Never Seduce a Scoundrel

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Never Seduce a Scoundrel Page 22

by Sabrina Jeffries


  Between them and the ruined castle lay a field, but Lucas didn’t even break stride as he dragged her across. The waist-high oats wouldn’t hide them, and she ran harder, knowing that their assailants might soon reach the field behind them.

  Just as she and Lucas reached the castle, she heard a noise to their right and saw the Scourge galloping down the hill, headed for the grove. Probably drawn back by the pistol shot, he thankfully hadn’t seen them. Yet.

  Despair gripped her as she and Lucas darted into the castle ruin. Around them, high, crumbling walls stretched up to the sky. There was no roof, and as they scanned the space, they realized it was little better than an open pile of rubble.

  “Do you still have your knife?” she asked, thrusting out her bound hands.

  “Yes.” He cut the ropes. “For all the good it does against blunderbusses and pistols.”

  She peeked around the edge of the wall and groaned as she saw the man on horseback abruptly wheel round and head toward his men, who’d broken free of the forest. The man Lucas had stabbed was cradling his bleeding arm, but it didn’t seem to slow him much.

  “We have to do something,” she hissed. “If they take us again, that Robbie will kill you for sure.”

  He glanced around the side of the wall, too, then jerked back with a grimace. “You run for help. I can hold them off long enough to buy you time—”

  “I’m not leaving you! They’ll kill you, Lucas!”

  “If you get free, you can bring soldiers back for me.”

  “And by the time they reach here, you’ll be dead, and those murdering Scots will be long gone.” She left the wall to roam the enclosure, being sure to stay out of sight of the Scots. “There must be a place to hide here somewhere.”

  “Damn it, Amelia!” He came after her and jerked her around to face him. “You have to go! We don’t have time for this.”

  “If anyone stays behind, it should be me. I’m the one worth something to them alive.”

  “You’re not staying.” Turning her around, he pushed her toward the gap in the wall that led to open fields.

  Instead, she headed for a still-standing chimney. “Perhaps we could crawl up into the chimney.”

  “You wouldn’t fit.” He stalked toward her. “And I damned sure wouldn’t.”

  She knelt to look up in it, bracing her hand against the stone mantelpiece. A creaking noise made her jump back. Perhaps the castle was haunted.

  Then she realized that the side piece of mantel had moved. She gazed at it uncomprehendingly a moment, then pulled on it. The slab moved toward her. It was blocked by debris at the foot, but when she gazed around the edge, she saw an enclosure about six feet by four feet.

  “It’s a priest’s hole!” She began shoving the debris aside.

  “What’s a priest’s hole?” Dropping to his knees, he scooped away handfuls of rubble.

  She rose, and this time was able to pull the slab out enough to squeeze through. “A priest’s hole, my dear husband,” she said triumphantly, “is where we’re going to hide.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Dear Charlotte,

  Forgive me for taking so long to answer, but I can learn nothing of the whereabouts of any parties involved. I’ve spoken to Lord Kirkwood’s friends and to the American consul, but no one knows anything. It is most vexing.

  Your baffled cousin,

  Michael

  Lucas stared into the yawning hole and shook his head. “I’m not going in there. Not now, not ever.”

  Having already slipped behind the slab, Amelia turned back to glare at him. “Yes, you are. It’s the only chance for escape.”

  “Fine. You hide, and I’ll hold them off so they’ll think that you’ve gone on. I’m not taking the chance that we’ll both be trapped inside—”

  “We won’t. There’s an iron handle on the inside to close it, and a little latch that you press to open it.”

  “Do as I say, Amelia. Stay inside, and I’ll hold them off.”

  Already his vision had narrowed to a pinpoint, and his breath caught in his throat. If she didn’t close that maw of hell soon, she’d see him clawing for breath.

  He set his shoulder to the slab, but as she realized he meant to close it, she thrust her arm out to grab him by the coat. “Absolutely not, Lucas Winter.”

  “Move your arm,” he ordered.

