Chapter 12

Ash led Marguerite into the room he’d procured for the evening. Naturally, they hadn’t reached Gretna Green as planned. Not after backtracking to find her. He dropped both their bags—hers and his—beside the fire and gazed at her with an arch of his eyebrow, waiting for her protest.

She stared from her bag to his. They had spoken very little in the carriage, but he fully expected her to break that silence now.

True to form, her lips parted with hot words. “What is your bag doing—” Her whiskey eyes shot to his face, brimming with understanding. “You’re sleeping in here?”

He cocked his head. “I believe that might be the only way to make certain you don’t do yourself harm.” He sent the window a wry glance. “You may very well break your neck at this drop.”

She stepped toward him, then stopped herself abruptly, as though she realized she had come too close. She shook her head, her eyes straying to the bed. “I promise I won’t run again—”

“I know. You won’t.” He took a seat and shrugged out of his jacket. Panic filled her eyes at the sight of him getting comfortable, settling in for the night. “Tomorrow, if you wish to return, I will take you back myself.”

She moistened her lips, and his gut tightened, his gaze following the pink tip of that tongue. He remembered that tongue, remembered tasting it against his own.

His blood heated, looking at her, standing so small and yet proud. Men twice her size took more caution around him than she did. It was reckless, to say nothing of baffling. Why should she resist him so greatly? Did her situation as a mistress appeal so much more to her than the respectability he offered?

A knock sounded at the door. He called out, bidding entrance. A serving girl arrived, balancing a tray laden with food. Steam wafted from the crockery, making his stomach rumble. He’d scarcely eaten from the hamper he’d stowed on the floor of the carriage, too tied into knots over the female who thwarted him at every turn.

Instead he’d watched as Marguerite nibbled on a wedge of cheese, his muscles still tense and tangled over her escape. A woman alone, without a protector … anything could have happened to her. He’d seen many a female abused and maltreated. Friends, girls that he had fancied even. Their faces flashed through his head … each one looking a little like Marguerite in his mind. His hand curled into a fist. As long as she was in his care, he would not leave her side again.

He held out a chair at the small table where the serving girl arranged their plates. He motioned for Marguerite to sit. She lowered herself onto the chair, her gaze lowered from his.

The servant girl left them, and they ate in silence: him watching her; her watching the snow fall outside.

“You don’t see that very often,” he murmured, nodding his head at the snow, marveling that he should make light conversation with her—that he felt compelled to woo her as if she were a lady he sought to court and not daughter to the king of London’s underbelly. As if he hadn’t come one breath from ravaging her on a snow-swathed field today.

He stared at her lips as she slowly chewed, his flesh tightening as he contemplated leaning across the table and kissing her again, swinging her into his arms and depositing her on the bed, ending what had begun today. Hell, what had begun the first time they exchanged insults in St. Giles.

She had completely addled his head. In the short time he’d known her, she’d gotten beneath his skin.

Likely it was this cat-and-mouse game. The hunt was entirely new to him. He wasn’t accustomed to women refusing him.

Ever since he had taken to the streets, scraping to survive, he’d had his share of lovers. For a time, it was how he survived. Many a lonely widow with coin to spare would beckon him within her darkened carriage for a foray beneath her skirts. He’d walked the ugly, seamy side of life. Had perhaps forgotten anything else existed. This, he realized, is what Jack had spoken of. What made him fall short and undeserving of any female with a modicum of gentility. Fortunate for him, Marguerite was no tender maiden. Perhaps they were well suited for each other.

“I’ve seen my share of snow,” she volunteered. “It’s never very lovely though, when you’re cold and hungry.”

He cocked his head, staring hard at her, trying to see beneath the delicate lines and hollows of her face. “When did the daughter of Jack Hadley ever go hungry?”

“My surname is Laurent. I was not raised Jack Hadley’s daughter. My father never recognized me, never gave me his name.”

He nodded slowly. “How is it then that Marguerite Laurent should know the pains of hunger and cold?”

“After my mother died, Jack sent someone to fetch me.” She shrugged, paused as if she needed to catch her breath before continuing. “A servant collected me and deposited me at the Penwich School for Virtuous Girls. Maybe Jack was too busy to care. I don’t. I don’t know him.” And from the tone of her voice, he gathered she had no wish to.

She continued, speaking so quietly he had to lean in closer. “Let us just say that Penwich was not the type of school a father would send a daughter he loved … not after her first letter home, not after the first time he visited and observed how thin and listless his little girl had become. Yorkshire winters can be hard enough with warm clothing and food in your belly. Without that, well …”

“And Jack never visited,” he surmised.

“No, he did not.”

He nodded grimly, imagining Marguerite as a little girl with little food and little clothing to abide a Yorkshire winter. Damn Jack.

His hand curled into a fist beneath the table. He almost wished he didn’t know this. Wished he didn’t know that he and Marguerite had anything in common, that she had known suffering and depravity as he had.

He lifted his glass of claret, extending it to her for a toast.

She looked from the glass to his face. With an arch of her dark eyebrow, she lifted her own glass. Everything in the motion struck him as reluctant. She was still fighting this, fighting him. She wouldn’t even let herself contemplate a moment of accord between them.

