A Reckless Runaway

by Jess Michaels

  Only he…hadn’t. He’d made no effort to bother her, beyond polite knocks on her door to offer food or other comforts. Once he’d entered the chamber to fill the tub in the corner with water for her bath. He’d been all but silent as he did so and hardly looked at her. That was the only time she’d seen the man since her arrival.

  On the second evening, she’d moved the dresser away from the door because she no longer felt like he would burst in to harm her. She’d been alone for days, and that meant she’d had plenty of time to think about what she’d done.

  To think about how this was her punishment for behaving a fool and running away with a man who was practically a stranger. How did her sisters feel now? Even her father? Were they worried about her well-being? Had they chased after her to Gretna Green only to find she’d never arrived?

  “Stupid girl,” she muttered as she flopped the covers back and got up.

  Each day she woke and hoped that Ellis would return. Each day she went to bed without knowing what was happening. If he would ever come back.

  No. He would. He’d said he would. He’d said he loved her. Hadn’t he? Sometimes it was hard to remember. It seemed like he had, but perhaps that was her imagination. He’d certainly said he cared for her. He’d said he was coming back. Even if he were using her, a thought that had taken root two days before, he couldn’t do so without marrying her to obtain her dowry.

  God, these thoughts. These horrible thoughts.

  She glanced at the book on the nightstand beside the bed and sighed. She’d finished it two days ago and read it twice since. She was bored.

  One more punishment. After all, how many times had she lamented being trapped out on Harcourt’s country estate instead of in London with all its excitements? And now she would pay ten pounds for the joy of walking those musty old halls and green grounds.

  Of course, there was nothing stopping her from doing the same thing here. Just her pride. Her humiliation that made her not want to meet the eyes of Rook Maitland and see his pity.

  She shook her head. This was ridiculous. She wasn’t going to be so foolish as to leave herself in this room one more moment. She pulled her nightrail over her head and exchanged it for her chemise. She’d have to wash some of her things anyway—that would be the excuse if Rook was difficult about her escape from self-exile.

  She dressed, happy she had chosen gowns that fastened in the front so they were easier to manage on her own. She’d done that for modesty on the road before she and Ellis reached Gretna Green.

  At least that was something she’d done right.

  She quickly pulled her hair back, pinning it in place in a rather lopsided bun at her nape. She had never really known how useless she was at taking care of herself until the past few days without Nora.

  Nora. Her poor maid would have been as shocked as the rest at her escape. Had she been punished for it?

  She pushed those thoughts away with all the other guilty ones that stole her sleep, drew a deep breath and stepped into the main room of the cottage. It was quiet with only the faint click of the clock on the mantle and the clinking of dishes in the kitchen area across the way. She followed the sound and the delicious smells that accompanied it, and stepped into the small room.

  It was very much unlike the big, dark kitchen in Harcourt Heights or even the one at her father’s home in Kent, but it was warmer and more inviting than either of those two rooms. With a washbasin along one wall and a hearth beside it, and a table in the middle of the room for preparation and, she thought, eating.

  There were three large windows on each side of the room, which let in the light to make the space more inviting. One was cracked open so that steam and smoke could evacuate the chamber.

  Rook stood at the table, his back toward her. A fresh loaf of bread was on a plate beside him, steam coming from its crust as if it had just been removed from the pan. He was plating bacon from a skillet, and eggs sizzled on another over the fire.

  The smells hit her all at once and her knees went weak.

  “She has come out of her hibernation at last,” he said without turning toward her.

  She jumped at the idea that he’d known she was there, staring at him for the entire time she’d been in the room.

  “Good morning,” she squeaked as she inched into the room a bit farther. “I-I did not expect to find you here cooking.”

  He glanced over his shoulder, one eyebrow crooked in question. “You might have been hiding away these past few days, but the rest of the world turned on. How did you think you were being fed?”

  She bristled at the word hiding, though it was entirely accurate. Shifting, she picked at a thread on her sleeve. “Er…I…I suppose I didn’t think of it at all,” she admitted at last.

  He nodded and put his attention back to his work as he crossed to remove his eggs from the cooking fire. He met her stare as he walked to the table and slid two onto each plate, perfectly cooked with bright yellow yolks cheering up the room like the sun.

  “I guess you wouldn’t,” he said.

  She folded her arms. “What do you mean by that comment?”

  “Just that a lady like you probably never thinks twice about those who serve her. She just expects to be served.”

  She wanted to argue, but again, his words weren’t wrong. Damn him. She had led what now felt a very sheltered life. She didn’t ask questions because it had never occurred to her that she had to. As a result, she struggled to do anything for herself. Certainly she couldn’t have cooked the meal Rook now set on the table. He motioned for her to sit at one of the chairs and then turned to collect an extra set of cutlery and a napkin, which he handed over with a shrug.

  “I didn’t think you would join me this morning,” he explained. “I thought I’d prepare another tray for you.”

  She bent her head. “While I was hiding, you mean,” she said.

