A Reckless Runaway

by Jess Michaels

  He shrugged as he lifted his head to look at the window. “Not sure. Dawn, though, judging from the light around the edge of the curtains. The beginnings of the day.”

  She yawned. “I have not slept so well in weeks. Months. Not since my engagement was announced.”

  He frowned at the reminder of the man she had vowed to marry. She’d mentioned him many times, though never named him. But Rook knew he was titled. Powerful. A match on paper, at any rate.

  “Was he cruel to you?” he asked softly.

  She lifted her face in surprise. “No,” she said, quickly enough that he could tell it was true. “No, he was…he was just nothing. I was a business arrangement. Nothing more.”

  He frowned. The thought that a man could have this woman in his life and not want more and more and more of her was so odd to him. If she could be his, he would show her every day just how much he cared.

  But she couldn’t be his. He wasn’t worthy to shine her boot. That hadn’t mattered until it did. But now it did.

  “It hasn’t rained all night,” he said, changing the subject before he could make a fool out of himself by perhaps confessing his heart. He could only imagine how she would react. She had to feel he was nothing more than a mere affair to her. “We’ll surely make it to Gretna Green today.”

  She let out her breath slowly. “Yes. Well, I look forward to seeing our options for getting home, I suppose. You must be ready to return to your island, too. I know we spoke of a reward. I could have it forwarded to you in that village where we started if you give me its name before we part ways.”

  He stiffened. She was already aching to be rid of him, it seemed. Perhaps this was her kind way of managing it. Reminding him that she didn’t need him once she was in a place where she had access to more options.

  It was better for her, of course. Better for him to let her go before these feelings in his chest bloomed even further. But it stung, nonetheless. Everything about this stung like a lash across his back.

  He rolled from under her, getting to his feet. She shifted and lifted the sheets to cover her breasts as she watched him dress as quickly as he’d divested himself of his clothing hours before.

  “I should ready the horses then, since we’re both anxious to be off,” he said, hearing the clipped nature of his tone. “Take your time getting dressed and we can be on the road as soon as you are able.”

  “Rook—” she began.

  He winced at her use of his nickname. He didn’t even know why, for he’d told her that was what she should call him. Constantine was the man who pleasured her. He only existed when he perched between her legs.

  “It’s best if we carry on,” he grunted as he moved to the door. There he paused and turned back to look at her one last time. In his bed, mussed by him. His.

  But it was an illusion. A mirage he’d believed in for a moment.

  “I’ll see you downstairs,” he added. He turned on his heel and left her, trying to ignore the pain that action caused. Trying to ignore the voice inside of him that screamed at him to go back to her instead of walking away.

  Chapter 13

  Before she and her sisters came out to Society, Anne’s maiden aunt had pulled them aside to talk to them about men. It had been a very unenlightening conversation on the whole. The woman had no experience herself and a hard look on the opposite sex. But she had said one thing that now rang in Anne’s ears as they trotted along the road in the warming sunlight of the afternoon.

  If you give a man what he wants, he’ll leave.

  It was meant as a strategy, of course. Play the hard-to-get diamond and men would chase. But it had also been an admonishment not to kiss behind flowerpots or give up one’s innocence too easily. Anne had done just that. The innocence, not the flowerpots.

  And now she felt Rook pulling away from her. Oh, he was polite as they rode. He was amiable as a travel companion could be. But he no longer looked at her with smoldering intent. He no longer teased with her. He no longer asked her about her past or her family and surrendered no information about his own.

  They were like faintly acquainted travel companions now. Not friends, as she’d once felt they were. Not lovers.

  Her heart broke for the loss of both roles, even though she knew it might be for the best. She’d come to care for him, to want him to distraction, but he didn’t feel the same way about her. Pushing her away now was a kindness. It allowed her to start to plan for the frightening future she would face once she returned to Harcourt and the family and fiancé she had abandoned there weeks before.

  They reached the top of a rise and Rook trotted his mount off the road and to an overlook. “There,” he said, pointing in the distance. “The infamous Gretna Green.”

