by North, Evie
Maddox reached out and grasped Rattray by the throat before he could escape back inside his room. He squeezed and shook the other man like the rat he was.
Rattray flailed about, gasping for air, and then Maddox threw him backwards through his doorway. There was a crash as some piece of furniture was pulverised, followed by some glass object shattering, but by then Maddox had closed the door.
Silence. He was breathing heavily from the exertion. Only now did he realise how agonisingly painful his arm had become. Cursing under his breath, he leaned against the wall beside Miss Jones, waiting for the dizziness to pass. When it didn’t, he shut his eyes and reminded himself he couldn’t risk falling into unconsciousness because he had to sail on the morning tide. It didn’t seem to help.
“Sir?” Her voice was close and breathy with concern. “Mr Hawley?”
Maddox’s arm had set up a throbbing, pounding ache that threatened to undo him, but he was holding on. Just. He opened his eyes. She was right there, staring at him, and he noticed the bead of blood on her lip. Rattray’s blow had probably caused her teeth to cut her inner cheek. The rage he had thought over and done with surged through him again, and he groaned.
Her eyes widened even more. “Should I fetch you a physician, sir?”
“Miss Jones…” he began, then shook his head impatiently. “Tell me your first name?”
She hesitated before she said, “Gabriella.”
He gave a huff of laughter. Whatever name he was expecting it wasn’t that. He let his half-closed eyes sweep over her, from her curling dark hair—falling out of its pins in a way that made him long to run his fingers through it—to her big dark eyes shining in the light from the corridor lamp. Not to mention her pretty heart-shaped face and the breasts he had already sampled that filled the bodice of her sombre gown. Yes, she was a Gabriella, by God.
“Why do you find that amusing?” she asked, eyes narrowing. “The orphanage named me.”
“I would have thought an orphan would have a less flamboyant name,” Maddox said, enjoying himself more than he expected in the circumstances. “Jane or Mary, or something Biblical…” He tried to think of another name from the good book, but any lessons he might have been given were long forgotten. There had been a nanny who tried to explain to him the stories in the Old Testament, but she hadn’t been there for long. His eldest brother Sebastian had seduced her and the earl moved her on.
The memory had always amused him, but now it occurred to him that those circumstances were very similar to what had happened to Miss Gabriella Jones. Maybe it was the wound on his arm, but suddenly he felt as if he might be sick.
She was explaining the origins of her name, her smooth brow wrinkled and her dark eyes earnest. “A patron had recently donated a large sum to the orphanage and the governors wanted to show their appreciation. I was named after her.”
“Then I am glad for your sake her name wasn’t Hortense,” Maddox responded, and chuckled. Only to curse when the movement shook his arm.
There was a step behind them as a maid carrying a jug of steaming water and some cloths arrived. She glanced between them with a curious look before dipping an awkward curtsey. Gabriella bustled toward Maddox’s room, thanking the girl in an unnecessarily—to Maddox’s mind—fulsome fashion. Surely the maid was paid to serve the customers in the inn? After a moment, when they didn’t return, Maddox pushed himself off the wall and stumbled after them.
He made a beeline for the chair. The woozy feeling was worse now, and he wondered if he would make it. That he did was a testament to his iron will. With a groan he fell into the chair and immediately dropped his head between his knees. The last thing he wanted to do was faint in front of Gabriella.
Do heroes faint? he asked himself.
Or at least he thought he’d asked himself, but he must have spoken aloud because Gabriella answered. “I once saw a very large man faint at the orphanage, but he was certainly no hero.” She said it quietly, patting his shoulder on the uninjured side, as if she was trying to make him feel better.
A thought popped unbidden into Maddox’s head. What would her hand feel like on his cock? He groaned again, desire mixed with self-disgust. Wasn’t he supposed to be better than this? He would have thought that the pain from his arm and the sick dizziness in his head would curb his desire. Why couldn’t he have decided to champion a girl who was less attractive than this one? Or at least one who didn’t cause all of his senses to heighten with every move she made and every word she uttered? She lit him up like a summer storm.
