“I’ll take it.”
“I’d like to see you–OH!”
The sound that escaped past her lips could only be described as a screech when he lunged across the divide and grabbed her wrist. They were so close she could hear his ragged breaths, see the storm clouds gathering in his eyes, feel the hardness of his thigh pressed against hers.
If this wasn’t the very definition of desire, then Charlotte didn’t know what was.
Her pulse scrambled beneath his grip as her stomach tightened and the tiny hairs at the nape of her neck stood straight on end. She inhaled his scent: rain and leather and the soap he’d used to clean himself. Unconsciously she swept her tongue across her bottom lip. Gavin’s eyes darkened, and suddenly his thigh wasn’t the only part of his anatomy that was hard.
“Thank you,” he said icily, plucking the newspaper from her grasp.
Then he was back on his side and she remained on hers and the empty space between them might as well have been an endless abyss. Her racing heartrate gradually returning to normal, Charlotte turned her head to stare out the window, Gavin went back to reading, and not another word was spoken.
Chapter Thirteen
Charlotte didn’t know when she fell asleep. But she jerked awake when she felt the ground beneath her rumble and buck. Before she had time to brace herself or even cry out, she was thrown up in the air like a rag doll and came down hard on her side as the world around her spun like a top.
Nausea threatened, and she waited for the queasiness to pass before she tried to make sense of what had happened. In the distance she thought she heard someone shouting, but the noise was drowned out by the humming in her ears and the pounding rain on the roof.
No, not the roof, she corrected herself dazedly.
The roof was no longer the roof.
The floor was no longer the floor.
Sometime between falling asleep and her abrupt awakening, everything had turned upside down. The carriage had upended, and now laid crippled in a ditch with her trapped inside of it.
“GAVIN!” she shouted, fearing for his safety even as she assessed her own. She was wedged in a corner, pinned between the door and the seat, and even though she could freely move her arms and upper body, her legs were caught beneath something quite heavy.
Squinting through the shadows, she gasped in horror when she saw it was Tabitha who was sprawled face down across her calves… and it did not appear as though the maid was breathing.
“Tabitha! Tabitha, can you hear me?” Unable to lift herself free, Charlotte stretched as far as she could and was just able to grasp Tabitha’s shoulders. Not knowing what else to do, she tried giving the maid a quick shake, but it was not enough to wake her.
“HELP!” she cried, directing her voice to the door above her head. “SOMEONE, PLEASE HELP US!”
There was no reply. Fighting back the panic that threatened to roll over her in a black, all consuming wave, Charlotte closed her eyes and offered up a fervent prayer.
She had heard of carriage accidents before. Large and unwieldly, they were notoriously unstable and it did not take much to send them careening off the road, especially when the roads were washed out. But to hear of something happening and then to actually experience it were two very different things, and as the minutes passed by and help did not arrive, desperation started to build.
Curling her hands into fists she began to pound against the side of the carriage in a frantic attempt to draw outside attention, pausing only to try to rouse Tabitha, whose face and arms had turned alarmingly white. At least she knew her maid was alive by the faint chatter of her teeth, but the maid was cold as snow, and Charlotte instinctively sensed that if rescue was not forthcoming, Tabitha’s outcome would be dire indeed.
She needed to try to keep the maid warm, but how? There were no blankets in the carriage, and all of the trunks were well out of reach. She tried to unbutton her pelisse, but it was twisted beneath her and impossible to remove. With a soft cry of frustration, she began to strike the side of the coach in earnest while yelling for help as loudly as she could.
Soon her voice was nothing more than a hoarse whimper and her hands were numb, knuckles bruised and bleeding. Just as she was about to crumple beneath the crushing weight of hopelessness, Gavin appeared.
Like some dark avenging angel he wrenched the door open and shoved his top half through, bracing his arms on the sides to keep himself from falling in. Above him the sky was an angry, swirling mix of blues and purples. Rain lashed out, pummeling his shoulders and sluicing through his hair. There was dirt smeared across his face and a cut dripped blood above his right eyebrow. His left sleeve was ripped to the elbow, exposing a long gash that ran from his wrist from his elbow.
