The Highwayman's Folly

by Daria Vernon

  Rhys walked past her, carrying the saddlebags from where he’d hitched Lionel’s horse, and threw them into their little shelter.

  “Not sure what all is in these yet. As you can imagine, Lion isn’t a responsible or organized sort. There will be food though.”

  Beth stared into the fire, not really hearing him. She wasn’t aware he had come close until he took her hand. She looked down at where their palms were joined and wondered if he, too, felt this clutching sensation beneath his ribs when they touched. The glow of the fire danced on Rhys’ high cheekbone. The creases of a smile were at the corner of his eye as he drew her toward their shelter.

  “After you.”

  She crouched down to duck under the overhang, careful not to drag the excess of Rhys’ cape right through the fire. She smiled as she crept into the glowing space. Rhys, crawling in behind her, must have noticed.

  “What is it?” His eyes danced with their familiar curiosity.

  “This is not the first time I’ve been outside late at night, but it is the first time that I don’t have to sneak back to my bed before morning. None of my female relations have ever slept outside. It will be a distinction all my own.”

  “So will being kidnapped. Twice. You could boast about that one in just about any company.”

  They both laughed. The mirth didn’t leave Rhys’ eyes as he began to sort out some food. Beth returned her eyes to the flames as though she might see her reflection there.

  “I’ll have many adventures to gloat about, but absolutely not a soul to tell.”

  “Why in heavens not?” Rhys passed her a piece of hard cheese.

  “I don’t have any friends.”

  Rhys leaned against the wall of rock, and she watched his face change as this information was digested.

  “Because of what you said back at the folly? When you spoke of ruin?”

  “Yes. Mostly. A lot of people turned their backs on me, and, I suppose, once that began to subside, I turned my back on them as well. It changed me. Made me quiet and small.”

  “Which is exactly what everyone wanted you to be.”

  Yes. Beth hadn’t thought of that before—of just how effective their methods were. The tittering old society ladies had gotten exactly what they demanded—her shame. Yet they never offered any forgiveness. Her ostracism had been so deviously orchestrated that Beth had confined herself, imagining it to be her own choice.

  Rhys’ hand on her knee broke her from the revelation.

  “I’ve never met this Beth, quiet and small. The only one I’ve ever met is a legend.” Rhys said it with a confident, almost cocky expression as he brought a crumb of Cheshire cheese to his lips, but there was no trace of mocking.

  A legend. Beth remembered sitting in Dyckson’s fortress as a girl, clutching her stick sword. She had felt like a legend then. The way she felt now, under Rhys’ gaze and the night sky, felt as similar as she would ever come again.

  “When you return home, you’ll be able to tell anyone you meet about this because it will all be too legendary to be believed.”

  Beth smiled. Perhaps that was so. She picked up some bread and inched herself until his shoulder was behind her. Something stopped her from leaning back.

  “I know ruin too,” said Rhys.

  “How? A man may have congress with every woman in the county and not be ruined.”

  Rhys laughed—a loud, rich sound—the most unrestrained thing she’d ever heard from him. “I don’t mean it in that way.”

  She knew that, but she was happy to see him laugh anyway, and she joined him in it. His brow suddenly crinkled, and he looked at her very seriously, gripping her knee more tightly. “And just to be clear, Beth, that is not a thing that I’ve done.” She looked deep into his eyes, knowing he was communicating something serious to her, but also wondering who was going to collapse back into laughter first. She could see it on his lips. It would be him. “I’ve only slept with half the women in the—” He couldn’t finish. Laughter had taken them both.

  An arm was wrapped beneath Beth’s ribs as Rhys pulled her to lean back into his shoulder. It was the invitation she’d been longing for. With it came a thick silence.

  “Rhys?”

  “Yes?” His breath caressed her ear, making her want to abandon her question and wrap herself around every part of him. But the desperation to know his story was somehow even stronger.

