With This Ring

by Celeste Bradley

  Yet this was not hesitation. Not in the slightest. When she thought of her family, she felt not the slightest waver in her conviction that she would do whatever must be done to save them from themselves.

  It was only the method that seemed … well, tawdry. He was a stranger.

  Then again, perhaps it was better this way.

  He was a very handsome fellow. His hair was darker than hers, more of a light brown than her own blond. His eyes in the candlelight kept switching from blue to gray. He had a square jaw and quite a lovely set of shoulders, if she was impressed with that sort of thing. She didn’t think she’d mind despoiling herself all that much with a man like him. The books her mother had given her—the ones that other girls never even knew existed!—had hinted at the possible joys of the flesh that came from coupling with an appealing man.

  Other than that, there was no point to knowing him better. It didn’t really matter much if she liked him in the end. Love was for people who could afford the luxury.

  And that little voice crying out inside her that she was wrong, wrong, wrong—well, that little voice could take a flying leap from the ruined roof of Worthington Manor! She knew what she was doing. She always knew what she was doing.

  Declining to waste one more moment on dithering, Elektra rose to her feet and brushed out her skirt—er, oops, her trousers. Bother. She ought to have changed into something a bit more entrancing. Then again, she still had all the required equipment to seduce a man. She’d been born with it.

  One deep breath. Then she crossed to where the bound man in the chair still gazed at her in horror. She smiled brightly, to ease his anxiety. Oddly, her dazzling smile didn’t seem to relax him at all.

  “My lord, I have decided that your search has come to an end.”

  He drew back. His struggles increased, until the heavy chair creaked against the pull of his muscles. Elektra gazed at him perplexed. What had she said?

  Come to an end.

  Oh, for heaven’s sake. Where had she drawn that silly line from, the dialogue of the villain in some seedy novel? She clasped her hands before her and waited for his alarm to die down a bit. When he again lifted his gaze to hers, she nodded encouragingly, widening her eyes and smiling at him.

  “What I meant to say is that you have found me at last.”

  Now he just gazed at her as if she were drooling and listing slightly to port. Seriously, the fellow was just a bit thick, wasn’t he?

  Elektra worked her neck slightly to ease her own tension, then showed more teeth. It might be best to speak slowly. Sometimes the upper classes could be a bit inbred. “I—am—your—countess,” she enunciated carefully.

  He paled, the dusky tan of his skin fading right before her eyes. Really, there was no call for him to take it so hard.

  Dreaming of making a brilliant match and kidnapping a man might not seem like one and the same, but Elektra refused to listen to the voice of reason, even when it was emanating from her own mind.

  Lord Aaron Arbogast was The One. All the factors matched up. Rich, titled, young, and not from near about. He was looking for a countess. She was looking for an earl.

  All she would need was a private moment with the man in order to make him see her point, she was sure.

  Around her stood Worthington Manor—at least, what remained of it after all these years. The broken walls supported her like the loving, if somewhat irregular, arms of her family.

  This house was the perfect place to have her little tête-à-tête with his lordship. It was isolated enough that no one would hear him calling for help—er, rather, no one would overhear their private conversation.

  This is mad.

  Yes, but what else was she to do? How else to bring a man—the right man!—to heel?

  You’ve been dealing with your brothers too long.

  Elektra suspected that the voice of reason was quite right about that. Unfortunately, it was a laggard voice. It had kept too silent for too long. Now she stood in the very place she meant to save, with her bound, titled victim—er, future husband—in her grasp.

  Her nerve began to fail. She ought to turn about now. Or better yet, leave him here, safe in his carriage on the roadside, none the wiser to the identity of his assailants!

  Then the clouds passed on for a moment, and the moonlit lines of Worthington House came into view. Graced by a silvery glow, it almost looked as it once had—the lovely, graceful seat of the Worthington family history and stature.

  I want to come home. I want us all to be able to come home again.

  And I will do whatever it takes to make that happen.

