At Your Pleasure (24 page)

But the fear faded almost instantly. What a queer, curious idea: she knew him too well, even now, to imagine he would ever use her brutally. “Adrian . . .”
What devil rides you tonight?

But caution checked her words. His answer, she sensed, would not leave her any easy exit.

She reached out, avoiding his sword, brushing over
the stiff leather of a fighting man’s waistcoat, to find his hand. That she discovered it clenched into a fist startled forth a tenderness she did not understand. This intuitive knowledge of him did not bear scrutiny, but she yielded to it as her fingers wrapped over his knuckles.

“You are the villain here by accident,” she murmured. “I will fight you, but I will not fear you.”

“Then God help you, Nora,” he said softly. “For I mean to show you no mercy.”

That such words should strike joy in her made as little sense as her instinct now to lift her face, or her lack of surprise when his mouth touched hers.

His arms came around her and she felt the full evidence of his readiness for bloodshed: not only the hilt of his saber, but the rude butt of a dagger strapped to his thigh. Such proof should have chilled her. It was her family, her cousin, that he armed himself against.

She was a wicked, depraved creature to want him more for it. She tightened her arms around him, pulling him as close as he might come—not close enough; she wanted no space between them. As a girl she had craved only this, to be loved without scruples or surcease, to be loved violently and against all good sense. She had not realized that the price would be to love him in the same fashion, and to pay a higher cost than he did.

But now the knowledge made this hot kiss seem all the more wondrous. It was bound to end. It always ended. But until it did, would that every walk in the shadows, every long night of self-doubt, had such blissful dangers as its reward.

His mouth broke from hers. “Come,” he said, taking her by the shoulders, turning her and urging her forward.
To his chambers
.

Her mouth went dry.

Could she do this? Could she lie with him? She had known it for a mistake this afternoon, but now, in the giddiness of midnight, although her stomach soared with a mix of fear and anticipation, she could not locate her doubts. “I don’t . . .”

But she forgot the rest of her words when he directed her toward the stair.

His chambers lay above, not below.

She dug in her heels. “Where do you take me?”

“To the chapel,” he said.

The fluttering in her stomach sharpened, now flavored more by panic. “But why?”

“A very good reason,” he said. “That is where marriages are performed.”

For the space of a shocked heartbeat she waited for his next remark, which would clarify this joke.

But all he said was “Come.”

He was not asking.

She swallowed the sudden wild urge to laugh. “Come? To—be married, do you mean?”

“Yes, that is what I mean.” His voice was cool, evidencing no trace of shame at his brazenness nor any concern for the turmoil his proposition raised in her. “I am removing you from this unhappy bind. Your brother’s troubles will concern you no longer.”

Now her laugh did slip out. It sounded savage. So, he
would not let Cosmo take her against her will; instead, he would take her himself! But how
kind
he was to free her of this
obligation
of her brother! How kind, indeed, to inform her of her impending marriage!

Twice now in one day she had learned such happy news. Had any woman ever been blessed with so much tender, solicitous
consideration
?

“You are mad,” she said. But she sounded breathless when rage would do better. “I will not marry you for aught!” If only she might smite every man in the human race who had ever told her a single instruction for her benefit! “Simply because I trifled with you in the meadow—why, any slut might instruct you what store to set by
that
!”

In the brief space of his silence, she felt her temper yield to the stirring of hope. “I know you wish to spare me,” she said more softly. “But this is not the way, Adrian. I—you and I—I cannot tell you what all is in my heart for you, but now, as matters stand, there is no clear way to see—”

“And so I see for you,” he cut in. “In time you, too, will come to understand. Now I must bid you come. I am sorry for it, Leonora, but I will carry you if I must.”

Disbelief splintered into shock.

He truly did not care for her consent.

With the pressure of his hand, he tried to marshal her down the steps.

She drew back her fist and slammed it into his ear.

He hissed out a breath. As his fingers flexed on her arm, she hit him again—one great shove toward the
stairs. Perforce he released her to catch himself, and she did not wait for him to recover. Sprinting past him, she flew down the staircase.

Five steps’ advantage, then four: she heard the light fall of his foot as he bounded after her. She would have cursed him—
you arrogant, conceited, Lucifer’s spawn
—but she saved her breath for flight. Lifting her skirts, she took the stairs two by two, reckless with her footing, giddy with some hot intoxication that might, soon enough, prove to be fury.

He called to her, rough words, indistinct, as she leapt the last length of stairs. Marry her, would he? She had been trapped before,
because of him
, and she would see him in hell before he worked this trick on her! She was done with surrendering choices!

She spun away from the main entrance, for there was no escape outside in the moonlight, on terrain where he could easily outpace her, where his men waited in watch of her brother . . . Oh, he had planned very well, had he not, to capture every Colville of interest to him!

A hidden door stood behind a tapestry. She knocked aside the dusty cloth and struck the door with her shoulder, the pain welcome, blending into and heightening the violence inside her. Let him try to find his way in the blackness! This interior passage twisted like a snake, the stone flooring uneven; it had been paved long before the erection of the walls that now enclosed Hodderby, a remainder of the old lodge that had stood when the houses of York and Lancaster had split apart the kingdom centuries ago.

She sprinted silently, knowing by memory when to turn. The cramped corridor curved, and she ducked as she approached the sudden drop in the ceiling, invisible in the dark. The door, now distant behind her, thumped at Adrian’s entrance. Another sharp thud and a curse announced his encounter with the buckling slant of the ancient masonry.

