by Lydia Dare
Twelve
Wes barely slept a wink the entire night. At some point, Madeline had pressed her lithe body up against his and decided to use his chest as a pillow. She’d burrowed in so tightly that he couldn’t tell where he stopped and she started. Not that he’d ever complain about such a thing. If she wanted to sprawl her delightfully naked body across him all evening, he was more than willing to accommodate her. There was also the matter of her snoring. Though that was an awful word to describe the content, little breathy sounds that emanated from her as she slept. He’d listened to them the whole night and imagined them transforming into sounds of passion. The thought had nearly forced him to get up and sleep in a chair. Parts of him still stood at attention as dawn threatened to break.
She could torture him like no one else had ever done, but that would all end. Today. He’d marry her today and finally relieve the ache he’d felt for her since the moment he’d first laid eyes on her.
The sound of a carriage in the distance caught Wes’ attention, and he glanced toward the rented room’s small window. A warm orange hue tinted the horizon. Morning was upon them, and they had an important day ahead of them.
“Darling.” He caressed her bare back. Dear God, she had the softest skin he’d ever touched. He could touch her all day. Except for today. They had an appointment with a blacksmith, after all. “It’s time to wake up, Madeline.”
She grumbled something unintelligible and smacked his chest as though he was a pillow she was attempting to fluff.
Wes laughed at his good fortune. “If you want to stay in bed tomorrow, I’ll be eager to stay there with you.” In fact, he’d stay abed for days if she wanted, making love to her until they were both breathless and sated.
I knew I’d take a husband one day, and I knew it would be someone I didn’t love. Her words from the previous evening echoed in his thoughts.
Wes frowned as he stared up at the dingy, water-stained ceiling above them. But what did he expect? Madeline barely knew him. Though he’d met her three years ago, they’d never spoken more than the most cursory of words until recently. However, that didn’t mean she couldn’t learn to love him. And she hadn’t tried to poison him, so that was a positive.
Odds were he’d spend eternity in hell for robbing her of her intended life, and though he would have never chosen this path for her, he couldn’t bring himself to feel badly about that at the moment, not with her naked breasts crushed against his chest.
“Hadley!” someone bellowed from the taproom beneath them.
Madeline bolted upright, horror splashed across her face. “Papa,” she gasped, clutching the counterpane against her breasts when it would have fallen lower.
Wes was certain his heart had stopped beating all together. The Duke of Hythe! Here? Good God. He scrambled off the bed and began to tug his borrowed trousers up over his hips. How the devil had the man caught up to them?
Madeline looked as though she might faint when she glanced down at her unclothed state. “You should never have sent him that note.”
Wes snorted. It was certainly too late to rectify that mistake. The one time he’d tried to do the gentlemanly thing and this was what happened. “Get dressed, will you?” He crossed the floor to peer down at the innyard below. The Duke of Hythe’s sleek traveling coach stood proudly out front, shiny black with gold gilt. A few feet away, Renshaw glanced up and met Wes’ eye. The driver gestured toward the Eynsford carriage already hitched with fresh horses. If they could just slip past the duke…
“Hadley! Where are you?” Hythe bellowed again.
Wes couldn’t let the duke catch them before they were married. His secret was only safe as long as Madeline needed to keep it, too. He turned back to find lady in question still too stunned to move. He picked up her stained-beyond-repair dress, which was still a little damp from the night before, and tossed it to the bed in front of her. “Get dressed!” he ordered more gruffly than he would have liked. But time was not on their side this morning.
Wes snatched up his own shirt from the floor and slid it over his head.
He heard the innkeeper mutter the number “Nine,” and he knew it would only be moments before the duke was upon them. Luckily, Madeline had pulled her yellow dress over her head and was scrambling to put herself to rights.
Wes crossed the floor again and opened the window as wide as it would go. He could easily make the jump, but Madeline couldn’t, not unless she was part Lycan and didn’t know it. He glanced over his shoulder at her. “Jump and I’ll catch you.”