He looked absolutely horrible.
She had never seen a more handsome man in all her life.
“CHARLOTTE!” he bellowed, and she flinched from the sheer volume of her name as it bounced around the carriage.
“Here!” Realizing he could not see her given the angle of her body in relation to the door, she waved her aching arms high in the air. She knew the exact moment he spied her amidst the calamity because he sagged with relief. Then his countenance hardened with grim determination.
“My God,” he said hoarsely. “Are you hurt?”
“N-no. At least, I don’t believe so.”
“You are probably in shock.”
For once, she agreed with him.
“What are we going to do?” Blinking against the rain as it splashed into her eyes, she tried to shield the worst of it with her hand. From down by her legs Tabitha let out a pitiful moan, but to Charlotte the tiny noise was like music to her ears. It meant the maid was alive, and now that Gavin was here there was a good chance they could keep her that way.
“I am going to come down and get you. Don’t move,” he ordered.
“Where do you think I would go?”
“Damnit, Charlotte, this isn’t the time for your bloody cheek. Later, when you’re safe in my arms, you can mock me all you’d like. For now, hold still!”
When you’re safe in my arms.
Despite the cold and the wet, something inside her warmed. Safe in her husband’s arms was exactly where she wanted to be.
She held her breath as he began to ease himself through the door, lowering his massive frame inch by precious inch. But he hadn’t gone more than half a yard when the carriage gave way with a heavy groan and began to slide, eliciting a startled shriek from Charlotte and a biting curse from Gavin.
“The ground is too unstable for the rig to take my extra weight,” he shouted.
“I–I rather gathered that,” she said weakly.
“You will have to give me your hand and I will lift you out.” He gritted his teeth and reached down with his left arm, the muscles bulging and twisting as he stretched as far as he could, but Charlotte shook her head and grasped Tabitha’s shoulders protectively.
“No, no I cannot! My maid…she…I think she struck her head. She is unconscious and must be carried out. You have to try again. Perhaps if you go more slowly…”
A vein pulsed in his temple. “Charlotte, if I move any further, the carriage will slide again.”
“So let it slide!” she cried.
“We are resting on the edge of a cliff.”
“Oh.” Her eyes widened. “Oh. That does not sound very good.”
“You’re going to be all right.” Rain continued to lash at Gavin’s back. In the distance thunder boomed, an ominous warning the storm was only growing worse. Charlotte cringed from the sound, but her husband only gave an impatient toss of his head and flattened his stomach out along the edge of the door. “If you can reach me, I can pull you out and—”
“No, that won’t work. My legs.” She gestured helplessly to her lower limbs, which were still pinned beneath Tabitha. “I cannot move. You have to get her out first.”
Now that Charlotte knew the true danger of their predicament, the panic she had been
able to suppress returned in spades. It clawed at the edges of her mind, urging her to thrash and kick and fight to free herself, but she knew any movement at all could be enough to send the carriage tumbling over the edge into an endless abyss.
“Gavin, I am afraid,” she whispered, closing her eyes.
“Open your eyes, Charlotte.”
She shook her head with a whimper.
“Open your eyes, damn it, and look at me!”
Reluctantly, she blinked the rain from her lashes and stared up, up, up to where Gavin hovered above her. With his torn shirt, long hair dropping water, and jagged features illuminated by bolts of lightning that had begun to streak in silvery bursts across the sky, he looked like a savage warrior of old, and all at once a sense of calm descended over Charlotte and she knew, as surely as she had ever known anything, that he would not let any harm befall her.
Mustering all of her remaining courage, she managed a tentative, trembling smile, and Gavin nodded in approval.
“There’s my brave girl. I’ll be right back.”
He was leaving her?