  She looked down at the little hamlet. It was a busy, pretty little village just like a hundred others that dotted the countryside in Scotland and England.

  “Hmm,” she said. “I thought somehow it would be grander or glitter in the light. The way it is spoken of, it almost feels like fairyland.”

  He smiled. “Folks like the romantic notion of it, I suppose. But the blacksmith shop is exactly that, you know, a blacksmith shop. A bit dark and drafty for my taste.”

  She jerked her head toward him. “Does that mean you’ve come here before?” she asked. She couldn’t help the smile that quirked her lips. “Tell me you are not secretly married.”

  He shook his head and a faint echo of his usual grin crossed his face. “I am not. Just a curious tourist, as are most who stop there.”

  “Then you’ll have to take me around the town when we reach it,” she said, and nickered to her horse to go back to the road. “Come, we’ll be there before supper.”

  She urged her horse forward and heard Rook follow after a moment. She was in no hurry to reach the town, of course. To see this time together end as it might when they reached the bigger town. But she had to put on a good face. Not let him see that it mattered to her when it meant so little to him.

  That was the only way to survive this with a fragment of her dignity intact.

  They entered the gates of the town in less than an hour and pulled their horses up before an inn that was easily three times as big as any that had housed them along their route. As Rook helped her from her mount, she forced another smile. “Oh, I cannot wait for a bath to wash the travel from my bones.”

  She thought there was a flicker of desire that darkened his stare at that statement, but he blinked it away.

  “Inquire about a room within,” he said. “And have them send up the water. I’ll take care of our horses and ask around about safe transport for you from here. If it seems likely you could get home faster any other way, I’ll also ask about a price for the horses.”

  She bit her lip at his efficient explanation about how he would rid himself of her and nodded. “Very good. Thank you.”

  He turned away, leading the horses up the busy lane toward the stable. She entered the inn, greeted by scents of baking bread and the sounds of travelers, drinking their ale and telling their tales of the road. It seemed a good-natured group, and she felt no fear as she approached a woman behind a desk.

  “Good afternoon,” she said. “I’m inquiring about a room for the night. My—my husband is out tending to the horses and making some other arrangements.”

  The woman made quick with finding a room and handed over a key to Anne. “It’s the third on the left on the second floor,” she said. “Supper will be in an hour, though you might want to come down early. Our inn is buzzing with the better weather, as you can see. A large group of travelers arrived from Harcourt just today.”

  Anne jerked her head up from where she was signing the ledger for the hotel and turned to look at the loud group of men by the fire. Her heart almost stopped. They were the Earl of Harcourt’s cronies, men from his shire. She hadn’t recognized them when she entered, but now she saw a few familiar faces in their crowd.

  She turned away swiftly, hoping they hadn’t seen her. Of
course she didn’t look half so fine as she had when she ran away into the night.

  “Harcourt, you say,” she said softly, glancing over her shoulder. “That’s a pretty shire. I know it a little. They seem a rowdy lot. What has them in such a dither?”

  The innkeeper’s wife leaned in, her gaze brightening with pleasure. “Well, I’m not one to gossip, of course. Everyone says I’m silent as the grave. Can keep a secret like no other. That’s what they say.”

  Anne pursed her lips. If that wasn’t the beginning of every gossip’s big confession, she didn’t know what was. “I’m sure you’re very discreet. As am I.”

  The woman nodded. “That lot keep talking about a terrible scandal back where they come from. Something about their lordship and a broken engagement.”

  Anne’s blood roared so loudly through her ears that she could hardly hear anything else. She swallowed, trying to calm herself. “That’s a terrible thing. But I suppose a thwarted wedding is only a scandal until the next one comes around.”

  “’Tweren’t thwarted, though.” The woman all but clapped her hands together. “They say the man’s fiancée ran away…so he married her sister.”

  Now the blood was all Anne could hear. Certainly she couldn’t have heard those words right.

