He smoothed his jacket as he walked to the door of the chamber. When he reached it, he heard Anne’s voice, weak and shaky. “Rook?”
He turned back. She had sat up and looked so forlorn it nearly broke his heart. Her face was puffy with tears, her hair was cockeyed and half fallen from the bun at her nape, and her tone was so sad. She was still the most beautiful thing he’d ever had the privilege to lay eyes on.
“Yes?” He made his own voice as gentle as he could.
“Thomasina is the sister who took my place. Juliana is my other sister. I need to know which one married Harcourt, if the rumor is true. I need to know.”
“I’ll find out,” he promised as he left the room.
He hurried back into the main room downstairs and as he rounded the corner, he was met with the bustling innkeeper’s wife, Mrs. Sanders.
“Oh, Mr. Maitland, how is your dear wife? Do we need to send for a doctor?” she asked, leaning up to look toward the stairs behind him, as if Anne would materialize.
“She is fine, Mrs. Sanders,” he assured her. “I think a bit tired from our long travels is all, just as you surmised. She was overwhelmed and now she just needs to rest.”
The older woman nodded slowly. “Of course, sir. Your plates will be sent up later for you and if there is any other way I can oblige, you’ll let me know.” He moved to go around her to the men who were still gathered in the corner, but she caught his arm. “Have you considered she might be in a family way, sir?”
He froze and stared first at the fingers that held his arm and then at the hopeful, upturned face of gossip who owned them. The very question curled down into his bones. Anne, pregnant with his child. Something that bound them together forever.
He had been careful when they made love. It didn’t mean accidents couldn’t still happen.
“No,” he said softly. “I don’t think that’s it. We certainly appreciate your kindness, though.”
He pulled away with a forced smile and weaved through the boisterous crowd of travelers to the men in the corner. They were talking and as he approached they glanced over toward him with smiles of greeting.
“Ah, another traveler, here to take his rest,” said a half-drunk, red-faced man with a wide and friendly smile. “Do you need a seat, young lad? We have several.”
The rest of their group laughed heartily, though Rook wasn’t exactly certain why the statement was so funny. He smiled nonetheless. “I appreciate the warm welcome,” he said as he took a chair at the outer edge of their group. There were introductions all around and then they talked amiably about the weather and the bad roads. After a while, Rook leaned back and casually asked, “I have heard told you men are traveling from Harcourt?”
“Aye!” said one of the men, very tall and almost gauntly thin. “Mr. Smithins, Squire Golding and I are all from Harcourt, on our way to Edinburgh for a wedding.”
Squire Golding, who had been the first to greet Rook, laughed. “Hoping it won’t be so eventful as the one we just left.”
Rook nodded, for he had been handed a gift of the open door for the information he sought. Now he struggled to maintain the years of training he’d had in extracting that kind of information. It was much harder when he knew Anne waited upstairs, broken hearted.
“An eventful wedding,” he mused. “That could mean a great many things.”
Mr. Smithins nodded. “In this case, it is quite the scandal. I think it could reach the gossip sheets far and wide.”
“My interest is raised even further,” Rook said. “And I’ve always loved knowing the gossip before anyone else. What is the tale?”
Squire Golding clucked his tongue. “Well, the Earl of Harcourt was meant to marry a lady. One of three sisters, all who look alike…triplets, I think they call that. Very unsettling. At any rate, when the wedding occurred, it wasn’t his original intended who walked the long aisle to his side. It was one of her sisters.”
Rook bent his head. He had hoped the words he said to Anne upstairs might be true. That these men were just telling tales to entertain themselves. But it was clear that wasn’t it. They were good-natured drunks, but they didn’t seem to be exaggerating the circumstance.
Still, he feigned great surprise and tried to keep a grin on his face. “Great God, that is a scandal. Did he simply prefer the other sister, faces alike or no?”
“Seems the original intended ran away,” Mr. Smithins said. “Though it was only whispered about, never confirmed.”