  She shook her head. “You’ll have to break it. Because I’m not hiding in here while they murder you within my hearing.”

  Damn her and her stubbornness! “I can’t,” he gritted out. “I’d rather be out here in the open with a chance of fighting than be shut up in there.”

  “Then we’ll face them together, because I’m not moving.”

  Now he could hear the sounds of their pursuers crunching across the gravel surrounding the place. If he didn’t act fast, she’d be discovered. And considering how that damned Robbie had spoken of her and leered at her…

  Closing his eyes, he slid through the crack into hell.

  He heard rather than saw her pull the slab shut. He was already starting to sweat, his heart to pound. Keeping his eyes closed didn’t help. There couldn’t be enough air in here to breathe. They would die in this damned hole, smothering the way he’d nearly smothered those last few hours in the tunnel….

  “Shh,” she breathed against his ear.

  Only then did he realize he must have made some sound—a groan, a moan, something. And that wasn’t acceptable.

  With a sheer act of will, he forced the fear back. He didn’t have the luxury of falling to pieces. If they were discovered, he’d have to come out fighting, giving Amelia a chance to run. And he couldn’t do that if he was huddled in a quivering mass on the floor.

  Voices very near arrested him. “Devil take it, they can’t have just vanished.”

  As he recognized the voice of the Scots’ leader, his eyes shot open. To utter darkness. Panic rose in him again, choking his throat, clogging his lungs.

  Then Amelia pressed against him, shaking in her fear of being caught. For her sake, he had to stay in control.

  “I told you the place was haunted,” Robbie muttered outside their cell. “They were carried off by the ghosts.”

  “They weren’t carried off by any damned ghosts,” their leader snapped. “They’ve got to be here somewhere.” He paused. “Sean!” he barked, making Amelia and Lucas jerk. “Are they in the fields?”

  They could barely hear the voice that answered. “I don’t see them. P’raps they’re hiding close to the ground.”

  “Spread out! We’ll search the fields around the castle!”

  The voices stopped, but that was worse, because now Lucas could hear the rasp of boots along stone, like the rasp of bodies being dragged across the floor above the tunnel. Like the bodies of his men, whom he should have been with, should have saved. The horror rose up in him again, and each breath grew more labored—

  Damn it, man, you can’t let the fear conquer you—not with Amelia’s life at stake. Think about something else. Anything else.

  He made himself listen for the world beyond the cell, keep track of where the men were. If he and Amelia stayed in here until sunset, they could probably escape. Three men couldn’t possibly watch the whole area at night, and they might not even try—if they couldn’t find their quarry quickly, they might just decamp.

  But the idea of spending hours in this godforsaken cell made his terror return, his heart pound, his throat close up. Hellfire and damnation, how would he make it? He didn’t even know how much time he and Amelia had before the air petered out.

  But the air didn’t seem stale. Forcing himself to concentrate on something other than the close space, he gradually realized he felt a draft from somewhere.

  Abruptly, he released Amelia to move along the perimeter of their cell, running his hands systematically from top to bottom. When he found an iron grate set into the stone with air coming through it, he sagged against the wall with relief. At least he and Amelia w
ouldn’t have to worry about suffocating.

  But that almost made it worse, knowing that they could be trapped in here for weeks without food or water. He needed to test the mechanism, make sure the door would open again.

  No, not yet. “They won’t stay gone long,” he whispered, as the darkness weighed heavily on him.

  “Shh, my darling,” Amelia murmured. “They might hear you.”

  Only then did he realize he’d spoken the words aloud. “Either I talk or I scream,” he rasped. “You choose.”

  Damnation, he wished he hadn’t said that. It mortified him to think of her knowing the full extent of his weakness.

  “I have a better idea,” she whispered. She pressed against him, then cradled his face in her hands, stroking him, caressing him…kissing him.

  Damn her. She was dangling a lifeline before a drowning man, and he wanted desperately to grab for it, to lose himself inside her warmth. But the only thing terrifying him more than this hellish darkness was the violence of his need for her. If he gave in to it here, he’d never be able to resist her.

