Only a cad would have removed his hands, would have kept his mouth from finding her breasts beneath that gown. Only a cad would have pushed her hands away as they undid the fall of his breeches. And only a true villain would have ignored the rising tide of lust that came up between them.
She slid on top of him; he clasped her waist tightly. She leaned her forehead against his. Their breath mingled, then their bodies. Ned could have let everything go in that first half a minute. He might have rolled her beneath him and held her tight, until he emptied all his fears inside her. But her hands clenched tight on his shoulders. For her, this was more than release. It was reassurance, proof that even the courts of the land could not make her into a small powerless thing.
She was a heated breath of air about him, a warm clasp around his member. Her hands pinned him in place. Only a cad would have taken that control from her.
Tonight, Ned was determined to be her hero.
And so he was.
CHAPTER TWENTY
RELEASE HAD NEVER SEEMED quite so relieving to Kate. After they had finished, after he’d kissed her and withdrawn from her and rearranged her skirts, he pulled her back onto his lap. She sat there, her cheek pressed against his, his arms clasped about her. Somehow, that act, primal and real, had jolted something loose inside her. She could think again, could face the prospect of an uncertain tomorrow.
“What do we do?” She whispered the words into his hair.
His hands splayed on her backside, caressing her still.
“We need to tell Gareth,” Ned said. “Send for him immediately, in fact. We’ll need to have our marquess here, to press our advantage.” He smiled slightly. “I shall enjoy using my cousin as a figurehead.”
A thousand doubts clamored up in Kate’s mind. “But—”
“Jenny was already suspicious of Harcroft, I think. And after the role they have played in this, they deserve to know. I would like them to hear it from you.”
“They don’t like me,” Kate said in a small voice.
“They don’t know you. They don’t know anything about you. Don’t you think, Kate, that it’s time you told someone besides me?”
She’d been hiding this side of herself for so long, she couldn’t respond at first. She wanted to, wanted someone else to know what she’d done—and she didn’t want to, all at the same time. If they rejected her for the person she wasn’t, it was almost as if it didn’t sting.
“Gareth respects people who get things done. He’ll take your side of things. Just tell him honestly what you’ve done, and what has transpired.”
Laid out logically like that, the thought was actually a relief. After all these weeks, she could finally tell someone besides Ned the truth—about Louisa, and about herself. It had been a confining secret. Perhaps it was best that it was about to be blown apart. She might have allies again. She nodded in agreement.
“And,” Ned continued, “I’ll need to get Louisa. We need to prove she went of her own accord, and she’s the only one who can convince the jury of that.”
Those words froze Kate. “But Harcroft will demand she return to him.”
“We can shield her from him for a little while yet. Gareth is a marquess. He has no legal claim on her, but in the public’s eye, if he places her under his protection, people will start to think. And the more Harcroft rages, the more society will see him for what he truly is.”
“That’s not what I meant. You’ve seen the state Louisa is in. What could she do? She won’t testify against Harcroft. She can’t even sit up straight when she thinks of confronting him. How can I ask her to speak on my behalf with him sitting there in the courtroom?”
“She’ll testify.” Ned’s voice went dark. “She’s strong. And I can convince her to give Harcroft a taste of his own medicine. I must get going if I’m to fetch her. It’s past dark, and she’s still twenty miles away.”
“Going?” Kate felt a cold flush wash through her. “Fetch her? You’re leaving now?” The words tumbled out before she had a chance to think them through. She knew rationally that he didn’t need to be by her side. But tonight of all nights, she wanted to be held. She wanted to know he was close. She desperately desired to know that she hadn’t been abandoned. It had, after all, happened before. “I wish you wouldn’t.”
He pulled back from her and met her gaze gravely. His eyes seemed impossibly dark in the night, and yet warm, like the charred remains of a log in the fire. “You know Louisa wouldn’t trust a hired man who arrived on her step. Hell, I wouldn’t trust anyone enough to send him, either. It has to be me.”