“Which sister did the man ultimately marry?” Rook asked.
The men all blinked at each other, then stared at him as if they didn’t understand the question.
“Er,” Squire Golding said. “Who’s to say, eh? All the same face, it might as well have been the same woman. I think it started with a T. Anyway, they’re married now, easy as that, and we wish them happy.”
The men all raised their glasses with a boisterous, “To the earl!”
“And his poor wife,” Squire Golding added with a laugh.
Rook raised his glass with the rest and drank, but the ale was sour to him now. He leaned in. “You know, I once knew a man who did business in Harcourt,” he said. “Perhaps you know of him. Tall, broad shouldered, dark hair a bit too long. Handsome fellow, goes by Maitland?”
The men looked at each other and shook their heads slowly. “Bit of a vague description,” Mr. Smithins said. “And I don’t know the name.”
Rook forced his disappointment from his face and got to his feet. “Well, I thank you gentlemen for the sharing of your tales and your ales.” They laughed at the rhyme like it was the funniest thing they’d ever heard and Rook shook his head slightly. “But my own lovely wife awaits upstairs, and I ought to be sure she doesn’t need anything.”
“Just be certain it isn’t her sister!” one of the men said, and the rest laughed boisterously and slapped their hands against their thighs.
Rook waved as he headed back across the room and up the stairs. The men were simply silly with liquor, but they had no idea how close to the mark they’d come. Or what a burden they’d laid on Rook’s shoulders when it came to breaking Anne’s heart.
Chapter 14
Anne had already known the truth. She knew one of her sisters had been thrown to the wolves because of her. But the moment Rook opened the door and stared at her, she couldn’t pretend he might tell her anything different. She pushed to unsteady feet and clenched her hands so tightly in front of her, it hurt.
“He married one of them,” she whispered.
Rook nodded as he closed and locked the door behind himself. He looked tired as he exhaled a long, unsteady breath. As if having to be the one to tell her this truth was not something he wished to take on. It was too big, too awful. Too crushing.
“Yes,” he said softly after what felt like an eternity had passed. “Harcourt married one of your sisters. You were right—it was probably Thomasina. The men below thought the name started with a T.”
The room spun around Anne, and she gripped at the back of a chair to steady herself, warding off Rook’s advance to help her with a raised hand. “You sat with those men, you saw their expressions and heard their voices. Was it merely casual gossip, tall tales? Or do you believe it to be true?”
He nodded slowly. “I’m sorry, Anne. I had no reason not to believe them.”
She sank into the chair and covered her face with her hands as her mind spun with horrible images. She heard Rook move and glanced up at him. He had dragged the other chair in the room closer and took it, letting his knees brush hers as he searched her face. “Tell me about Harcourt,” he said.
She shook her head. Harcourt. Oh, Harcourt, who she despised more than anyone at that moment, even more than Ellis. Harcourt, who had taken the freedom and future of one of her beloved sisters. Who didn’t care, didn’t love, didn’t give over even a fraction.
“I’ve told you everything already, even if I somehow didn’t say his name to you,” she said on a sigh. She tried to s
ort through the jumble of her thoughts. “He was cool, distant. The marriage was arranged by my father. Harcourt had inherited the title and a mountain of debt when his brother was killed in that scandalous duel.”
Rook flinched. “Yes, even those of my class heard about that.”
She nodded. “He needed my dowry to save himself and rebuild his legacy. My father wanted to buy a connection to a title. Once the house of Harcourt was a fine one—I suppose my father thought he was buying low in the hopes to one day trade high.”
“But you have two sisters,” Rook said. “Why did he choose you for the duty?”
She bent her head, thinking of her attitude and actions over the past twenty-two years of her life. How many times had her father said she was running wild, that he would have to find a way to bring her to heel, that she would spoil things for her sisters if she didn’t settle herself down?
It turned out he was right after all. And that stung down to her very soul.
“Although he would claim otherwise, I think he wanted to rid himself of me because I was most likely to make trouble.”
