‘Let’s race,’ she said, snapping him out of his lustful thoughts.
‘What?’
‘I’ll race you back to the house.’
‘Pru, I don’t think that’s a good …’
‘Go!’
She’d kicked Misha into action before he’d finished his sentence, and he watched her race across the plains ahead of him. He had no choice but to chase after her and urged Persephone up to speed.
Damn, she’s fast.
She leaped her horse over a fallen log and Jack’s heart leaped into his throat.
And reckless.
‘Blast it. Pru, slow down!’
‘Wahoo!’ she screamed like a banshee.
He’d almost caught up with her by the time they reached the gates of Little Windsor and they were neck and neck as they pulled their tired horses to a halt near the home paddock.
‘I win!’
‘It was a draw,’ he insisted, highly entertained by her childlike behaviour. ‘And you cheated.’
‘I still feel so energised, so …’
‘What?’ he asked, dismounting and tossing Persephone’s reins over the fence.
‘Alive!’ she yelled.
Letting go of the reins, she threw her leg over the horse’s neck in a most unladylike fashion, and slid from the saddle into his waiting arms.
Since there was no one around to see this time, without hesitation he took her mouth with his. Each time he kissed her she became more and more a willing participant. She’d learned fast what excited him, and was no longer demure, she no longer waited for him to take charge.
Had she been wearing one of her flouncy dresses she may have missed it, but wearing the man’s corduroy trousers she’d donned for the robbery, he had no doubt she would feel his arousal pressing against her. He tried to lean away but her hands grasped his hips and pulled him closer still. His control, already paper thin, snapped, and he lifted his head to catch the breath she’d stolen from him. But the want he saw in her eyes just served to take his arousal up one more notch.
Spinning her, he leaned her against the fence, his hands gripping the top rung of the wooden railing behind her head. Keeping his eyes on the ground, he fought his basic urges. He needed to slow down. He needed to slow down before he dragged her into the house and took her like a Neanderthal. He felt her finger beneath his chin as she lifted his face to hers. Her green eyes open wide, watching him, she lightly flicked her tongue across his lips, teasing, coaxing until he gave in. His tongue entwined with hers and the moan that escaped her was like a red flag.
His fingernails dug into wood. He couldn’t touch her. He couldn’t give in to the desire that was like a racing wildfire in his blood. She was an innocent, regardless of the way she was currently kissing him, frying his brain cells. And they were unmarried. He still had enough sense in his skull to know he had to pull back.
Abruptly, he pushed off the fence and tore himself from her grasp, taking a good five paces away before he felt strong enough to turn back and face her.
Big mistake.
Her hooded eyes, her swollen lips, her breasts, lifting with her breath, straining against the thin cotton of the shirt, all enticed him, screamed at him, to walk the five paces back to her and take … and take.
‘Jack …?’
The breathless way she said his name tugged at him, but he had to stay strong. ‘I have to go to town.’
‘Now?’
He took in the hurt that melded with the want on her perfect face. ‘Yes, now. I have to work out the shares with the boys.’
He mounted Persephone in one quick movement, using the horse like a lifeline.
‘If I don’t go now, Garrett will spend my share.’
‘Our share,’ she added with a lust-filled, confused smile.
He ran a hand across her cheek. A dangerous angel sent to tempt him.
‘Our share,’ he said with a nod.
She stepped back and clasped her hands in front of her. ‘Will you be home tonight?’
‘I … I don’t know.’ Her smile faded and he hated himself for it. But he had a big decision to make and he needed time to think things through. He couldn’t trust himself alone in the house with her anymore. Time was running out. ‘You are the most incredible woman I have ever known.’
Her smile came out again and he felt the power of it in his chest.
‘I’m not leaving because I don’t want you. I’m leaving because I do. And I can’t have you like this.’
‘You can have me any way you want, Jack.’
‘I’ve never been honourable about anything in my life. Will you at least let me be honourable about this?’
