The Dangerous Love of a Rogue (21 page)

The footman had not moved. “Horses! Now! Run!”

The man did.

Edward looked at John. “We shall ride to Smithfield’s. If she is not there perhaps his daughter will know where she is.”

Ellen looked pale. “I will go to her room.” She pushed past him. “Perhaps she has left a letter.”

If Mary had left a letter it could only mean one thing – she had eloped.

Edward followed Ellen as she crossed the black and white chequered marble floor. Then he hurried up the stairs beside her, his hand at her back as she gripped her dress lifting her hem from her feet, John followed behind them.

Edward walked through limbo – riven from reality. Someone had tied his hands so he could not reach out or do anything.

This was his precious daughter.

The child who had been a light in his life ever since her birth.

Moments illuminated his thoughts; the moment she had walked, the way as a baby she had rubbed his earlobe when she was tired. Her fingers gripping his leg to get his attention as she had grown. The beauty of her smile when she had come out.
Mary?

There was no sign in her room that anything was amiss. Everything was still where it ought to be.

Two days ago he’d handed her up into a carriage, where the hell had it taken her.

“The writing desk?” John pointed.

Edward turned to look. He’d bought it for her, as a gift. It was mahogany and had a delicate inlaid pattern of roses carved from rosewood, walnut and apple woods.

Pain gripped about his heart when he opened the lid and saw a muddled pile of letters, some written by a hand he knew, but others…

The letter which lay on the top was the one Edward had seen from Smithfield’s daughter, confirming her parents’ agreement for Mary to stay. Was that a lie? Had he not even known his daughter? How many times had she lied?

John leaned past him and took out some letters.

Edward took a pile too and passed some on to Ellen. They all began scanning the words. Those that Edward read were inconsequential. These were letters from her female friends, young women’s chatter. “There is nothing here.”

“DF?” Ellen said.

Edward turned.

Her eyes shone with fear. “Mary received a letter. She said it was from Daniel. That is why I thought she had a liking for him. These are all love letters signed DF or D. Most are dated after Daniel’s engagement… Why would I disbelieve her? Mary never lied. Never…” Tears dripped on to the letters Ellen held.

Nausea gripped at Edward’s stomach. “They are not from Daniel Farquhar…”
Damn…
would Mary really be so foolish.

“They speak of meeting her, Edward. Who has she been meeting? I thought her silence and distraction a symptom of a broken heart. These letters urge her to trust him. Why did she not speak of this to me?”

Edward cast the letters he held down on the desk behind him, and moved to comfort Ellen, though he felt no comfort himself. “Because they are from a man we told her to avoid…”

“Drew Framlington!” John growled. “She would not have been so foolish!”

“It looks as though she has been…” Cold fear raced beneath Edward’s skin.

“They have been passing these letters through a stable boy.” Ellen pulled away, anger in her voice now. “If we find who it was…”

John growled and turned away.

“She has eloped,” Ellen said when John left the room. “We do not even know him, Edward. How could she? Why did she not at least try to persuade us? We have always told her she may choose her husband.”

“Because both John and I would have told her no, Ellen. My guess is she feared that speaking would only alert us to the possibility. I would not have condoned this match. The man is a manipulator, he’s charmed her. He will have told her not to speak to us.”

“If he has hurt her—”

“I will kill him.” Edward growled. What had Framlington said to her, done to her, to persuade her? Damn it. Edward wished he had challenged her harder the other day, he could have prevented this.

He held Ellen as she wept.

“Mama!” Edward turned as John came back. He held a young lad by the shoulder and the boy looked scared. “I found Mary’s little messenger. Tell Lord and Lady Marlow, what you told me.”

“I didn’t do nothin’ other than what m’lady told me to.”

Edward glared at the boy. “Then tell us what she told you to do.”

“She gave me letters an’ said no one else should know. She made me swear.”

“Where did you deliver the letters to, to whom?”

“I don’t know the gent’s name, m’lord, ’e was just some toff who lives in the Albany. I took letters there, an’ ’e sends ’em back and one time ’e came ‘ere.”

