The Autumn Bride

by Anne Gracie

  Oblivious of her follower, Miss Chance turned down a narrow alleyway—presumably a shortcut to the market. The man turned down too. Max got there a split second later. Damn! Apart from them, the lane was deserted.

  And in those few seconds the swine had almost closed the gap between himself and Miss Chance.

  The shabby man tensed and rose on the balls of his feet. Max didn’t wait to see what would happen next. With a shout, he flung himself forward and grabbed the man’s coat. Miss Chance whirled.

  “Hey—” The man swung around, a knife in his hand, and slashed out at Max without warning. Max tried to dodge it but felt a glancing blow.

  “Run,” he shouted at Abby. He didn’t see her go; he couldn’t take his eyes off the man with the knife.

  The man had a pasty, ratlike face. “Stay out of it, ya bastard,” he snarled. “’S nothing to do with you.” The knife glittered in his hand. It was a long, wicked-looking blade with a carved bone handle.

  “The woman is with me,” Max growled.

  Rat Face gave a grunt and a philosophical shrug. “Fair enough, gov’nor.” He held up his hands pacifically and seemed about to back away; then abruptly he lunged at Max again, going for his throat.

  But Max was ready for it. As the knife flashed toward him, he dodged and at the same time chopped down on the man’s wrist hard. The blade clattered to the cobblestones. Max followed through with a swift punch to the gut and another to the throat and, while the fellow was still gasping for breath, shoved him hard against a wall.

  “Why are you following her?”

  The man struggled and spat an obscenity. Max punched him again.

  “Look out!” Miss Chance screamed. Blast it, what was she still doing here? But he had no time to think. Another man threw himself at Max.

  Max whirled, dragging Rat Face with him and thrusting him into the onrush of the second attacker, a thickset brute in a cloth cap. They crashed. Rat Face tripped and went sprawling on the cobbles. The second man came on, swinging a cosh at Max’s head. He ducked it.

  The second man closed in. He and Max wrestled. From the corner of Max’s eye he saw Rat Face struggle to his feet and head again at Max.

  Max braced himself for the attack, but to his astonishment Miss Chance jumped on Rat Face from behind, screaming like a vengeful banshee, battering him around the head with her reticule. She wrapped her arms around the man’s neck, clinging like a monkey, trying to drag him down or choke him. He reeled and swore, trying to fend her off.

  Max, wrestling with the second attacker, didn’t see what happened next, but he turned just in time to catch the glitter of a blade as Rat Face stabbed behind him at Abby. The blade was buried in a swirl of fabric. Rat Face had to pull hard to get it free.

  Abby’s grip around the man’s neck slackened. Rat Face twisted and flung her violently to the ground. There was a sudden, shocking silence as her scream was abruptly cut off. She lay sprawled on the wet cobbles, unmoving.

  “Abby!” Max hurled himself across the gap, grabbed Rat Face by the scruff of the neck and slammed him hard against the wall. Again he dropped the knife. This time Max snatched it up and placed himself between Abby and the villains. “Now let’s see what you’re made of.”

  Rat Face and his accomplice exchanged glances, muttered something and fled.

  The moment he was sure they really had gone, Max flung himself onto his knees beside Miss Chance’s prone body. “Miss Chance! Abby!” She wasn’t moving.

  “Abby!” Heart in his mouth, he gently turned her over, and saw to his relief she was gasping like a fish, soundlessly, helplessly. Her eyes were wide and panicked, her face contorted as she fought to breathe—and couldn’t. But there was no sign of any blood.

  Relief poured through him. She was winded, not wounded, thank God.

  “You’re all right; you’ve had your breath knocked out of you, that’s all,” he told her. The first time you had your breath knocked out of you was terrifying, he remembered. Those first few moments where your lungs simply did not work.

  He lifted her off the cold, muddy cobbles and pulled her across his knees, supporting her against his chest as he rubbed her back in a soothing rhythmic movement, rocking her gently, murmuring, “There, now, you’re safe; you’ll be all right in a minute. Just relax and your breath will come.”