“I know.” Kate shook her head. “I know. But…” It was foolish to think herself safe when wrapped in his arms, not with danger threatening her so. And with her trial pending in the morning, it would be downright idiotic to suggest going herself, however much she wanted to.
She felt irrational, foolish and mulishly idiotic. Just not so much that she would actually say so.
He must have understood, because he smiled and tipped her chin so that her lips were inches from his.
“Kate,” he said. “I’m not leaving you. I am merely willing to forgo a great deal of sleep in the next few hours. This time, I am going to slay your dragons and leave them for dead. You can count on me.”
Trust him. He lifted her off him and then stood, adjusting his clothing. Something in Kate’s stomach jarred loose.
A great deal had changed since his return to England. She had thought trust was an evanescent thing, impossible to cabin. But whatever the stuff that their marriage was made of, it was not some dry and weightless thing any longer. It had taken root inside her, and it wasn’t going to blow away.
“Ned.”
He turned back toward her again, his face wary.
“Be safe,” she said.
A smile spread across his face, as if she’d given him an unexpected gift.
She wrapped her arms around her waist. It was as if she could feel his hands against her skin, even as he stood yards away. He looked up at her and grinned one last time. She memorized that expression, every last line of it. The memory of his smile was as good as an embrace, even as he walked away.
THE SHEPHERD’S COTTAGE where Louisa was staying was three hours’ hard ride from London on a good night. This night, Ned realized, wasn’t good. It was desperately dark out; only a sliver of moon lit the way, and even that pale lantern shone fitfully behind ragged, breathy clouds. Tiny, icy spicules of rain cut into Ned’s face as he rode out of the stables.
His mare’s hooves clopped dully, muffled by the rain. The streetlamps edging the cobbled roads of London cast globes of light, dividing the world into stark regions of harsh yellow and impossible shadow. But after half an hour, as he urged his horse on, even that dim illumination faded into nothingness behind him. The moon slipped closer to the horizon. He could make out nothing about him but the dim moonlit track, two muddy wheel-ruts carved through dying autumn grass. It rustled in the wind, rattling in the rain. His horse fell into a relentless canter; the wind rushed by his face, cold and numbing. It didn’t matter. There was no direction but forward; no possibility except success.
It seemed Ned had been riding for an eternity, suspended in night air. The horse’s rhythm pounded into his flesh, until he was nothing more than the fall of hooves against mud, and the whip of the wind about him. One hour faded into two, then crept up on three. The rain stopped; the wind did not.
He came to the point where the track turned off toward Berkswift and entered the woods. During daylight hours, the grove seemed nothing more than a scraggly copse of trees. Now he could feel the change in the night air immediately as the horse entered those shadows. The musky scent of earth grew thicker; the air felt colder when he drew it into his lungs.
The foliage had never seemed particularly dense in the sun. But the black leaves filtered out all but the most persistent light—and that came through in dark, waving blotches, shadows chasing each other across the uneven forest floor as the
branches overhead moved in the wind.
His mount shied and skittered, throwing her head in fear of those moon-tossed shadows. Ned patted the animal’s neck in a fashion that he hoped was soothing. There wasn’t much time to cater to equine sensibilities in his schedule. And while he’d chosen the animal for the speed and sureness of her footing, with these shadows about, she was almost as skittish as Champion.
A quarter-mile into the forest, an owl hooted. For one heart-stopping second, Ned felt his horse’s muscles tense in panic. He reached forward to give the animal another soothing pat, but before his gloved fingers landed, the animal let out a frightened cry. She reared up, and before Ned could regain his balance, she broke into a teeth-jolting gallop.
Ned sawed uselessly on the reins. The heavy leather strings cut into his gloves, but the mare had grabbed the bit between her teeth and was too frightened to pay the least attention. She stampeded along the unlit path, her sides heaving in terror. Branches crashed into Ned’s cheeks, little whippy things that left stinging lashes across his face.
