“You frightened him, my dear,” Visel said mildly.
Eva tried to catch Jemmy’s eye, but he flipped up the steps and closed the door with a quick snap, clearly too ashamed by his traitorous behavior to look her in the eye.
She tried to find something in Visel’s plan to complain about, but couldn’t. She was every bit as eager as he was to avoid notice. It would make everything easier after she escaped him and made her way to Lady Repton’s.
Once the carriage stopped, he exited first and offered her his hand. Eva ignored it and hopped down without any help from him.
The side door opened as they approached it. “Ah, yes, right in here my lord, my . . . er . . .” The rotund innkeeper blinked down at Eva, his round face shiny and red. “I beg your pardon, but if you’ll take these back stairs, you’ll be more private.”
Visel took her elbow in a firm, unbreakable grip as the innkeeper led them to the second floor.
“This is our nicest room, my lord.”
“This is yours,” Visel told her, before turning to the innkeeper. “Have a bath brought up for her ladyship, and I’d also like to engage a maid for her and—”
“I don’t need a maid. I can take care of myself. And I don’t want—”
“Would you excuse us a moment, Mr. Johnson?” the earl asked, not waiting for an answer before pulling her inside the room and shutting the door in the stunned innkeeper’s face.
Eva yanked her arm, but he would not release her.
“Listen to me.” It was an iron tone of command Eva recognized: Lord Visel sounded remarkably like her father. But he was not her father and she was under no obligation to obey him.
She glared up at him. “Let go of my arm.” She infused the words with all the venom she could muster, but his grip didn’t loosen.
“Do not argue with me every step of the way or it will become tedious for both of us.”
“Let me go and you won’t have to worry about me and my tedium.”
He walked her backward, until she was pressed against the wall, his tall, hard body not stopping until they were touching from shoulders to hips. He took her chin in strong, warm fingers and tilted her face to his, holding her immobile when she tried to pull away. This close to him she could see his irises were a dozen shades of blue intermixed with shards of white, the iris rimmed with pale, pale gold. The lines that fanned out from his eyes were myriad and distinct, and the grooves between his nose and mouth were etched deeply. Bits of gold glinted under the light of the wall sconce: his night beard. Something about seeing the tiny hairs scattered across his angular jaw and determined chin made her aware of her body, especially the region south of her belly and north of her knees: this was the face of a man, not a boy.
As Eva looked into his penetrating blue eyes, she knew manipulating him would not be easy; he was not the sort of man to bend to her will.
“If you behave like a child, I’ll treat you as one.” His body pressed against hers and the words rumbled like the threat of approaching thunder.
“How dare you speak to me this way? I am not your wife and have no intention of assuming that position, no matter what you say.”
His lips twitched. “Trust me, darling, you will assume any position I say when the time comes.” His smile disappeared. “You kidnapped me, hit me on the head, and dragged me halfway across the country. I dare a good deal at this point. I will not fight you every step of the way to Scotland. I will not argue in front of others. I will not be made a fool of. Do you understand me? I will punish you in private. I will put you over my knee and paddle you like the willful, wild, undisciplined, spoiled child you are.”
She gasped. “You wouldn’t.”
One side of his mouth pulled up, the action unveiling a dimple in his tanned cheek. “Oh, but I would. And I daresay my hand would enjoy meeting your bottom.” His eyes dropped to her mouth and his nostrils flared and for one dreadful moment she thought he was going to kiss her.
For one dreadful moment Eva wanted him to.
Instead, he thrust her away, strode to the door, flung it open and closed it ungently behind him, leaving her alone.
* * *
“Good Lord, Godric—this is remarkable.”
“So you’ve said, Bertie—at least a half dozen times already.” Godric topped up his friend’s glass and his own while he was about it.
The other man, shorter, plumper, and with considerably less hair than the last time Godric had seen him, took a deep pull and shook his head yet again. “I’ve never heard anything like it—a chit kidnapping a man right from a ton party. If you told her father this story, you could not rightly be expected to marry her.”