  Her fingers clutched at his lapels; her gaze locked with his in agonized entreaty as she struggled fruitlessly to breathe. The effort seemed to last forever, but at last a great, sobbing gasp sounded and her body shuddered against him as she gulped in her first blessed lungful of air. Again and again she dragged in great breaths of air, until the panicked reaction began to fade.

  Max held her close, not ceasing the rhythmic rubbing of her back, though whom exactly he was soothing he wasn’t sure. That moment when he saw the knife go in . . . the still, small figure sprawled on the cobbles . . .

  His arms tightened around her. He needed to feel her warm, living body against him.

  She rested quietly, trustfully against him, her eyes closed, catching her breath, fighting to calm the shivers that racked her body.

  “They’ve gone,” he told her. “You’re safe. I have you now.” He looked down at her. She looked white and shaken, her small, sweet face pinched in a way that put an ache in his chest.

  She’d lost her bonnet in the affray. He carefully smoothed the hair back from her forehead. A bruise was darkening just above her eyebrow. There was a raw-looking scrape on her chin.

  But there was no blood. He’d checked as thoroughly as he could, but could find no sign of a wound. It was a puzzle: He was sure he’d seen the blade go in, and Rat Face had definitely had to pull to get it out. But somehow, by some miracle, he’d missed her. Thank God.

  * * *

  Abby knew she should make an effort to move. She should; she really should. She could breathe again now, and the trembling had subsided to a manageable level, and her heartbeat . . . oh, her heartbeat . . .

  There was no controlling that.

  He’d saved her. Fought two men for her, stood over her with a knife, facing them, her Viking protector. And now, the way he held her . . .

  She didn’t move; she couldn’t—couldn’t even make herself want to move. Like a child who squeezed her eyes tighter shut, not wanting to wake from a dream, believing as children did that the dream could be made real if only she kept her eyes closed and just . . . didn’t . . . move.

  The rhythmic soothing of the jangled nerves of her spine: tangible warmth, tangible reassurance. The deep murmuring voice, a bedrock of security.

  She pressed her cheek against his chest. It was so broad and strong, she wanted to climb right inside it and stay there forever, stay like this forever, in his arms, breathing in the scent of his body—damp wool, a hint of cedar, fresh linen and the dark, entrancing scent of man, the warm breath of him stirring against her skin.

  “How are you feeling now?” he asked, and she wanted to weep, wanted to laugh, to cling to him in undignified desperation, to prolong the moment, the dream, the illusion.

  “Miss Chance?” He leaned back to look at her, his arms loosening their hold on her. The cold drafts of self-awareness slipped between them, chilling her body, and she was once more the spinster governess.

  “Your forehead is bruised, and you have”—cupping her jaw in one hand, he gently tilted her face—“a scrape on your chin. But is that all?”

  A pulse throbbed in his cheek. It drew her gaze like a magnet. She couldn’t look at him, not yet.

  “Abby?”

  “You saved me,” she whispered. And glanced up. And found herself drowning in the smoky mystery of his gaze.

  His eyes darkened; he seemed to hesitate; then slowly, agonizingly, almost as if it were against his will, he lowered his mouth to hers.

  Their lips brushed. It was just the faintest breath of a touch, barely a caress, but she felt it clear to her toes. A deep shiver passed through her.

  He drew back with an arres
ted expression. He muttered something under his breath that she didn’t catch, and then he was kissing her deeply, ravenously, pulling her hard against him, cradling her head in his hands, tilting her face the better to . . . sear her soul.

  His mouth was hot, the taste of him dark and intense. Addictive.

  She clung to his shoulders, kissing him back with everything in her, years of aching loneliness burning away under the assault of his passion, savoring the taste, the feel, the power of him. The hunger in him to match the hunger in her.

  His kisses were rough and tender at the same time, deep, as if he were taking her inside him the way she’d gulped in air a few moments before, as vital and necessary as life.

  She speared her fingers into the thick, cool darkness of his hair, still damp from the rain. She was afire, heat shimmering across her skin, coiling in hot shudders deep within her.