  “No,” he breathed against her lips. “I’m all right, I swear. It’ll pass. And we have to stay alert in case—”

  “They find us? You’re trembling all over, and your skin is clammy. You won’t endure five minutes more unless you let me take your mind off the darkness.”

  “I can handle it,” he choked out.

  She cupped him between the legs, where his traitorous cock leaped to her touch. Stretching up to press her mouth to his ear, she added, “And I can handle this. You needn’t do anything. Just let me worship it.”

  Worship it? What the hell was she talking about?

  Then he felt her hands on the buttons of his trousers, and he knew. Or he thought he knew. But as usual, he didn’t know a damned thing about his wife, for after opening both his trousers and his drawers, she didn’t put her hand inside, as he expected. No, she sank to her knees and kissed his cock.

  God have mercy. He’d definitely never taught her that . So either she’d been pretty wild with some other man before coming to his bed, or she’d learned another skill from those damned harem tales.

  Odds were on the latter, since she was kissing and licking his shaft instead of taking it into her mouth. That was probably her idea of “worshipping” a man’s cock, but it was driving him crazy.

  “Suck it,” he hissed, then cursed himself for speaking aloud. He hadn’t heard the boot steps for a while, but that didn’t mean the men were out of earshot.

  Luckily, he didn’t have to say anything else. Her mouth enclosed his cock, warm and silky and wet, and he thought he’d leap right out of his skin. He thrust his hands out into the blackness to grip her head, then urged it closer.

  Having her mouth surround his cock felt too damned good to resist. Her tongue…oh, God, her tongue was laving him, stroking him, making him squirm and fist his hands in her hair. Her mouth worked along his shaft with such sweet uncertainty that his chest ached. Knowing that she would do this…for him…to soothe him…was more arousing than even the hot silk of her tongue twisting around his cock as she sucked and sucked and…

  Dragging himself free of her mouth, he bent and grabbed her by the shoulders to haul her up into his arms.

  “Lucas?” she breathed against his mouth.

  Pride be damned. “I need to be inside you. But I can’t take it slow.”

  “Then don’t,” she answered, looping her arms about his neck.

  He shoved her against the wall and lifted her skirts. Catching her legs up to straddle his waist, he found the sweet, melting center of her and thrust his cock through the opening of her drawers to impale her on it.

  She swallowed his heartfelt groan with her lips, kissing him as she’d never kissed him before, fiercely, blatantly. Drowning himself in her whiskey-scented mouth, he let the taste and feel of her blot out the terror that still held him in its grip.

  He drove inside her, and the terror receded. He thrust deeply again, and it receded more. With every thrust, he drove it back, and with every honeyed kiss of hers she shoved it back more until they moved in perfect rhythm, swept up in a conspiracy to beat back the nightmare plaguing him.

  And when he found his release inside her and buried his cries in the lush warmth of her mouth, the sweet contentment that stole over him banished the rest of his fear.

  They stood there panting, kissing, touching. In the intimacy of complete darkness, he discovered that her earlobes were amazingly sensitive, that one careless stroke of his forefinger over the inside of her wrist could send her pulse beating wildly, that she seemed to enjoy the rasp of his whiskers against the delicate skin of her neck.

  She smoothed the hair back from his ear, to whisper, “I haven’t heard anything in some time, have you?”

  “No.” He paused to listen, concentrating on what a soldier notices—the break in natural rhythms like wind and birdsong and ground vibration. “They’re not nearby. But they won’t have gone far.”

  “Then I guess we can’t leave yet,” she murmured.

  “Not until after sunset.”

  She was silent a long moment, her breath hot against his cheek. “How will we know when sunset comes?”

  “I’ll know. Sounds change. And the temperature of this breeze coming through the grate will drop.”

  “Oh. I’m certainly glad one of us notices things like that.”

  “You’d be surprised how much you learn to notice when you’re trapped underground—” He broke off as he realized what he’d revealed.

