.” She closed her eyes. “He t-touched me.” Her chin started to tremble. She opened her eyes again. She looked lost, like a child in the grip of a nightmare.

James gathered her close. Her arms went around his neck; her face buried into his cravat. He lifted her up, sat down in the chair and settled her on his lap. Her whole body was shivering. He wrapped one arm tightly around her waist and cupped the back of her head with his other hand, holding her face to his chest, resting his lips on her hair.

Sarah sought warmth. She was so cold. She was shivering inside and out. Her teeth chattered and her stomach clenched and jumped. She could not get warm. She felt as if even her fingernails were cold and tight.

James sat with her as he had the night of Lizzie’s come-out ball, but this time he just held her. At first she was frantic for him, for the strength and safety he promised. She buried her face in the soft warmth of his shirt. His heat surrounded her. His chest pillowed her cheek, his arm supported her back, his breath stirred her hair. She would have climbed inside of him if she could have.

She was tired of being alone. She was tired of trying to be strong. She pressed her cheek tighter against James’s chest and listened to the steady, calming beat of his heart. She breathed in the warm, familiar scent of him and felt his hand moving over her scalp and down to her neck, slowly stroking her hair. His voice rumbled under her cheek. She didn’t try to understand the words. She just wanted to
be
with him, not to think or to feel, but just to know that he was there, close around her, making her safe. Slowly the fear drained out of her and James’s warmth seeped in. Her muscles relaxed.

“Tell me what happened, sweetheart.”

She shook her head. She didn’t want to remember the ugliness. Putting it into words might make it real again.

“Tell me, Sarah. Trust me, it will be better to get it all out. Then the hurt won’t fester.” His big hand wove through her hair, his fingers rubbing the base of her skull. “You’ve been in a battle, love, just like in war, and the men who talked most about the battles they were in, about the horrors they’d seen, were the ones who got free of the violence.”

Sarah shuddered. “He was so much stronger than I,” she whispered, feeling the helplessness again.

James’s hands tightened on her. He too was stronger than she was, but his strength was reassuring, not frightening.

“I knew I had to get away or he would do something terrible. He was going to push me up against a tree. I would have been trapped. I couldn’t have moved him.”

James’s hand kept up its gentle stroking. “But he didn’t trap you. You got away. How did you do it, love?”

“I kneed him.”

Sarah could feel James smile against her hair.

“Good girl. Who taught you that trick?”

“My father. He said if I ever was caught by a sailor on the wharves, I should drive my knee up between his legs as hard as I could and the man would let me go. It worked.”

James chuckled. “Believe me, sweetheart, it will always work.”

“At first, I didn’t think I could do it, but then I had a flash of panic and my leg moved without my thinking.”

“Good for you. Robbie and I heard you scream, but it might still have taken us a few minutes to find you.” James’s hand paused in her hair. “Why were you in the garden, Sarah?”

Sarah turned her face into his chest again. Her words were muffled in his shirt. He felt her lips move, felt the warmth of her breath through the fine linen on his chest.

“Everyone knows about the Green Man, James.”

“I see.” He resumed his rhythmic stroking of her hair. She was stiff with tension again. “You know what that means, don’t you?”

Sarah hunched one shoulder and kept her face in his chest. He smoothed her hair off her forehead.

“It means, sweetheart, that now we have to marry. I will send the notice out tonight so it makes the morning papers.”

“No.”

“Yes.” James tried not to let the pain he felt at her refusal show in his voice. Her feelings and his were immaterial now. “It will silence the gossip, Sarah. I’ve already had one old roué ask me if I were done with you. If the announcement of our engagement doesn’t appear tomorrow, all the rakes and riffraff will think they are free to proposition you.”

Sarah shuddered. “All right.” Her voice was small and toneless.

James frowned. An engagement would stop the gossip, but it would enrage Richard. Once the notice appeared in the papers, there was no way James could honorably call off the wedding. The deed was as good as done. His—and Sarah’s—lives were about to get exceedingly more dangerous.

Anger and frustration surged through him and his grip on Sarah tightened reflexively. She whimpered, and he loosened his hold.

“Did Dunlap hurt you? I can’t do much about bruises, but I have this salve that should help with any cuts.”

“I think his ring scratched me when he tore my dress.”

Sarah’s face was still buried in his chest, but James could not remember seeing any marks there. The scratch must be hidden under his jacket. Perhaps Dunlap’s ring had caught her on the neck or upper arm.

“Do you want me to have a look?”

She sat completely still for a moment; then her head nodded slightly.

“Yes,” she whispered. She sat back a little in his arms and started to undo his jacket. Her hands shook too much for her to manage the buttons. James gently brushed her fingers aside and took over, moving slowly so she could stop him if she wanted. When he finally had the buttons all undone, he folded back the coat.

A long, angry red scratch ran from her collarbone to the tip of her left breast. James reached for the cloths Wiggins had brought. He dipped one in the water and gently stroked it down the scratch.

“Does that hurt?” Even he could tell that his voice was huskier than usual. Sarah shook her head. Her eyes were huge in the firelight. He put the cloth down and dipped his index finger in the salve. Slowly he rubbed thick ointment into Sarah’s soft skin, from collarbone down to the tip of her breast. In the light he could see that a bruise was beginning to form. He skimmed his thumb over the spot.

