He looked down at her, his head cocked slightly to one side, one eyebrow raised in a mocking manner. “Then come with me or not, as you like. Only please, please do not forfeit our agreement, I beseech you. It truly is the best offer I’ve had all evening.”
“I abhor sarcasm, Richfield. I won’t have it,” she stated firmly. He might as well come to heel now as later.
“Duly noted. Stay here by yourself, then, if that’s what you want.” He disengaged his arm while glaring quite directly.
“I believe I shall come with you. After all,” she said archly, grasping his arm again and putting on a smile, “who could ask for better company?”
“Oh, and I must embrace your sarcasm. I expect it is another requirement of the match, eh?”
“We should both refrain,” she told him with a succinct nod. “It is rather a common indulgence and I do apologize. So should you,” she added.
“Your pardon,” he said idly with no attempt at sincerity. “You’re quite enjoying all this, aren’t you?”
“Certainly not.”
With no further comment, he led her to rejoin Phyllis, Cole and Harry. John was back with the group, as well, with the simpering Miss Hermoine on his arm. Harry had somehow acquired Blanche Nesbitt, so they were eight altogether, paired off like gloves.
“Shall we stroll about the gardens?” Harry was asking as they arrived. “I cannot hear myself speak for all this noise.”
“That is music, Harry!” Phyllis teased with a wide-eyed glance toward the musicians. “You have such a poor ear, ’tis a wonder you ever learned to dance. Not that you manage more than a leap and hop at your best.”
Harry winked, then frowned at his sister. “Be aware I am attempting to gain Miss Nesbitt’s regard and you are sorely hampering my effort, sister.” Blanche Nesbitt blushed as Harry shot a sly look at Hugh and Clarissa. “Well, Rich, old son. Where did you get off to? Clarissa, you really must cheer up this fellow. He’s a casualty of war, y’know.”
She swung her gaze to meet Hugh’s. “You were wounded?”
“Pay no attention to him. Harry embroiders everything to such an extent, you could outfit a bed with the result.”
His attempt to imbue the response with levity failed miserably. The words sounded almost bitter. Obviously the very reminder of his injury made him feel ill. For the first time Clarissa noted that fine lines of worry or perhaps even pain had etched themselves on his features.
“Were you badly hurt?” she questioned, leaning closer, observing him even more closely.
“I’ve heard tell he gave much worse than he got!” Harry answered for him as they exited the ballroom through the open doors that led out to the terrace.
Cole joined in eagerly. “Righto! I wish we could have seen ol’ Rich in the thick of it at Waterloo. Astride that surly black beast of his, they say he charged into the fray slashing left and right, his sword a bloody scythe, mowing a path right through ’em! Gave ol’ Boney’s lads a run for it before going down. Ain’t that right, Harry?”
They nattered on, relating tales of Hugh’s ferocity with gory details and horrid scenarios of battle unfit for a lady’s ears or imagination.
“Hugh, tell me, is that true?” she asked, pressing him.
“Hearsay, all of it,” he snapped.
“Hearsay? They were not there with you? Where were they?”
“Assigned elsewhere, obviously. Ask them if you want to know.”
Clarissa stared up at Hugh, who fell silent and grew increasingly grim. He quickly caused them to drop behind the others and guided her along a graveled path that branched off the main one.
Harry and others continued on, apparently so caught up in the grisly war tales they did not even notice the departure. Over the drone of the men’s deep dramatizations she heard the high-pitched, horrified gasps, moans and exclamations of Phyllis, Hermoine and Blanche.
The idle thought occurred to Clarissa that Harry was perfectly willing for Hugh Richfield to attach himself to her. He seemed to be pushing for it, in fact, probably relieved beyond imagining that Phyllis had escaped becoming the object of Richfield’s attentions.
Clarissa admitted feeling envious of the brotherly concern Harry offered Phyllis. At the moment there was not a soul alive who would bat an eye at anything she did that might precipitate her downfall. Except for her cousin, and even then, Trenton would not care a whit about that so long as he got his hands on her money.