  “I interrupted you. Tell me how you were ruined.”

  His arm around her tightened as he sighed into her hair.

  “Well, Beth. You were right all along. I was a sailor. We all were. But I was far from being a captain.”

  An onslaught of questions was surging to Beth’s lips, but she bit them back. Rhys’ eyes were far away and glistened with the mist of tides that only he could see.

  He would share what he was able.

  “We were all on a merchant contract to Newfoundland. When we reached the Labrador Sea, our captain ordered us north. Captain Sir Ralph Cloudesley. Second son of an earl. The master and the captain’s mates were all of his ilk. They put on their indiscernible, high-born expressions and followed Captain’s orders to the letter. The captain was old, hadn’t sailed in near a decade, and he kept ranting about an important mission on behalf of The Crown. All of those officers believed enough in their own importance that they got their heads wrapped round his delusions.

  “The rest of us had never seen enough shillings in our whole lives to give a whiff about praise from The Crown, imagined or not. We just wanted to come back home with our skins intact. Going where he wanted us to go, we’d have been sunk by ice, or gotten trapped in it and starved.

  “I was only the carpenter. My closest friend was Heathcote Dewey, the quartermaster.”

  Rhys’ speech tightened around his friend’s name, and he paused. Beth slipped a hand under his and his fingers responded with a grip almost too tight to bear. He kept his eyes on the fire.

  “Dewey and I had heard more of the captain’s delusions than some of the other crew. Harry, who was my mate, and Lion, and Sol, who were sailors—they strongly favored our concerns. So we organized a mutiny.”

  Rhys always had sweat beading at his temple when near a fire, but the moisture that streaked over his cheek now wasn’t that.

  “I believed so ardently in justice,” he said. “We kept careful records of all that happened. Most of the crew sided with us. We locked up the captain and his mates and sailed back to Bristol, but the first mate perished in the brig. That was the first time I began to wonder if we’d been right to do it.”

  Beth stroked Rhys’ hand with her thumb, as much for her comfort as his. Her heart felt fragile against his sorrow.

  “On arrival, the five of us were shipped off to Bristol Newgate to await our day in court. An entire sea of nobility washed into the city to defend the captain’s reputation. The officers’ wives, daughters of peerage, came into the prison to titter and gawp at us. They promised us that with one flick of their tongues or one letter from their fathers, they would see us all hanged. Their words worried Dewey . . .

  “He was the first to go before the judges, and unbeknownst to us all, he took full responsibility. Went so far as to tell the court that he’d murdered the perished officer. By the time we learned we were free, he’d already been hanged.”

  Beth squeezed his hand. It seemed time to speak.

  “It’s his family you take care of, isn’t it?”

  Rhys nodded. “I was the first one to dare speak of mutiny. I felt responsible for everything and for the way our lives were after. We’d just sailed for months with no pay. We were blackballed from contracts and banished from Bristol. The four of us walked away from the city together, not knowing where we’d go.”

  He looked into Beth’s eyes darkly. “That night on the road, we came upon the post, with a broken wheel—”


  “—and it was like a lame deer to a hungry beast?”

  “Yes,” he said, ruefully. “So that’s how it began. And now you know all of my secrets.”

  “I’ll keep them as safe as the marble nymph kept mine.”

  The fire cracked and an owl heralded the beginning of night.

  “What secrets do I get to learn of you?”

  Beth rolled her head in mock frustration. “Oh? Was it not enough to announce to the whole world that I’m lacking in purity?”

  “I don’t think you’re lacking in anything,” he said.

  Chapter 12

  Periodically, Rhys would feel Beth shiver against him. No matter how tightly he held her, it took minutes for her body to still. If she were sleeping any closer to the fire, she’d be choking on its smoke, yet she could not keep warm.

  He tucked his cheek against hers, hoping he might stem the chills that gripped her neck like the very hand of winter. The edge of his unshaven jaw dragged roughly against her silken skin. He prayed it wouldn’t wake her.

