Rogue in My Arms: The Runaway Brides

by Celeste Bradley

  Selling the trinkets had bought them a little time, enough for Pru to realize that no one wanted to hire an educated young lady, but would possibly take on a common girl who could read and count.

  Pru felt sometimes that they were still running. They ran from betrayal, they ran from hunger, they ran from the day that she couldn’t manage it anymore and she would be forced to give Evan back for the sake of his own survival.

  The chaise jolted again and again as her memories of the past swirled and twisted inside her, mingling with her terror of the future.

  One more mistake and they would not survive. One more mistake and she would lose Evan forever.

  As the Cabriolet jostled down the road away from Brighton, Colin began to have the feeling he’d made a colossal mistake.

  For one thing, the chaise was made to seat two adults comfortably. The addition of two squirming children made more of a difference than one might expect. The advantage of having another pair of eyes watching over Melody was outweighed by the added complication of young Evan, whose mere presence sent Melody into raptures of excessive behavior as she sought to capture the boy’s attention.

  Evan himself mostly sat scrunched in the far corner of the seat, arms crossed, with an expression of profound displeasure etched onto his thin features. Every so often Colin caught the boy giving him a darkly suspicious glare. Melody seemed not to notice the lad’s sour disposition. She clearly saw him only as another child after being deprived of such company for most of her short life.

  “Evan, Evan, Evan, look at meeee!”

  Miss Filby caught Melody before she came to disaster again and again, but Colin could see that the strain was beginning to wear on the strange young woman.

  Not that she was odd in her speech or manner, precisely. As he drove with one part of his mind, Colin the scholar began to toy with the puzzle that was this perfectly unremarkable girl whom he likely would never see again after this journey . . . but who kept snaring his attention with her every gesture, or sultry-voiced word, or husky resigned sigh.

  Taking on more dependents didn’t bother him, for he kept a full staff of fifty at Tamsinwood when he was in residence, however rarely that occurred.

  No, it wasn’t the addition of another employee that disturbed him. She seemed agreeable enough and the theater manager had confirmed that she was a dependable, steady sort. In fact, the man had seemed quite fond of Miss Filby.

  Yet not of Chantal. That was odd, for Chantal was all that was sweet and compliant and good. Well, perhaps the fellow resented being left just as the theater season was beginning.

  Colin could sympathize. Losing Chantal had been one of the most difficult obstacles he’d ever had to face—that and losing his mother. Odd that it was due to his father, whom he had once hated, that he might now have a chance to win Chantal back forever.

  When he’d lost her, he’d been no one. Merely the son of his father, a wealthy scholar who had refused his defiant son more than the barest allowance. When Chantal saw him next, she would see a new man. Sir Colin Lambert, a man with a knighthood and a vast property. A very rich fellow indeed. Eagerly, he snapped the reins, ready for the moment when he saw Chantal with something significant to offer her.

  Melody was chattering now, retelling fragments of pirate tales to Gordy Ann, whom she held like an infant in her folded arms. Young Evan tried to look immensely bored, but Colin could tell he was listening.

  Colin shot another glance at his seatmate, who held the squirming child gently but firmly in her lap and gazed out over the southern landscape in silence despite the jolting of the wheels on the rough road.

  Truly he wasn’t distracted by what the motion of the curricle did to her figure. He was much too gentlemanly to stare at the way her bosom jiggled and swayed or how Melody’s little monkey fist sometimes grabbed at the neckline of her plain gown, stretching it enticingly to one side for a brief moment.

  No, he wasn’t one to stare—not when judicious glances from the corner of his eye would suffice.

  Although her figure was most diverting, he did sometimes sneak a glance at her face as well. Those eyes . . . large and gray and thick of lash, so stunning in her plain, pale little face.

  A pale little face that had abruptly turned a sickly green!

  Colin halted the horse in the middle of the empty road and snatched Melody from Miss Filby’s lap. “Go!”

