Stolen Away: A Regency Novella (6 page)

“Such as that steam carriage in London which exploded a few years ago?”

“That one failed. And perhaps the next will as well. But some clever fellow, he’ll get it right—if he hasn’t already. And that’s the fellow I’ll back with my money.”

“You mean my money.”

His grin flashed. “Yes, your money. But think on it—what would you rather be? A marchioness, married to a dull fellow, weighed down by a chain of traditions, suffocated by a world that tells you what you can and cannot do? Or one of the new leaders—the real ones, who has the freedom to make your own rules. With a husband who’s making you so rich that even those old biddies will come round to smiling at you and inviting you to all their affairs?”

Chloe stared at him. She wished she could see his face better. Did he really think a title meant so little? The passion in his voice seemed deeply felt, and it stirred an answering excitement. How much fun to be a setter of fashion—to be someone who remade the world? Oh, it would be risky. Failure would mean ruin and ostracism. But had he not already dragged her outside society’s boundaries?

She frowned.

Of course, all this was bound to sound alluring, what with moonlight streaming into the barn and that soft accent of his making his words sound smooth as the finest silk.

Bundling up the chicken bones in the cloth, she wiped her fingers as best she could on it and pushed it back at him. “You sound quite mad, you know!”

His grin flashed again, and moonlight threw dim light on his profile. Her heart tightened as his words flowed over her. “Ah, but it’s a fine madness that stirs the blood—like that of a long, hot kiss that sears you through to your soul.”

Face burning and mind empty, she turned away and wished she had some clever, sharp answer for him. Audrey would have had something to say. She had nothing. And the thought of her cousin made her think of her aunt. Tears stung her eyes again. Why had she not listened to them? Why had she not been a dutiful girl?

She lay herself down on her cloak again, but she doubted she would find any rest.

* * *

Audrey decided she would have to tell him the truth. That’s all there was to it. She ought not to have lied, really. She winced at the stories she had told him. Well, perhaps, somehow, she could gloss over the fact that Chloe had gone willingly with Fitzjoy to something as vulgar as a masquerade. Perhaps Arncliffe would be angry with her, not with Chloe for seeking out Fitzjoy’s attentions.

Taking a breath, Audrey twisted in her seat to face Arncliffe.

He had had a team of six horses set to his traveling chaise, and the closed coach—after a day already spend in his open phaeton—seemed luxury. Soft velvet cushions covered the seat and seat backs. Matching burgundy velvet drapes could be pulled over the glass windows. Roses had been set into the crystal holders beside the door, giving a faint perfume to the coach, and the lanterns outside the doors offered a pleasant warm glow.

They had stopped every ten miles to change horses. “We will make the best time with frequent changes,” Arncliffe had explained. At two of the stops, he had confirmed sightings of a dark-haired Irishman who matched Fitzjoy’s description. However, for the past three stops, they had not had word of such a person.

Now Audrey studied Arncliffe and wondered how best to disclose the truth.

He sat with his legs stretched out before him in the spacious coach. He had tossed his hat onto the seat that faced backwards, and had sat, arms crossed, in companionable silence. Oddly, she had felt no urge to babble in the intimacy of the coach. He also seemed to feel no need as well to make conversation. But they must talk now—for they would need to start asking after not just Fitzjoy but an Irishman who might be traveling with a young lady.

Taking a breath, Audrey let it out slowly. She hurried into the truth before she could think better. “I...my lord, I have a confession to make. I...I have not been completely honest. I am not following Mr. Fitzjoy because I care for him, but because he has abducted Chloe and I was afraid to confess this to you.”

Staring at him, she waited for his answer.

For a moment Audrey only heard the beat of galloping hooves on the hard, dry summer road and the creak of the carriage springs. The softest of snores reached her. The carriage rounded a bend and the lantern light from outside the coach fell briefly across Arncliffe’s face.

Eyes closed, face relaxed, he stirred as the light drifted across his features, casting the rugged masculine contours into rough peaks and valleys, making him more startlingly handsome than ever. He did not waken. The road straightened, and the dim gloom of the carriage hid his features from her again. Still, she continued to stare at him. Did she not know already every line of him—the straight nose, that sharp edge of his jaw, the curve of his cheek? Her mouth twisted. Here she was disclosing her sins to a sleeping gentleman. She turned away to stare outside the window on her side of the coach, at countryside made into ink etches by the silver moonlight.

She looked back at Arncliffe—at Connor.

He must be exhausted to fall asleep in this fashion. After all, while she had rested at his house, he had been busy arranging matters. He stirred again as the moonlight slanted into the coach. She glanced at it, her mouth pulled down. Rising and steadying herself against the sway of the coach by bracing one hand against the back seat, she reached across him to pull closed the curtain. The coach gave a lurch and she fell back into her seat, landing next to him so close that her breasts brushed his arm now.

He stirred and she thought he might wake, but he only shifted, turning so that his head fell onto her shoulder and his hand fell onto her waist.

Muscles tensed, she held herself still. What now? Wake him? Push him away?