Her green eyes grew wide, as though he’d just asked her to sprout wings and fly to the moon.
The stomping of boots pounded up the steps.
“We don’t have time to make other plans, Madeline. I need you to jump to me.”
She barely nodded, but Wes figured that would be as good as he would get standing there. He looked back over the window, climbed up on the ledge and jumped to the ground below. His legs stung a bit from the landing and he wished he’d thought about his boots before he leapt, but there was no time.
“Madeline,” he hissed at the same moment he heard a pounding on the bedroom door.
Then before Wes could say another word, two boots flew out the window, one of them smacking him directly above his left eye. “Madeline!” he growled.
“Sorry.” She looked down on him from the window. “You forgot them.”
The duke’s voice rang out loudly. “Madeline, are you in there? Open up!”
Wes’ heart pounded so loudly in his ears, he could barely hear. “Jump!”
She peered over the edge of the window and cringed. “It’s too far, Weston.”
They didn’t have time to plan something else. “I will catch you, my dear. I swear it.”
Madeline climbed up on the sill, fear etched across her face. Wes heard the bedroom door break open at the exact moment Madeline leapt from the window. A second later, he enveloped her in his arms, relieved beyond measure that she’d actually jumped. But he didn’t have time to revel in the emotion, and he bolted toward the awaiting Eynsford carriage.
“Weston Hadley!” the duke bellowed from the window. “Return my daughter to me at once.”
“I can’t do that, sir.” Wes called back, pushing Madeline toward the open coach door. He glanced up at her father, who was red in the face with fury flashing in his eyes. “I’ll be happy to discuss the situation with you tomorrow.”
The duke bolted from the window, presumably down the stairs to catch them, which Wes couldn’t allow. He motioned for Renshaw to follow, darted back to the sleek Hythe coach, and lifted the rear of it. “Take the wheel,” he ordered with a grunt. Before the duke’s men could even move, Renshaw had the wheel removed and stood there staring at him like an idiot. Wes released his hold on the carriage, and the conveyance nearly toppled over from the disparity of balance.
There wasn’t a second to spare. Wes ran forward, took the wheel, tossed it onto the top of the Eynsford coach, and yelled, “Don’t just stand there! Quickly, man,” to the still-startled driver. Then, as an afterthought, Wes snatched up the boots Madeline had thrown at him and dashed back to the Eynsford carriage, hurtling himself inside the open door and landing on the floor.
“Go, Renshaw! Go!” he called as the carriage lurched forward.
***
Out of breath, Maddie watched Weston scramble to the bench opposite her. He heaved a sigh as he tossed his borrowed boots to the floor. “I didn’t think you’d jump.”
Maddie wasn’t certain why she had. She could have easily turned around, opened the door for her father, and been headed back home to Kent right this moment. Back to the suitors her father wanted her to entertain, assuming he’d been able to keep her flight north a secret from the collection of lords. And Maddie couldn’t face that possibility. Weston Hadley wasn’t the sort of man she was supposed to marry, nor was he the sort of man she had ever dreamed she would marry. But there was something about him she liked, and that was more
than she could say for all the other fellows still in residence at Castle Hythe combined. “I’m not accustomed to leaping out of inn windows.”
He smiled as he caught his ragged breath. “Well, allow me to say you did it magnificently for your first time.”
Maddie glanced out the coach window, back toward the little hovel where they’d spent the evening. “It won’t take him long to catch us.”
“He is now missing one rear wheel,” Weston informed her rather smugly, if the truth be known.
Maddie blinked at the Lycan.
“It’s on the top of our carriage,” he said with a chuckle “He won’t go far without it.”
She wasn’t sure she wanted to know how he had accomplished such a feat so quickly. But it was no matter; her father wouldn’t give up. Quitting wasn’t in his nature. “Papa will simply take a horse and follow us then.”