  Then, with no warning, it was over. He wrenched his mouth from hers, a stricken look in his eyes. “I apologize. That shouldn’t have happened.”

  Abby stared at him in dazed disbelief. For a moment all was still, silent, no sound except for two people breathing hard. And the thud of her hammering heart.

  She felt raw, new-hatched, her skin so sensitive it was as if the moist, cool afternoon air could pass right through her.

  And then suddenly they were sitting on the damp cobbles of a laneway in the middle of London. The sounds of traffic, of wheels rumbling over cobbles, of hawkers crying out—of reality—rolled over them like a wave. Gulls screamed overhead, following the river, fighting over scraps.

  “This . . . it can’t happen,” he said. His chest was heaving. He was panting, his lips still slick from her kisses. He pushed her away just a little, enough to put a few inches between them, but it might as well have been a mile; the shuttered flatness of his gray gaze told her that.

  “I’m betrothed,” he said tightly.

  Shame scalded her. Shaking, clumsy, she scrambled to her feet, brushing herself down, picking up her bonnet, her reticule, tidying herself with shaking hands, looking at the walls, at the cobblestones, at the gulls wheeling and screaming to the sky. Anywhere but at Max, Lord Davenham.

  The neediness in her, the way she’d clung to him. What must he think?

  It was just a kiss, she told herself. It meant nothing. She was lonely; that was all. She was unsettled by the attack; she’d overreacted. And he . . . well, men were like that, taking what was offered. Even if you didn’t mean to . . .

  “You’re hurt.”

  “No, no, of course I’m not. It was just a kiss; I know,” she managed to say with a fair attempt at worldliness.

  “No, I mean . . .” He gestured. “There’s blood on your back.”

  She tried to look, found a smear or two of blood on her skirt at the back. But she didn’t feel injured. Not unless mortification drew blood.

  “Let me see.” He twisted her around. “There’s blood on your back, but I can’t see any wound.”

  “I can.” She carefully lifted his sleeve. “You’re the one who’s wounded, not me.”

  “Me? Nonsense!” And then he saw it, the slash in his sleeve, the blood soaking it, dripping slowly onto the cobblestones now that they were standing up.

  “Well, I’ll be damned.” It was the hand he’d rubbed her back with. He’d bled all over her back and hadn’t even noticed.

  “Didn’t you feel it? Doesn’t it hurt?”

  He shook his head. “It didn’t before, but now . . . yes, I can feel it now.”

  She began to unbutton his coat.

  He fended her off. “What do you think you’re—”

  “I’m going to check your wound. I can’t see it with the coat on.”

  “It’s nothing, a mere scratch.”

  “You’re bleeding.” She started to tug at his coat, trying to ease it from his shoulder. She felt better now she had something practical to concentrate on.

  “Stop that.” One-handed, he pulled his coat back into position.

  “Don’t be silly. How can I help you if I can’t see your injury?”

  He dragged a handkerchief from his pocket and gave it to her. “Tie that tightly around the cut—from the outside. I’ll get the wound seen to later.”

  It was pure male stubbornness, but Abby didn’t argue. She shook out his handkerchief, folded it diagonally, pleated it to form a bandage and tied it around his arm, over his coat. “There,” she said, pulling it tight enough to make him gasp. “That should slow the bleeding enough until we get home.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  “I may have lost my heart, but not my self-control.”

  —JANE AUSTEN, EMMA

  Max’s phaeton and groom were still waiting around the corner. In silence Max helped Abby—he couldn’t think of her as Miss Chance anymore—into the vehicle, climbed up beside her and picked up the reins.

  “Are you sure you should drive with that injured arm?” she asked.

  “I’m fine.” He signaled to the groom to release the horses, flicked the reins and, as the groom jumped on at the back, the horses moved off.

  Two questions worried Max. Why had she been attacked? And why had he kissed her in that . . . unbridled manner? And though the first question was the more important, it was the kiss he couldn’t get out of his mind.

  Why the devil had he kissed her at all? He had no idea. It had been a purely instinctive response—but to what? The danger? The woman in his arms?

  Or had he simply meant to comfort her? What a noble fellow he was, his conscience mocked him.

