by Lydia Dare
Dovenby quickly guided her around the stables to a small privy, using his jacket above their heads to keep what little rain off them he could. “Here you are, my lady. Do be quick, will you?”
Just as Maddie had feared, there was no way to escape with him standing guard. So she stepped inside the small closet and made certain to rustle her skirts to keep him from being suspicious. After a moment, she knocked on the door and he let her out, shielding her once more with his jacket from the storm.
“Feeling better?” he asked.
“Much,” she lied.
“Good. Let’s see about some lunch, shall we?”
Maddie agreed with the nod of her head. Then the two of them bolted around the stables and finally into the safety of the taproom, which was fairly dark and devoid of anyone other than a tavern maid.
“My wife and I are drenched and quite famished,” Dovenby said to the woman behind the bar, and Maddie had to work to swallow her gasp at his audacity. How dare he? “Do you have something hearty, lass?”
“Meat pies baked this mornin’,” she replied.
“Wonderful. We’ll take two along with some ale.” Dovenby held out a chair for Maddie, and after she sat, he took a seat beside her.
“Wife?” Maddie hissed under her breath.
“I wouldn’t want to damage your reputation, my dear. Now smile and behave yourself.”
Behave yourself? Maddie was tired of behaving. She’d been behaving all of her life—well, except for when she jumped out that Yorkshire inn window and when she’d actually married Weston Hadley. And though that situation hadn’t ended like she’d hoped, she wasn’t ready to go back to behaving herself to appease the men around her. The Earl of Dovenby’s handsome looks would be most improved with meat pie dripping from his hair and eyelashes. What a pity she didn’t have her pie yet.
***
“We are not taking you with us,” Wes said for what seemed like the hundredth time that morning in the taproom.
Lucy Reed thrust out her lower lip in a very practiced pout. “But I have every right to go. There are a few things I’d like to say to the esteemed Earl of Dovenby.”
Gray dropped his hand on Lucy’s shoulder, a mischievous twinkle in his dark eyes. “I don’t see the harm, Wes.”
So much for brotherly loyalty. Wes managed not to snort. His twin only wanted to secure Lucy’s affections. “It is about to storm, Grayson. I cannot be slowed down. So if you are too busy to travel with me, perhaps you should say here with Lucy.”
Gray frowned. “Very well,” he grumbled and squeezed Lucy’s shoulder. “Wes is right, love. It could be dangerous, and I wouldn’t want to see you hurt or get rained on. Do you want to wait for me here? Or do you want me to put you on a mail coach back to London?”
“It’s so nice to be around a true gentleman, Mr. Hadley.”
“Tell that to his tutor,” Wes mumbled under his breath only loud enough for Gray to hear.
Gray spun Lucy toward him and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Wait for me here, Luce?”
She shook her head and her blond curls back and forth. “I really must be getting back to London. Visit me there?”
“It will be my honor.”
She grinned at Gray. “Promise me something.”
“Anything,” Gray vowed.
“Will you break his nose for me?”
Gray laughed. “What a bloodthirsty wench you are. I’ll be happy to break the fiend’s nose and blacken his eye all in your name, Miss Reed.”
She batted her eyelashes at him. “I always knew you were my favorite Hadley.”
Wes somehow managed not to roll his eyes. “We really should be off, Grayson.”
“Of course, of course.” His brother gestured to the exit. “After you, brother.”
As soon as Wes stepped outside, lightning flashed in the ominous grey sky. Damn it to hell, they had to hurry.
Thankfully, a sour-faced Renshaw held two mounts steady for the brothers Hadley. “If you don’t tell Lord Eynsford his coach was stolen from me, I’ll forgive your debt.”
Wes shook his head. Poor Renshaw really had endured an awful morning. “My lips are sealed, old man. But I’m still good for my debts. I don’t hold you responsible for Dovenby’s scheme.” Then he mounted a sturdy bay at the same moment Gray swung up onto a chestnut.
“Northward!” Gray declared and kicked his horse’s belly before bolting for the main road.