His breathing deepened back into steady, rhythmic pulls.

Experimenting, she pulled one arm from his hold. She tried to sift his weight. He mumbling something, and he did shift, but only to snuggle closer, so that his face now rested low on her shoulder and just above the swell of her breast. With a contented sigh, he seemed to slip into deeper sleep.

Desperate, heart thudding, she wet her lips and glanced about her. But no one was here to see her predicament. No one would know.

Lifting one hand, she bit down on the tips of her glove and drew it off. She brushed her fingertips across his forehead. He did not move. Growing bold, she brushed her lips across the spot where her fingers had touched. He tasted warm and sweet. She pulled in a breath, intoxicated with him.

Longing swept through her, sharp, fierce, bright as the summer sun. Now that she had him in her arms—solid and real, and no longer a recollected story from Chloe—she knew that she had lied to everyone, herself included.

She never really had intended him for Chloe. No, she had used her cousin shamefully. She had lived through her cousin, counting each success of her cousin’s as her own. She had chosen Chloe’s gowns, and selected the events for Chloe to attend. She had guided Chloe into her engagement to Arncliffe, and had convinced herself that it was because it was such a perfect match. She had told Chloe what to say. She had even written Chloe’s notes to Arncliffe.

And she had told herself it would be enough to see him happy with Chloe. To see him settled with such a beautiful woman—a woman he loved. She had thought she could live as the indulgent second cousin to their children.

But the longing ache inside mocked such intentions with the truth—she loved him. And it was not enough to give him to Chloe and watch him marry her cousin. But it would have to be so. He had given his word. And he was a gentleman.

Shifting herself, she settled her arms about him, making him and herself more comfortable. She laid her cheek against the softness of his hair.

The carriage rocked as the horses galloped into the night. For another night, she would keep lying. She would imagine herself to be as pretty as Chloe, to be as rich, and to be eloping with the man she loved, a gentleman accustomed to beauty and to having the best of the world.

Come the morrow, she would stop the deceit, and Arncliffe might well be happy to turn his back on the entire Colbert family. But she would be greedy tonight and keep him in her arms.

* * *

Fitzjoy woke with a stiff neck, shivering cold, and to find his heiress gone. Jumping up, he glanced around the barn, seeing only the gelding, placid in its stall, and a black velvet cloak on the ground. He took it up and her scent swirled around him—lavender and rose. With a muffled curse, he strode to the door. Now what would he do? And what did she think herself doing, jaunting around on her own where any sort of devilment might befall her?

He scowled at that. Perhaps she thought the worst had already happened—but he had not touched her. No, he’d wait for a proper ring on her finger first and all the legalities tied up for them in Guernsey, where a man might marry with as few ties as could be had in Scotland.

However, there was danger afoot in this world. Half-pay English soldiers back from the war wandered the land with little to do other than make mischief, and they’d not be so kind to such a beauty.

Muttering curses he wondered why he had ever thought Chloe’s lack of male relatives an advantage. Now he knew it for the disaster it was—she had never learned to mind anyone. Least of all a man. Well, time she learned.

Striding to the gelding, he threw on the beast’s bridle and led the horse from the barn. With his luck, the nag would probably not be broken to saddle and would throw him, but the hunt for his heiress would be faster on horseback.

He led the horse from the barn and stopped at the sight before him.

She sat cross-legged in a patch of wild daisies, her skirt billowing around her, her shoes—pretty, dainty things fashioned with low heels after those of last century—next to her. Even in her rumpled brocade overskirt, her curls tumbled lose, she looked fresh as the dawn itself.

His irritation sharpened. What was she doing giving him such a start? Frowning, he dropped the reins, leaving the gelding to graze and strode to her. “And what do you think you might be doing here all on your own?”

She glanced up, her expression calm. His heart seemed to stop for an instant. Mother Mary, but she was a beauty, with that spun-gold hair and that heart-shaped face and those wide, wide blue eyes. She looked like the dawn, right enough, all pink and golden and soft blues.

“I am resigning myself,” she said.

“Resigning now, is it?”

“To marriage with you. We have spent the night together—however chaste.”

His frown deepened. “It’s not rape I’m after.”

“No, you made it quite clear you want my fortune, not my person. Therefore, I shall marry you, for my reputation is in ruins if I do not. You may have my money and I shall go to a nunnery.”

He couldn’t stop the grin. “A nunnery? You’d be trying to take the veil as Christ’s bride, would you? You’d not be an hour in any cloister before you caused so much trouble they’d want you packed and gone from their hallowed halls.”

Her chin came up. For a moment, the blue eyes sparkled. She turned to pick a daisy. “I do not expect to become a nun, merely to seek refuge from an unkind world.”

He almost laughed at such melodrama, but the tremor in her voice checked his mockery and he stopped grinning. Throwing himself in the grass beside her, he plucked the daisy from her fingers. “Just how has this world ever been unkind to you? You’re an heiress—the most courted lady in London. That’s not sounding too unkind to my ears.”

She glanced at him, hot scorn in her eyes. “What would you know of it?”

