“I’ll never marry you!” she ground out.
“You’ll have no choice. There’s a blacksmith just across the border who’ll do anything I ask, if I pay him enough. Including marrying you by force over the anvil and swearing you went willingly. And his wife will witness it.”
“Then I’ll—I’ll have it annulled!”
“You can’t. Not without your husband’s permission.” An icy smile spread across his face. “And I’ll never give it, unless you give me Glenarvon.”
A sickening helplessness overcame her, and she whispered in horror, “You’re mad.”
“Worse.” A muscle ticked in his tightened jaw. “I’m a gentleman in debt.”
With a hard shove, he released her throat and pushed her away, then flipped the ribbons and set the horses into a faster pace.
Annabelle cowered to the side of the seat and stared at him with revulsion and fear, her hands grasping the rail to hang on as the curricle bounced beneath her. In desperation, she looked down at the road again, now speeding by beneath the deadly wheels.
She took a deep breath to resolve herself and inched closer to the side of the carriage to jump—
“Annabelle!”
The deep voice boomed across the countryside, only seconds before the sound of racing hooves reached her.
“Quinton!” With relief pouring through her, she tried to rise up from the seat and wave for help over the large canopy. “Help me! Help—”
Sir Harold let fly a sharp curse and grabbed her by her hair. He yanked her down onto the seat.
Annabelle cried out in pain as she fought to keep hold on the seat, now bouncing wildly beneath her as he cracked the whip and the team jumped into a run. She could do nothing more than hang on for her life and trust in Quinton.
* * *
Quinn lowered himself over the back of his horse and urged the large gelding into a run after the curricle. His heart pounded as hard as the hooves thundering beneath him as his horse ate up the distance between him and the carriage.
When he pulled even with the carriage wheels, he saw Belle clinging in terror to the seat. Beside her, Bletchley ignored her cries to stop and whipped the team into a dangerous frenzy.
Something inside him snapped. A fury and fear unlike any he’d ever experienced before flared through him, and he focused every ounce of his being on saving Belle.
“Let her go!” he shouted at Bletchley.
In answer, the man gritted his teeth and yanked on the ribbons to send the curricle careening at Quinn, the tall wheel spinning dangerously toward his horse.
With a curse, Quinton reined in. The well-trained gelding darted out of the way just seconds before the wheel cut across their path.
Quinton dug his heels against his mount’s side, and the horse surged forward again. This time, before Bletchley could swerve toward him, he reached out to snatch the ribbons from Bletchley’s hands.
“Damn you!” Bletchley struck back with the whip, cracking it at Quinn’s horse, who jumped to the side just far enough to put Quinn in reach of the whip.
Bletchley smiled wickedly and snapped it again. The metal tip struck Quinn’s cheek and sliced through his skin, drawing blood from a painful gash. Belle screamed.
Growling and furious, and increasingly terrified for Belle, he ignored the sting of the whip as he rode in close. When Bletchley let fly another snap of the whip, Quinn grabbed at it, catching it and ripping it from Bletchley’s hands.
But Bletchley still had control of the ribbons and the team, and he pulled sharply, turning again toward Quinn’s horse. The gelding darted away from the spinning wheel, safely out of danger, but damnation! The weaving carriage kept him too far away to stop it.
“Annabelle!” he shouted, needing her help.
She looked up, and for one heartbeat, they locked gazes. In that instant he saw the terror leave her, replaced by a fierce determination.
Carefully keeping hold of the seat, she moved closer to Bletchley, whose attention was still set on running Quinn down beneath his wheels. With a cry, she drew her right hand into a fist and swung with all her might. The glancing blow caught the tip of Bletchley’s chin and flung his head back. Not enough to make him stop the team but enough to distract him while Quinn charged again toward the lead horse.
From the corner of his eye as he moved up even with the team, Quinn could see Annabelle slapping at Bletchley, kicking and clawing at every part of him she could reach.