Wes followed suit, trusting his brother’s nose more than his own at the moment. Hugging his bay close, Wes barreled north as the grey sky darkened overhead. Dear God! They needed to find her before her scent disappeared completely.
Gray rode like the wind, as fast as his chestnut would carry him. The one thing they had on their side was speed. The coach was heavier and couldn’t travel nearly as fast as they could on horseback. But Dovenby did have quite a large head start.
But after a few miles, the sky opened up and a deluge of rain nearly washed the road out from beneath them. Gray headed for the closest tree line and Wes pulled up beside him.
Gray shook his head. “I can’t catch her scent. Can you?”
Wes’ heart sank. All he could smell were horses and the scent of a Scottish rainstorm. “When the rain lets up, we’ll keep heading north.” There wasn’t anything else they could do.
Gray sighed and looked sincerely sorry. “You know as well as I that the storm will wash away all trace of her.”
“She’s my wife, Grayson!” Wes growled, wanting to knock his brother from his horse to the sodden ground. “I can’t give up. I love her.”
“I know,” his twin replied as though the weight of the world rested on his shoulders. “You always have. I didn’t mean we should give up. Just that it’s going to be difficult.”
Wes scoffed. “We’re Hadleys. When have things not been difficult for us?”
“True enough,” Gray agreed. “True enough.”
***
Maddie shoveled the warm meat pie into her mouth. She was so ravenous that it nearly melted on her tongue. She probably looked like an uncivilized heathen who hadn’t eaten in weeks, but she couldn’t help herself.
“Would you like me to get you another?” Dovenby asked, amusement lacing his voice.
“Only if you’d like to wear it,” she returned haughtily and stiffened her back the way her grandmother always did when she was affronted.
The earl laughed. “You’ve truly become a Hadley, haven’t you?”
A pain squeezed Maddie’s heart. Weston. She shouldn’t have run off. She should have demanded that Wes return her to her father instead of trying to escape him. She was in a much worse situation than she would have been if she’d done things the right way. Now she was at the mercy of an unscrupulous werewolf. “Just what do you plan to do with me, my lord?”
He dabbed his mouth with his napkin and sat back in his chair. “I suppose I haven’t quite decided yet.”
Hardly helpful. “Well, where are we headed? Or is that a mystery to you as well? Shall we just travel the length of Scotland until an idea strikes you?”
“You do have a saucy tongue, Madeline.” He smiled wolfishly. “I like that.”
Maddie glared at him.
“But so conflicted,” he continued. “I can see it in your countenance. You’ve been raised to be a proper lady, genteel, subservient, obedient. A very interesting mix, my dear.”
“Where are you taking me, my lord?” she asked again.
Dovenby shrugged. “I’ve got a set of stables a few hours north of here.”
“Stables?”
“I dabble in breeding,” he explained. “There’s something about the Scottish air that makes the cattle stronger. I do quite well on the racing circuit with my horseflesh.”
“How wonderful for you,” she muttered.
“And for you. I’m certain there’s something you can change into at Strathwell. Something my sister left behind. Something belonging to one of the maids.” He grinned. “Or
perhaps you’d just prefer to take a nice warm bath and then slide into bed instead.” The way he said the words made her certain he meant his bed.
The idea churned Maddie’s stomach, and bile rose up in her throat. What an awful thought. She couldn’t imagine any man touching her the way Weston had. She didn’t want any man to ever touch her the way Weston had. Blast him! When had she fallen in love with her perfidious, unfaithful husband? “I’m a married woman,” she reminded the earl.
“Who has left her husband.”
“That doesn’t change my circumstances, as you reminded me in Gretna.”
He agreed with a nod. “Do you know how many married women I’ve entertained?”
Maddie’s mouth fell open.
“A world of opportunities has opened up for you, Madeline.”
Opportunities? Most certainly a euphemism for whatever he had planned for her. “I am not a whore.”
“No, indeed. A lady born and bred.” His wolfish grin returned. “A true lady whose beauty can’t be disguised by mud, ruined dresses, or the harshness of travel. I bet you’ll be stunning in the morning. The sun transforming your locks to golden silk fanned against my pillow. Your soft skin bared for my touch. I think we’ll rub along quite well, Madeline.”