Weston shook his head. “Not from that establishment. The only cattle left are Hythe’s coach horses, and who knows how far that group has been driven thus far.” He shook his head. “No, we have a lead on your father. But we can’t afford to give it up.”
His eyes strayed to Maddie’s décolletage, and she realized her tattered day dress hadn’t been buttoned properly. She gasped and smacked a hand to her bodice.
Weston laughed. “Don’t know what I was thinking. You couldn’t get out of the thing without help last night. Turn around and I’ll button you up.”
Was he enjoying her state of dishabille? “I woke up to hear my father yelling your name, then had to scramble into this awful dress and jump out an inn window. I didn’t even have time to don my chemise. I hardly find my current state amusing.”
He motioned for her to turn around, which was easier suggested than done inside a moving carriage. But Maddie did turn her back to him. A moment later, his warm hand stroked across her bare back as he worked at the first button. “If you don’t find your dress amusing,” he brushed his lips against the side of her neck, “then I won’t even mention your hair.”
Her hair? Maddie felt the top of her head with both hands. She couldn’t see her hair, but she could just imagine it wild and sticking out in all directions. She squeaked in horror. Heavens, every moment she spent in Weston Hadley’s company, her appearance became more ghastly. What would she look like after a decade with the wolf?
Weston chuckled again as he finished with her buttons. “You should never go to bed with a wet head of hair, darling.”
Maddie glanced at him over her shoulder, hating the mirth she saw reflected in his dark eyes. Of course he looked dashing this morning, even with his scar. She hated him in that moment. Why should he look handsome in his borrowed innkeeper clothes when she looked worse than a common refugee escaping The Terror a quarter century earlier? Not that she’d ever seen a refugee, but she could well imagine one, and she could well imagine that she looked even worse by half. “I had very little choice as we don’t possess a brush. We probably can’t even afford one.”
A frown settled on his face, which Maddie found strangely satisfying. “I don’t want to hear you complain about needing a bath until after we’ve reached Gretna. Your hair is unruly but it is clean.”
Did he think she was a dolt? She knew they couldn’t stop any longer than it took to change horses along the way. Not with her father fast on their trail. Still, she couldn’t resist goading him by saying, “A novel concept for you, Mr. Hadley?”
Something flashed in his eyes, a hint of wickedness perhaps. “Indeed. Being dirty is so much more appealing. I’m certain you’ll grow to enjoy it immensely.”
Not if she was made to look like a waif, she wouldn’t. She might be marrying into the Hadley family, but she would always be Lady Madeline. No one could ever take that away from her. And ladies, no matter what breed of dog they married, never looked like waifs. Well, except for those refugees who had escaped The Terror, but she chose not to give that point any credence.
“Only you,” he settled back against the leather squabs, “can look so imperious in a ratty dress and wild hair and,” he looked at her feet, “no slippers.” Then he tipped back his head and laughed.
Maddie folded her arms across her chest and glared at him.
“My apologies.” He actually appeared to be struggling to stop his laughter, but then he started laughing even harder.
How did one strangle the life out of a creature that could heal himself?
Finally his levity came to an end and he coughed into his fist when he saw her glower. “I-I… it’s just that,” he hastened to explain, “you hit me in the head with my boots, but then you managed to leave your own slippers behind.”
Maddie tossed her wild hair back regally. “I had them when I jumped. They fell off along the way. Be glad you got your smelly boots.”
Weston flashed his blasted charming smile and nodded his head in agreement. “I suppose I’ll just have to carry you the rest of the journey then.”
“I suppose someone will have to,” she muttered as she crossed her arms beneath her breasts and flopped back against the squabs. She’d never flopped in her life, but it seemed the appropriate thing to do at the time.
Weston bent and lifted the edge of her dress, then plucked at her naked toe, lifting her foot into his lap. “I’d imagine these pretty little feet have never run bare through the woods or across a pasture?” He arched a brow at her.