“Wait!” Without thinking of the consequences, she jolted forward. The movement was slight, but it was still enough to send the carriage sliding a few more precious inches through the muddy soil.
Her heart pounding, Charlotte froze, and when the bulky rig groaned and settled back into place without toppling over the edge of the cliff both she and Gavin breathed audible sighs of relief.
“Do not do that again,” he snarled. “Do you understand me?”
“I–I won’t.”
“I have to find something to pull Tabitha up with and then I will get you out.” His eyes were dark and fierce and he was staring at her with such a burning intensity she felt the heat of his gaze like a flame against her skin. “I swear to you, Charlotte. I will get you out.”
“I believe you,” she said. Still, the minutes in which he was gone were the longest of her life, and she nearly wept when at last he reappeared and began to lower a long, skinny piece of black leather into the carriage.
She grabbed at the end of it once, twice, and managed to secure it the third time. The leather was slick with water, and smelled of mud and…horse?
“What is it?” she yelled up to Gavin, who was once again braced in the doorway with only his upper torso and long arms visible.
For the first time it occurred to Charlotte if the carriage shifted, he could easily slide off the top of it and meet his death at the bottom of the cliff. She paled, her pulse quickening as she realized the peril he was putting himself in to save her, his wife of a single day, and Tabitha, a maid he hardly knew.
“A trace,” he shouted, wiping the rain from his eyes with one hand and holding fast to the end of the leather with the other. “From the harness. Do you see the buckle on your end?”
The heavy brass fastening was impossible to miss. “Yes! Yes, I see it.”
“Good. See if you can wrap the trace around Tabitha, right under her arms, and buckle it. I will lift her up, and then you will do the same for yourself. Do you understand?”
He was going to pull them out of the carriage one at a time with a piece of harness? Leather stretched when it was wet. What if the trace stretched too far and snapped while she was dangling in midair? What if it slipped from Gavin’s hand entirely? This was his grand plan? It was suicide!
“Is there any rope?” she called up hopefully.
His only answer was to tighten his grip on the trace. “Do as I say, Charlotte, and be quick about it. There is no telling how much longer the ground with hold.”
“I can do this,” she muttered to herself. “I can do this. I can do this.” Sweeping her wet mass of curls out of the way, she began to carefully loop the trace around Tabitha. The leather was surprisingly pliable, and she was able to slip it beneath the maid’s shoulders and buckle it snugly around her middle.
She whispered a final prayer, and then could only watch as Gavin pulled the trace taut and began to lift Tabitha slowly, but surely, from the depths of the wrecked carriage.
When it was her turn, she buckled herself so tightly it was difficult to breathe, and kept her eyes pinched shut from the second her feet lifted off the floor to the moment Gavin’s arms wrap securely around her. They slid onto the muddy ground together. Crying, laughing, Charlotte rolled into a sitting position and hugged her knees.
“You did it. You saved me. You saved us.” Her eyes widened. “Tabitha, is she–”
“She’s fine. Or rather, she will be fine.” Effortlessly scooping her up, Gavin held her cradled against his chest as one would a child, his chin resting on top of her head. “My driver is with her. There is an inn a short distance from here and–”
His voice was drowned out as the carriage, with a sharp groan and protesting rumble, began to slide in earnest. Charlotte cried out and buried her face in her husband’s wet shirt, unable to watch as the carriage disappeared from view over the edge of the cliff and splintered with a crash of wood and screech of metal on the rocks below.
“Everything is fine,” Gavin murmured, drawing her even closer. “Another coach is already on its way, and they have a room and food prepared for us at the inn. A doctor will be there as well to look after your maid.”
Charlotte burrowed into him, a tiny bird seeking shelter in the storm. He felt so good, she thought. Safe and strong and secure.
“Thank you,” she said softly.
“There’s no need to thank me, Charlotte. I’m your husband. It is my job to protect you, and it’s one I take seriously. I only regret that I couldn’t get you out sooner.”
