by Jane Ashford
To top it off, the groom perched behind them in the curricle appeared to have overindulged during their luncheon at the inn. He was continually nodding off and then jerking awake again to gaze around blearily. Richard was beginning to fear that he would lose his grip and fall.
Emily cleared her throat nervously. Richard braced himself for another odd remark. “Lord Warrington?”
“Yes?”
“I…there was something I wished to speak to you about.” Emily took a deep breath and then spoke in a rush. “My aunt tells me that gossip about my parents could be quite harmful to me. So I wanted to ask you please not to mention that you…that is, that they…your visit to them.”
The request surprised Richard, and annoyed him. “Do you imagine that I spend my time gossiping?”
“I…I didn’t mean…”
“Do you imagine I tell malicious tales for the pleasure of it?”
She bit her lower lip.
Richard was assailed by a rush of wholly unprecedented embarrassment. Had Emily Crane heard all about the old Lord Warrington? Embarrassment became humiliation. No doubt she had, and had probably despised the man described.
The emotion he felt then stunned him. In all of his twenty-nine years, he had never worried about what a woman might think of his character. He hadn’t cared. The old Warrington had had only one purpose for a woman.
“I don’t spread rumors or indulge in tittle-tattle,” he added stiffly, wondering if she would believe him. “I have more important things to do with my time.”
“You talked to me of nothing but my parents at the ball,” Emily snapped. “How was I to know that you would not…”
“I didn’t know you were trying to conceal their identity. That scheme is unlikely to fly, you know.”
“I am not trying…”
“What are you trying to do?”
Emily hesitated. “My aunt is very knowledgeable about society.”
“Undoubtedly.”
“I am not.”
Richard felt a spark of interest.
“I must be guided by her advice.”
“Must you?”
Emily looked up at him. She was an enigma, he thought. He couldn’t predict her as he could so many people he met. “You wish to succeed in society?”
“Why shouldn’t I?” She looked him straight in the eye as if daring him to answer.
Richard was startled by a strong pulse of desire. His hands had found her body delightfully rounded in all the right places, he remembered. Her red-gold hair, brushing his chin, had been like threads of flame. Sternly, he called himself to order. This was out of the question—he certainly didn’t need any more complications in his life.
The sound of hooves pounded up behind them. Richard pulled a little to the side to let the other vehicle pass. It came abreast of them—a light carriage and four going flat out. The driver had a hood pulled up over his head, obscuring his features. How the devil did he see the road with that thing on? If this were some young blood racing for a wager, he would most likely be foxed as well. And deadly dangerous.
Richard started to slow the curricle, but at that moment, the other carriage veered slightly and slammed into it, rocking the lighter vehicle. Both teams shied, one of the leaders squealing. Richard fought the reins, every muscle in his body taut.
The other carriage hit them again. The driver must be sodden drunk, Richard concluded. He pulled hard on the ribbons, trying to halt his thoroughly spooked horses. The leader threw back his head in a challenge and tried to bite his opposite number.
Richard hauled harder as the other carriage careened into them again. In the midst of the chaos, he noticed a small gloved hand clutching the seat beside him. Emily wasn’t making a sound, he noted with approval. Then all his attention was claimed by the plunging team. There was something wrong. They were moving away from the curricle to the left. Risking a glance downward, Richard saw that the traces had parted. The only links between the curricle and the horses were the reins in his hands.
The team turned farther, eager to get away from the melee now that it was free. Richard gripped the leathers, but it was no good. They weren’t pulling the curricle any longer, and if he held on he was likely to be dragged from the seat. With a supreme act of will, he let go. The horses raced off, dragging the broken traces behind them. He heard a muted cry from Emily just as the rogue carriage hit them again and sent the curricle plunging down a hill toward a grove of trees. He had a bumping, reeling vision of sky, branches, a huge spray of water, then blackness.
* * *
Richard woke to darkness and rain pounding on his face and chest. When he tried to sit up his whole body protested in one great ache. Where was his spear? His sling? Groping for them, he searched the area for predators.
He found mud. He was half-submerged in it. Then his hand brushed his coat tail, came up to his shirtfront. He sniffed the air. He wasn’t in the jungle. He had come home, he remembered. He was home. No great spotted cats or bone crushing snakes were likely to drop on him.
Bringing his hand to his face, he rubbed his pounding head. There had been a carriage…a fall. Struggling up, pulling his boots from the sucking mud, he squinted into the darkness. There was a full moon behind the rain clouds. He could make out the hulk of the curricle, sagging in the middle of a small pond. There seemed to be trees beyond—probably the trees they had crashed through, he decided, as memory sharpened. He had been thrown clear.
He scanned his surroundings. The rain was letting up a bit. He could hear something else, a rhythmic sound. Squelching his way toward it, he discovered his groom, flat on his back on the sodden soil, snoring. Richard shook him. When he got no response, he hauled the man up by his lapels and shook hard. The groom snorted and gurgled, but he didn’t wake. How could the idiot sleep in these conditions? He must have emptied a barrel of ale. Richard dropped him, resisting the strong urge to give him a kick. He had to find Emily, yet he was almost afraid to. With her more fragile frame, was she lying broken somewhere nearby?