“If this story got out I would be the laughing stock of all England, Bertie. The great war hero Godric Fleming kidnapped by a girl barely out of the schoolroom? I think not. Besides, the chit would be ruined.”
“But isn’t she already ruined? I mean she is—”
Godric lifted his eyebrows at the other man and Bertie froze. “Have a care, Bertie. She is to be my wife.”
Bertie took a big swig from his glass before answering. “Yes, yes, of course, old chap.”
Godric forced himself to relax. “How are Amelia and the children?”
Bertie perked up. “She’s blooming. We’ve got seven now.”
“Seven! Good lord, Bertie—don’t you ever let the poor woman have a night’s rest?”
Bertie’s homely face flushed with pride. “Four boys and three girls. All strapping, fine youngsters who take after their mother in their looks.”
“That is worth raising a glass to.”
They toasted Bertie’s fine-looking children.
After that they drank several more toasts, becoming increasingly loose as the evening wore on. Godric had ordered a separate dinner for his betrothed and had not seen her since leaving her room. He’d been wise enough to lock her door but wouldn’t have been surprised to catch her crawling out the window, falling, and cracking her head open on the cobbles below. So he’d told Johnson to pay a man to stand in the back courtyard all night. The innkeeper had looked at him as if he were unhinged, but it was better than hieing across the country searching for her tomorrow morning.
The woman was bloody exhausting.
And you will get to spend the rest of your life with her. Mocking laughter echoed in his head.
Christ.
Bertie maundered on about some hunt or other while Godric tried to impose order on his mental chaos. He hadn’t been lying when he’d told the girl he’d not planned to marry The Kitten. What she didn’t know was that he’d not planned to remarry at all. It had been an enormous bone of contention between himself and his grandfather, the Duke of Tyndale.
From the moment Godric’s uncle—the present duke’s eldest surviving son—had been killed in a carriage accident, his grandfather had come after Godric with a singlemindedness that was dizzying, even going so far as to make a journey to the Continent to apply pressure on him to sell out and come home. When Godric had refused, the duke had pressured the Beau to speak to him.
When Wellington had summoned Godric to dinner, he’d been fairly certain why he was being honored. “You’ve done your duty to your country for fifteen years, Lord Visel.” The duke’s use of Godric’s courtesy title told him what was coming next. “Now it is time you do your duty to your family.” Wellington was one of the most powerful men in the world; he was also Godric’s commander. He could not disobey the Iron Duke, even if the man had only been making a suggestion.
So he’d sold out and come home. Tyndale had wanted to install him in the country estate that had always been occupied by the ducal heir, a rambling nightmare of a place where Godric would rattle around like a pea in a dried-out pod.
That had been the first of his grandfather’s orders that he’d ignored. He would live at Cross Hall, he told the duke. What he hadn’t told the other man—one of his few remaining relatives—was that he needed to live there. The death of his father, mother, two brothers and th
eir wives and children, and his young sister, had only become real to him when he’d set foot in his childhood home. Never could he have imagined it so empty—so silent. Even with all the servants still occupying it, the house was like a tomb. A tomb without bodies. Because none of the bodies of his family had been recovered after their ship had been sunk by pirates.
“Godric?”
He looked up at the sound of his name and saw that Bertie was staring at him.
“Sorry, Bertie, I’m afraid I’m knackered and drifted a bit.”
“Quite so, quite so, old chap. Here I am rattling on.” Luckily Bertie was too good-natured to take offense at Godric’s inattention. “I was just saying I could send word to Samuel Porter, the local tailor. It’s late, but I know he’d work through the night if it meant kitting out a duke’s heir.”
“Yes, that would be excellent. I’ve only got this to wear.” He gestured to the rather battered clawhammer and buckskins he’d had on beneath his costume. “And I managed to lose my purse somewhere along the way, I’m afraid,” he said, not wanting to tell his friend that his bride-to-be had stolen his money and given it to her accomplice. “I shall need to dun you.”