  Pru scrambled over Evan and out of the chaise to stumble to the grassy edge of the road, where she dropped to her knees and heaved. Nothing came of it, for her stomach was empty and had been for a day and a half.

  For the second morning in a row when she’d left breakfast for Evan before going down to the theater, she’d also left a falsely dirtied plate by the basin so he wouldn’t realize that she’d given him the last of the dry bread and cheese they had.

  Damn you, Chantal!

  She heaved again, helpless against the waves of dizziness and nausea caused by her hunger and her fear and the jolting motion of the curricle. She felt a hand on her shoulder, patting awkwardly. Poor Evan. She must pull herself together before she frightened him.

  Her body rebelled once more. Goodness, Pru, don’t be such a weakling!

  “Cor Blimey, Pru,” Evan said in dismay.

  “Cor Blimey, Pru!” piped a baby voice.

  “You are not to say ‘Cor Blimey,’ Melody.” Mr. Lambert’s tone was gentle but distracted.

  “I didn’t! Gordy Ann did.”

  A fine lawn handkerchief appeared before Pru’s streaming eyes. She took it with a shaking hand and forced herself to sit up on her heels. That was enough crawling about in the weeds! She mustn’t let Mr. Lambert think he’d made a mistake in hiring her. After dabbing at her eyes and carefully wiping her mouth, she looked up at the three concerned faces gazing down at her and forced a smile.

  “Sorry ’bout that, guv’nor. It’s just been a while since I been usin’ anything but me feet.”

  Mr. Lambert gazed down at her with his green eyes narrowed. “You are ill. Are you sure it is only the jolting of the road?”

  “O’ course it is!” She forced a bright tone. “Why, I’ll have a sip of water and be right as rain in a minute.”

  He seemed reassured—until she made the fatal mistake of trying to stand. As the bright day swirled into gray dizziness she felt strong arms come about her, lifting her to rest against a broad, hard chest as if she weighed no more than little Melody.

  Weak as she was, she found herself unable to resist laying her cheek against the silk of his waistcoat. So good to rest, just for a moment . . . so lovely to let someone else take charge . . .

  As if finally allowed to let go the reins at last, her consciousness faded away to the sounds of Evan’s worried voice.

  “Leave ’er be, you great posh bastard!”

  CHAPTER 5

  The grim-faced landlord of the inn that Colin found just down the road didn’t seem to think there was anything odd about a gentleman bursting through his doors with an unconscious servant girl in his arms and demanding a room. If Colin had had time to think about it, he might have wondered what sort of dastardly doings the innkeeper was accustomed to.

  However, his entire attention was absorbed by getting Miss Prudence Filby into bed.

  Young Evan was no help at all. The child vacillated between abject worry and aggressive resistance. When one of the innkeeper’s daughters attempted to get Miss Filby out of her clothing, it was Evan who insisted that Colin leave the room. Colin compromised by turning his back on the process and staring out of the window.

  When the other daughter brought the steaming bowl of broth that Colin had ordered, Evan tried to manage that as well, but eventually was forced to allow Colin to take over. The lateness of the hour stole the rest of the boy’s ferocity and soon both he and Melody were asleep on the small upholstered settee before the fire.

  Now in the quiet room, with only the glow of the coals to guide him, Colin sat on the edge of the mattress and lifted
Miss Filby into his arms. She weighed nothing at all.

  “Wake up, Miss Filby. Miss Filby?” He gazed down at her pale face with concern. She was so limp.

  “Pru!” he whispered sharply. “Wake up, Pru!”

  She stirred and her eyelids fluttered a few times but did not open. Good enough. He propped her against his chest and lifted the bowl of broth to her lips.

  “Drink up, Pru,” he urged. She obediently took a tiny sip, but immediately sagged against his chest once she’d swallowed. Colin kept at it, coaxing sip after sip into her semiconscious lips, all the while whispering encouraging words to “Pru.” Damn, he was going to have trouble going back to the usual formality after this.