A movement caught his eye. A pale figure staggered upright, wavered. Striding over to it, he was just in time to catch Emily in his arms.
She clung to him. A hint of warmth penetrated his soaked shirt from her body. She was shuddering with cold and probably shock. “Are you hurt?” he said.
“B-bruised and battered,” she responded, her teeth chattering.
She said it remarkably calmly, all in all.
The rain intensified again, pouring over them, the drops beating on his head. The spring night wasn’t frigid, but with the wet and the wind, it was enough to do them harm. He had to find some shelter. Holding Emily close to his side, he led her over to the somnolent groom. “Wait here. I’ll find someplace out of the rain.”
She nodded, then sank down next to the groom. “Is he sl-sleeping?”
“Apparently. I’ll be as quick as I can.”
Richard left them there and took his bearings. The road was beyond the trees and up a bank if he remembered correctly. He could scramble up there and hope to flag down a passing carriage, but travelers would be few or none on a night such as this. He needed a house. Peering through the rain, he looked for a light. There was nothing. He walked up the low bank of the pond. Rain pounded on his face and shoulders and dripped from his fingertips. He would have preferred the jungle, he thought ironically. There, at least, he could have built a shelter. But this landscape offered no convenient plants with great broad leaves.
He walked a little farther, straining to penetrate the curtains of rain. There seemed to be something…a dark mass against the slightly lighter clouds up ahead. Moving faster, he came to it. Not a house, not even a barn; it was a small three-sided shed for storing fodder. But the overhanging roof kept out most of the rain. There were mounds of dry straw inside. It would do.
Returning to the others, he told Emily about the shelte
r as he helped her up. “I can walk,” she said when he would have supported her. “Help your poor groom.”
“Poor!”
“There must be something wrong with him to sleep like that.”
“He’s drunk,” retorted Richard. But he grasped the man’s shoulders and began to drag him across the muddy field.
Slowly, they made their way to the shed. “Oh,” said Emily when she stepped inside. “It is so good to be out of that rain.”
Richard grunted his agreement as he deposited the groom on a pile of hay. Emily had wrapped her arms around herself, still visibly shivering. “I have no means to make a fire. There may be a house nearby, but to find it in this…”
“You mustn’t go out there again,” she objected.
“I don’t intend to. We will have to cover ourselves with the hay.”
She turned to it immediately, surprising Richard at the lack of argument. Burrowing into one of the piles, she started to create a nest for herself. After a moment, he bent to help her pile the hay on top. He could not see her face, but his hand encountered hers and paused. “You’re freezing,” he said. Her fingers were like ice.
“I am cold. The hay will help.” She nestled down into it.
Richard turned to throw some of it over the groom, then made his own place in the cramped shed. When he was done, there were scarcely six inches between him and Emily, and little more separating him from the servant.
He lay there in the darkness waiting for the chill to fade. The rain beat on the slanted roof. The groom snored. He could hear Emily’s teeth chattering, the rustling in the hay caused by her shivers. She made no complaint. She didn’t cry or moan or accuse. She was simply lying there, quietly freezing, not asking for anyone’s help.
An unfamiliar pressure arose in Richard’s chest. He had never experienced anything like it. Did it have something to do with the new Richard Sheldon? Was it something he’d acquired during his ordeal?
It was almost painful. It pushed him, without words, to act.
Reaching out, he pulled Emily into the crook of his arm. She fit neatly under his open driving coat against his side.
She made a small sound of protest.
“You must get warm,” he said.
She didn’t reply, but neither did she draw away. She was shivering violently now. But as heat began to spread between them, the shudders lessened, and finally faded. She relaxed slightly in his embrace, though he could tell that she still wasn’t completely at ease.
How could she be? It was not a situation that encouraged nonchalance. He could feel the soft curve of her breast against his ribs, the pressure of her thigh on his own. Her breath ruffled against his cheek, and the beat of her heart made a counterpoint to his accelerating pulse.
He remembered the kiss in Vauxhall Gardens, and the way she had responded to his touch, with an innocent eagerness that had driven him wild. The feel of her lingered in his fingertips, on his lips. He could recall every nuance of those moments—the delicate, yielding texture of her mouth, the slender suppleness that nestled against him now. Making love to Emily would be glorious. She was such a beguiling mixture of inexperience and wisdom.
Her contours softened into his, and Richard almost groaned aloud. His body was demanding the pleasures his mind had visualized so clearly. It was all he could do to keep his hands still, to discipline the drive of desire.
Emily’s breathing grew more regular. She had fallen asleep.
Richard clenched his jaw. She trusted him. She had little reason to do so, but she did. She snuggled closer, and this time Richard caught his breath. He was unbearably aroused. He wanted her as he couldn’t remember ever wanting any woman. And he wasn’t going to do anything about it.
The thought made him smile slightly. How the old Richard Sheldon would jeer at this restraint. Nothing had been allowed to interfere with his desires. He would have found Emily’s trusting openness laughable.