She tried to pull her foot back, but he held tightly to it. “Of course not.” She was hardly a savage. “May I have my foot back, please?” she asked as sweetly as she could.
“No,” he grunted as he examined the arch of her foot, allowing his fingers to slide up the sensitive skin like the gentlest touch of a feather.
Maddie couldn’t keep from giggling as she tugged at her foot again.
“Ticklish, are you?” he said, looking like he was thoroughly enchanted by the sole of her foot.
“I suppose I am,” she said with a laugh she couldn’t withhold. “Let my foot go,” she cried.
“But it’s cold,” he said as he wrapped both his hands around her bare foot.
“I had to abandon my stockings,” she reminded him. The warmth of his hands did feel nice. So she stilled her foot, reveling in his ministrations.
He looked up at her with a wicked grin. “Lost your stockings, lost your slippers, lost your underthings,” he said as his gaze drifted down her body, almost as though he was looking at her naked. She shivered lightly under his heated look. He’d gone from being winded and worried to being thoroughly entranced by her foot, and now he looked completely taken with the thought of her loss of appropriate clothing. “Lost your dignity yet?”
“Hardly,” she replied. She jerked her foot, and he finally released it. He looked slightly bereft without it, like a child who’d lost his plaything.
Before Maddie could even settle her skirts back around her legs, he scooped her up and deposited her on his lap. “Wes,” she cried as she pushed weakly against his hold.
“Oh, so I’ve graduated to Wes, now, have I?” he laughed.
“Weston,” she corrected herself. “Let me go.” Her protests sounded weak even to her own ears. Did she really want him to let her go? Maddie stared into his dark eyes and could imagine losing herself in their depths.
Thirteen
Wes had only planned to play with her feet, since she’d suffered the great indignity of losing her slippers. She’d even gotten the bottom of her foot dirty in her mad dash across the innyard. But he imagined she wouldn’t be overjoyed to hear that the bottom of her pretty little foot was less than clean.
But then they’d started talking about her losing her stockings, and all he could think about was the fact that her bare little foot was connected to a bare little leg, and he wanted to run his hand up her bare calf and higher.
Then the thought of her with no chemise made the thoughts even more prominent. So, like the beast he was, the moment she’d said his name, he’d scooped her into his arms and directly onto his lap
. Right on top of his rising manhood. “Stop squirming,” he warned, adjusting her in his lap as he turned her to face him.
“Put me down,” she said weakly. But the flush on her cheeks and the mad thumping of her heart gave him a good idea of her true desires.
“I would if I thought that’s what you really wanted.” He played with a lock of her hair as she settled comfortably in his lap. Comfortably for her, but not as much for him.
“What makes you such an expert on women’s thoughts and feelings, Mr. Hadley?” she asked with an imperious tone.
“A moment ago, I was Wes, and now I’m back to being Mr. Hadley?” The very thought was like a knife to his chest.
“You didn’t answer my question,” she prodded, and if he wasn’t mistaken, there was a teasing sparkle in her eyes.
All Wes could think about was Madeline’s lack of underthings and how easy it would be to get her out of that dress and on his lap completely naked. He could toss the dress out the window, and then she’d be completely at his mercy. He could spend the next hours of their trip convincing her that she’d like being naked and poor. “What was your question?” he grumbled, trying to concentrate on her words.
“I want to know what makes you so adept at deciphering a woman’s thoughts and feelings that you can tell me what I do and do not want.” She grinned at him, a playful little grin. He hadn’t misinterpreted her expression moments earlier.
“Shall I be honest?” he asked, looking into her enchanting eyes. They were like limpid, green pools he could drown in.
“Please,” she said softly. Then she inhaled deeply and held her breath, as though what he had to say would realign the pieces of her world, if the thought was profound enough.
“I don’t care about other women, Madeline,” he admitted. She looked so serious that he felt like he needed to tell her the truth. She’d just jumped from a window to outrun her father, to stay with him, for God’s sake. She at least deserved something in response of her loyalty.