‘Jack …’
He turned and rode out of the gates. Yes, he had some serious thinking to do.
***
When Jack returned to Little Windsor, it was almost midnight. The house was quiet, one lamp burned on the dining room table.
He stepped up to the door of the room Pru was occupying. It was closed but he couldn’t stop himself from checking on her. He hated leaving her in the house alone at night.
As quietly as he could, he opened the door a slit. The light, pale as it was, washed across her face. Eyes closed, mouth parted slightly, Pru slept. He stared, longer than he should have, at her cream complexion, touched with pink from her morning in the sun. Every time he saw her face, her beautiful face … the revelation came as a shock to him. He’d fallen in love with her. When exactly, he couldn’t say, but there was no denying it now. And she deserved better than a dirty, uneducated bushranger, despite his alter-ego as a prominent business man. Yes, she deserved better, but there was no sending her away now. He couldn’t bear the thought of her leaving. Still, he had to remember it was a marriage of convenience. She had no more love for him than she had for Grantham. But at least she liked him, he recalled her words during her proposal a month ago. Had it really been a month?
She bewildered him. Not once had she shown any sign that she was even thinking of giving in and begging to be taken back to Carrington Manor. He thought by now she would be tired of living rough with him. But she’d taken everything in her stride. Even doing housework seemed to make her happy—useful, she’d said. And she often sang as she worked. Her voice was angelic. She’d managed to shock him with a rather bawdy tune when she’d thought he wasn’t about. That’s what he loved about her. She could still surprise him. So gentle and vulnerable one minute, and so strong and adventurous the next.
And today … well, today, she had been magnificent. Dressed in ugly male clothes—his clothes—battling against her nature to keep quiet during the robbery, and then that tip-off about the hiding places in the shoes! She’d looked so proud and exhilarated. And she’d never been so irresistible to him.
Pru sighed in her sleep and shifted so that the covers dropped a little. He groaned quietly. She still wore his old shirt. It gave him a thrill to know that some part of him, something that belonged to him at least, was pressed against her warm, firm body. What would it smell like? He liked the idea of wearing that shirt again, being able to smell her fresh scent wherever he wore it. He was losing his mind. To preserve what was left of his sanity, he backed out of the room.
Four weeks they had been cohabitating. He’d given her the time she needed—the time he needed—to be sure that she belonged with him. But he could put it off no longer. Moving back out to the stables, he mounted D’Artagnan. Leaving in the middle of the night was a cowardly move, but it was the only move he had left.
Chapter 9
Pru spent a fitful night and was up earlier than usual. She’d tossed and turned in her bed, having worked herself up to a state she knew would only be sated by Jack’s kisses and hands. Hands that he still refused to lay on her, damn him. It was romantic really and she admired him for his patience and his strength, but didn’t he know how much she wanted him to make love to her?
Having dressed and made breakfast, she went to the little spare room to see if Jack was a
wake. He must have returned very late from town, as she hadn’t heard him come home. The door was slightly ajar and she pushed it a little to see if he was there. No Jack. The bed was made, just as she had left it the day before.
Following her instincts out to the barn, Persephone and Misha stood chomping on their morning feed. They lifted their heads to look at her momentarily before digging back into their chaff. He must have come back at some point in the night, or early this morning, and had taken the time to feed to horses. But why had he gone out again?
‘He’s run away again, has he?’ she asked Misha, giving her a good scratch.
A few hours later, Pru heard a horse and wagon coming up the driveway and opening the front door she stepped out onto the wide wooden porch to see Jack just pulling a small dray to a halt at the bottom of the steps. When he grinned at her before jumping down off the wagon, she smiled and placed a hand over her belly. It never failed to amaze her how the sight of him caused butterflies to wake in her stomach.
‘Where have you been?’ she asked. ‘And where did you get the dray?’
‘I’m sorry I was gone so long,’ Jack responded. ‘I needed to go a little further afield for this particular delivery, and required something larger to carry it in.’