His chest warmed with pride. The Bluebell was no shirking violet. Bletchley had made a terrible mistake by attempting to abscond with her. Thank God that he’d gone after her, that he’d ridden into view at the far end of the lane just in time to see her climb into the carriage and ride off, that he’d gotten close enough when the curricle had turned to the north to see Bletchley grab her by the throat.
When he caught them, he’d murder the bastard for that.
Quinn leaned far to the right, dangerously hanging off his saddle by only a single stirrup, and reached toward the lead horse’s head. He glanced back at the spinning wheel just behind him, the ground rushing past beneath them. If his horse stumbled and he fell, if his stirrup snapped—he was as good as dead.
Belle cried out, and white-hot anger and fear for her drove him on. He lunged for the rein near the bit, grabbed it, and held tight as he slowed the team.
Behind him, the wheel smacked a large rock jutting up from the road. The curricle jumped, both wheels coming off the ground. When it landed, it careened out of control to the right. The rein yanked from Quinn’s hand.
His horse darted away as the carriage tipped. The axel broke with a splintering crack, and the wheel snapped. He watched helplessly as the carriage bounced into the air before slamming into the hard-packed road. Annabelle flew from the seat and hit the ground with a dull, sickening thud that stopped his heart with a soul-shattering jolt. The team ran on, dragging the wrecked carriage behind it with Bletchley clinging to the dashboard. When it hit another hard bump, he was flung to the road, where he lay moaning, too hurt to scramble to his feet.
Quinn yanked his horse to a stop and jumped from its back. Terror pulsed through him at the sight of Belle lying still in the dirt. Dear God, no! He ran to her side and dropped to his knees, scooping her into his shaking arms.
“Annabelle!” He clutched her to him, all of him trembling and shuddering. Fear clasped an icy fist around his heart as he cupped her face in his hand. “Open your eyes, darling,” he ordered breathlessly. “Please, dear God…Open your eyes. Annabelle…”
Her name was a pleading rasp on his lips. But she didn’t open her eyes to look at him.
“Don’t leave me,” he whispered against her temple, his own eyes now squeezed shut against the pulsing pain. “Not now, now that I finally have you…Annabelle, please!”
Pained heat stung at his eyes, and he held his breath, desperately listening for any sound of her breathing, of her heart beating—anything to signal that she was still there with him. But she lay so terribly still in his arms, her body limp and lifeless against his as he cradled her against his chest.
Wetness burned at his lashes. Each beat of his heart was agony.
“I love you, Annabelle,” he rasped out and kissed her.
A soft inhalation tickled against his lips. Then her eyes opened and she stared at him, dazed and unfocused.
With a shudder, she gasped and gulped in a deep swallow of air as she tried to catch back the breath that the fall had ripped from her. Her hands clutched at his shoulders as she struggled to breathe, and her eyes never left his as she forced out hoarsely, “Quinn…”
He crushed her to him and buried his face in her hair, which had come loose and now fell in disheveled curls around her shoulders. Her clothes were dirty and ripped. An ugly scrape bloodied the side of her face and both of her palms where she’d tried to arrest her fall, and her right ankle lay at an unnatural angle. Each breath she took was labored and rough, filled with pain.
Bu
t she was alive.
Thank God.
Then she winced as she lifted a hand to touch his cheek and the streak of blood from the whip wound. Her brow furrowed with worry as she breathed out, “You’re…hurt…”
Relief poured through him, like a liquid heat that filled him to overflowing, and he gave a soft laugh. Only Annabelle could be worried about a scratch on him when she had nearly been killed herself.
“I’m fine,” he assured her, gently rocking her in his arms. “I have you. And I am never letting you go.”
“You said you loved me,” she whispered. “Did you…did you truly mean it?”
“Yes.” Sweet heavens, yes. He cupped her cheek against his palm. “I thought I couldn’t love you, that I could keep from being wounded if I kept myself from you. And my heart.” Closing his eyes, he touched his lips to her forehead. “But when I saw that bastard hurt you. And then when you fell…” He silently shook his head, unwilling to put into words the terror he’d felt at nearly losing her.