“Why wasn’t he a hero?” he asked, to give direction to his wandering thoughts, and also because he liked the sound of her voice.
“He’d come to mend a leak in the ceiling but he spent more time dozing in the corner than working, and when he did work he swore in the vilest manner.” She paused, and he knew she was remembering how he himself had cursed a moment ago. “He struck his hand with his hammer, took one look at his bleeding thumb, too shocked to cry out in pain, and fell down in a faint. The matron had to call a doctor.”
“You tell that story as if it was one of the most exciting things that ever happened in the orphanage.” His voice wasn’t quite as shaky now. His brain was beginning to clear, but the sick feeling remained. He dared to raise his head and found she was very close, and he couldn’t help but stare. The candle flame showed flawless skin, and her lashes were long and thick, framing those bottomless dark eyes.
Maybe he was sicker than he’d thought, because right now Gabriella Jones was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, and that couldn’t be possible. Maddox had met some of the most exquisite women in the England, and taken many of them to his bed. He was a connoisseur of beauty. And yet here he was placing this disgraced governess above them all.
Startled, Maddox came to his senses. How long had he been looking at her?
Perhaps she too had been distracted because colour suddenly washed into her cheeks and she spoke quickly, with a self-deprecating twist of her soft lips. “Life in an orphanage isn’t meant to be exciting, Mr Hawley. We are meant to show gratitude and learn to live a hard-working, wholesome life.”
“Maddox,” he said abruptly. And, when she looked puzzled, “My name is Maddox Hawley. If I am to call you Gabriella then it is only fair you call me Maddox.”
“I don’t think that is…”
“Or we could go back to Miss Jones and Mr Hawley. It’s entirely up to you.”
He sounded irritated, and he wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t as if it mattered, and yet for some reason he wanted to hear his name come from her mouth.
“Maddox,” she said, a little stiffly. “Please let me see to your arm so that I can make you more comfortable.”
* * *
More comfortable was an overly optimistic estimation, he thought with a grimace, lying white-faced and shaking on the bed.
She had unwrapped the filthy bandage the drunken doctor had applied to his injury, her eyes widening at the mess underneath. The bullet had passed across his arm rather than through it—at least there was that—but this was no neat slice in his flesh. The open wound was gaping. She washed it carefully, using some of the red wine as well as the warm water the maid had brought.
At one point he noticed her peering down at him anxiously. “Are you going to be sick?” she asked.
“No,” he growled, except he was, and when he lurched to the side she had a bowl ready.
After she finished cleaning his arm, she began to wrap fresh bandages around it. She was good at it, too, which made him think she had done this sort of thing before.
“I worked in the infirmary at the orphanage,” she had informed him when he asked. “Children find all manner of inventive ways to injure themselves.”
Maddox may have laughed, because the whole situation seemed quite bizarre. Here was he, a legendary rake, being ministered to by a disgraced governess who claimed to be a virgin, and they were about to embark on a journey to Italy where she would tend his
wound and he would do his very best not to seduce her.
Finally Gabriella helped him out of the chair and he took the two steps to the bed to lay down, trying not to groan as his arm began to throb. She lifted his legs up onto the mattress and tugged off his boots. The movement hurt his arm more but he bore it in stoic silence. Eventually she covered him with a blanket and tucked him in.
He hadn’t been tucked in since…? His memory failed him. An image of his mother came to him, or at least her face as it had been captured in the portrait on the wall in his father’s house. He couldn’t remember her in the flesh, she had died when he was still in leading strings. She had Sebastian’s eyes and Gervais’s hair, but her smile belonged to Maddox.
His stomach began to settle, and the room stopped going around and around. He kept his eyes closed, listening to the sounds of Gabriella cleaning up, and then she was speaking to the maid again. He felt too exhausted to care what they were saying, but eventually their low voices lulled him to sleep.