  Beneath his forearm, her ribs gently rose and fell. In spite of the fits of shivering, her slumber seemed heavy and distant.

  Rhys took a deep breath. Emotions were climbing up his ribcage like a ladder, but he wouldn’t know how to expel them should they ever reach his lips. Here she was, at last, in his arms again. Only days had passed since she’d been curled against him on their way to his thieves’ den, but that day now felt distant and antiquated—changed incrementally through the act of remembering.

  When they’d been alone at the bottom of the ravine that first day, he’d learned who she really was. His first assumptions were picked up by the fist of truth and smashed upon the ground. She’d stared him down, threatening to fling herself once more down that horrible slope—it was in that moment that her animal eyes dragged his rakish heart to its knees in respect for her.

  Tonight, that respect had blossomed into borderline worship as he’d come upon her standing over the carcass of a wolf. That the only wolves on the isle even found her—wasn’t that some omen? But was it the sort of omen meant to lure or the sort meant to warn away? His lip curled against her cheek. The thought that there existed some intrinsic danger to her made a thrill course through his veins.

  He’d imagined the criminal life as one of permanent solitude, isolated forever from women of caliber. Not caliber measured in wealth or stature or the classical “accomplishedness” of ladies but of this. Whatever this was. Be it her buoyancy, her ferocity, or her appreciation for his eccentric outpost in the woods.

  Her wealth and stature could not simply be cast aside though. They were the very things that he’d been prowling for on the road. Now they loomed as the specters that would keep the crossing of their paths temporary. Could she not just have been a horse groom’s daughter? Even if he’d never taken up such illegitimate business as highway robbery, he’d have still only been a ship’s carpenter. By no judge in the land was he deemed worthy enough to set foot on the lawns of her dear Greenthorne.

  Another fit of gentle shaking moved up Beth’s spine where her back was fitted to his chest. In an instant, his concern reignited. He pushed his face into her hair. The tangled umber waves smelled of the fire, yet felt as cold as the ground they both lay on. The gentle shivering turned into a spasm that roused her.

  “Beth,” he whispered. He rolled her beneath him so they might see one another. “What can I do?”

  Beth’s eyes opened to find Rhys almost at her nose. His eyes were round and desperate. She did her best to quell another spasm. She couldn’t bear to encourage the worry that was writ on his face.

  “I’m fine,” she whispered as though they might wake someone. “I just shudder easily.”

  His leg was atop hers. The warmth of it felt so nice. She reached around his ribs and guided him to cover more of her. Then she tucked her bare hands up between their chests, seeking the sheltered heat there.

  Unbidden, her chest began to rise and fall with more urgent depth.

  Propped on an elbow, Rhys reached his other hand between them and smothered both her hands in his. She could feel her own heartbeat and imagined that he could feel it too.

  A drop of sweat fell from his cheek onto her face. If only she could perspire in such cold.

  “I’m not too heavy for you?” He shifted atop her, and their foreheads touched.

  She responded only by hooking one of her fingers tightly around one of his. He understood and stayed.

  Beth closed her eyes and wondered when he might be near enough to feel the flutter of her lashes.

  His exhalations spread across her lips warmly.

  He was so close.

  Yet not enough.

  She craned her neck to close the very small gap between them.

  She brushed her lips on his, finally feeling what they were like. She found them as warm as the rest of him, but they didn’t move against hers. The longer she hovered there, the more she worried she’d been wrong—

  And then he came down on her.

  Drawing her lips against his, he fought her for possession of the kiss. He covered her, and the cape at her back pressed deeply into the damp cushion of leaves and moss. Yet she rose so hard against him that had he not been there to pin her down she might have floated off into the night sky.

  Her insides vibrated fiercely as an unholy swarm of passions tried to escape her. She commanded her heart to be calm but found her mind had no more authority over her than a dormouse.