“Hush,” he tried. And then, “Quiet.” Not that the horse could hear any of Ned’s attempts to calm her, not over the cacophony of breaking branches.
“Stop!” he finally shouted.
As if the mare heard this command, her forward motion checked. It happened too fast for Ned to react, and yet it seemed to occur so slowly, he could see every leaf on the tree in front of him. There was a cracking noise; Ned felt a sudden sense of drunken vertigo as inertia slapped him against his mount’s neck. The beast stumbled. There wasn’t time to move as his mare fell, but still, Ned tried to kick free. His boot caught in the stirrup—he swung wildly—and the ground rushed up to slam into him. The next instant after that, the horse was rolling on him. Ned’s leg twisted underneath that crushing weight. He pulled away; his leg wrenched.
He pulled again, and his leg finally came free. He scrambled away, backward, his elbows digging into the cold mulch underneath him. It was over. He’d survived. His lungs burned and he fell back on the cold ground, expelling the breath he seemed to have been holding.
He was light-headed. He lay, a thousand little twigs poking his spine. He was a mass of cuts and bruises. Just beyond him, his horse let out one last panicked whinny before surging to its feet.
Ned felt a momentary flit of pleasure that whatever had caused the fall had done no permanent damage to his mount. But before he could clamber to his feet and rescue the reins, his mare raced off again. He heard her hoofbeats echoing into the distance.
Oh, yes. The evening had wanted just that.
This was not yet a total disaster. The beast was familiar with the area; he’d ridden her to Berkswift before. She’d go there now—and Ned would perforce need to walk behind. It would take him longer on foot, but he was no more than five miles distant at this point. Once his heart slowed down—once his breath ceased slamming into his lungs—he’d follow after. The schedule… He would make it work. Walking would mean delay, but there were more horses and a carriage at Berkswift. He would have needed them, in any event, to bring Louisa and her infant home. He’d be back in London hours before eleven in the morning. It was a delay, but it was only a delay. Just an unfortunate setback, not a catastrophe.
Ned took another deep, calming lungful of air. With that breath, he came to a very odd realization—his leg hurt. He noticed it as an intellectual curiosity before he truly felt the pain. And then it hurt like hell.
He vaguely recalled the twist of his hip as he’d fallen, the slam of his horse’s weight atop him. Now, with every last respiration, it felt as if his lungs were taking in acid in place of oxygen. It was a sharp pain, like a thousand shards of glass all stabbing his ankle with vicious glee. Beneath that, there was a dull, persistent throb, a pressure where his leg seemed to swell against his thick riding boot.
Deeper than any of the coruscating sparks of hurt, lay an exceedingly bad feeling in his gut. This was not good. It was so not good that he couldn’t even bring himself to think of what had occurred. He could only act.
His gloves had shredded when he hit the rocky earth. Slowly, he pushed himself to his knees. His breath caught against his ribs. From his knees, he pushed himself upright onto one foot. His ankle dissolved into a fire of pain from even that tiny amount of weight.
“Holy Christ,” he swore aloud.
Blasphemy didn’t make the pain any better. It sure as hell didn’t make the truth any more palatable.
He didn’t want to admit it, didn’t want to take off his damned boot to feel the telltale fracture. But he knew with a sick, sure certainty, knew it with the grinding pattern of pain he felt, pressing his foot into the ground.
Somewhere in that fall, he’d broken his leg.
The black despair that seeped into him was all too familiar. At least this time he actually had a reason to feel it. It felt like little tearing claws, that sure knowledge that he’d failed, that he’d made Kate another promise he couldn’t keep. He’d thought he was good enough. He’d imagined he could do anything. But that had been sheer pride. Reality now stripped him of his arrogance.
Failure settled about him like a lead cloak. He wasn’t good enough. Wasn’t strong enough. He was an idiot to have allowed Kate to rely on him, and now she—and Louisa—were going to pay the price of depending upon someone who was fool enough to think he could be a hero.