“You?” Rook teased gently.
She couldn’t make herself smile at the effort. “I have always been the one to do so. I certainly did this time.”
“So you were given to Harcourt so you would be his problem instead of your father’s. And a wedding date was set. You said the man wasn’t cruel, just cold,” Rook said softly, and now he took her hands and held them between his warm ones. That touch brought her the smallest peace. One she sank into with a ragged sigh.
“Yes.”
“Then your sister isn’t in danger,” he said. “At worst, she took your place in an arranged marriage no different than many in the titled class. A marriage that could have easily been arranged for her instead of you in the first place, had your father taken a different mind.”
“You don’t know Thomasina,” Anne said, and the tears returned to her eyes. “She is so gentle a soul, so good a person and so dear a sister. To think of her married to a man who could not love, could not feel…it is gut wrenching. What she must think of me as she endures…” She trailed off and yanked her hands from his as she paced the small room. “I can’t think of what she has endured. And our other sister, Juliana, she must despise me to my core.”
Rook hadn’t moved, but she felt his stare burning into her back. “Why would you think that?”
“She is the one to fix the messes we all make,” she said, facing him. “And this is the worst one of all. She could never forgive me for putting Thomasina in a position where she could be so…so…so…” She sank down on the bed a second time, and the tears she’d been fighting returned. “Hurt,” she finished on a sob.
He moved then, jumping from his chair and crossing to the bed. He lifted her limp body into his arms, cradling her against him as he smoothed her hair and rocked her as she wept. Wept for the life she had destroyed with her selfish decisions. Her sister’s life.
And she cried for her own. Because it was now painfully clear to her how much she had lost by running away with Ellis Maitland. And what little she had to go home to.
* * *
Rook smoothed Anne’s hair as she stirred with nightmares for the third time since she had collapsed in exhausted sleep hours before. She hadn’t woken to eat, she hadn’t woken at all. It was as if she’d collapsed in on herself, and seeing her in such pain broke his heart in ways he never could have imagined possible.
That was the risk, he supposed, in loving someone. He’d not had many people in his life he had allowed into his heart that way. His mother. His cousin. He’d always hurt for their pains, too.
He cradled Anne closer as she stopped muttering in her sleep and sighed.
His mind returned to his cousin. Ellis had created such a mess by pursuing Anne, and now Rook’s blood ran cold at the deeper ramifications of it all. He’d known Ellis had involved himself with the previous Earl of Harcourt, Solomon Kincaid. The man had been a lout, a drunk, a cad of the highest order. He and Ellis had been well matched in some ways.
But where Rook had always tried to temper Ellis’s worst impulses, Solomon had only seemed to encourage them. Ellis had taken worse risks, gone into situations without consulting Rook. Involved himself with dangerous people. One very dangerous one especially. A man named Winston Leonard.
And Solomon Kincaid was dead because of that. He would never forget Ellis’s face that awful night when his friend had been cut down. A duel, gossip said. But it hadn’t been a duel.
It was a murder, plain and simple.
They had a code, or so Rook had thought. There were certain things he and his cousin had vowed they would not do. And so he’d walked away, leaving Ellis to clean up his own mess.
And this was how he’d done it. Pursuing the new earl’s fiancée for…well, Ellis couldn’t think of what purpose his cousin might have. But it couldn’t have been a good one.
Ellis had been so desperate when he came to him weeks ago, demanding Rook’s help. Begging for it. Now Rook looked down at the woman asleep in his arms, the one Ellis had used for his own ends. He’d put Anne in danger. She was still in danger, because a desperate Ellis had never been a safe Ellis. Recklessness was his downfall, every fucking time.
“Rook?” Her voice was muffled against his shoulder, this time not as heavy with sleep.
He leaned back to give her more space, and she looked up at him. She said nothing, but her hand slid up his stomach, bunching his shirt as she dragged her fingers along his abdomen. She arched against him gently, her lips parting on a sigh. His body reacted, even if he didn’t want it to do so.