  She straightened at that thought. Ah, there it was, flooding back through her veins, no longer faltering in the late hours of the night. Her purpose. The goal that had her riding out behind her brother’s saddle, chasing down a carriage in the night, stealing a man from the side of the road like … like pilfering a pumpkin from a field! Everything she did, everything she would ever do, had only one aim.

  The Worthingtons would be restored.

  She had the means. His lordship sat before her. If he didn’t wish to listen to reason, she would simply have to take matters into her own hands … again.

  Elektra took two steps and straddled his lap, settling herself gingerly onto his hard thighs. The trousers were coming in handy once more. She placed her hands on each side of his beard-scratchy jaw and closed her eyes against his appalled gaze.

  And kissed him.

  Chapter Four

  Aaron froze when the madwoman’s mouth touched his. Her lips were so damned soft. Her mouth tasted like cherries. Her hands softened on his face when he went still, and her fingertips eased experimentally into the hair behind his ears.

  Soft … sweet … tender …

  It had been so damned long.

  His breath escaped him on a short gust that parted his lips. She parted hers in response. She ran her tongue across her own lips to wet them, and wet his as well. She must have liked the taste of him, because the tip of her tongue came back again and again, slipping just past the boundary of his parted, hungry lips. Sweet, bold little tongue—

  Lost in her taste, he sucked that tongue into his mouth and stroked his own over it. Then he dipped his own into her parted mouth, tasting cherries and sweet, hot innocence. She didn’t know how to kiss, some distant part of his mind realized. She didn’t even realize that open mouths were carnal and wicked and oh, dear God, her mouth was so damned delicious—

  He pressed forward, kissing her as hard as he could in his restraints. She responded with a surprised little noise that went straight to his groin, leaching the last bit of sense and blood from his brain in the process. Her fingers slid around to the back of his head, fisting in his hair as she pressed hard into him.

  Wild tongues, darting and dueling in the secret hot confines of their kiss. Soft, succulent breasts flattening against his hard chest, small, relentless hands tugging at his hair. God, if only he weren’t tied up—

  Bound.

  Kidnapped.

  Cold sense dashed onto the fiery kindling of a decade of abstinence, dousing the flames ignited by her hot, untutored kiss.

  Aaron pulled back sharply, whipping his head away, pulling his hair from her grasp, leaving a few strands behind in the process.

  Her dazed eyes and flushed features—damn, she was pretty!—hung only inches away. “What’s wrong?” Her fair brows drew together. “Is it the way I’m dressed? I know I don’t currently look my best, but believe me when I say I clean up fairly well. I shall not embarrass your house or your name.”

  Aaron fervently hoped he never saw her at her best. He might not survive the event. Then he fought back his instinctive male appreciation to glare at her in dark fury. His countess, she’d called herself. Title by seduction—or worse! What sort of creature was she to arrange her own ruination?

  Oh, God. Ruined.

  Everything he’d worked for over the past decade, ruined. His grandfather would never award him
the rest of his inheritance if he believed him capable of defiling a young lady! Not after what had happened before!

  Curse his damned fatal luck. How had this come to happen? He’d been riding along, minding his own business, a man with a future and real possibilities at last. Then this unbelievable little maniac simply reached out her dainty hand and, with the flick of one finger, completely destroyed his life!

  Well, not if he could bloody well help it! He’d not spoken a word yet in her hearing. Good. She’d best listen carefully now. He gazed into her blinking, green-blue eyes and gave her Hastings’s finest sneer.

  “Nice try, ducky, but I ain’t ’is lordship. Ye’ve gone and wriggled on the wrong bloke’s lap!”

  * * *

  “Ha!” Elektra folded her arms. “Good shot, Lord Aaron, but servants don’t ride inside the carriage.”

  He twisted against his bonds. “They do if the master be too bunged up to travel and an urgent message is to be carried on!”

  Elektra examined the man before her. The unconscious lord in the rain had been long-limbed and lean. This man was just so formed, although she’d not noticed such a breadth of shoulder in the limp fellow in the yard.