“It’s all right,” she assured him, so softly his ears barely registered the sound. But his heart heard every word. “I understand.”
“I was a damned fool. But now I’m not willing to miss a single moment with you, Annabelle.” He slid his hand down her arm until he clasped her hand, lacing his fingers through hers. “Can you forgive me?”
Not moving her eyes from his, she slowly raised his hand to her bosom and guided his fingers beneath the gaping front of the torn waistcoat and shirt. He felt the rope of pearls she wore beneath her clothes, just as his aunt wore her locket. In order to keep him close to her heart. “Always,” she whispered.
“Then marry me, Belle,” he urged, his voice trembling and all of him shaking. “Not because we made love or because I need you to let me care for you and protect you—although I do, more than I realized. But because I love you, and because I hope that you still love me.” He traced his fingers over the pearls and the warm skin beneath, feeling her heart beating strong beneath his fingertips. “I want every moment with you that I can have, for as long as this life gives us.”
“Then it must be love.” A tear slipped down her dusty cheek as she lightly teased, “You keep asking even though I keep refusing.”
He crooked a half grin. “I’m not the kind of man who lets a woman’s absolute refusal stop me from marrying her.”
A small bubble of laughter escaped her, then she winced at the pain. Guilt washed through him. “Belle, I’m so sorry that you—”
“Yes, Quinton,” she whispered.
His heart stuttered. “Yes?”
Her fingers tightened around his, as if she never wanted to let him go. A smile of joy lit her face. “I will let you marry me now.”
Grinning at her stubborn pride, shining in her even now, he felt his love for her warm inside him until it permeated every ounce of his being and soul. Aunt Agatha was right. There was no choice in love. Thank God.
He lowered his head to kiss her.
EPILOGUE
Four Very Busy Weeks Later
Quinn stood on the other side of the door connecting his room to Belle’s and took a deep breath to calm himself. God’s mercy, he was nervous. Nervous! Although why he was, he had no idea.
They’d been intimate before, for heaven’s sake. What did he have to be nervous about? Nothing…except that this would be their first joining as husband and wife. Except that tonight would be the first of all their nights together for the rest of their lives.
He wiped his sweaty palms on his dressing robe. Nervous, indeed.
Belle was making him wait, extending the very long and tiring day they’d already had. They’d taken their wedding vows before friends and family that morning in the Braeburn parish church. Robert, Sebastian, and his sister, Josephine, stood up with them, while his mother and Aunt Agatha cried from the front pew, with his sister-in-law, Miranda, dutifully patting the backs of their hands. Then came breakfast at Glenarvon beneath special tents he’d had erected among the ruins of the old castle. Everyone from the village came to congratulate them…and to welcome him permanently to Braeburn.
All the loose ends were tying up perfectly. Bletchley had been sent out of the borderlands and out of their lives forever. When the bank foreclosed on Kinnybroch, Quinn purchased it with the money he’d saved for America. Now, he and Annabelle would start their lives as equal partners, their combined lands forming the second-largest estate in Cumbria. The land would be theirs now, not hers or his. And although it was too early to receive a reply to the letter Quinn had written to Asa Jeffers and his wife, he knew they would be just fine as well. Their sons-in-law would care for them as they deserved, perhaps even deciding to keep the land in the family and farm it themselves. He suspected that any ill will they felt toward him for not claiming the land would dissolve when they received word of the birth of his and Annabelle’s first child. One he hoped would be their godchild.
And then, there was Belle herself. The little bluestocking had refused to let him into her bedroom during the past month, even after her sprained ankle and other wounds from the accident had all healed. She’d insisted that they wait to make love until after their wedding.