  After half the bowl had disappeared, she curled up against his chest and refused to drink another drop. “No, Papa,” she’d whispered. “No more.”

  “Papa?” Colin grunted. “Is it the suit?” he muttered. “That does it. One new suit, coming up.”

  Her response was to snuggle more comfortably against him and begin a gentle snoring. Still, her color was much improved and the very feeling of her body against his had changed from alarming limpness to the resilience of natural sleep.

  He pushed a strand of hair back from her brow. When her mobcap had been removed, her hair had been revealed to be a deep auburn that now looked astonishingly red in the fire-light. The silken strands caught at his fingers, warm and clinging.

  Colin gazed intently into her face. Yes, the tight lines of weariness had left her eyes and the corners of her mouth. In fact, she looked quite young with her features relaxed in healing sleep. Young and a bit . . . pretty.

  Narrowing his eyes, he studied the hollows of her cheeks and the way her collarbone protruded. He ran one hand down her arm and lifted her wrist, noting the curiously vulnerable thinness.

  The old nightdress which Evan had found in her valise was too large for her spare frame and the neckline, though diligently tied, dropped over one bare shoulder. Feeling odd, Colin tugged it back up, trying to ignore the warmth of her skin on the backs of his fingers. It was an intimate gesture, one he’d only ever made with a lover. Yet what was he to do, sit here and watch it slip lower and lower until the upper swell of her breast was revealed?

  Something animal in him stirred at that thought.

  Yes, all right. Let’s do that.

  As if in response to his flare of awareness, the girl in his arms turned and wriggled closer to him, pressing her bosom into his chest and draping a limp arm around his torso, tucking her hand into the warmth of his weskit.

  He could feel her touch on the flat planes of his stomach, with only the thin linen of his shirt between the heat of her palm and his skin.

  “S’warm,” she murmured.

  Was he “Papa” still? Or did she dream she curled her body into that of a lover? Had she ever had a lover?

  What do you care? She started it.

  There was a scent rising from her, as she lay warm and pliant in his arms. It teased at his senses, worming its way into his consciousness until he itched with the need to know. With a glance at the sleeping children, Colin dropped his head and breathed it in, trying to decipher it. She smelled of clean, fresh . . . what was it? It was a little green and a little wild, yet a comforting, familiar scent all the same.

  It made him think of the gardens of his childhood home, of running over the beds, a sharp spicy scent rising from underfoot, where his shoes crushed the . . .

  Mint? Yes, she smelled of fresh crushed mint leaves and something else. He inhaled more deeply, closing his eyes. Something warm and female and . . .

  Mint . . . and her.

  His body reacted. The pulse in his cock increased, swelling his trousers and fogging his mind. He quelled the response almost instantly.

  A long time had passed since he’d been this close to a woman. Years, in fact. Not since just before he’d stood in that damp alley in the gray morning and called out Chantal’s name.

  No. Miss Filby was Off Limits.

  Off Limits, as in she was common, which meant she was unfairly susceptible to his rank. As in he was her employer, and he’d never been one to tupp the chambermaid. As in they were not alone.

  He glanced over to where the children were sleeping by the fire. He’d have to take Melody into his room tonight again, when he’d been hoping to have his bed to himself and sleep without benefit of pointy little elbows and kicking little feet.

  Sliding the surprising Miss Filby down his chest and onto her pillows proved difficult. She seemed unwilling to let go of his body heat. It was beyond tempting to let her pull him into the warm sheets with her, if only because he was so bloody tired after two nights of child-disturbed sleep that any horizontal position seemed to weight his eyelids closed.

  At last he untangled himself without waking her. Tugging his weskit straight again, he tried to ignore that his belly felt cold without the heat of her hand upon it. Crossing the room to the hearth, he gazed down at the two small persons slumbering on the settee.

  Melody was curled on her side with her head upon a pillow and Gordy Ann’s “arm” in her mouth, wet from sucking. Evan sprawled faceup on the other end, one arm flung over his eyes, booted feet pointing in different directions. He was working on a man-sized snore to match the man-sized feet.