  He nodded as he took his place at the head of the table. She was at his right hand and it felt very close. He felt very big and very close in that moment.

  “I understood why you’d want to hide,” he said before he took a bite of eggs. As he chewed, he cut two slabs of bread off the loaf and handed one over, along with a crock filled with butter flecked with something else.

  She arched a brow at him in question.

  “Cinnamon,” he explained. “It makes everything better.”

  She wasn’t sure of that, but spread her bread with the seasoned butter and passed it back to him so he could do the same.

  They ate for a while in silence, and Anne found herself itchy with it. All it had been was silence for her in the last few days and all her thoughts seemed to be getting louder and louder. She needed something else to fill the space of them, to push them out so they wouldn’t cloud everything and anything.

  She needed to say something so that she didn’t feel like she could read the pity in her companion’s mind. She forced a smile for him and said, “This is delicious.”

  He didn’t smile, but she thought the apples of his cheeks got a bit pink at her words. He took another bite and grunted, “Thank you.”

  More silence and she felt her foot begin to twitch under the table even as she ate a few more bites of the food. Would he not help things along?

  “I-I fear I’m putting you out,” she said. “By being here so much longer than anyone could have expected. Surely Ellis will come soon, though, and take me off your hands.”

  Rook froze in eating at those words and his dark eyes lifted from his plate to meet hers. He held there for what seemed like forever, making her a prisoner to that even stare, to the words he never spoke.

  She swallowed hard. “We will be married,” she whispered.

  “Yes,” he said at last. “That was your plan, after all.”

  She noted he said your plan, meaning her. Not including Ellis, she didn’t think. Like he knew her to be a fool but was too polite…or perhaps too uncaring about her situation…to say it. He was so hard to read. He didn’t seem to
be annoyed that she was here, despite having to sleep on the settee instead of his bed, despite having to share his food and his fire.

  Why couldn’t she read him? Probably because she didn’t know him at all. She’d made sure of it these past few days. But he was her intended’s cousin, wasn’t it? Family, Ellis had reminded her days ago. It was wrong of her to separate herself so much, especially now that she’d decided he was no threat.

  Or she thought she had. Sitting next to him, it was hard to recall that decision. He still felt dangerous, though in a different way than he had the first night they met.

  She shifted. “You know,” she said, switching tactics, “I never asked your name.”

  He lifted his eyes again. “You know my name. Rook Maitland. And you keep calling me Mr. Maitland, and I keep telling you it’s Rook.”

  She pursed her lips. “But Rook cannot be your real name.”

  His gaze moved back to his plate. “Rook is the name I go by, Miss Shelley. There isn’t any other anymore.”

  She clenched her napkin in her lap and drew a few long breaths. He really was determined to make this difficult, it seemed. But they were both almost finished with their breakfast and it offered her an opportunity to fill her mind and her time.

  “Since you have provided me with my bed and board these past few days,” she said, rising and picking up her plate, “why don’t you let me help you by cleaning up?”

  He took the last bite of his bacon and stared at her, wide eyed, and she thought perhaps a little fearful as she collected the plate before him.

  “Certainly,” he said, leaning back as she took the items to the washbasin and stared at it.

  Once again, she realized she had no idea how to do this. And now he was sitting there watching her be a spoiled brat like he’d all but accused her of being.

  And she felt a sudden, strong urge to prove him wrong about everything. To be better than he thought she was. Right now.

  Rook had to give himself credit. He had not laughed at Anne once while she staggered her way around his kitchen and he had only interfered in her work once, when she tried to wash his cast-iron skillet. Perish the thought she would destroy that.

  He also had to give her credit. It was patently obvious she had never put a slippered toe into the kitchen, let alone tidied up after a meal. But she was trying. And that was more than some people would have done.

  She had cleaned up the cookware and the plates, wrapped the remaining bread in a cloth so it wouldn’t get dry, put things away, mostly in the wrong places, but still…

  She turned back to him after she found a random drawer where she put his silverware and smoothed her hands over her now wrinkled and slightly damp skirt. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes bright, and for a moment his breath caught. By God, but she was a beauty. He wasn’t supposed to notice that, he thought. She belonged to Ellis in theory, though he didn’t think that was true in practice. She certainly didn’t belong to or with Rook.

  But facts were facts, and the fact was that this woman likely turned heads in any room she entered. When she was a little undone the effect was multiplied. It made him think of better ways to muss her hair and pinken her cheeks.

  Thoughts he pushed aside as he jerked his chair back with a shriek of wood against wood and stepped away from her. She jolted at the loud sound, but didn’t seem defensive against him. If she had feared him at first, that had faded. But she didn’t know his thoughts, thank God. If she did…

  “Do you think I might take a look at your island?” she asked.

  He blinked at the question and refocused himself. “You aren’t a prisoner, Miss Shelley.”

  She bent her head and her regrets were plain on her face before she swept them aside. “Perhaps not, though I’ve made myself one these past few days when I felt…well, it doesn’t matter how I felt.”