Thank goodness she had found a way around that and in so doing, had chosen better than she imagined. Apparently, Hugh was a hero, not the sort another man would dare cross. He did not seem to be suffering a wound as Harry had indicated. Perhaps Harry exaggerated. Or perhaps the wound was not physical.
“I daresay it was an awful time. The memory of it troubles you still, doesn’t it?” she demanded softly as she clung to Hugh’s arm.
“Harry and Cole have drunk too deep and their tongues are loose. The war is over and I neither wish to hear of it or to speak of it again.” The muscles of the arm she grasped had turned to cold steel. His voice was every bit as cool and rigid. “That is my one condition to our getting on well together. Surely you can manage that.”
“Of course,” she whispered, feeling the waves of pain that emanated from him. Was she wrong? Was he hurt somewhere and not yet healed? “Where were you wounded, Hugh?”
“Oh, for God’s sake, I said leave off!” he snapped. Before she knew what had happened, he roughly disengaged his arm from her hands and disappeared into the darkness.
Clarissa stood alone among the carefully sculpted topiaries decorating the Dicksons’s formal garden and wondered whether her concerned curiosity had just caused Hugh to cry off their agreement.
Would he still meet her at two o’clock as planned?
She looked upward and formed a small wordless prayer that her persistent questioning had not foiled her plans. That he would be there when she came down to meet him and would carry through with their elopement.
Clarissa worried even more because she knew she wasn’t praying for herself altogether. The insistent notion occurred that Hugh might possibly need her even more than she needed him and for reasons far more critical than her avoiding an undesirable marriage to her avaricious cousin.
She knew one thing for certain. She did not need to become deeply involved with Hugh Richfield even if they were to become man and wife. His problems were his own and he obviously wished them to remain so.
But what was he really? she could not help but wonder. A daredevil with no thought for anything but his next breakneck adventure? Or a heroic figure attempting to outrun the events that had made him so? Whatever the case, Clarissa knew she must take him as he was.
The wise thing would be to ignore the past, both his, hers and theirs together. It would be devilishly hard enough not to love him knowing as little about him as she did now. And Clarissa had determined not to love him. Any fool could see that was a path to disaster, and she was no one’s fool.
But for whatever reason—hands clasped firmly beneath her chin as she stared up at the stars—Clarissa still prayed Hugh would hold to their bargain. He simply had to.
CHAPTER THREE
THE NIGHT WAS CLEAR of fog, excellent for travel. Hugh saw Clarissa waiting beside the gate. She stood half hidden by a large wisteria vine.
She looked so young and so delicate in her high-waisted pelisse and neat little capote confining her wild, dark curls. Like a proper schoolgirl abandoning her classes for a lark.
He cursed under his breath, thinking he should have brushed off her proposal as a joke. But he could no more have done that than he could have struck her down. Heaven knew whom she would have approached next, and she might have done even worse than that cousin of hers if left to her own devices. At least, this way, Hugh could make certain she came to no harm.
Not that he didn’t find Clarissa attractive enough to marry. Not that he would mind having her as a wife. In fact, if he had ever found himself in
any position to contemplate marriage, she probably would have occurred to him first. He had always admired her, unapproachable as she had been.
But Clarissa had changed since he had known her as a graceful, intelligent girl who rarely spoke and who exuded a quiet sensuality. He could scarcely credit the forthright woman she had become.
She was still graceful, of course. And sensual—much more so now that she had blossomed fully—but she was no longer quiet, or at all shy about speaking her mind. In fact, she had become a regular little termagant. That quick temper of hers had certainly surprised him, almost as much as her kiss. Kitten turned tigress, apparently.
He alighted from the post chaise and approached her. “Ready?” he asked, reaching for her tapestry case. He hefted it, wondering how she had managed to lug it so far alone.