  She tried to breathe, but spots were beginning to appear before her eyes. “Lord Harcourt married one of his intended’s sisters instead?” she asked, her hands shaking, her knees shaking.

  “That’s the news from that group there,” the woman said. She blinked. “You’ve gone pale, miss. Do you know the couple?”

  “I-I do.” Anne pressed both hands into the desk, trying to find purchase when the room was tipping. “It cannot be true. It cannot be true that Harcourt married one of the remaining sisters. Which one? Do you know which one?”

  She knew the answer even though she asked. Thomasina had been the one she’d forced into her games. Thomasina was the one who would agree to such a thing out of penance if she were caught. Sweet, innocent, good Thomasina, married to Jasper Kincaid, the Earl of Harcourt. A man with no heart.

  “I’m sorry, miss, I don’t. You could ask the men the particulars. Miss? Oh, miss!”

  But Anne hardly heard her as she began to suck air in and out of her lungs. Her knees gave and she barely caught herself. Then hands were touching her, coming around her waist. She turned toward them and saw Rook’s face swimming in her vision. His dark eyes were wide, filled with pure terror as he swept her up and carried her up the stairs, the innkeeper’s wife not far behind. The woman was talking, speaking about something, she didn’t know what. Her fainting, perhaps.

  She didn’t hear it at all. All she could think of, all she could understand, all she could focus on was what she had done. What she had forced upon her sisters. Her selfishness had compelled one of them, probably Thomasina, into marriage. A loveless marriage meant for Anne that had closed around one of her sisters like a trap.

  And as she let out a long, pained cry, everything around her went dark at last.

  Rook cradled Anne in his arms on the bed, slapping her cheeks gently. At least the rambling innkeeper’s wife had left, off to search out smelling salts and water for the basin.

  “Anne,” he said, slapping just a touch harder to shock her awake. “Anne, wake up.”

  It had been terrifying to walk into the inn just in time to see the woman he loved buckle and nearly deposit herself on the floor. People had run to help, there had been shouting and good will…he hadn’t cared about anything but her. Her pale, stricken face as she stared up at him and wailed, “It’s my fault!”

  Then she was gone, fainted dead away from a shock he couldn’t understand because the innkeeper’s wife was going on and on about earls and marriages and something about a group of men across the room who hadn’t even seemed to notice the hubbub because they were so deep in their cups.

  He didn’t know what the hell was happening, all he knew was that Anne stirred at last. Relief flooded his entire being as he smoothed the hair from her face. “It’s all right now. I’m here.” She lurched as if to rise, but he held firm. “Shh, don’t get up, you fainted.”

  She stared up at him, her face still as stricken as it had been the first moment he found her. She shook her head. “Tell me it’s a dream. A nightmare. It cannot be true.”

  The door opened then and the innkeeper’s wife scurried back in. She had a tray with smelling salts and water, and she almost looked disappointed when she saw Anne awake.

  “Oh, there she is,” the older woman cooed. “Poor lamb, the road can take it out of you and that’s a fact. You rest now and let your man tend to you. Shall I bring up food?”

  Rook’s appetite had fled the moment he saw Anne fall and he could see how green her skin was as she turned her face, so he shook his head. “If it’s not too much trouble, perhaps you could bring it up in an hour or so. Let my wife rest and let me ascertain that she doesn’t need a doctor.”

  “Aye, for certain,” the woman said. “A good man, then. Yes, I’ll leave you be. Please fetch me if you need a thing. I’ll set two plates aside for you.”

  She left them, shutting the door behind her. Only then did Anne sit up a fraction. “I don’t need a doctor.”

  “Perhaps not, but it made her happy and it made her leave,” Rook said. “Now tell me what happened. Was she right that it was all brought about by mere exhaustion of the road?”

  She rocked forward and tucked her knees up, putting her head against her hands. “No,” she whispered, pain in every sound. “Oh God, no.”

  “What is it?” he repeated, this time sharper. “You need to tell me now.”