  “Tell me,” she murmured. “Please. If you think it won’t…well…”

  “Make me crazy again?” He paused, then realized that he didn’t feel so panicked anymore. He still didn’t like the close space and the darkness, but the breeze helped, and having her in his arms almost made it bearable.

  Almost.

  He slid down to the floor, urging her down, too, then sat with his back to the wall and pulled her onto his lap. When she laid her cheek against his, he steeled himself to relate his tale. “My ship was captured by the English toward the end of the war. I was taken prisoner and sent to Dartmoor Prison.”

  “In Devon? That’s not terribly far from where I live. It’s a ghastly place.”

  “Trust me, I know. It’s why I wasn’t in Baltimore when my father hanged himself. Apparently my parents didn’t even know I’d been taken prisoner. They never got any of my letters. Father went to his grave believing me dead.”

  “That’s why he killed himself.”

  He hesitated before speaking the lie. “Yes.” The old bitterness swelled in him. “Then Mother heard from one of the earliest released prisoners that I might be at Dartmoor, so in desperation she wrote to Kirkwood. He’s the one who tracked me down, then persuaded the British to release me.” He gritted his teeth. “The treaty was signed at Ghent in March, yet I wasn’t released until May. Some were held until as late as July.”

  “Which means you were there in April.”

  “Yes.” He let out a shuddering breath.

  “Oh, Lucas,” she murmured, her voice achingly soft. “You were there during the massacre.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Dear Cousin,

  Lady Kirkwood has finally admitted to the Toveys the most astonishing thing—Major Winter was imprisoned at Dartmoor during our late war. Given the horrible events taking place during that time, Lord Tovey is now even more worried to learn that his daughter may have married a vengeful man.

  Your concerned cousin,

  Charlotte

  Amelia didn’t have to hear Lucas’s answer; she knew. With a sinking in the pit of her stomach, she knew.

  Still, when he said, “Yes, I was there during the massacre,” she couldn’t prevent the tears from coursing down her cheeks.

  Because she finally understood why he hated the English so much. And why it would be so hard for him ever to accept her and her countrymen.

  She struggled to keep the pity
out of her voice, knowing he would loathe it. “Did you…see it happen?”

  “I heard it, which was nearly as bad.” He clutched her so tightly she could hardly draw breath. “When the firing began, I was taking my turn in the escape tunnel. The other prisoners hastily moved the flagstone over the shaft to hide it, not realizing I was still inside.” His tone grew bitter, cold. “The redcoats were above me, killing seven of my fellow Americans and maiming over sixty others, some of whom died later. All I could do was listen to the screams.”

  “Good Lord.” She kissed his cheek. “They said nothing about tunnels in the newspaper accounts.”

  “The British papers kept silent about half the things that happened at Dartmoor. About how many of us died from the cold and damp. About the outbreaks of smallpox; the starving prisoners scavenging food from offal piles—” He halted abruptly. “It’s not a tale for a lady.”

  “I don’t care—I want to hear it.” Even if every bitter word broke her heart. “The way the papers told it, the prisoners were attempting to escape over the walls when the soldiers fired on them.”

  “And if that were true, what would it have mattered, for God’s sake? The war was over and the treaty ratified. Only a damned administrative matter kept us at Dartmoor, yet Shortland, governor of the prison, still had us slaughtered! That damned haughty English—”

  He halted, breathing heavily. Then his voice turned grim. “The bastard claimed at the inquiry that we were planning to wreak havoc on the countryside, but that was pure claptrap. He was just frustrated by our determined opposition.”

  “He did say in the papers that he’d rather have charge of two thousand French prisoners than two hundred Americans.”

  “We hated him, and he hated us.” His body shook with outrage beneath her. “No matter what Shortland claimed,he was the one who ordered the soldiers to fire. Some redcoats discharged their muskets over the heads of the crowd, but the rest were animals, cutting the prisoners down like dogs. One of the dead was a man from my own ship who—”

 

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