‘Another present? For me?’ she asked, clapping her hands in delight.
Taking a step forward to help him unload the dray of whatever he’d bought, she stopped dead when instead he unloaded a man, bound and gagged.
Jack walked his prisoner towards the house and her eyes widened as she saw the man’s distinctive clothing.
‘What’s this?’
‘It’s a priest.’
‘I can see that,’ she said. ‘Why is he bound and gagged and standing on our doorstep?’
‘He wouldn’t come of his own accord.’
‘So … you kidnapped him?! You kidnapped a priest?’
‘He said we had to come to church on Sunday,’ Jack said, as though it ought to make sense to her. ‘But I needed him to marry us today. He refused. So I talked him into it.’
Pru struggled against the smile that threatened. ‘How romantic?’
Jack removed the gag from the old priest’s mouth. The man coughed and spluttered. ‘He dragged me out of my bed before dawn. Made me get dressed. Dragged me all the way here from Daylesford.’
‘Daylesford?’ Pru shot another angry look at Jack.
‘Well, I couldn’t use a priest from Ballarat. They all know me.’
‘Really?’ Pru raised an eyebrow. ‘Priests know you?’
Jack rolled his eyes. ‘Fine, so I’ve never stepped foot inside a church in my life. But I couldn’t risk anyone recognising me from town. This was the only way.’
‘Untie his hands too,’ Pru ordered.
‘But …’ Jack started, rubbing his chin as he hesitated. ‘He already hit me once.’
‘I’d say you deserved at least one, wouldn’t you?’
‘What happened to “how romantic”?’ Jack huffed.
She stepped down the wooden steps and kissed him. Then she slapped him across the back of the head.
‘Ow!’
‘I was being sarcastic, you madman.’ Pru shook her head and turned to the priest.
‘Father, I apologise for my wayward, romantic, husband to be. You are free to go.’
‘Now hold on,’ Jack complained. ‘I brought him here to marry us and that’s exactly what he’s going to do.’
‘I’ll not be married by a man of God who is being held against his will.’
‘I do not know why you agreed to marry this reprobate, child,’ the priest said, rubbing his rope-burned wrists.
‘She proposed to me,’ Jack grumbled.
Pru ignored him. ‘Can I at least offer you a cup of tea before you go, Father?’
The priest looked from Jack to Prudence with some remaining suspicion before he yielded. ‘The name is Father Flaherty. Your friend here did not even bother to ask.’
‘You were too busy taking swings at me,’ Jack threw in.
‘You were dragging me out of my bed!’
‘Jack, enough!’ Pru ordered.
‘A cup of tea, you say?’ the priest said, ignoring Jack and stepping up onto the porch. ‘Don’t mind if I do.’
Both of them turned their backs on Jack and walked into the house.
***
Jack stood on the doorstep for a good minute trying to figure out just what Pru was up to. She had been angry, that was certain enough, but there was something in the manner of the last grin she’d shot him before she headed inside. She was up to something. She got that same look in her eye right before she tormented him in some way with her feminine wiles. He’d always known women to be a devious species, but none came close to the pure calculating intelligence of his Prudence. Her smarts could make her a dangerous adversary.
Curious, and not a little wary, he stepped into the house. Prudence was just setting the teapot on the table to steep while Father Flaherty washed his hands. Jack opened his mouth to speak but Pru shot him a look of censure that had him closing it quick smart.
‘You live here with this morally corrupt man?’ Father Flaherty asked, eyeing Jack. ‘Alone?’
‘I do,’ she answered easily. ‘He’s not so bad, kidnapping aside.’
‘Surely you have a family somewhere who are worried about you,’ the priest continued as Prudence poured the tea. ‘A mother and father who would be distressed to know you are living with such a depraved ruffian?’