She glanced back toward the house before answering. “Yes, quite.”
He experienced a sudden urge to wrap his arms around her and kiss her again, to assure her that all would be well, that he would protect her. Amazing how she stirred these ridiculously powerful longings in him without even trying.
Even more astonishing, Clarissa had been able to prick his anger. No one else had done that in a while.
She had caused a veritable rage in him when telling of her cousin’s machinations. Also, Hugh admitted to feeling a moment or two of shame when she had asked about his ambition. Life had wrung that out of him completely and he was not proud of it. Now that she’d reminded him so pointedly, the lack of it plagued him like a sore tooth. He needed a direction and knew it. She had given him one with this nodcock scheme of hers.
“There,” he said as he plunked her case inside and turned to assist her into the post chaise. He took her arm, remarking to himself how small it was in relation to his, how fragile she seemed. Merely touching her sparked thoughts he should not be having. Thoughts he had fought like mad seven years ago and had all but forgotten in the interim.
His swift reaction to Clarissa’s softness, her sweet, intriguing scent, those dark, fawnlike eyes and tremulous lips, had given him quite a turn, then and last night in the Dicksons’s library. Now he had to keep telling himself repeatedly that the longing was allowed, no longer forbidden. She was a woman, not the girl he had tried so hard to ignore when she was but fifteen and he a good four years her senior.
Arousal was a natural occurrence, he told himself. His body was not what had failed him these past two months. He could still bed a woman and had frequently done so, though he had not experienced any overpowering need to perform. It was simply a regular hunger to be assuaged.
No, the body had never shut down. The feelings were the thing. The bloody feelings. And Clarissa was bringing them back. How could he resist that? How could he resist her? He couldn’t, of course, and he didn’t mean to try.
He had to wonder, though, if he was not taking blatant advantage of Clarissa’s conundrum. Was this fair to her? Despite his qualms, he could not in all conscience leave her to the mercy of others. What else could he do but this?
“We should hurry,” he said. He grasped her by her waist and all but shoved her inside. “All we need is to be caught in the midst of this farce. Harry would have a damned fit.”
To his surprise, she had not mentioned the fact that he had arrived ten minutes late. With all the preparation required, he would have welcomed another hour. As it was, he’d barely had time to change his clothes and pack a bag after hiring the coach.
She huffed as she settled herself into the conveyance on the seat facing the back. “Try not to trouble yourself with basic courtesy!” she grumbled.
He could not see her face for he had extinguished the interior lamps as well as those outside of the coach. In the faint light of the quarter moon, they should not be observed by anyone who happened to be looking out the back windows of Dickson House.
The driver he had hired—a former sergeant he knew who had purchased himself a natty post chaise of the new and light variety—had padded the team’s hooves so they would make as little noise as possible. The man’s two young sons rode post astride, while Sergeant Devlin sat atop the thing to mind the reins and supervise his lads.
Though Hugh knew Clarissa was set on this course, he gave her a chance to change her mind. “I still wish you’d consider going about this properly, Clarissa. If I were your uncle I would have my head for this.”
“Uncle James would need to come looking for you in order to accomplish that. He’s not been out of his suite of rooms for heaven knows how many years and is not able now, even if he wished to,” she declared. “You needn’t worry about him. However, I believe my cousin might be another matter altogether. Have you a weapon?”
“I always have a weapon,” he replied. “I thought you said you didn’t want me to kill him.”
“If he should cause trouble, the fact that you are armed should be enough to dissuade him. I’ve told you he’s nothing but a bully.”
He could hear the nervous rustle of her skirts as she arranged them around her and the scuffle of her tiny boots as she searched for a place to rest her feet. Apparently her legs were too short for her feet to reach the floor. He snatched his leather satchel from the seat beside him and dropped it between them. “Use that as a footrest, else your legs—pardon my crudity, your limbs—will grow numb within the hour.”
“You are so kind,” she snapped.