“He hurt you here, too.”

“He grabbed me.” Sarah’s voice was barely above a whisper. “He said I was skinny. He said he was going to take me against a tree so my sharp bones wouldn’t dig into him.”

James looked into Sarah’s eyes and saw the question there. He held her injured breast gently in his palm. He felt the sweet weight, the gentle give of flesh so different from his own.

“You are beautiful, Sarah. I would love nothing more than to have you beneath me, but on a large, soft bed.”

“Other women have more…bigger…don’t you want…”

“I want you, Sarah. Only you.”

James let his fingers carefully explore the treasure in his hand—the rounded underside, the smooth slope tapering to the darker circle at the tip, the hard little nipple at the center. He heard Sarah draw in a breath when he touched her there. He let his thumb rub back and forth, and the little nub got harder and stiffer. Like a part of his anatomy, he thought, smiling.

Sarah’s breath came in little gasps and she squirmed on his lap. Heat flooded him. He wanted to see how this small part of her tasted. He wanted to put his tongue where his thumb was, to flick that hard little nub with moisture. To take her into his mouth.

He did not hear the click of the study door opening, but he heard the sharp, indrawn breath, the one that had not come from Sarah.

“It looks like we can finally set a wedding date,” Aunt Gladys said.

Chapter 11

The announcement that James William Randolph Runyon, Duke of Alvord, was to marry Miss Sarah Marie Hamilton of Philadelphia appeared in the morning paper. Betty delivered it with Sarah’s chocolate.

“We’re all that happy, miss,” Betty said, setting the tray on the table by Sarah’s bed. “I’ll tell ye, we’ve been right worried, but all’s well that ends well, I always says.”

“Umm.” Sarah stared down at the paper. She had slept like the dead, too exhausted by the emotional storm she had weathered to have nightmares. In fact, the events of the previous night now seemed like a bizarre dream. The horror of Dunlap’s roughness and the heat of James’s gentleness were equally unreal.

She took a sip of chocolate, running her fingers over the words of the announcement. How would she feel if this were a normal engagement? Excited? Wildly happy? But it wasn’t a normal engagement. She hadn’t been asked; she’d been told. No, not even told. Propelled by forces outside her control, like a ship before a gale. And if she were honest, there was a different kind of gale within her propelling her toward this marriage, sweeping all rational thought away before a storm of feeling whenever James touched her.

She closed her eyes and leaned her head back against her pillow. He had had his hand on her naked breast. Her whole body flushed in an agony of embarrassment. The heat that surged through her pooled low in her stomach, throbbing in the strange, new way that was becoming all too familiar. She didn’t know herself anymore. She must be ill. A brain fever, perhaps. She certainly felt feverish.

Thank God James’s aunt had blocked Lady Amanda and Lizzie from seeing into the study.

She put her cup down and closed the paper.

How did James feel? He had said he wanted only her. Did he mean it, or was that something he told all women? She supposed it could be true—at any one moment he might want only the woman he was with. If he was with only one woman, Sarah thought, remembering the gossip of Nigel and his cronies at the Easthaven ball.

“Sarah!” Lizzie burst into the room. “I saw the paper! Why didn’t you tell me you and James were getting engaged?”

“Good morning, Lizzie,” Sarah said weakly.

“You sly thing! Here we were, worried that you and James had had a falling-out, and you two go and get engaged.” Lizzie flopped down on the foot of Sarah’s bed. “What happened last night?”

“Which part of last night?”

“All of it! When did he propose? How did he propose? Tell me everything.”

“Certainly you heard the rumors in the ballroom?” Only the dead could have missed them, Sarah thought.

“Well, yes, I heard them. It’s amazing how quickly a story can get out of hand. Did you know that people were saying you and James were
naked
and in
bed
together?”

Sarah blushed furiously. “Yes.”

“So that was why James proposed?” Lizzie sounded very disappointed. “Well, at least he gave you the Runyon engagement ring, didn’t he?”

“Well, no. Things happened rather quickly.”

“Oh.” Lizzie flipped over on her back and stared up at the ceiling. “Who do you think spread the story?”

“Richard saw me with James at the Green Man. Maybe he was the one.”

Lizzie shook her head. “That doesn’t make much sense. Richard doesn’t want you to marry James, but he must know that James would be honor-bound to marry you if word got out that he had ruined you.”

“He
didn’t
ruin me!”

Lizzie turned her head to look up at Sarah. “It doesn’t matter what he did, Sarah. The story has ruined you—or would ruin you, if James weren’t marrying you. But he is so, voila,” Lizzie snapped her fingers, “you aren’t ruined.”

“Wonderful. I feel
so
much better.”

“So, Walter,” James said, “tell us what you have discovered about William Dunlap.”

James gave his full attention to the little man on the other side of his desk. Walter Parks had been an excellent soldier and now he was an excellent shadow. He had grown up poor in Tothill Fields and had learned early on how to be unobtrusive. James wished he could say it was sheer brilliance on his part that he had recognized the man’s special talents when Parks had been hauled before him for stealing from a fellow soldier, but it was luck. He’d had no stomach for a thrashing and so had assigned Parks to make restitution by acting as the wronged soldier’s servant for a week. The two soldiers had ended up friends and James had won Parks’s loyalty.