Four weeks. Four very long weeks without touching her luscious curves, without holding her sultry body against his, without kissing her sensuous lips and licking his tongue over every delectable inch—
He groaned and knocked impatiently on the door. “Belle?”
“Just a moment longer,” she called out. “I need to fix the ribbon along my thigh…”
His gut wrenched with ravenous yearning. Sweet Lucifer, just the sound of her voice describing what she was wearing was enough to turn him hard. For the past month, she’d seductively teased him with snippets of what she planned on wearing tonight, a lace and silk confection from her trousseau. The same silk and lace he planned on slowly peeling from her body, one tempting inch at a time, then following along with his lips—
Another groan. Good Lord, he would die if she didn’t open the door and let him inside!
“I’m ready,” she announced. Finally. “Come in, my love.”
He threw open the door and charged into her room—
Then pulled up short. She wasn’t there.
He glanced around. What kind of cruel joke was she playing? The room was ready for them. The fire glowed warm, and two glasses sat next to the bottle of scotch on the bedside table. The coverlet had been turned down, the candles extinguished, and the drapes drawn so they could linger in bed as long as they wished in the morning without being bothered by the dawn. And he was certainly ready for her.
But there was no Belle.
He frowned. “Annabelle?”
“Bluebell, you mean,” she corrected teasingly as she stepped out of her dressing room.
Quinn saw her and grinned.
Instead of wearing the gossamer negligee he’d expected, she sashayed slowly toward him wearing her rope of pearls, a pair of very blue stockings tied with bows around her thighs…and nothing else.
“Do you still want me?” she taunted as she lifted her leg to rest her foot on the chair beside him, giving him a tantalizing view of her smooth thighs and a teasing glimpse of that special place which lay between. “Even though I’m an unrepentant bluestocking?”
“I wouldn’t want you any other way.” With a growl, he lifted her into his arms and carried her across the room. “I love you.”
She sighed happily. “I know.”
Then he placed her on the bed and followed down after her.
The only thing standing between Lord Robert Carlisle and the business empire of his dreams is one woman: Mariah Winslow, known about town as “the Hellion.” Robert will do anything to win—even help Mariah’s father find her a suitable husband and force her into respectability. But as the desire flares between them, will he dare sacrifice his dreams to get in bed with the enemy?
A preview of
As the Devil Dares
follows.
/> Chapter One
London
January 1823
I suppose you prefer White’s,” Henry Winslow drawled.
With a knowing smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, Robert Carlisle let his gaze drift from the smoke curling off the end of his cigar to the man sitting in the leather chair across from him in the smoking room at Brooks’s. Before them, a crackling fire warmed away the chill of the winter afternoon whose gray sky once more threatened to snow.
“I prefer being here at Brooks’s. I’d rather be in a club with the real leaders of England.” In truth, Robert preferred Boodle’s, where the gambling required more skill, the stakes were higher, and the women allowed in through the rear entrance were more interesting. But he raised his glass of whiskey to salute Winslow anyway. “Businessmen and merchants, traders, importers—the men who truly make England run.”
“Hear, hear!” Winslow lifted his own glass and gasped softly as he took a large swallow.
Robert popped the cigar between his teeth before Winslow could see the self-pleased smile at his lips. Pompous arse. But he would gladly flatter the man’s choice of club, where he’d been invited for a lunch of roasted pheasant and conversation about business afterward, because he needed Henry Winslow.
Rather, he needed Winslow Shipping and Trade.
Given the fierce pounding of his heart at the reason why Winslow wanted to meet with him, he drawled as nonchalantly as possible, “I’ve heard that you’re considering expanding into real estate.”
“Ha! Where did you hear that?” Winslow flicked the ash from his cigar onto the floor.
“I have good contacts.” The best, in fact. Winslow knew that, too, or the man wouldn’t have reached out to him in the first place.
Robert eased back in the chair and kicked his Hessians onto the fireplace fender. A model of a confident businessman, when he was actually nervous as hell.
When the Scoundrel Sins Page 28