Then he heard her soft sigh. This could not be easy for her, abandoning the rules she had lived by all her life, fleeing into the night with a man she knew little about, worrying about the possible consequences of her hasty actions.
Hugh wished he could somehow assure her everything would go well, but this escapade was as likely to turn disastrous as not. Even if they accomplished what they were setting out to do, the aftermath would pose problems she probably could not yet comprehend.
“Clarissa?”
“Yes?”
“Shall we call a truce? We have a long way to go. Would you come sit beside me? If you lean on my shoulder, perhaps you can sleep.”
“No, thank you,” she replied, sounding so prim he almost laughed.
She was such a curious mixture of seemliness and impropriety, he never knew quite what to expect from her. One moment, as now, she would insist on observing the strictest decorum. The next she might very well suggest something totally beyond the pale, such as when she had proposed to him. And kissed him. He could scarcely credit she had done that. And could hardly wait for her to do it again, he readily admitted.
He could kiss her, of course, but he wouldn’t. Not just yet. If he did, he would not be inclined to stop at that and a rattling, poorly sprung post chaise was no place to initiate a woman to the joys of intimacy.
“Come,” he insisted, despite his resolve not to begin what he could not finish here. “It’s dark as a tomb and no one can see. Pretend you are five and I am your nanny.”
She scoffed.
“There’s a good lass, Clary dear,” he added, raising his tone an octave and sounding a bit like Miss Meldrum, his own former governess. “Have a wee lie down.”
He heard Clarissa stifle a laugh, though she tried to turn it into a cough.
“I dare you,” he enticed her with a deep growling whisper.
“Stop. This is no time to jest.”
“Well, be sensible, then,” he admonished. “When we reach the main road and speed up, you’ll be tumbling this way with the first bump anyhow. This wretched thing has no springs under it to speak of and we’ll be flying along at nearly ten miles to the hour.”
“Oh, all right,” she said with mock irritation. At least he thought it was mock. “Move over.”
He slid to one side, heard the swishing of her skirts and immediately caught her as she plopped firmly down upon his lap.
She shrieked. “Oh! Oh, I thought you…”
“Quite all right,” he assured her, his arms clasped firmly around her waist to prevent her falling between the seats. The contours of her bottom nestled
snugly against him and he had not the slightest wish to give up the contact. “Sit still.”
“I will not!” she cried, struggling madly to slide off onto the seat beside him.
He released her and helped her arrange herself at his right, not minding at all the very provocative tangle of limbs and accidental touches that ensued. “There you are,” he said finally. “All set.”
She exhaled sharply. “You behave entirely too familiar, sir! Do not presume simply because I allowed you one kiss.”
“Two strangers riding through the night, anticipating connubial bliss,” he drawled. “Ah, what a pair we are, Clary. Do you regret it already?”
“I—I am not quite certain,” she said, and he felt her shiver against his arm. “Do you?”
“Not yet,” he answered honestly. “However, I do think the more well-acquainted we become, the easier this will be. Are you game?”
“Not yet,” she murmured, repeating his truthfulness so faintly that he could barely hear her over the clatter and squeak of the coach. “To tell the truth, at the moment I feel somewhat…undone.”
He granted she had good reason to doubt the wisdom of this harebrained scheme of hers. “Not too late, y’know. We could easily reverse our direction and have you back inside Dickson House in less than half an hour. No one but us would ever be the wiser.”
For a long moment she remained silent. Then she asked, “What of our agreement?”
He smiled to himself. “Oh, I’ll demand you honor your word no matter what you decide about the elopement.”
Even the darkness could not conceal her disbelief. “You will still insist on the ten thousand even if we do not marry?”
“Actually I shall insist on the marriage. A fellow has his pride, you see. A breach of promise suit sounds rather more scandalous than an elopement, don’t you think?”
“Yes. Yes, it does,” she muttered.
The Wedding Chase: In His Lordship's BedPrisoner of the TowerWord of a Gentleman Page 21