Of course, no one had trusted him, Richard acknowledged. It was different, seemingly, when one had to deal with such complications. Because there was more going on than simple physical arousal, compelling as that was. He felt odd. When he considered Emily, he felt—pity, or no—that wasn’t it.
Her reaction to their plight had impressed him, he reasoned. She had been brave, astonishingly uncomplaining. He admired that.
She turned slightly in his arms, and Richard let out a quick breath. Her hands were curled on her breast. They would only have to move a little to caress…
He stopped himself. This was not acceptable. He was losing his grip on himself. And that was a thing he no longer allowed. If he had learned one thing in his fight for survival, it was control.
He’d taken a sharp pummeling in the accident, he told himself. That was it. Perhaps he was slightly delirious. He would take more care.
He looked around their crude shelter, then down at Emily, curled so confidingly against him. He had a sense of consequences rippling out from this night, already far beyond his control. He ought to have gone on searching for a house or…something.
The sound of the rain contradicted him. He had done what he could. And now he would simply have to endure. He would hold her, keep her safe and warm, until he could get her home again. And he would resist the urge to touch her, to see if he could rouse the desperate need he was feeling in the exquisite body pressed against his. It couldn’t be any harder than slogging through a steaming swamp for days on end. It had to be easier than facing a jungle cat with little more than his teeth and nails to defend him.
But it wasn’t. The heat they’d generated burned through him, and the soft caress of her breath drove him mad. It was hours before the rhythm of the rain and the rush of wind finally lulled him into a restless sleep.
Around dawn, the groom stirred. He sat up, holding his head as if it might split in two, then staggered out into the long grass. He squinted at the daylight, spat, and reeled off in the direction of the pond like a desert wanderer spotting succor.
* * *
Emily woke to the sound of voices. Her aunt was calling her, she thought groggily. Perhaps she had overslept. Aunt Julia equated early rising with virtue and steadiness of character. Why hadn’t the maid brought her tea? She moved, and was rewarded by a whole medley of aches and strains, a prickle of hay in her face, and a sudden stunning awareness of another body pressed close to hers. She blinked to clear her vision and found herself gazing at Richard Sheldon’s face from a distance of inches. She was folded in his coat. His arm was draped over her. So was one of his legs. Even as her face flamed, Emily realized that the position was not precisely unpleasant. It was unprecedented in her life, of course, and very unsettling. But the pounding of her heart and the shortness of her breath were…stimulating.
An earsplitting shriek cut through these ruminations. It also caused Richard to jerk awake just as Emily was struggling up out of their cocoon. When she managed to sit, she found herself facing her Aunt Julia, her cousin George, and two of the duchess’s footmen. All of them looked profoundly shocked.
“Emily,” cried the duchess. “What…?” Her mouth opened and closed, but she appeared unable to find words.
Emily struggled to escape the hay. It was clinging to her clothes and no doubt her hair as well. She must look like…well, she didn’t want to think about it.
A strong hand helped her rise. Richard came to his feet beside her. Emily tried to gather her wits.
“What are you doing?” her aunt managed finally.
“The curricle overturned,” said Richard.
The duchess gazed at him with horror.
“I…we were all thrown. It was some time before we recovered, and then…with the rain and…we were forced to shelter here. My groom was…ah…injured.”
“What groom?” asked George belligerently. He was tapping his stick against his thigh.
Richard
looked around the empty shed.
“This is dreadful,” moaned the duchess. “This is disastrous. Olivia will…” She turned even paler. “Alasdair! He will have an apoplexy. He’ll kill someone.” She looked at Richard as if in no doubt of the victim.
“But Aunt, we only…”
“Don’t tell me what you did!” She started to wring her hands. “Lady Jersey will make such a story of this.”
“Not if Lord Warrington is a man of honor,” said George. He looked thunderous.
Richard looked worse, thought Emily. He looked murderous. Muscles shifted in his jaw as he stood rigid. His hazel eyes burned. She worried suddenly that he would go for George’s throat.
“I will call on the duke as soon as I am able,” he said, spitting out the words.
George gave a curt nod. His mother wrung her hands a final time, then clasped them tight together.
“Miss Crane should be taken home,” Richard added.
The duchess surged forward to gather Emily. George ushered them both out of the shed. “I will tell my father to expect you,” he said over his shoulder.
“Count on it,” was the clipped reply.
Emily stumbled a bit as she was helped over the rough ground. She still felt disoriented. She couldn’t seem to think. It seemed an endless way to her aunt’s carriage.
“But will it do?” said the duchess to her son.
“I’ve left Ned to find that groom. We should be able to hush it up.”
“Nothing…improper occurred,” stammered Emily.
Her aunt looked scandalized. “Nothing? Do you call lying in a man’s…? I can’t even speak of it. What would your parents say to me if they heard?”
Her father wouldn’t say anything, Emily thought. Aunt Julia had been right before. He would kill someone. She wasn’t sure about her mother. “No one will know.”
The duchess shook her head. “We will do our best. But such things get out. The servants will gossip. If Warrington doesn’t…”
“He would never tell anyone,” interrupted Emily.
Her aunt and cousin stared at her as if she had lost her wits.