  His tone seemed to shock her out of some of her panic, and she took a few long breaths before she forced herself to meet his stare. The tears that sparkled in those bright green eyes broke his heart and he took her hand, smoothing his fingers over her skin in the hopes it would comfort her.

  “When I ran away from my arranged marriage, I used my sister to do it. I told you that we used to trade places—” She let out a hiccupping sob, but managed to continue. “Well, I convinced my sister Thomasina to do this one more time. I lied to her and she believed me and put on my dress and went into a lion’s den.”

  He shook his head, both at the idea that Anne had concocted such a plan and that now she was so upset by it. “I know you think your sisters will be furious at you for your escape,” he soothed her. “And perhaps that weighs more heavily on your mind because you are so close to reaching them, but—”

  She lifted a hand to stay his words. “You don’t understand. Rook, that group of men downstairs…they just came from Harcourt.”

  He flinched at that name. “Harcourt?” he repeated, his voice sounding tinny and far away as shock flowed through him.

  “Yes, my fiancé was the Earl of Harcourt.” She tilted her head. “Have I never told you his name?”

  Slowly Rook got to his feet and backed away from her a long step. His heart had begun to pound. “No,” he whispered. “You never said his name.”

  “Well, that is it.” She bent her head. “The men downstairs told the innkeeper that—that…that Harcourt had married one of the remaining sisters. The wedding went forward and one of them was forced to take his hand. And it’s my fault! To escape a loveless marriage, I doomed one of the people I hold most dear to the same.”

  She collapsed again on the bed, wracked with sobs. He couldn’t stay away, and perched on the edge of the bed, smoothing his hand across her shaking back even as his own mind reeled.

  He knew the name Harcourt, but not from gossip. He knew the man because his cousin Ellis had been involved with his brother. The previous Earl of Harcourt had been a gambler and a drinker and a rabble-rouser.

  He was also dead. And Ellis had a hand in that. It was part of why he and Rook had parted ways. And now this woman Rook loved, this woman Ellis had destroyed with his desperation, said she was tied to Harcourt, as well. He didn’t believe in coincidence, but e
ven if he did, this couldn’t be one.

  He shook off his reaction, his horror, and focused on Anne. She was still weeping, utterly gutted by her grief and guilt. God knew he was familiar with those concepts.

  “Anne,” he soothed. “You mustn’t do this to yourself. We have no idea what has truly happened. Those men might be telling tales, they might have misunderstood a rumor within a rumor.”

  She shook her head and when she lifted her head, her cheeks were streaked with tears. “I saw them. I recognized them. There are three men from Harcourt down there. Three who would have been invited to my wedding. Why would they tell such a tale?”

  He straightened up. He wondered the same thing, as well as a great many other things. And there was only one way to answer those questions.

  “We’ll ask them,” he said, rising.

  She jerked her red-eyed gaze to him. “I cannot. They would know who I was the moment they saw me. They all met me as Harcourt’s intended bride weeks ago.”

  He frowned. Of course she wouldn’t want to be seen as she was now, with the company she kept now. “I’ll go,” he said. “I’ll find out all the information we need without revealing you are here or that we’ve traveled together.”

  Her lips parted. “You would do that for me?”

  He wrinkled his brow at her apparent shock. “Of course. We need to know the truth, don’t we? To understand all the facts before we make our next plan. Strategy alone dictates I understand the situation. And you need to know for your own peace of mind.”

  He smoothed his jacket as he walked to the door of the chamber. When he reached it, he heard Anne’s voice, weak and shaky. “Rook?”

  He turned back. She had sat up and looked so forlorn it nearly broke his heart. Her face was puffy with tears, her hair was cockeyed and half fallen from the bun at her nape, and her tone was so sad. She was still the most beautiful thing he’d ever had the privilege to lay eyes on.

  “Yes?” He made his own voice as gentle as he could.

  “Thomasina is the sister who took my place. Juliana is my other sister. I need to know which one married Harcourt, if the rumor is true. I need to know.”