“Of course, don’t give it another thought.” Bertie grinned, his eyes flickering to the top of Godric’s head. “I’m guessing you’ll want to wash that out as well.”
Godric squinted and then recalled what he’d done for the masquerade ball.
“What do you think, Bertie?” he jested tiredly. “Does it suit me?”
“I think that shade of black is not for you, old man. Besides, you wouldn’t want to hide your gold curls from your adoring flocks of women.” He stopped abruptly, his pudgy cheeks coloring. “Although I suppose those days might be behind you now that you’re getting shackled.”
Godric thought of his female companion stewing away a few doors down: his wife-to-be. He snorted and pushed away any questions of women, adoring or otherwise, and smiled at his friend.
“I suppose you’d better send a message to a dressmaker as well as a tailor.”
Chapter 5
Eva was awake even before first light.
She paced the two rooms, telling herself to be calm. Nothing was ever gained by becoming angry with a man. No, they were allowed to be angry but women were merely supposed to smile, bow their heads, and meekly obey.
Well, if Visel was expecting her to be that kind of wife, he was in for an unpleasant surprise. Lots of unpleasant surprises.
What had he said? That she would not be required to do her wifely duty? So, he found her so revolting, he did not even wish to bed her. She squeezed her hands together so hard the bones ground against each other. Good. She was glad he didn’t wish to touch her. The only way she wanted to touch him was with a shovel.
The door opened and she swung around: it was the earl. He swept her from head to toe to head, his eyes even paler in the bright light of day, his hard mouth pulled down at the corners.
“Why are you not dressed?”
“Somebody has taken my clothing.”
His eyes flickered to the garments the maid had laid across her bed. “What are those?”
“That is an excellent question,” she shot back.
His mouth tightened. “That is a dress and undergarments I had brought over for you at great inconvenience.”
“I want my clothing—what I was wearing yesterday.”
He took a step into the room and closed the door before leaning back against it and crossing his arms. “I believe it is time we came to some agreement.”
Eva crossed her own arms and returned his cool, haughty look. At least as well as she could when she was dressed in a borrowed dressing gown while he was clean and pressed and kitted out in clothing that fit his big body as snugly as a glove. His hat and overcoat looked new but his other toggery was so well-tailored that she assumed this must have been what he was wearing beneath his ridiculous corsair robes.
“I do not wish to engage in arguments every day. Or even every other day. What can I do to accustom you to the idea that we will shortly be man and wife?”
Eva thumbed her chin and gazed upward in a gesture of exaggerated contemplation. “Let’s see . . . that would be, um . . . Let. Me. Go.” She dropped her clenched fists to her sides and strode toward him, brimming with fury. “Why can’t you leave me here? I can send a message to my father to come fetch me. I daresay James is already halfway back to London. My parents are not leaving for another few days—it will not take them long to come up here and—”
“No.”
She couldn’t help the frustrated noise that slipped from her. “Why are you doing this? I don’t care if my reputation is ruined. I don’t. You must have guessed I never intended to marry, so this makes no odds to me. You can go your happy way and never have to see me again.”
Impossibly, his expression hardened even more and his arms dropped to his sides. He took a step toward her. When she would have stepped backward, his hands shot out and closed on her upper arms like vises.
“I am going to say this again and it will be the last time I repeat myself. You will become my wife. I do not care if you have no regard for your own reputation or name; I have plenty for my own and for the few family members that remain to me. I do not care to live out my life known as a man low enough to destroy a woman’s reputation and make no amends. If you are harboring the bizarre belief that anyone in Britain would believe you abducted me, you are—” He hesitated, his eyes narrowing slightly as he realized what he was about to say. “Nobody would give any credence to such a story. Even if they did, that still does not change the fact you have been alone with me for two nights. And really, that is the crux of it all: you have been compromised. You have just seen your brother’s response to compromising Miss Drusilla Clare—do you expect anything less from me?” She opened her mouth and he lifted one hand, his index finger raised in a cautionary gesture. “Do not say anything you will regret, my lady.”
