Lucy Ashford - The Rake's Bargain

Instead, what his kiss had done to her just terrified her. Yes, she’d lured him into the kiss because she knew that Luke and Francis would arrive any minute, and it had been the obvious way to distract him. She’d been prepared to feel revulsion and fresh fear. Instead, she’d been completely stunned by her own reaction to the touch of his lips on hers.

Damian Beaumaris was the kind of man she absolutely detested. He was arrogant. He was hatefully insulting. But as soon as his mouth came down on hers she’d felt shock flooding every nerve and her world had slowed. She’d wanted—no, she needed to be closer to him; she even heard her own little moan of longing. She still felt as though her world had turned upside down.

Deb drew a deep breath, and urged her ambling steed onwards.

Chapter Four

In less than an hour Deb had returned to the inn to find that the rest of the Lambeth Players had travelled on earlier as arranged, taking their carts of belongings and their other two horses. She was glad everything here at least had gone according to plan, but she missed their lively banter. After stabling Ned, she went to buy herself a hot meal to take back to the stables where she would spend the night, but she wasn’t able to escape the sharp tongue of the innkeeper’s wife.

‘I’m hoping, young lady,’ the woman said as she ladled out some dubious-looking stew, ‘that a few people turn up for this speechifying of yours tomorrow. It’s going to put us to a deal of trouble, you know, clearing our yard and setting up a stage for you.’

Deb took her plate and looked at her steadily. ‘Your courtyard is always packed every year when I appear. You know that. And they pay.’

‘Sixpence apiece, but you take half of that!’

‘Ah, but the people who come to see me also drink your ale and buy your hot pies by the dozen.’ Which I’d guess you fill with the local butcher’s sweepings , Deb added to herself. She’d tried one of them once—it was horrible. She turned to go, but the innkeeper’s wife hadn’t finished with her.

‘The rest of your friends,’ she said suddenly, making Deb almost drop her plate. ‘They paid their bill and cleared out this morning. Now, where were they bound?’

‘They’ve gone on to the fair at Stow on the Wold,’ Deb lied glibly. ‘A little muddying of their trail might be a good thing, all in all.’ Mr Beaumaris. Palfreyman. Oh, heavens .

Still the woman hadn’t finished, but came closer, her eyes gleaming with malicious curiosity. ‘It must be a strange life,’ she said, ‘for a young woman, traipsing around with a bunch of travelling players. And I heard tell that you’re all in trouble with the local magistrates—’

‘You must excuse me,’ Deb broke in, ‘I really wanted to eat this delicious stew while it’s hot—’

‘In trouble with the local magistrates,’ repeated the woman with emphasis, ‘for putting on a play on a Sunday. They say the lot of you have been threatened with prison. There, now. What do you say to that ?’

‘It was all a mistake. And I assure you that the matter will very soon be sorted.’ Deb gave the woman a dazzling smile, then marched out towards the stables. Once inside she kicked the door shut with her foot, sat on a hay bale and put her plate down.

She wasn’t hungry any more.

Did everyone in the whole of Oxford know the predicament that they were in? Damn Palfreyman! She would come through this. They would all come through this. But now there was an added complication—their prisoner.

She had a feeling that Mr Beaumaris wasn’t a man to either forgive or forget. But he’s no idea who I am , she told herself. He has no idea of my connection with the Players or with Palfreyman. He thinks my friends are highway robbers, and that I’m a whore. Hardly surprising, since he’d found those books on her ...

Oh, to blazes with Mr Beaumaris, Deb thought irritably. It was his fault that he was in such a pickle. But with both him and Palfreyman as enemies now, the sooner she, Francis and Luke were on their way to Gloucester to join the others, the better. And then she could push today’s rather alarming events from her mind.

But she wouldn’t be able to forget Mr Beaumaris’s kiss quite so quickly. Or his wicked blue eyes and devilish good looks. She thought that she would quite possibly never forget the way her heart had jolted and almost stopped as his lips crushed hers and his hands had drawn her closer...

Enough. Enough . She picked up her plate and tried to convince herself that the greasy mess looked appetising. She hoped that Mr Beaumaris was vastly cold and miserable in the charcoal-burner’s hut, and that Luke and Francis were making his captivity as uncomfortable as possible.

She forced herself to eat the stew, aware that she really needed to keep her strength up—because just at the moment, it rather looked as if her company would be lucky to survive the next few days without the lot of them being hurled straight into Oxford County Gaol, by either Hugh Palfreyman, or the even more formidable Mr Beaumaris.

* * *

As the sun began to sink in a haze of mist over the Ashendale Forest, Beau turned restlessly in his bonds and decided that he could not remember having been more furious in all his life.

Oh, he’d been angry before now. But there had always been something he could do—some counter-attack he could plan, some legal strategy he could devise. He’d been known in the past to use his fists if the circumstances were appropriate.

But now his impotence made him wild. He’d heard the girl riding off on her pony, leaving her two companions to guard him—and there hadn’t been a thing Beau could do, since he was once more roped up and blindfolded.

His hearing, though, was acute, and shortly afterwards he realised that the younger fellow was riding off also. But Beau heard him return within half an hour, and then they both came over to offer him some food that the lad must have purchased. After some muttering between themselves, they removed his gag, so he was able to point out, in no uncertain terms, that they’d have to untie his hands as well if he was to eat.

They muttered to each other again, then unfastened the cord round his wrists to allow him to feed himself with the bread and cheese they offered. But when he reached for his blindfold the older one tutted and said, ‘I hope you’re not going to try and get your blindfold off, are you, Mr Beaumaris? That wouldn’t be a good idea at all. It really wouldn’t.’ And—though Beau doubted if the fellow could use it—he heard the ominous click of his own pistol and decided it was, for the moment, more prudent to obey.

Of course, they didn’t want him to see their rascally faces—but he guessed they were watching him all the time as he ate. Then they tied his hands again but loosened the rope at his ankles and led him about a hundred yards or so to what he guessed was some kind of rough shelter. And that was where, he gathered, they expected him to spend the whole of the long, miserable night.

It was apparent that their leader—Miss Deb, or Deborah—had had no intention of returning that evening, quite possibly because she had her own trade to ply in the streets of Oxford. And that troubled Beau.

She was a slut and a highway robber, by her own admission. But most dangerously of all, she was attractive in the kind of way that he just could not erase from his mind. Yes, she was a little on the skinny side, to be sure—but he’d quickly forgotten that when he’d held her close and realised that some very feminine curves were hidden by her boy’s attire. Yes, she was scruffy, and her long hair could have done with a good brush, but what did that matter, when she possessed such ravishing chestnut curls and such enchanting, dark-lashed golden eyes?