Jack saw a moment of pain flicker over Pru’s face as the priest mentioned her mother. With hands that shook, she put the teapot on the table. Jack made a move towards her but she stopped him with a raised hand. Her chin went up and she steeled herself before speaking.
‘My parents are dead, Father,’ she said with a strength that he admired. ‘I have no family but Jack.’
She crossed glances with him and his heart flew at the frail smile she gave him. God, how he loved her in that moment. He was her family. Neither of them had known their parents, but they were each other’s family now.
If Jack had been concerned the priest would persuade Pru she was better off going home to her grandmother, he’d been mistaken. She was a determined woman—he knew it only too well—and she seemed determined to be with him. God knew why. And only God knew what he had done to deserve her.
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ the priest softened then, and spent a long time looking between Jack and Pru as they finally came to stand together. United.
‘But you are unmarried,’ Father Flaherty said, giving them both a look of disapproval.
‘And that’s why I went to find a priest,’ Jack tossed in. Pru cleared her throat and silenced him with a hard look.
‘It is true,’ Pru said, sitting down at the table across from Father Flaherty. ‘Jack went about things the wrong way, but he only wished to make an honest woman of me before we …’ she blushed on cue, ‘before we consummate our love.’
The priest studied her, as though he could tell whether her maidenhead had been compromised just by looking at her face.
‘And do you love him?’ Father Flaherty asked.
Jack tensed. They hadn’t made any declarations of love. He’d believed all along that she only thought of it as a marriage of convenience, as she had stated when she’d proposed. But over the last few weeks, her actions had led him to hope that she might actually care about him. Just because he’d loved her since the kiss they’d shared at the ball, didn’t mean she loved him back. She looked up at Jack in such a way to make his heart turn over in his chest and his pulse quicken.
‘Yes,’ she said softly, keeping her eyes on his. ‘Yes, I love him.’
Jack exhaled relieved, not even realising he had been holding his breath for her answer.
‘And you, kidnapper,’ the priest asked in a less approving voice. ‘Do you love her?’
‘Yes,’ he said quickly, not taking his eyes from hers. ‘Yes, I love her.’
> Her smile lit him up.
‘Well then.’ The priest stood. ‘I can see there is love between you. Even if I think you can do better, Miss Prudence.’
Jack scowled, but he really couldn’t argue. She could do better than him.
‘If you will follow me outside, I shall marry you here and now as you so impatiently insist, and then you can drive me back to town, Master Jack.’
Jack stared at the priest surprised and crossed glances with Pru, who was grinning from ear to ear. Her cunning plan had worked. She’d been making sure the priest would marry them before he left.
She stood to follow the priest outside.
‘Wait!’
Father Flaherty and Pru stopped, surprised at Jack’s outburst. He walked to her and took her hands.
‘Pru, my love,’ he started. ‘If you would prefer a proper ceremony with a dress and a cake, we can wait. I can wait. If that’s what you want.’
‘After you stole a priest for me?’ she asked, kissing his cheek. ‘I want to marry you, Jack Fairweather. Now.’
He grinned, relieved. He’d lied. He couldn’t wait, and was thrilled that she didn’t seem to want to wait either.
‘Lead on, Father,’ he said, and followed them out onto the porch.
He picked a few wildflowers for Pru to hold as the priest gave the marriage rites. They exchanged rudimentary vows and Pru eyed him suspiciously when he presented her with a stunning gold wedding ring.
‘Where did you get that?’
‘At a jewellery store.’
‘You mean you bought it?’
He huffed, offended as he realised she thought he had stolen the ring. ‘Of course I bought it! I bought it two days after you came to live with me.’
He saw the purse of her lips as she tried not to laugh when she held out her hand. He slipped the ring on her finger and shook his head at her mistrust.
‘I now pronounce you man and wife,’ Father Flaherty said. ‘You may kiss the—’
But Jack was already kissing his wife. His hands were on her cheeks and his mouth melded with hers with such fervour the priest had to finally interrupt.
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