“Anne,” he whispered. “You’ve had a hard day and I don’t think—”
“I just want to forget,” she whispered, lifting closer to brush her lips against his jawline. “Please. Please help me forget for just a moment.”
He shut his eyes. He was no match for her when it came to this. No match for her touch or her voice or her need or for his own. And perhaps, in the end, they both needed to forget.
He rolled her onto her back as he kissed her, probing her lips with his tongue, deepening the kiss when she opened to him with a sigh. She dug her fingers into his hair, angling even closer as they fell into the deep abyss of pleasure.
He let one hand move over her, over the wrinkled dress she’d fallen asleep in, across her shoulders, down her sides, over her hip as it surged against his. He dragged his fingers back up her center, cupping her breast as they broke the kiss and stared, panting at each other in the dim darkness.
“More,” she demanded. “I want more.”
His eyes narrowed. Now it was she who sounded desperate, and he didn’t like that any more than he had when it was Ellis. Desperation led to dark thoughts and even worse decisions and he didn’t want—
His thought was cut off as she dragged him in for another deep kiss. His brain emptied, because when she swirled her tongue around his, when she ground up against him, he couldn’t remember coherence or concerns. He had so little time with her now, he didn’t want to waste it.
Not when every time he touched her might be the last.
So he thrust away his regrets and instead pushed to his knees between her legs, bunching her skirt so he wouldn’t kneel on it. He tugged her to a seated position and stripped the buttons along the back of her gown open with a flick of his wrist. The dress gaped and she pushed it to her waist along with her chemise beneath.
He let his fingers play along the bare, warm skin along her spine, stroking fine circles there until she shivered and his name exited her lips: “Constantine.”
He glanced down at her with a smile. So that was how they’d play. Constantine when he was pleasuring her, Rook the rest of the time. He had never liked either of his names more than when she said them. Moaned them. Whispered them.
He leaned down and captured a nipple with his lips, swirling the tip of his tongue around the hard peak, spelling I love you on her skin. She jerked against h
im, her soft cry like music in the quiet room. He sucked harder, harder, cupping her hips as they surged against his, arching her back as he pleasured her ceaselessly.
This was what she needed. He intended to provide. When she was mewling sounds of pleasure, he released her and got to his feet. She stared up at him, foggy gazed and almost confused. “Don’t go,” she begged.
He shook his head. “I would never. Just want to remove some clothes.”
She blinked as if she hadn’t realized they were still dressed. She lay back on the pillows and kicked out of her dress and underthings, then rolled her stockings away. He tried to focus on his own clothes, but that was almost an impossibility when she was now laying there naked on the bed they’d share, her legs open, her gaze devouring him as he tugged his shirt over his head. He removed his boots and then got back in the bed with her.
He grabbed her hips, tugging her closer and flattening her on her back as she giggled. He loved the sound of her laughter, for it meant he had actually done what she requested. Made her forget, if only for a moment.
He bent his head, stroking her thigh with his cheek. Then he took a deep whiff of her sex. The musky sweetness was so uniquely her, so beautifully her, and he wanted to remember it forever. To bathe in it so he would always be able to recall every part later. He darted his tongue out and swept it over her, once, twice, until she balled the coverlet into her fist and twisted, until she murmured an incoherent moan of pleasure. His cock hardened at giving her pleasure, more even than it did at the idea of receiving it. There was just something so bewitching about stealing her control and making her quake beneath his tongue or his fingers or his cock.
He never wanted to lose that, even though it was inevitable.
He sucked on her clitoris, hardening it with his ministrations. Scenting her arousal increase, feeling the trembles of pleasure begin deep within her as she ground against him while he licked. He added a finger to her sheath, loving the slick welcome of her flexing body, loving the catch of her breath as she was invaded. He added a second finger, adjusting until he found that rough patch deep within her and curling his fingers against it until she pled for more and less and everything.
A Reckless Runaway Page 15