“To a better future,” he murmured.

Her face paled, all color bleeding from her olive complexion. She set her glass down without drinking.

One would have thought he had toasted to her death.

“You can’t toast to the future?” he bit out. “Are you that stubborn? That determined to hate me? I did not say it had to be with me.”

She shook her head. “You don’t understand.”

“Explain it then.”

“My future isn’t …” her voice faded. She tore her gaze from him.

He snatched up her glass and thrust it toward her. “Bloody hell. Toast,” he hissed. “If I’m not part of your future, you should merrily drink then, correct?”

She dragged her gaze to his face. Her eyes were luminous, shining like sunlight through stained glass.

“And who is your future with?” he continued with a sneer, a dangerous fury burning through him. “Your fine gentleman back in Town?”

“No,” she whispered, her eyes reminding him of a wounded animal. “My future is with no one.”

“You make no sense,” he growled.

She nodded. “I know.” She turned her gaze back to the window then, staring raptly at the falling snow.

And he stared at her just as raptly, wondering if she might not be a little mad—and marveling why that did nothing to cool his ardor for her. Why the thought of returning her to Town and saying good-bye made his chest ache uncomfortably.

After dinner, Marguerite changed behind the screen in the corner, berating herself for skirting so close to the truth with Ash. Those kisses must have addled her head. A part of her wanted him to know, to understand. Except he would never believe her. She could scarcely believe it herself.

Sighing, she slipped the cool fabric over her head, disgruntled at having to wear one of the night rails Ash provided. Especially in his presence. The silk whispered over her skin, hardly appropriate armor for winter in the north of England. Clearly he had not shopped with practicality in mind. It had been one thing to sleep in the scanty attire alone, but another thing entirely to face him wearing the garment.

She released a shuddery breath and lingered behind the screen, gathering her composure.

She had thought she might wed someday. A possibility, yes. Marriage to a staid, hardworking, respectable man. Someone safe in his very predictability.

Exciting men only ever led to trouble. Her mother taught her that. Fallon and Evie were the exceptions. Marguerite was not a fool. Nor was she arrogant enough to count herself as an exception.

She had no use for a scoundrel—a disreputable gaming hell owner who lived on the most distant edge of Society alongside her guttersnipe of a father.

She ran a hand over the sheer fabric hugging her hip. Indeed, a scenario like this had never entered her mind. A union with a brute who more resembled fantasy than reality. His demon eyes, sun-kissed hair and a body fashioned from a sculptor’s hands were the stuff of novels. Not the substance of Marguerite Laurent’s life.

Gulping down a breath, she darted from the safety of the screen, reminding herself that she made her life. She alone chose her fate.

She raced the few steps and dove beneath the coverlet, yanking it up to her chin. Too late, of course. She felt the imprint of his gaze burning every inch of her. He had missed nothing. She cursed the champagne-hued peignoir she wore. With lace panels up the sides, she knew it blended with her flesh and made her appear naked.

Heat crawled over her face. Her heart beat a furious rhythm in her chest. She recalled that snowy field—his lips, his hands, the heavy, wonderful press of him on top of her. There would be nothing to interrupt them this time should they repeat their tryst. No servants calling out. No reason to stop. Unless she gave him that reason. Could she? Could she be that strong when her body acted of its own volition of late?

A dark whisper shivered across her mind: How badly do you wish to live?

Even beneath the coverlet she trembled, longing for the familiarity of the white cotton nightgowns abandoned in her hotel room, waiting alongside the rest of her belongings to board a ship for Spain.

The familiar was gone. Nothing would be as it was before.

Peeking out from the blanket’s edge, she watched him in the glow of firelight as he stripped his clothing. He moved with a bold grace, unmindful of himself, of his strength, his appeal. He possessed an animal beauty, reminding her of a jungle panther she’d watched one afternoon at a zoological exhibition in Town. The raw power was the same, ready to spring at will.

As he approached the bed with his feral strides, the air froze in her lungs and she wondered if she could really do this. Was it worth it? A life filled with passion, opposed to a safe, dull life. That was one manner of death, was it not?

She burrowed deeper into the soft mattress. Even with the crackling fire, the room was frigid. The wind howled at the window panes, seeking entrance.

She hardened her jaw. She wouldn’t be cowardly. She wouldn’t cower like the Marguerite of old.

He wouldn’t ravish her. Such savagery was not in him. After days together, he could have performed any number of dastardly deeds and depravities on her person, but he had not. No, if she willed intimacy, she would have to alert him of the fact.

He doused the lamp. The bed dipped as he slid beneath the coverlet. Cringing, she hugged the edge, turning on her side to stare out the window, the image of his bronzed flesh permanently branded in her mind. The contours of his shoulders and biceps. The cut of muscles ridging his belly.

A deep throbbing began at her core. She brought her knees to her chest, biting her lip against the sensation.

His voice reached across the small space between them, plucking at her frayed nerves, making the tiny hairs along her nape prickle. “We’ll turn back for Town on the morrow.”