  The too-large coat might have misled her, of course.

  Yet the man who had been too ill to walk into the inn under his own power should not be now struggling so mightily against his bonds. The ropes creaked, and she worried for the structural integrity of the old chair. Her own knots worried her not at all, for she’d learned how to tie up her brothers years before. It was often the only way to get half an hour of peace.

  If only she’d allowed herself a peek at the fellow when he’d been brought indoors! Her worry over appearing unsuitably curious now seemed ludicrous. She’d been too demure to poke her nose from her quarters, but not too ladylike to kidnap a man at the point of a pistol!

  Her eyes narrowed. “I saw you being toted out of your carriage myself!”

  His handsome face regained the scornful sneer. “Does I seem like I ’ad to be carried out o’ my carriage a day ago? I saw you, too, you know, up there in that window, lookin’ down on us all—and you saw me.” His gray—no, blue—eyes bore meaningfully into hers.

  Elektra’s stomach jumped at the memory of the dark figure of the driver in the rain … and the way he’d gazed so boldly at her.

  And the way that had made her feel.

  She lifted her chin. No, it couldn’t be so. Look at him! He was handsome and lean and … handsome.

  You don’t want it to be true. You don’t want this man to be a common servant.

  You don’t want him to be forbidden to you.

  That thought shocked her enough to make her wonder if it was not the truth. Never let it be said that inner voices weren’t annoyingly blunt.

  And usually right.

  Oh, shut it!

  His suit. She clung to one last hope. It was a good one, if a bit worn, which could be the garb of a gentleman a bit down on his luck!

  Except that Lord Aaron Arbogast was supposed to be wealthy.

  A good suit could also be the garb of a good servant, who sometimes received an employer’s castoffs. Worthingtons did not toss away perfectly good clothing in such a way, for there was nearly always another Worthington coming up who could wear it—but Elektra knew some people did.

  “I tell you, for the last time, you li’l lunatic!—I be not ’is lordship!”

  Elektra swallowed hard. Oh, heavens. She could not have gotten it wrong, could she? Did her quarry lay feverish and quaking back in the Green Donkey Inn, his wealthy, titled, eminently eligible brow even now being mopped by some comely housemaid instead of by herself? Had she thrown away her best advantage on the mad, desperate pilfering and imprisonment of a valet?

  Her breath left her abruptly.

  What have I done?

  She sat down again on her crate and dropped her head into her hands, one fist still wrapped about the pistol. I suppose I am just another mad Worthington after all.

  Inhale. Exhale. She lifted her head to eye the man still bound to the chair. “Well,” she said wearily. “This is a pickle, isn’t it?”

  He stared at her for a moment, then offered her a short, amused snort. “That’s puttin’ it mildly, I’ll agree.” He watched her, no longer fighting his bonds, clearly sensing that she’d begun to believe him.

  Elektra stood and set down the pistol. His gaze followed it to the floor. She flapped her hand to release the tension of holding the heavy thing. “Oh, don’t worry. I won’t set it off.”

  He shot her a wary glare. “It ain’t even loaded, is it?”

  Elektra blinked. “Well, of course it’s loaded! Goodness, only an idiot would play highwayman with an unloaded pistol!” Shaking her head at the very notion, she bent to tug at her very good knots.

  He was silent, so she glanced up at him. Only a foot away, his eyes were locked on her in abject horror. “Ye held a loaded pistol on me all these hours? What if ye’d fallen asleep with that thing pointed my way?”

  Elektra gave him her loveliest smile. “I imagine you would have woken me up.”

  His brows rose. “Aye, with me dyin’ scream, ye mad thing!”

  “Oh, be still. You’ve pulled the knots so tight I cannot budge them!”

  “Cut ’em, then!”

  She frowned. “That’s ten yards of very good rope! Besides, it belongs to the Green Donkey. I’d rather not ruin it, thank you.” She put her hands on her hips. “Besides, I forgot to bring a knife.”