  He found it did matter, though. More than it should have, even when he tried not to give a damn. He had to show her he didn’t, and shrugged. “You’re free now, at any rate. You may take in the island if you’d like.”

  “Will you…will you show me?” she asked.

  His brow wrinkled. Show her his island. Now why did that feel like an intimate exercise? But he knew why. No one save Ellis had ever visited here. And his cousin hadn’t given a damn about his home except to drag him away from it.

  So this woman…this stranger…would be the first to see the place Rook had come to love over the past year. The place he’d run to in order to forget, to heal…to forgive himself for the unforgivable.

  He cleared his throat to refuse, but she took a small step toward him. “Please?”

  He sighed. “I will, but it’s not very big. You’ll surely be disappointed there’s so little to see.”

  “It’s more to see than there’s been in the bedchamber,” she said with a short laugh.

  He let out his breath slowly. “Come along, then.”

  He walked away from her, not waiting for her to follow, even though he heard her do so. They exited the cottage into the cool, gray day and he sucked in the fresh air in a deep, calming breath. Well, it should have been calming, except that when Anne stepped up next to him it felt anything but.

  “It looks to rain again.”

  He shot her a side glance. “It is Scotland. There’s a reason why their favorite word is dreich.”

  She shook her head. “I’m not familiar. What does it mean?”

  He stepped out onto the path that led through the woods toward the dock where they’d come to the island days before. “Gray, cold, wet, foggy. A combination of the four, I think.”

  “Then it isn’t quite dreich today,” she said, looking around. “There’s no fog.”

  “There likely will be,” he said as they reached the dock. “There’s another storm coming in.”

  She looked out at the rocky beach and the inlet beyond it with a sigh. “It is beautiful.”

  “I don’t think you thought so a few days ago,” he said with a small smile.

  “I was too exhausted to think anything a few days ago,” she admitted. “But it’s lovely, despite it being almost dreich.”

  He forced himself not to laugh at her quip, though he felt his mouth twitching. He wasn’t about to go liking her. He needed to feel nothing for her at all, except perhaps annoyance that she was here in his space. He had to cling to that.

  She stared off in silence toward England, too far away to see. She let out a small sigh. “Could the bad weather these past few days have slowed Ellis’s return?”

  He held his breath a moment at the lilt of hopefulness to her voice. She was determined to keep faith in his cousin, it seemed. Rook had to believe she loved him, even if he didn’t return the feeling.

  He ignored how irritated that fact made him and shrugged. “Could be,” he grunted.

  She glanced at him after a moment and smiled. “This is the most you’ve talked to me since we met.”

  He couldn’t help but smile back. “You’ve been hiding away since almost the first moment we met, haven’t you?”

  She shrugged and turned away from the dock, looking back up at the green, wooded expanse of the small island. “Is it all rocky beach like this, then?” she asked.

  He motioned up the shore and they began to walk together along the sandy grass at the edge of the rocks. “No, there’s softer beach just up the coastline.”

  She was silent for a moment as they walked, taking in the beauty around them. Then she said, “I can see why you’d choose a place like this to live. It’s so quiet and beautiful.”

  He nodded. “Aye. I lived a busy life in London and other cities my whole life. I got so used to the noise, I couldn’t be silent even with myself. But then it got to be…” He trailed off and looked at her. He hadn’t meant to say so much to this stranger. This woman who wasn’t his.

  She leaned a little closer. “It got to be…?”

  He shook his head. “You don’t want to listen to me ramble.”

  “I as
ked the question,” she said softly. “I wanted to know the answer.”

  He flexed his hands at his sides, suddenly wishing he had something to busy them with during this uncomfortable conversation.

  “It just got to be too much,” he finished, trying not to think of the horrible moments that had led to this end. This place. This sanctuary.

  She nodded. “I can understand that. Things getting to be too much and wanting to run away. It seems you have found a way to do it right. I suppose I only made a muck of things my way.”

  He looked at her, watching her expression grow sad and empty as they crossed the last few steps to the windswept, white sandy beach around the tip of the island. Ellis had been a way for her to escape whatever was too much.

  And it had landed her here. With him.

  “Oh, the sand is lovely,” she said with a smile that erased her pain for a moment. She gathered up the hem of her skirt, flashing her ankles as she hurried down the little embankment that separated green from sand. As the water came up toward her, she laughed and scurried back so her slippers wouldn’t get wet.

  He stared, stock still as she danced along the sand with an effortless grace. Her loosely bound hair scattered down out of the bun as it was whipped by the wind and for a brief, powerful moment he wanted to pull the rest down. Tangle it around his fingers as the sea rolled in around them.

  He needed to get away from her. That much was clear. He’d been without a woman too long if the first one he met inspired such lustful urges. Especially one so far out of his sphere, who was in love with his own cousin.

  “You wanted to help,” he called out, recognizing how hoarse with desire his voice was.

  She pivoted and came farther away from the water as she gazed up at him on the bluff. “Yes?”

  “Have you ever dug for clams before?” he asked.