Good. She hoped he bled.

Her course dead-ended at a new door. She threw it open.

The ancient hall blazed with light. Rivenham’s men looked up from the end of the room. The dice rolling between them reached the edge of the table and skittered onto the floor, loud in the silence of their surprise.

“Hold!” called one as they shot to their feet. She pulled shut the door and was running again, left now with no choice but go exactly where she should not.

Down again the path dipped, through air that grew cool and dry. Did she truly mean to do this? One wrong step—gunpowder was unpredictable—

She slowed and put out her hands, feeling her way between the casks that cropped up all around her. Splinters of oak stabbed her palms.
Carefully, carefully . . .

“Nora.”

His voice echoed off the low ceiling. Like a tightening noose, it halted her.

At the far end of this chamber, a bolted door opened into the stable yard. But she could not risk leading him through these barrels. He had no idea of the dangers they contained.

He spoke again. “If it will comfort you to know you ran . . .”

Comfort?

“. . . then by all means,” he said. “Run.”

She would show him
comfort!
She reached into her pocket, the bottom of which she had slit open in her solar. He was not the only one carrying a weapon. She had planned well for her midnight departure. The hilt of the small knife strapped to her thigh butted into her grasp. The trembling of her fingers infuriated her. She tightened her grip until pain stabbed through her knuckles.

Damn him
.

Damn him for making this choice for her!

His hand closed on her arm.

“This is the only way,” he said.

She dared not struggle. It had been reckless to lead him here. “The only way to . . . what, Lord Rivenham?”

Her voice sounded strange to her, low and unnaturally calm.

“Listen well,” he said. “I see two ways for it: I kill your brother myself—here—and thereby spare you the chance to follow his treason. I save your life thereby but earn your enmity for eternity.”

“Yes,” she whispered. “So you do.”

“Or I refrain from authoring his death, and you, doing your best to aid him, thereby author your own. No Colville will find mercy in London.”

His grip was tightening; he was trying to turn her toward him, but the position of the casks between them
put him at an odd angle that prevented him from exerting the full force of his strength.

She could not fight, lest they upset the barrels around them. But with every muscle in her body she strained against his grip, and the effort frayed her words. “You did not speak of my brother on the stair. You spoke of marriage, and I will not have it.”

“But you will,” he said very softly.

Goose bumps rose on her skin.

“Your brother will not touch you,” he continued, his words still low, as though he sought to lull her into believing them. “As a Ferrers, you cannot be touched. You will be safe, and so, too, this place you love: I swear it to you.”

Her scoff seemed to explode, echoing around them. “Such charitable motives!”

And she drove her knife into his arm.

To her shock, he did not cry out—or release her, either. A small hissing breath escaped him. His free hand gripped hers, twisting hard, until she gasped from pain and the knife dropped from her numb fingers.

A cask toppled as he dragged her backward into the iron grip of his arms. She flinched—but naught happened, save that his mouth came against her ear.

“I see that you will make a most interesting wife.”

14

T
he bride was bound and gagged. The parson was drunk, and had been kept so since Adrian’s men had purloined him from the high road a day earlier. At first terror-stricken at being separated from his party, the clergyman had found calm in a sizable bribe. It now resided in his dusty pockets, the former contents of which had sealed his fate: Jonathon Masters of York was one of those innumerable clergymen who did a brisk trade in illicitly distributed marriage licenses, properly stamped, affixed with the seal of the Royal Arms, conveniently lacking only the names of bride and groom.

Adrian’s men had detained three other holy men before finding one so well equipped. The only surprise was that it had taken so long: the trade in such certificates was a much-favored way to support the godly lifestyle.

The clergyman slurred out the words now from the Book of Common Prayer, his voice rising in counterpoise to the bride’s furious grunts. Braddock and Henslow,
flanking the parson to encourage him, presented stern countenances only occasionally prey to smirks: alas, the parson’s faculties at present were not equal to the language of his office.

When Masters paused to hold out the book a distance from his face, squinting quizzically at the riddles it presented, Adrian shifted impatiently. “Skip to the vows,” he said. “I do not require a jobsworth.”

The parson lowered the book, blinking. “Well, if it comes to that, your shig—your signatures will shuffice.”

Reaching inside his valise, he produced a dog-eared folio that he settled atop the altar. Next he produced a bottle of ink—its spillage prevented by a quick, lunging intervention by Braddock—and a quill, which he offered up with a lopsided smile that bespoke pride in his own resourcefulness.

“Never without it,” he said. “Good many a-marry on the road.”

Henslow snorted. Undoubtedly these proceedings had taken on a comical note, but Adrian’s current mood did not allow for humor. He wanted this completed—in all regards. And then he wanted Cosmo Colville off this property.

The quill was in want of sharpening. His signature emerged illegibly, the thick ink smearing with a drop of blood that had escaped the makeshift bandage—his own neckcloth—with which he’d bound his arm. The wound was not deep; he would need to teach her better to defend herself.

He wiped his palm on his leather waistcoat and signed again, writing his name at a much larger size.

He turned to Nora, whose glare looked forceful enough to permanently displace her eyes from her skull. For a moment he paused, struck by the finality of this moment: from now forward, this woman was his.

The smile that grew on his lips did not please her. Her eyes narrowed, threatening him silently.

“You will forgive me,” he said. Eventually.

He meant it as a promise to her, even as she furiously shook her head. Now, here, he would right the injustice done them six years ago. After this night, no man would be able to unmake his claim to her.