Ripe for Scandal (7 page)

“I chose Scotland, and I meant it,” he said, willing her to understand. “But if, for any reason, we somehow failed to reach
it, were prevented from marrying, your falling pregnant would make everything a thousand times worse. If your family—if Leo,
damn it all—were to catch up with us…”

“You’d want to be able to assure Leo that I was untouched.”

“I know you have a plan, and I’ve agreed to it, sweetheart, but your family might have an alternative. If you’re carrying
my child, if there’s even a chance of that, then you’re trapped.”

“And you’re trapped with me.”

She said it flatly, as if it were the worst option in the world rather than a fate he wished for with every fiber of his being.
“I’m not trapped. As you said, I could put you on the mail coach back to London in the morning if I chose. But when your brother
and I meet again, I have to be able to tell him honestly that you married me of your own free will, not because I’d left you
with no choice. Do you understand, brat?”

Beau nodded, but her expression remained disgruntled. She caught her lower lip between her teeth, an unmistakable
glint of mischief lighting up her eyes. “I can’t fall pregnant if all you do is touch me, can I?”

The look of dumbfounded disbelief on Sandison’s face was priceless. Beau held her breath and waited. His touch had been far
too pleasurable. She wanted more. Needed more. And she wanted him to push himself close enough to the brink that there would
be no turning back, even if in strict honesty, he could tell her family that she was still a virgin.

“You’re going to be the death of me,” Sandison said as he reached for her.

He rolled her beneath him, his mouth hotly covering the pulse point just below her ear. He yanked the nightshirt up and his
hand slid back between her thighs, long fingers splaying her open, circling and teasing until her breath caught in her throat
and her limbs tingled.

Sandison caught her earlobe between his lips, the hint of teeth causing her to shiver. “Do you ever touch yourself?”

Beau bit her lips to keep from grinning. “Anyone who says they don’t is a liar.”

His palm slid roughly over her, dragging across the aching, sensitive peak between her thighs. His fingers circled the opening
to her body, the tip of one pressed for entrance, slipped into her, and delved carefully deeper.

“Do you ever touch yourself and think of me?”

Beau caught a strangled breath and didn’t answer. His finger slid in until his knuckles lodged against her. He curled his
finger within her, and she gasped.

“If you didn’t, you will now,” he said, sounding pleased and possessive. He kissed her, tongue delving into
her mouth. Beau kissed him back, a whimper rising in her throat as her release threatened to crest.

“Shall I show you something you could never have done for yourself?” Gareth asked. “Something far better than hands and fingers?”

“Yes.” Beau’s thighs tried to clamp shut around his hand, and Sandison used his hips to keep them spread open. For a moment,
she thought that he’d changed his mind about taking her maidenhead, but then he slid down, his hand abandoning her.

Beau gave a cry of protest, and Sandison chuckled. He yanked her to the edge of the bed, legs dangling over, one knee on either
side of him.

He planted a hot, open-mouthed kiss on the inside of her thigh. Beau felt her legs begin to tremble. Another kiss, this one
with teeth behind it, where her leg met her torso. Sandison’s hands slid behind her knees, pushed her thighs wide and held
them as his lips took over where his fingers had left off.

Beau bit the heel of her hand to keep from screaming. His tongue swirled across her, and then his mouth locked over the already
inflamed flesh of her clitoris, and her entire body throbbed and shook as she climaxed.

Sandison lapped the length of her secret folds. He dragged the flat of his tongue from the opening of her body to the bundle
of nerves where her pulse hammered with unslaked demand for more.

Beau took hold of his hair with one unsteady hand and dragged him up. He kissed her hard, almost roughly. She could taste
herself on his lips, sweet and salty at the same time.

Gareth swiped his jaw over hers, the stubble of his beard an oddly intimate caress. “We can do that as often as you like,”
he whispered. “Even after we’re married.”

“If we can make it to Neville’s Cross, we can hire a coach. Or we could if three pounds and twelve shillings wasn’t all we
had to our names.”

Gareth counted the coins again and swore. It wasn’t nearly enough for a coach, changes of horse, rooms, food, and stabling
for Monty.

“Don’t forget,” Beau said as she sipped her tea, “we’ve got whatever Nowlin had in his purse.”

“You prigged it? Brilliant girl!”

Beau grinned back at him. “Clearly we’re both meant to hang.” She reached into her pocket and held up Nowlin’s embroidered
pocketbook.

“Well?” Anticipation clawed through his veins as she opened it.

“Nowlin was certainly prepared,” Beau replied, pulling out a thick pile of bank notes. “I think we can afford to pay the piper
here and stable poor Monty somewhere decent.”

“And procure you a change of clothes.”

“Another shift at least would certainly be welcome.” Beau shrugged. “I know the poor make do with just the clothes on their
backs, but looking like a shag rag hardly presents the image of a married couple who can afford to hire a coach.”

Gareth swept up the pile of bank notes and quickly counted them. “We should have more than enough to reach Scotland and return
to London, even with your sar
torial needs. In Neville’s Cross, we should be able to outfit you there swiftly and anonymously, as well as hire a coach.”

“Shall we go then?” Beau finished off her tea and bit into the last bun, tearing off a chunk with her teeth. “Between my brothers
and Mr. Nowlin, I’d like to reach Scotland as quickly as possible.”

Gareth pushed a wave of guilt aside as he tossed the last of his things back into his saddlebags. Was there any way to explain
things to her brother? Any chance of Leo understanding that, as bad as things looked, he really had done his best for her?