At that moment, Ned should have given up. Any reasonable man would have done so. He wanted to give up, to simply declare this task impossible so that he wouldn’t have to stagger through the pain that awaited.
But then, this wasn’t the worst thing to happen to Ned.
He shut his eyes. A privy, a dunking, a boat on the ocean. In some ways he felt he’d left a part of himself there on the water. The sun on that boat had scoured away so many of Ned’s illusions, all except one—when you needed to live, you kept on going, no matter how impossible the future seemed. And you didn’t stop.
Kate didn’t need a hero who could slay dragons. At the moment, she needed one who could stand up and walk.
And so Ned took the fear and pain yammering in his head and set them to the side.
“If I can do this,” he said aloud. “I can do anything.”
It could have been worse. Compared to that moment in the boat at sea, when his own will had betrayed him, a little thing like a broken leg was a picnic in the park, complete with beribboned basket. It was a baby dragon, belching tepid puffs of flameless smoke.
Ned didn’t want to stand—but then, he’d practiced doing what he didn’t want to do for a good long while. His leg hurt. Good thing he’d practiced pushing through physical pain before. When he shifted his weight, his breath hissed in.
On its own, he doubted his ankle could have supported him. But the stiff leather of his riding boot was as good as a cast. Well. He thought it would do. It was going to have to.
Before he put his full weight on it, however, he felt around the forest floor.
“Damn,” he said aloud, as if talking to himself would make the pain leach away. “I encountered enough branches on my way down. There has to be one here.” The leaves rustled around him in grim appreciation of the joke. He found a suitable piece a few feet away. It was crooked, and the bark rasped roughly against his skin. But it was long enough to lean on, and strong enough not to snap if he put his full weight on it.
He was going to make it to Berkswift.
One step was agony. Two steps sent shooting pains up his leg. Three… The pain didn’t get better as he went along; it got worse. It invaded his bones, his tendons; the strain of holding himself upright tested muscles he’d rarely used.
If he could do this, he could do anything.
He would never again need to flinch when he thought of his early years. He could win, step by step, yard by yard. Ned kept going. The first mile gave way to the second. The second, more slowly, gave way to the third. The third turned into a bone-jarring, fatiguing crawl uphill, where even the thought
of success couldn’t drive him on. By the fourth mile, the pain had deranged him enough that he imagined the sound of bone grinding against bone with every step.
He reached the top of the hill, much relieved. There was the fence of the old goat pasture where Champion was kept. Ned paused and grabbed for the rail. It supported his weight better than the battered branch he’d been using. He shut his eyes, and tried to remember if the fence wound all the way to the stables. It did—but unless he crossed into the pasture, he’d be diverted an extra half mile. If he could just cross this final acre, he might finally be within shouting distance of the house.
Climbing over the stile into the pasture was even harder than struggling uphill. He slipped on the last rung of the descent, and his bad leg slammed into the ground on the other side. His hands grabbed the splintered wood of the fence rail, just as his limb twisted underneath him. He barely kept from toppling over. Instead, he grasped the post and breathed in.
He could do this.
He could do this.
And perhaps the only reason he was muttering that he could do this in the gray of near dawn was that he couldn’t. The world swayed dizzily about him, even as he clung to the fence. He had no notion of balance any longer. He wasn’t sure which direction was forward. His mind was fuzzing around the edges, everything turning to uniform gray with the pain.
He wasn’t capable of taking another step. It really couldn’t get any worse.
And then, in the darkness of the night, he heard a sound. The stamping of hooves. A challenge, from an animal frightened because its sleep had been interrupted.
Stay away, that noise proclaimed. I am a dangerous stallion.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
KATE COUNTED close to a hundred unfamiliar faces in the courtroom just before eleven the next morning. Word of the trial must have spread overnight. Perhaps the drunkard had not been so drunk. Or more likely, the sergeants who had been on duty the previous day had boasted of the coming spectacle.
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