Tilting her back in order to look at him, she saw the cut above his brow was still bleeding, the red turning to rust as it slid down the side of his face and dripped onto his collar.
“Put me down,” she ordered. “You’re injured, and I am far too heavy–”
“You are light as a feather. I could carry you anywhere.”
Obstinate man.
“Not anywhere,” she sighed. Her eyelids were becoming extraordinarily heavy, as were her limbs. And yet, even though it was still raining and the sky was still booming with the thunder, she felt completely at ease in Gavin’s arms. “You could not carry me back to London.” She felt as much as heard his chuckle, and it roused a sleepy smile from her lips. “What is so amusing?”
“I could say the sky is blue and you would argue it was orange, wouldn’t you?”
“Well, sometimes it is…orange,” she said with a yawn. “At sunset it turns orange and pink and purple.”
“You need to rest.” Carefully combing her hair back from her forehead, Gavin pressed a soft kiss to her temple. “There will be plenty of time to disagree with me in the morning.”
Charlotte did not want to fall asleep. She was loath to give up control, especially when so many things still needed to be done. But she was so very tired…and so very comfortable…that when she closed her eyes for only a moment, sleep came instantly.
Chapter Fourteen
Charlotte woke to a great weight across her chest.
For one fleeting, panic stricken moment, she thought she was back in the carriage pinned beneath Tabitha. Then she remembered Gavin’s daring rescue.
Blinking to clear her sleep blurred vision, she did a quick study of her surroundings. She was in a small, sun filled room with plain white walls, a single washbasin in one corner, and a wooden chair in the other. Recalling what Gavin had said last night about the inn, she realized she must be in one of the rooms, although she had no recollection of arriving.
Turning her head to the side, she could not quite contain a startled yelp of surprise when she saw what–or, to be more accurate, who–was sprawled next to her in the narrow bed.
Gavin slept like a man dead.
It was his arm and leg that held her place, his limbs thrown haphazardly across her body as though they belonged there. His face was turned away and buried in a white pillow. From this angle she could just make out th
e neat line of stitches running across the cut on his brow. He must have also bathed, for his black hair gleamed in the morning light and he smelled faintly of evergreen with a hint of lemon.
Inhaling the pleasant scent, Charlotte allowed her gaze to wander down the length of his naked torso, her eyes lingering on the muscles in his abdomen before curiosity led her all the way to a narrow trail of black curls leading to…
Her gaze jerked back to his face as her cheeks burned crimson.
Gavin was completely nude.
Gavin was completely nude lying next to her!
Heavens.
At once the room felt much too hot. She reached for the blanket that was twisted between them and attempted to pull it up and over her husband’s hips, but the edge was caught under the mattress and try as she might she could not pull it free.
“Bullocks,” she cursed under her breath.
Now what?
Taking care to keep her eyes averted from that part of his anatomy, Charlotte began to ease herself out from underneath his arm…but with a murmur and a sigh he simply splayed his hand flat across her belly and pulled her closer to him. She rolled neatly into the crook of his body as though they were made to fit; two puzzle pieces locking together.
At least she was fully clothed in her modest blue nightdress. How she had changed out of her rain soaked clothes was a mystery, but she would be willing to bet quite highly it had something to do with the man currently holding her hostage.
Perhaps…perhaps it wouldn’t hurt anything to stay like this for a while. After all, he was the one holding onto her. And he did smell so very nice.
“You feel soft.” Gavin turned his head and nuzzled the side of her neck, his bristle of whiskers brushing against her sensitive flesh as he burrowed his face into her sea of tangled curls. “Amanda…” he sighed.
Charlotte went rigid.
Amanda?
Who the hell was Amanda?!
It was bad enough he had the audacity to crawl into bed with her naked as the day he was born after he specifically said he did not want an intimate relationship! But to do that and then have the nerve to call her by another woman’s name? The man was a pig! An ill-mannered, disgusting, loathsome pig.
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