  “You—you—!”

  It was difficult to tell but she rather thought his features were turning an alarming shade of red … or perhaps purple.

  * * *

  Aaron was furious. He had been back in England for all of twenty-four hours and here he was, hip-deep in another scandal!

  And in Shropshire, of all bloody places. The quietest corner of the land, bucolic, boring Shropshire—and he’d managed to run smack into the only insane female within fifty miles!

  Her single irresponsible action would undo all his years of hard work to convince his grandfather that he wasn’t that man any longer. No, the last thing he needed was to have his plans thwarted by a headstrong beauty who was willing to shred his reputation along with her own!

  For a moment, he contemplated telling her so. He would see how she liked the fact that she’d locked herself into marriage to a destitute blackguard!

  Then again, the notion of being a countess, even a destitute, publicly scorned countess, might still appeal to her. She was mad, after all. At last he felt the ropes around his hands part.

  His fury boiled over. Without planning to do anything but deliver a sound scolding, he reached up and grabbed her by the shoulders, pulled her face close to his and—

  He kissed her. Again. Hard.

  Let’s see how she likes being kissed against her will—

  Well, it appeared she liked it quite a bit, for after a first stiffening protest, her lips parted under his and her arms came about his neck. She relaxed into his lap as if it had been made for her, sinking her body into his.

  The soft weight of her arse and the heat of her on his groin, not to mention the billowy press of her breasts against his chest, made Aaron lose his train of thought. What had he been thinking? Oh, that’s right. He’d been thinking that he ought not kill this person, because she was female, and because she was weaker than him, and because killing women was frowned upon in England, and God, she felt good!

  No. He would not allow himself to be distracted. Distraction was death.

  If anything, this disruption in his schedule ought to make him realize just how important his mission was. He had to get to his grandfather’s as soon as possible. To lose his last chance to see himself redeemed in the old man’s eyes would be more than he could bear.

  And no matter how soft or voluptuous or inviting or tantalizing his captor was, he would not allow himself to think about her as anything but a threat and a nuisance.

  U
ntil she kissed him back.

  Her mouth was so soft, so warm. As warm and soft as his life had been hard for a decade. He’d allowed himself no softness, no release, no temptations for so long that he was afraid he’d forgotten what it was a man did with a woman pressed to his body. Then his cock surged against her. Oh, yes, that’s right. He remembered now.

  She wrapped her slim arms more tightly around his neck and kissed him with hard, untutored pressure. Something in his remaining consciousness twanged a warning at him. Part of him would’ve liked to ignore it, especially the part of him that was now wedged against her rounded hip, growing harder by the minute. And it wasn’t as if he could pull away … or move away at all. His lower body was still bound. He was trapped, wasn’t he? A victim. None of this was his fault.

  So he kissed her back, just as hard as she was kissing him.

  The kiss evolved, changed, growing into something pure and white-hot between them. It became more than mouth meeting mouth, more than body pressed to body. Something inside him rang out, a bell unsounded ever before. He felt it resonate within him, within her, silvery and strong and mysterious, tangling them deep in their souls.

  To hell with his mission. To hell with his grandfather. To hell with anyone or anything that was going to keep him from her, keep him from drinking from this well, from driving himself hard into the sweet liquid softness of this softly panting, willing …

  … Virgin.

  He could tell by the way she kissed him. Saucy and strong-willed and convincing as she might be as a kidnapper, this girl was as innocent as a day-old chick.

  Damn it.

  Obviously becoming aware that he was no longer kissing her, she pressed herself tighter to his body and opened her lips against his, just as he had done a moment ago. She tasted of honey and woman and hot glowing moments of mind-blowing ecstasy that he would remember for the rest of his life … except that they had never happened, and never would.

  Damn it!

  Mustering willpower such as he’d never needed before, he twisted his neck to pull his lips away from hers. Gasping, he pressed his cheek to the back of the chair and closed his eyes. He would not take the girl. He would not take …