A knife lanced into Edward’s chest. “The man was here?” Had Mary lost her mind. What had happened then? What was happening now?

“Framlington lives in the Albany,” John stated in a bitter pitch. “He has probably been playing her for weeks…”

“Damn.” Edward could not look at Ellen. “We had better go there to begin our search. I saw her speaking with Lord Brooke and Framlington only days ago at a ball.”

“Brooke is Framlington’s best friend,” John stated, “and he rarely goes to such things—”

“Well he has attended balls recently, twice, he danced with Mary,” Ellen interjected. “Oliver had introduced one of his friends. I never thought to question…”

“And Oliver clearly never gave a damn,” John growled.

“It hardly matters now,” Edward stated. “What is done is done. Now we must simply find them…”

Chapter 13

Mary had no idea how many miles they’d travelled but it seemed a considerable distance, although they’d stopped at a busy posting inn for luncheon and he’d not hurried the horses. But her bottom was sore from being bounced about on the seat of his curricle over rutted tracks and due to the change in her status last night she ached in other places too.

Relief overrode every other emotion when they booked into another inn for the night.

Andrew had said it would take three or four more days to reach Gretna. But tomorrow her parents would discover her gone and follow. What had been done could not be undone, though. Her fate was fixed. She’d lain with Andrew.

Mama will be heartbroken.

Andrew’s fingers clasped her elbow guiding her upstairs to their bedchamber.

They had eaten dinner in a parlour downstairs.

Papa will be hurt and angry and John will be disappointed.

She wished they’d find her before she reached Gretna, then they would be at her wedding. But she was not foolish enough to think anything could have been done differently. Papa and John would not have let her marry Andrew by choice.

The soft light of a vibrant sunset flooded the small room and it cast Andrew in gold, gilding his features.

He was so starkly handsome. Her heart melted a little more each time she looked at him.

“You’re silent. A penny for them?” Andrew asked as he closed the bedroom door behind them and turned the key in the lock. His eyes gleamed with a dark honey colour. “What are you thinking, tell?”

Ah. Why must tears come? They burned in her eyes and her teeth caught her lip to stop them tumbling over, but failed.

“You are not regretting…” His expression twisted to pain. “Mary?” He caught her hand, and would have pulled her to him, but she pressed her other hand against his chest to stop him, before swiping away her tears.

“I am not regretting. I was thinking of my parents. They will know tomorrow.”

His thumb, brushed another tear from her cheek, then he let her hand go and turned away; a bitter sigh escaping his lips as he moved to pour a glass of wine from a decanter by the bed. “Must we go back to this? Must you think of them now? I thought you were past leaving them; that we had left them behind where they belong.” His voice rang with impatience and a note of anger. It was as though something had snapped inside, as he barked out his bitter words. “We have become something of our own, I thought.”

He did not understand. He was not close to his own family and clearly he did not realize how much she cared for hers. Or because he did not understand he simply did not care. She did not try to explain or persuade him to understand. The emotion made finding the words too difficult.

Instead she went to him and hugged his waist, her fingers gripping across his stomach as she pressed her cheek to the fabric of his coat at his back.

He didn’t touch her and his body was stiff; nothing in his stance yielded as she held him.

“I wish Papa to walk me up the aisle, and Mama to watch us, that is all…”

A condescending sound left his throat as he turned, forcing her to let him go and step back.

“Your father would drag you away from the aisle.” Anger and annoyance echoed in his pitch.

She felt a frown crease her forehead. “I should have tried to persuade them to accept you…”

His eyes narrowed. “You could not have persuaded them. Nothing would have made them allow it.”

Mary opened her mouth to speak, but no words came as he sipped from his wine glass, his hard gaze told her he did not wish to discuss her parents’ point of view. After he’d drunk he held the wine glass to her lips and tilted it as if daring her to refuse to drink.

It was like he offered a poison chalice, or a potion – the devil in him shining in the black hearts of his eyes which had crowded out the honey colour.