  Fevered, she moved to press her lips to his hard jaw, his brow, everything in reach, and he buried his face in her neck, inhaling deeply against it and leaving the marks of his ardor.

  He pulled away to swallow a great gasp of air and smiled down at her. That smile—it threw the firelight at her. Beads of sweat sparkled as they peeled across the creases at his eyes.

  He had a hand buried in her tangles as he observed her, but although she smiled back, she could see the specter of melancholy trying to overtake his features.

  She frowned. This moment was theirs—the past could not have it.

  Grasping his collar, she pulled him lower and locked into his eyes with all the seriousness of casting a spell. Her fingers began to work free the large buttons of his greatcoat. He helped. Soon he was sliding back down atop her, his coat open, sheltering them both. In the night’s cold, it was as close as they could come to undress, but it was so much easier to feel the heat of him with only a few layers of linen and her stays between them.

  He pressed her with another kiss as his hand explored her. Her neck. Her chest. A tender brush against the raised stitches in her skin.

  His touch grew hungrier. Squeezing her arm. Tugging the cloth of her dress. The rip at the top of her habit had days ago left the top of her stays exposed. His hands ran helplessly over the boning of the garment—almost clawing—making her acutely aware of his desperation to feel more of her. As she felt his knee drop and tense between her legs, she grasped furiously for her skirts, tugging upward at them, consumed with the same desperation she saw in him. He completed her thought and abetted her in the act.

  Having wrestled the petticoats up between their flattened bodies, she now discovered another sign of his need—one that pressed against her hip. It sobered her, made everything more real—made her even more ready to have him.

  His stubbled cheek drew against hers, scraping it pleasantly. Her breath caught as she felt his hand against the inside of her knee. His heat against her coolness was enough to startle, but as his fingers spread out wide, her skin met his warmth and borrowed it.

  He stroked her leg before catching the back of her thigh in a decisive grip and tugging her nearer to him. Her insides tugged downward too, and a sigh transformed into a moan as it rolled out from her body.

  She pressed against his lips as he kissed her temple. As his hot, rasping breath swirle
d in and out of her ear—

  “Beth.”

  Her hips responded to the name.

  His hand slid along her thigh—up, up until there was no more leg to climb. The side of a warm finger slid up against her sex, and she pushed down against it on impulse, feeling her lips part slightly and weep in anticipation.

  Rhys’ hand squeezed that last edge of her thigh in a pleasant farewell, and then he began to stroke her teasingly with the back of his hand. Sensation unraveled her as she soaked in the foretaste of what was to come.

  The wetness he teased from her was the warmest thing for miles. Beth’s eyelids lolled drunkenly as she savored her own arousal.

  Rhys began to swirl his fingers, lovingly, against her. Each little circle brought her more awake than the last as her own folds massaged that tender apex that she knew so well. But Rhys’ hand—it was so intoxicatingly different from her own touch. There was all of this pressure inside her that made her feel powerful and vulnerable at once. Perhaps it was the strangeness of the past few days. Perhaps it was the tension of survival. But perhaps . . . perhaps it was just him.

  Beth counted the seconds away, dying for the moment that Rhys would give her more. Then, at last, his fingertips traced the rim of her entrance, pressing her and taunting her. It took all of her summoned patience not to—and then he stole inside.

  She gasped, pushing herself down to his knuckle and grasping at the wrist of the hand that was going to bring her such pleasure.

  He lowered himself to cover her neck once more in sensuous kisses and tastes. Rhys’ hold on her was certain. He had control of her from her most secret and defenseless place, and she threw herself into trusting surrender. His middle fingers hooked inside her. His palm pressed onto her mound and circled there, almost imperceptibly, and the pressure of it made her feel insane—made her feel like she had a thousand new confessions for the maenad.

  Their lips met, and she breathed him in, tugged at his lip with her teeth, a plea for him to be infinitely closer—until he was a part of her.