Beau finished off the sticky bun and licked her fingers. Desire flared. It was all Gareth could do not to drag her back to
the sagging bed and repeat every delicious thing that he’d done the night before.

The true problem was that no matter how guilty he felt about betraying a friend’s trust, he knew deep down that even if Beau
hadn’t stated flat out that marriage to him was the best of her options, he would still be dragging her to Scotland this morning.

Leo had every right to hate him.

CHAPTER 8

S
andison ran one hand down Monty’s neck and slapped the gelding on the shoulder. “I’ll be back for you shortly, beast.”

Beau bit her lips and clutched Gareth’s greatcoat around her. Leaving Monty behind felt wrong somehow. Like a betrayal. Monty
shook his head, making a familiar, blustery sound as he blew his breath out his nose.

“Come on, sweetheart.” Gareth held out his hand, and Beau took it, clinging to it, suddenly afraid to let go. Last night didn’t
seem real, but this did. Something about leaving Monty behind brought it all into perspective and left her feeling suddenly
unsure.

Sandison squeezed her hand and tugged her along, steering her through the streets, past puddles and steaming mounds of horse
droppings. “The innkeeper said there was a pawn shop just a few blocks away. We should be able to find something for you there.”

“A pawn shop?”

He grinned, showing a row of large, white teeth.
“What do you think most maids and valets do with the cast-off clothing of their employers? They sell it. And a pawn shop will
give them far more for anything that’s still serviceable than the rag-and-bone man.”

Beau blinked and stepped over a small pile of refuse. She’d never really thought about where her clothing went when she was
done with it. Some of it her maid reworked as clothing for herself, but not all of it. The idea of some stranger wearing her
cast-off clothing seemed unnatural. As though she might someday meet a stranger with her own face.

They rounded the corner onto a small green, and Sandison pointed to a shop with a window full of silver. Inside, the shop
was cleaner and more orderly than it appeared from the street. The man behind the counter looked up. The light from the candles
that illuminated the shop bounced off his glasses.

“Selling or buying?”

“Buying,” Sandison said. “My wife’s trunk was stolen off the diligence, and we’ve got a good ways still to go before we reach
home. The innkeeper at The Oak and Acorn said you’d be our best hope of finding something quickly.”

The shopkeeper nodded. “I think we have a couple of gowns that might serve, and there’s no shortage of shifts and the like.”
He stepped to the door behind the counter. “Mrs. Chandler! Bring those things Mrs. Stops’s maid sold us last week. Yes, the
two chintz gowns, Ma’am.” He turned to face Beau. “Would you like to make a list of what else you might require, and I’ll
try to see what I can find for you while you examine the gowns?”

“Yes, thank you very much.” Beau took the scrap of foolscap and the pencil he offered her and quickly wrote out a list of
very basic items: one shift, two pairs of cotton stockings, a cap and hat, and a shawl.

Mr. Chandler took the list and glanced over it. His wife appeared with the promised gowns flowing over her arm, and he swept
past her, disappearing into the bowels of the shop.

Mrs. Chandler looked Beau over with a careful eye. “Yes, indeed, ma’am. I think Mrs. Stops’s gowns will suit you well enough.
You might have to overlap the bodices when you pin them shut, but they’ll be decent enough for all that. Do you have pins?”

Beau shook her head. “They were in my trunk. And the jacket I’m wearing has hook and eyes.”

Mrs. Chandler made a tisking sound and rummaged in a drawer for a moment. She slid a paper packet of dress pins across the
counter. “Not a spot of rust on these, though a couple of them are slightly bent.”

“They just have to get me home,” Beau said, warming to the tale that she and Sandison had concocted. “I’m sure they’ll be
fine.”

The shopkeeper’s wife nodded. “Such an outrage. Stealing a lady’s baggage. I hope there was nothing valuable in it?”

It was all Beau could do not to laugh. She was so clearly hoping there was, and that it would end up here in her shop. “No,”
Beau said, shaking her head. “Just a few gowns and fripperies.”

“Oh,” Mrs. Chandler replied, clearly crestfallen. “Well then, not as terrible as it could have been.”

“Not at all,” Beau agreed. “And if your husband can supply me with the essentials on my list, the worst of it will be the
loss of my trunk itself.”

Mrs. Chandler nodded, an avaricious gleam sparking in her eye. “So inconvenient. Shall I find you a portmanteau to see you
home?”

“Please,” Sandison interjected. He stepped forward and put his hand on the small of her back. Beau felt her skin flush, heat
rising from his hand to flood her chest and face.

The two hours she’d spent in his lap riding from the Pig and Whistle to Neville’s Cross this morning had been pure torture.
She couldn’t stop thinking about what they’d done the night before… about what they hadn’t done, and how very much she’d wanted
to do more.

Wanton. There was no other word for it. Every time Sandison touched her, so much as looked at her, she could feel the desire
for more welling up within her. The desire for Sandison. The fact that he had his own passions firmly under control ate at
her.

It was somehow unfair, almost humiliating. The urge to drive him to the point of no return was irresistible.

Beau studied Sandison in the dim light of the shop. He was impossibly handsome. She’d have said beautiful except that it somehow
implied a softness that Sandison utterly lacked. He was a collection of sharp angles and planes, lean in the way of a greyhound,
strength and power tightly coiled over long lengths of bone.

He smiled at her, and her stomach clenched and then turned over. If she could just hold on to him until they reached Scotland,
he was hers.