  No, it wasn’t comfort, though that was part of it. It was just . . . she’d looked up at him with that expression in her eyes . . . and he hadn’t been able to resist.

  Just a taste, he’d reasoned.

  He snorted. Reason had nothing to do with it. He’d known he shouldn’t touch her, but the temptation was irresistible.

  And then he’d just touched his mouth to hers . . . the barest brush of lips against lips, and . . . wildfire . . . leaping up between them. A sizzle of recognition deep in his being.

  He remembered staring down at her, shocked at the power of such a brief exchange. He remembered telling himself he shouldn’t, that he was betrothed, that this young woman was a mystery, an enigma, embroiled in dangerous matters . . . but all the arguments he could muster were as the chattering of birds, and he couldn’t stop himself from bending once more to take her mouth with his.

  Instant conflagration; he’d never felt anything like it. The taste of her: pure intoxication. A shudder passed through him now, as he remembered.

  He slipped her a sideways glance. Had she noticed? Was she too remembering? Had she too felt the conflagration?

  She sat bolt upright on the seat beside him, looking ahead, her face pale and still, her reticule clutched firmly in her lap.

  His hands tightened on the reins. He had no business remembering, no business kissing her in the first place.

  He was a betrothed man, and he took his promises seriously. Not once in his life—not even as a boy—had he ever gone back on his word. And he wasn’t going to start now.

  It was just a kiss. Only a kiss.

  He had to put it from his mind, focus on the danger she’d just escaped. Why the devil had that fellow attacked her? He was no simple cutpurse, Max was sure. He glanced at her reticule. Then glanced again.

  “That’s one mystery solved,” he said.

  She started, as if her thoughts had been miles away, and turned to him. “What do you mean?”

  He nodded toward the reticule. “I was sure I saw that knife go into you. The villain had to tug to retrieve it. But it was that.”

  She looked down and made a small exclamation. “It’s been cut.” She opened the reticule, examined the contents and took out a small, leather-bound book. She held it up so he could see it. “My book was stabbed!”

  He gave a curt nod. That book had saved her life.

  He glanced at her to see whether she understood. She did; he
could tell from her expression. She sat in silence for a long moment, her thumb rubbing back and forth over the cut in the leather, as if the action would somehow heal it. Her lips trembled. She looked close to tears.

  Max ached to take her into his arms again. Instead he said, “And they say an addiction to novels is bad for you.”

  It surprised a shaky laugh out of her. “I’ve always found books a great comfort, but never quite like this.” With trembling hands she stuffed the damaged book back in her reticule and said in a more normal voice, “How is your arm?”

  “It’s nothing.” Max focused on the road ahead. His path was clear.

  * * *

  “It’s just a scratch. No need to make a fuss.” Max tried again to rise. They were in the kitchen of Davenham House. There was no sign of the cook or scullery maid. The moment they’d arrived home, Abby had ordered the footman to go for the doctor, but Max had vetoed that.

  He’d felt a little dizzy getting down from the phaeton, but it was nothing a brandy wouldn’t fix, he was sure. His head and shoulder ached a little from his connections with the cosh, but it was just a bit of bruising, nothing serious. As for the cut, it was a long gash, but not too deep. Blood still oozed from it sluggishly.

  She pushed him back onto the chair—and it was a sign of his light-headedness that she could. “If anyone is making a fuss, it’s you. You’ve lost a lot of blood.”

  She tossed a fistful of salt into a basin, poured water from the steaming kettle into it and stirred fiercely to dissolve the salt. “Don’t argue; I’m going to wash and bandage that wound. Cuts can fester, and salt water is good for healing. And besides, the blood is unsightly and upsets Featherby.”

  And shame on Max for bleeding everywhere, and upsetting her precious butler, her tone implied.

  The butler had taken one look at Max’s injury, turned an interesting shade of green and tottered out of the room. The footman, William, had helped to strip Max of his coat and shirt. He peered at the wound with professional interest. “Nasty cut, m’lord, but I don’t reckon it’ll need stitches. Best let Miss Abby tend to it.”