Eva ground her teeth, keeping her jaws clenched.
“If you cannot voluntarily bring yourself to get dressed and get into the carriage, then I will carry you into it, dressed as you are. If you cannot bring yourself to speak your vows in front of a member of the clergy, I will find one who is not so fussy about the, er, finer points of the ceremony.”
She gasped. “You would marry me against my will?”
“I thought I’d made that patently clear. Yes. Yes, I would. Because I know you will end up marrying me in any event. If I were to let you go home, as you have requested, the Marquess of Exley would hunt me down like the vermin I would be if I released a young, unmarried gentlewoman to the vagaries of the road. And when he caught me—after he administered sufficient chastisement—he would make us wed. If I refused him, he would put a period to my existence, and there isn’t a magistrate in the land who wouldn’t applaud such an action. So, yes,” he said in a low, menacing voice. “I will force you to do the sensible thing now and save us both a great deal of bother later.”
Eva could feel the mood come over her; it had been toeing the edges of her consciousness like a willful goat testing its tether. Her temper was what her father and everyone else thought of as a sign of madness. Well, everyone but one person: her stepmother.
“You have a dreadful temper, Eva. That is all that ails you.” Her beautiful, loving stepmother had taken her aside years ago—after one of the confrontations with her father that had left everyone in the house miserable and tiptoeing on eggshells.
“How do you know?” Eva demanded. “How do you know it is not m-madness?”
It had been difficult to say the word, but not to accept the truth. Her father had told them about their mother when Eva was not yet fifteen. She did not know why he’d waited so long, but she suspected it was because he’d not wanted to face the truth himself. No, only his new wife, Mia, had been brave enough.
“I have a terrible, terrible temper,” Mia confessed that day. “My head becomes hot and my hands shake. My
mind is like a trapped animal running around and around inside my head, looking for an exit.”
Eva had been stunned. “Yes! Yes, that is exactly how it is with me. But—”
“You are not mad, my beautiful daughter. You are only angry—and you are not good at managing your anger.” She had shrugged her delicate shoulders, as if such a thing—a thing that had plagued Eva all her life—was a mere inconvenience, a bagatelle. “You will need to learn to manage it. And I am proof it can be done.” Her mouth had curved into an ironic smile. “Not always, perhaps, but often enough. When you feel these things happening to you, it is time to breathe deeply and clear your mind. It is not time to argue or discuss—you will not be able to do so rationally.” Her pretty face had become hard. “Raising your voice, becoming hysterical? These are things that make men feel they can ignore us—that we are merely emotional females. I am not saying you must not be emotional, I am saying you should save your emotions for a time when you can examine them in private. Never let anger rule your behavior—or your anger will rule you.”
Eva clutched at the memory of those words now, her eyes held by Visel’s. A vein in his temple pulsed and she realized he, too, was struggling to manage his anger. Why? Because everything he said was true. She would have to marry him—whether he insisted on it or not. It was not just about her; it was about her family. What would happen if the truth about what she’d done got out? Rumors of such behavior would not only hurt her, they would hurt the rest of her family—especially Melissa. Sweet, gentle, and quiet, her seventeen-year-old sister would have even less chance of marrying than she did now. No, Eva had to marry him.
And then there is the fact that you want him. The thought rang in her mind with the sharp decisiveness of a judge’s gavel, and she wondered if she’d said the words out loud. But he was still looking at her with haughty inscrutability.
A wave of exhaustion hit her, leaving her feeling shaky and worn down. “I will get dressed, my lord.”
His eyebrows lowered and she realized her capitulation had put him off balance; Eva tucked that tactic away for future use. “You are not planning an escape?”
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