Shrugging, he twirled the daisy. “What would I not know—I’m an Irishman in England.”

Tilting her head, she studied him, and blurted out, “The other girls hated me in school—they always said such horrid things about me. And then my parents died...” She looked away, and added, her voice soft, “They called me an orphan, as if that was something awful. And when I went to live with my aunt and cousin—well, I tried to make them like me. I did. But I could tell they did so only from duty.”

“And don’t you know why?”

She shook her head.

“Dear one, have you never looked in a mirror before? Any other woman would have to be a saint to look at you and not be jealous—and then it’s themselves they don’t like, first for not being so blindingly beautiful, and then you for making them feel catty about it. Men lust for you, and women hate you for it, and it won’t ever leave you much company, save for those who’ll stay by you long enough to see there’s a person under that face of yours.”

“And how do you know so much about women?”

He grinned. “I’ve sisters, my sweet. I know them. As well, do I know jealousy. I’m Irish, dear one. And its jealous English hands that have been trying to take our land from us for well over the last seven hundred years. It’s a land you’d love—all willful beauty like yourself. Lush and seductive. It’s no wonder you English keep wanting it. And I know what it’s like to feel alone—so alone you’d swear you could die and not have it matter to anyone. There’s plenty around London who’ll make an Irishman feel unwelcome. But what matters is this.” He took her hand in his. “This matters—skin to warm skin. Human touch. Reaching out to another even if they slap you away for it.”

Uncertainty clouded her eyes. She looked at him and said, voice small, “I only want to have others like me—I thought they would if I were a marchioness.”

Smiling, he touched her cheek with the daisy, trailing the petals over her skin. “Start by liking yourself more. If that fails you, it’s my eyes you can look into to see just how much someone does care for you.”

With a sigh, she leaned against him. “I should love that.”

He tucked the daisy into her hair. Standing, he brushed his hands. “Good, now if it’s resigned you are, would you care to resign yourself to a hot meal? There’s an inn not a quarter mile down the road in Chawton.”

She stared up at him, and her eyes narrowed. “An inn—a quarter mile away? And you allowed me to sleep on the ground!”

He started to stroll back to collect the gelding. “Seems as if we’re even then for that swim I took yesterday.”

“Oh, you—you...!” Reaching down, she picked up her shoe and threw it at his back. The slipper bounced off his broad shoulders. He glanced back at her. “You might be wanting to hang onto those a bit—there’s no reputable inn I know as will feed a woman who arrives looking a barefoot harlot.”

* * *

The slowing pace of the carriage woke Arncliffe. For a moment he lay still, thoughts and dreams tangling in a pleasant lassitude. What had he been dreaming? Something about Chloe writing to him? No, it had been Audrey, only instead of her sitting at her desk, she had been in a garden, dressed in something white and transparent as she wrote on a scroll in her lap.

He had watched her scribbling as if from a distance, and, in one of those shifts of a dream, he stood next to her, watching her write down the same words she had spoken to him in the garden.

But you told me that already
, he had said in the dream.

She looked up at him. Standing, she faced him, the gown around her pulled tight against her figure to show her slender waist, pert breasts that would fit so nicely into his hands, and the slim curve of her hip.
No, I haven’t told you anything.

Spinning in a circle, she changing into Chloe as she laughed at him and danced away. She kept turning, changing from Chloe to Audrey to Chloe to Audrey. Chasing her, he caught her, dragging into his arms—only now he could not recall whom he had caught. Chloe or Audrey?

He frowned at that scrap of dream, unsettled by it, and to his body’s response to the dream-woman pressed against him. Awareness woke in him of the slender form next to him. He realized that at least part of his dream had a basis in reality.

Somehow Audrey had ended up with her head on his chest and her body reclining against his. The faintest recollection stirred of his almost waking last night, of finding himself wrapped in her softness, of pulling her closer as he leaned into the corner of the coach and drifted to sleep again. No wonder his dreams had been so delightful—and so vivid.

As a gentleman—and one betrothed to another lady—he could not consciously allow the situation to continue. However, Audrey looked so sweetly comfortable.

Sleep softened her mouth and the dawn light played over her face, pulling attractive angles from the high cheekbones and the strong nose. He wanted to run a finger down the slight bow outwards of that nose—a nose of character and determination.

Reluctant, but unable to put it off any longer, he gently pushed her from him, settling her in the opposite corner of the carriage. He leaned back in his own corner and said, his tone brisk, “Good morning, Miss Colbert. I trust you slept well.”

She sat up at once, one hand to her forehead, a dazed look in her eyes. He smiled at her. He hoped the formal use of her name might ease the situation, putting them back on familiar, distant ground again. But she still looked tousled, her brown hair softly disordered and her eyes wide and dark. He could not help thinking that he would like to see her every morning like this.

Immediately, he looked away.

The carriage had slowed enough that he could take a measure of their location. He let down the window. Not Southampton yet. No salt tang to the air, no cry from sea birds. He glanced back at Audrey. She had smoothed her gown and put on her bonnet again. Nothing could take the creases from her dress, but she had her face well starched again.