* * *
“Mr Hawley? Sir? Maddox?”
He woke with a start, blinking, and for a moment didn’t know where he was. Dawn’s light was coming through the window—the curtains had been thrown back to welcome in the day. The room appeared more seedy than he remembered, and the bed beneath him lumpy. He stirred with a groan as his arm began to throb, and a face came into his field of vision. A girl, looking worriedly back at him. She was so lovely that even his weary body tightened with desire.
Then he remembered. This was his new assistant and he wasn’t to touch her, not if he wanted to live up to his resolution of being a better man than he was. He was Maddox the hero now, who no longer bedded virgins.
“Gabriella,” he said, and his voice was husky. She gave him a little smile, and when he tried to sit up did her best to support him. But the movement set his arm off again and he gritted his teeth until the pain fell from excruciating to just agonising.
She reached to pour him some water which he drank gratefully, trying not to move about too much. When she rested her hand against his fevered brow it felt wonderfully cool and he sighed, pressing his head closer to the comfort she offered.
“You have a fever,” she murmured. Then, forcing a smile, added, “There is a man here to see you. He says your yacht is ready to sail, and you need to get aboard.”
“Thank God,” he muttered. The sooner he was out of the country the better. He blinked at her. “Help me up.”
She staggered a little beneath his weight and greater size, but after a moment he felt clear headed enough to stand on his own.
“Do you have luggage?” she asked, looking about.
“Very little,” he said. “Just the essentials. You?”
A wry smile crossed her mouth. “Nothing. The Laurels said they would send my belongings on to Lord Rattray but I fear now I will never see them again.”
He grinned. “Then we are well matched, aren’t we? Italy it is! Unless…” his eyes narrowed. “Have you changed your mind?”
She straightened her shoulders. “Of course not,” she said firmly. “What is there for me here?”
“What indeed,” he rumbled. “Apart from prison and dark looks from my father. Speaking for myself, that is.”
She bit her lip, and he almost groaned when instant lust gripped him once again. He seemed to be doing a lot of groaning around her. “Maddox, how were you shot?” she burst out. “Are you a criminal? Are the Bow Street Runners pursuing you?”
That almost made him laugh but he had to restrain himself because any movement brought the pain back. “I suppose I am a criminal,” he agreed. “I fought a duel, Gabriella, and the other party is not expected to live. He may be dead already, and that makes me a murderer. My father thought it best for me to go away. For a time, at least.”
Her eyed were round. “Oh,” was all she said. Then, “Why did you fight a duel, if I may ask?”
A memory of the scene in the laneway passed through his mind. The girl, the child, and the brute forcing her down. He frowned and perhaps that frown was uninviting enough to decide Gabriella into moving away toward the door.
“Come,” she said, realizing she had overstepped her bounds. “The sailor said we would miss the tide if we don’t hurry.”
Maddox followed her down to the quay where his father’s yacht waited for them, too proud to accept anyone’s help despite the echoey feeling inside his head. Gabriella’s dark eyes shone with excitement, as if she considered this a grand adventure. He supposed it was, but Maddox could not feel the same. He was wondering if he would ever see his homeland again.
6
GABRIELLA
The yacht was sleek and well maintained, and its crew very capable, so Gabriella supposed she had been lucky in her choice of companion. She didn’t feel so lucky with the foul weather, however. The waters of the channel were rough and the yacht crashed through the waves and tipped alarmingly in the gusts of wind. Gabriella surprised herself by not getting sea sick, especially since she’d never been to sea before. Just as well, because even some of the crew seemed to suffer, and someone had to remain upright to care for Maddox.
“Who are you to tell me what to do?” Maddox Hawley’s dark hair hung loose down to his shoulders. The stubble on his jaw was the same colour, and his pale eyes were ice blue as they narrowed, glaring back at her. She’d already been on the receiving end of one of his tirades this morning, and although she was aware that he didn’t know what he was saying because of the fever, the words still stung.