  What was he to do with young Evan? Leave him alone here with his sister? With Miss Filby practically unconscious, the boy would hardly be properly supervised.

  Resignedly, Colin rubbed the back of his neck and hoped his bed would be very, very large.

  It wasn’t.

  Three weeks earlier, in a cramped cabin on a schooner in the Indian sea, a thin, dark-haired man bent over a sheet of paper, trying to think of something to write.

  His friends were waiting for him to come home. He knew that. He’d left England as often as possible over the last three years, using his uncle’s foreign plantations and holdings as his excuse. He felt their concern stretching out over the miles, reaching for him like tendrils of light in the fog.

  Unfortunately for them, he preferred to remain alone, hidden away in the vast, blank fog that he’d walked in for the past three and a half years. Or had it been four? Somewhere in between, probably, and not worth figuring anyway. The event that had cut his last ties to the world was not precisely an anniversary to celebrate.

  He glanced away from his empty page to rest his gaze upon the small stack of letters on one side of the desk, held there by a giant conch shell he’d found on a beach on some tropical island. He blinked at it, idly trying to remember where. His ships had taken him to so many lands on this headlong flight of his, he couldn’t recall them all.

  Flight?

  That’s what Colin had called it, in one of the letters pinioned by the conch shell. “Stop running away,” his friend had urged. “No matter where you go, your cousin will still be dead and you’ll still be the heir to Strickland. You might as well be so in England, with us.”

  In a different, much more tersely written letter, his friend Aidan had said much the same thing. “Come home. Blakely is dead. You’re alive. Sailing away won’t change that.”

  The ship wallowed drunkenly, but Jack’s hand was steady, if still. It had been more than three years since he had taken a drink. He dared not go to that empty black place again. He hurt people, did things . . .

  Drinking didn’t keep the war away, it only set it free within him.

  What did he have to fight for, in any case? He no longer believed in anything, not honor, not nobility, not even the land he’d nearly died for. This lack of belief wasn’t bitterness, or even cynicism.

  He simply couldn’t remember why he should care.

  He pulled the paper closer, dipped his pen into the inkwell held fixed to his nautical desk, and wrote a single line.

  “I will come back to Brown’s.”

  He didn’t write why, because he didn’t know. He simply had nowhere left to run to.

  The next morning, Pru stretched her arms wide
beneath the covers. Her hands didn’t run out of bed, nor did they move across a stiff straw pallet covered by a rough blanket. Real linen met her touch, buoyed by deep, luxurious goose down within.

  A real bed. With a deep sleepy sigh, she rolled over onto her belly and buried her face into the real pillow. It must be getting quite late. Mama would be short with her if she did not rise and help little Evan dress . . .

  It didn’t take long to remember that Mama would never be short with her again, or that little Evan wasn’t very little anymore. The brief moment of living in the past was so sweet, so achingly real, that Pru felt her hands try to close about it as it slipped away. She tightened her fists as she woke fully.

  She was in a room, a very nice room compared to what she was used to, but the sort of blank featureless room one might find in an inn.

  She remembered accepting Mr. Lambert’s offer. She remembered the jolting curricle and the way his body had felt under her hand. She remembered the endless bumping and the way her weariness had made the world seem a little stark, full of contrasting light and jerky motions.

  Squeezing her eyes shut, she remembered the humiliating bout of nausea. Everything else was a sort of haze interrupted by flickering images. Evan’s worried little face. Mr. Lambert ordering someone about. Papa feeding her little sips of broth, just as he had when she’d caught the influenza as a child . . .

  Well, that must have been a dream. Easily dismissed until she saw the crockery bowl on the table next to the bed, an inch of cold broth remaining on the bottom.

  Warm arms about her. A broad chest to lean upon. Mr. Lambert’s voice, gruffly gentle. “Pru. One more sip. Just for me.”