When she had taken a sip, he put the glass down, and then his hands gripped her hips pushing her back against the wall as his lips came down hard on hers. The kiss felt like a brand burning into her – claiming her.

No one else would ever have been enough for her, no one else would have cared with the passion and intensity that he did.

When he broke the kiss, his hazel eyes were like treacle not honey, his pupils were so wide. Her bones were as weak as aspic.

“I love you. You know that.” It did not sound like a statement, but a question.

“I know.” Her words lacked breath. She believed him, but she knew he could not understand how much it hurt her to hurt her family. Yet it seemed as though when she spoke of caring for her family she hurt him.

He’d said in his letter, the day she had met him in the summerhouse, he did not know love. He did not – but she would teach him what it meant, what it was. “I love you too, Andrew.”

A guttural sound escaped his throat and then he kissed her, urgently. Then he spoke into her mouth. “I love you calling me Andrew, no one else does…”

He kissed her again, and she kissed him back, her arms bracing his neck as her body remembered his touch.

Then she realised he was drawing up her dress.

She broke the kiss, her fingers gripping his shoulders and her gaze meeting his dark eyes, but before she could speak he threw her his rogue’s lilting smile.

“Let me come into you now, here, no foreplay, no procrastination, let us make love now as we are.”

Her lips trembled as her next breath faltered.

He gripped her hand taking it from his shoulder and pressing it against the column in his trousers. “See how ready I am.”

He pressed a kiss against her temple, keeping the pressure on her hand, then he kissed her cheek.

She tilted her head as sensations of longing spiralled through her and she let him kiss her neck as he pressed the heel of her palm to his arousal. Then he let her hand go, and left her to touch him, as his hands returned to the task of raising her gown.

Yesterday he’d been tender; tonight he was being wicked. But his wickedness made something lurch low in her stomach as her body recalled how it had held him inside her.

In moments his fingers pulled at the bow securing her drawers and then he pushed the flimsy garment to the floor, and in another his fingers released the buttons of his flap. It was as if he’d touched a flame to tinder and they ignited as he lifted her feet from the floor, wrapped her legs about his waist and pushed into her.

There was heat, in flashes, and pain as he pulsed into her and her arms clung about his neck while her head and back hit the wall behind her over and over.

“Andrew?” she said, meeting his gaze as his fingers gripped even harder at her thighs.

“Am I hurting you?”

The urgency in his voice caught at her heart. He was, but it was pleasure as well as pain. He loved her passionately. It was the thing that made him so addictive. “No.” She shook her head and bit her lip as he continued moving even harder and faster, the sounds releasing from his throat animal like growls and cries.

“Andrew!” When the ecstasy of their union struck, it was in a rush that knocked her senses to the floor, and it span through her nerves to her fingertips.

“Hush, darling,” he growled in her ear as he carried on, and on… Her fingernails clawed into the back of his neck, and she panted out her breath, crying at the pleasure while her back hit the wall over and over, until suddenly he growled hard by her ear, and then he held still, as she felt her body tremble around him, and he pulsed with the pace of his heartbeat inside her.

“This is how I wanted you last night, just like this, quick and hard,” he said over her lips before kissing her. She kissed him too; her arms about his neck. She felt as if he really needed her…

He broke the kiss, but he did not set her down as his forehead pressed against hers. “Say you love me.”

Mary smiled, there were so many layers beneath his surface. “I love you.”

“And I you, Mary. More than you can ever know,” his husky voice seemed full of unspoken words. The grip on her thighs eased, then he set her down as if she was glass.

When her parents came she would make them understand and like him.

If she could see the good in him they must be able to see it too.

* * *

Drew could not sleep. She lay beside him, naked. But it was not only her body that was naked, it was her soul and her heart too and her openness and her innocence had cleansed him. Even the air drawing into his lungs felt different. Clean. He felt clean. He felt… blessed, and hopeful. He wanted to touch her. He did not, because he did not wish to wake her. The candle had burnt to a stub and the flickering light cast differing shadows across her face. She was more than beautiful. Her beauty was indescribable, because it was soul deep.