Maddox had been too proud to ask for the help offered him to get from the inn to the dock, and by the time they were aboard, he was so spent that he immediately retired to his cabin. Gabriella had seen illness before and nursed many a patient—she had even seen death, but that only made her worry more. By the time they set sail, Maddox’s fever had worsened. His injured arm looked red and sore as well, and it seemed that her efforts to clean it had been in vain.
She told herself not to imagine the worst, that he was a young, strong man, and yet she found her thoughts wondering in a very grim direction. What if she failed to nurse him through this illness? What would happen to her?
The thought was selfish, perhaps, but Gabriella was very much aware that she was alone with a ship full of strangers and would soon be in a strange country. Who would pay for food and shelter if Maddox wasn’t here? Like Lord Rattray and the Laurels, would she simply be abandoned to her fate?
The first day his fever climbed so high that he didn’t know who he was, or where he was. He began to mutter about the duel he’d fought, and accused her of aiding the authorities in finding him. At one point he seemed to think he was in an alley and she was someone else, someone in need of his help, and he kept asking her if she was all right, his eyes staring desperately into hers while she assured him over and over that she was.
Then there were the other times, the feverish demands that she climb into bed with him. “Put your mouth on me,” he groaned, lifting his hips restlessly. “Your sweet mouth. I want your mouth.”
“You are delirious, Mr Hawley,” she responded, wondering if her face was as hot as it felt.
“Sweetheart,” he’d muttered, flinging an arm around her waist, his lips on her neck. “Come to bed with me. Let me show you heaven.”
“Mr Hawley… Maddox…” She tried to push him away as he buried his face in her breasts.
“I wish I was a better man,” he said in his low husky voice. “Too late now, too bloody late.”
The angry grief in his words surprised her, and she wrapped her arms around him, holding him. “No, it’s never too late,” she reassured him, unsure whether or not it was true. “And you are a good man. You saved me from Lord Rattray, remember?”
“Gabriella?” Just for a moment he sounded lucid, and lifted his head to look up at her, squinting his blue eyes as if the gloomy cabin was too bright.
“Yes, it’s me,” she said softly. The fever had brought a flush to his lean cheeks and t
he stubble on his jaw prickled her skin through her bodice, but he was a handsome man nonetheless. A man who had made her heart flutter the first time she touched him, and now was no different.
She rather thought, to her shame, that if he asked her to climb into his bed right now she’d reject the offer…but only on account of his health.
“My brothers and I were always wild and reckless,” he said, as if to himself. He lifted a hand and rested it upon her shoulder, but he was looking at the hollow of her throat. He ran a finger over the bare skin, down to the edge of her gown where it skimmed the swell of her breasts.
Gabriella took a shallow breath. “Maddox.” She wasn’t sure what she was asking of him. Maddox stop? Or Maddox please go on? Before she could clarify it to herself, let alone him, he followed his finger with his tongue.
“You taste like nutmeg and cinnamon,” he groaned. “Like a warm and delicious punch on a cold winter’s night. God, I wish it was winter now. I’m so hot, Gabriella.”
He cupped her breast, his thumb finding the rigid nipple and although she was embarrassed for him to know how much she desired his touch, she didn’t want him to stop. It felt good. Not as good as when he had put his mouth on her at the inn, but almost.
“You skin is so soft,” he murmured.
Somehow she had ended up lying across him. Now his mouth was on hers, and she felt as if she had lost the capacity to tell him no. As he squeezed her breast she heard herself give a soft moan. Her body was eager for more. She was melting with desire, so languid she could barely move. When she felt his hand tugging up her skirts, she reached to stop him but her efforts seemed ineffectual, or perhaps she didn’t want him to stop.
His palm was between her legs, and he cupped her as if she belonged to him. “You’re wet,” he said it as if it was a fact. “You want me.”