She picked up her tankard of ale and splashed it in his face. The meat pie truly would have looked better on him. “Take me back to my husband.”
Dovenby chuckled as he wiped the ale from his face with his napkin. “Hadley doesn’t deserve you.”
“Neither do you.”
He nodded in agreement. “And yet we find ourselves thrust together anyway. Fate, perhaps?”
Fate would never be so unkind to her. “Nefarious scheme,” she countered.
“Word play is so much more interesting with you than it ever was with Lucy.”
“I’m certain my instructors would be so proud,” she grumbled.
Dovenby rose from his spot, and the legs of his chair scraped the wooden floor. “Have you finished?”
Maddie glanced back at her plate. She only had a few bites left but still no solid plan for escape. Drat! Where had the time gone? “I thought you were going to order me another,” she replied, hedging for more time.
“And I believe you threatened to dump it on my head. Under the circumstances, I’d rather forgo that, if you don’t mind.”
She probably shouldn’t have said that, on second thought.
“Besides, you’ll eat well at Strathwell tonight, Madeline. Cook will see to it.”
Maddie froze in her spot. If he took her from this inn, she might never get another chance for escape. She’d already used the necessary. She’d already eaten lunch. What else could she do to delay their departure? “I’m not at all well, all of a sudden.”
He narrowed his eyes on her. “I am not a dolt.”
“You’re not?” she asked and then bit the inside of her cheek. She probably shouldn’t have said that either.
Dovenby sighed warily and pulled her chair out from the table. Then without warning, he yanked her from her seat, bent at the waist, and tossed her over his shoulder.
Maddie gasped. “Put me down, you beast!” She beat at his back with her fists. “Put me down this instant!” She lifted her head to find the tavern maid gaping at her from behind the bar. “Help me!” she begged. “This man is abducting me!”
Dovenby smacked her bottom, making Maddie gasp even louder. “My wife is a little put out with me at the moment,” he said to the woman smoothly.
“I am not his wife!” Maddie squealed as they strode outside and rain pelted her backside.
A moment later she was unceremoniously tossed inside the carriage, landing on her bottom. An irritated Earl of Dovenby climbed in after her, shaking the water from his head like a dog. “What was that?” he snarled, dropping onto the bench across from her.
Maddie folded her arms across her chest. “You smacked my bottom!”
“Try something like that again and I’ll smack it harder next time.”
The coach lurched forward and Maddie lunged for the door handle. She had to escape or she’d never get another chance. But Dovenby caught her around the waist and plopped her on the bench.
“Sit,” he ordered. “Stay.”
Maddie blew her hair from her eyes. “I am not a dog.”
Twenty-Three
Wes sniffed the air. They’d been traveling the same road for hours but the rain had washed away all trace of Maddie. Thankfully, the storm had subsided, but it had left both Hadley brothers drenched and exhausted. Defeat swamped Wes, but he refused to give up. He pushed his bay farther down the road, Gray at his side.
“We’re going to have to stop,” his brother said. “If for no other reason than to get new horses.”
Wes nodded once. “Just to change horses. We have to keep going.”
Gray sighed. “You look like you’ve aged a decade, little brother. We’re going to have to stop eventually for sleep, you know?”
But Wes couldn’t think that way. Last night, he’d held Maddie in his arms. Last night he’d made love to his wife, and his heart ached to think what was happening to her in his absence. It was much easier to rail at his twin. “I’m not your little brother,” he groused automatically. “We’re the same bloody age.” Of course, they’d been having that argument for the past quarter century.
Gray chuckled. “Beat you into this world, and I beat you at everything else.”
“You are lucky I am tired, Grayson, or I’d knock you on your arse.”
“You could try,” his brother goaded good-naturedly.
Somewhere in the back of Wes’ mind he realized Gray was trying to keep him occupied so worry wouldn’t seep in. He looked over at his twin and sighed. The bond they shared was closer than with either Archer or Dash. “You don’t have to be a jackass to distract me.”
“That obvious, was it?”
Wes snorted. “No one is ever more obvious than you. Think, would you? What do we know about Dove? Where would he take her? Why north, farther into Scotland?”
“Because you wouldn’t expect it?” Gray suggested.
Perhaps. But Dovenby’s pack was in England. If he was going to abscond with Maddie, it would make sense to surround himself with his cousins and the others for their support and strength. Going it alone didn’t make any sense.
“Up there,” Gray pointed to a small inn in the distance. “We’ll change horses there.”
Wes urged his bay faster toward the inn, ready to stretch his legs if only for a moment.
From behind him, Gray sped past him, chortling. “Beat you at riding too, little brother.”
Wes kicked his horse’s belly and chased his twin all the way to the inn.
Gray dismounted first, handing his reins to a stable lad before ruffling the boy’s hair. “You haven’t seen a crested coach come through here today, have you? It would have had a team of four carrying it.”
The boy shook his head. “Nay. Ye’re the first travelers we’ve seen today, sir.”
Wes’ heart sank once again. It had been that way at every inn they’d stopped at. No one had seen the Eynsford coach. He would have worried that the carriage had slid off the road in the rain, but he and Gray hadn’t wavered from their path and they hadn’t seen any evidence of any sort of accident. He dismounted his own horse and stepped toward the lad. “We’ll need some fresh horses.”
“Of course.” The boy grinned and started for the stables, leading Gray’s chestnut.
Gray slapped a hand to Wes’ back. “We’ll find her.”
Wes nodded, wishing he felt as certain has his brother sounded. “We have to.”
***
Maddie stared out the coach window as a manor house grew closer and closer. She sighed, more in hope of annoying the earl than because she felt the need to do so. He’d said he had a few stables. He had several from what she could see. The estate was more than sizable.
“Isn’t it lovely?” Dovenby asked. “Won it off
a fellow on the turn of a card.”
That made Maddie think about Sophie and the ill-fated late Earl of Postwick. “Hardly commendable,” she muttered. “Far from honorable.”
He chuckled. “I’m sure you’ll feel differently after you’ve bathed and changed into something dry. You’ll be more comfortable.” He shot her a glance. “And perhaps of a better temperament.”
But Maddie was sure he had never been more wrong in his life. “I won’t feel differently.” She sniffed and raised her nose in the air. It was a move her grandmother had taught her years before. The duchess had a way of making people feel small with a simple tilt of her nose. Perhaps Maddie would be able to do the same someday. “I’ll still hate you just as much after I’m clean.”
“Then perhaps I shall allow you to stay dirty,” he taunted.
He wouldn’t dare. Would he? He would. She looked down her nose at him even more, and he chuckled at her. “Just what do you find to be so amusing?” she asked.
“If a heavy rain began, I swear to the heavens, you would drown, Madeline.”
“Then perhaps you should leave me outside so we can test your theory,” she countered.
He took her elbow in his hand and led her toward the main house. “And let you get away? Absolutely not. I won’t make it that easy on you.”
And she wouldn’t make it easy for Dovenby. Not for a single moment.
As they stepped over the threshold, an aged servant approached on quiet feet and Maddie opened her mouth to call to him. Before she got the words out, Dovenby had her tossed over his shoulder once more and was carrying her up the stairs. The butler just nodded in her general direction. Could this be common behavior for the earl?
“I’m here against my will,” she called loudly as she pounded on Dovenby’s back.
“Of course you are, darling,” Dovenby said smoothly. Then he said in a conspiratorial tone aimed at the butler, “They all like to pretend it’s against their will, don’t they? Makes it easier on their pride when they take that tumble.”
“Tumble!” Maddie cried. “If you think you’re going to tumble me, you have lost your mind.”
“Bound for Bedlam, I am,” he agreed as they slipped beyond the butler’s hearing and up the steps. The man obviously wasn’t going to save her, no matter how much she protested. “You can save your voice,” Dovenby informed her. “My servants are loyal.”