Elizabeth Beacon - A Regency Rebel's Seduction - A Most Unladylike Adventure / The Rake of Hollowhurst Castle

‘On the contrary, I’m exactly the right husband to deal with your wrongheaded ideas and headstrong ways. Any other man would be driven demented by your starts inside a sennight.’

‘He could be right,’ Kit observed traitorously.

‘And I’ll be flying to the moon any moment now,’ she scorned, but the idea of arguing with Hugh Darke for the rest of their born days suddenly seemed a little bit too promising.

‘I’ll take you there, Eloise,’ he whispered in her ear and she wondered how he’d managed to creep so close behind her that she was all but in his arms once more, and in front of her brother as well.

She shuddered with what she told herself was revulsion, but he’d reminded her how it felt to soar in his arms, to strive for the very moon and stars, and she sighed in besotted anticipation of doing it all again.

‘Not until you’ve put a wedding ring on her finger, you won’t,’ Kit warned as he eyed them very suspiciously once more. ‘And what’s all this Eloise business?’

‘You really don’t want to know,’ Hugh said with a return to his austerely apart, piratical-captain look as he withdrew his warmth and strength from her.

Louisa shivered at no longer feeling him next to her—how could she know if her scent and sound and touch were as deeply imprinted on his senses as his were on hers? He was so detached all of a sudden it was as if she’d dreamt that feverish interlude in his arms when neither of them seemed able to hold anything back from the other. She was almost glad when Kit decided this was neither the time nor the place for such an important discussion and put aside that comment to pick over later and eyed her pale face with brotherly concern.

‘I probably don’t either, but let’s get Louisa out of here. We can deal with Eloise and the details of your wedding in the morning.’

‘No, I can’t go home with you, I need to get away,’ Louisa argued, an illogical sense that she needed to escape nagging at her even now she had two powerful protectors instead of just the one.

‘Why?’ her brother asked.

‘Because Uncle William has been scheming to marry me off to a worm of a man, who probably offered to share my dowry with him, and both of them will be hot on my trail by now.’

‘He’ll answer to me for it, then, but why would that mean we can’t go home?’

‘The insect abducted me and kept me in his bedchamber for a night and a day and made sure my uncle and aunt saw me there, so they could exclaim loudly about my wickedness and their scandalised feelings. They forbade me their roof, unless I instantly married the repulsive toad, which I refused to do needless to say.’

‘That need not worry you, Miss Alstone. He won’t pollute the world for very much longer,’ Hugh Darke gritted between his strong white teeth and, given the fierce look in his eyes, she believed him.

‘How would your killing him help me? You would have to flee the country and I would still be the centre of a fine scandal, all the more so if I was stupid enough to have married you in the meantime. It would seem as if I ran off with you after growing bored with him.’

‘She’s right, Hugh,’ Kit intervened as Hugh Darke rounded on her with his best master-of-all-I-survey glare. ‘You need to leave the worm to me,’ Kit added, offering that caveat to soothe the devil of temper so very evident in Hugh’s furious gaze and stirring hers instead.

‘No, he’ll only dirty your hands,’ Hugh gritted furiously, quite lost to reason, even if her brother only had more masculine folly to offer. ‘What’s his name, this insect-worm?’ he asked fiercely.

‘Do you think I’m fool enough to tell you that, when you will only add to the scandal already surrounding me by calling him out?’

His hands closed about her arms, as if he wanted to shake some sense into her and she condemned her senses for leaping to attention, even at his angry touch through her second-hand jacket and gown. For a betraying moment she swayed towards him, as if her body and her senses were begging for a kiss despite her growing fury.

‘He must not get away with it, Louisa, I can’t let him,’ he gritted as if her lost reputation mattered to him more than it ever could to her. As surely as she knew Charlton would walk away if she was teetering on the edge of a cliff, she knew this man would plunge off it himself, if that was what it took to save her.

‘Don’t you think me capable of making him sorry he was even born, then, Hugo?’ Kit said almost gently.

‘I do, but it should be my job. No, make that my pleasure.’

‘It can’t be and you know why,’ Kit said obscurely and Louisa’s ears pricked up at the veiled curb in that short sentence. Then she felt the reminder bite into the man still holding her arms as if he didn’t know quite what to do with her.

Hugh jerked away from her, seeming horrified that he’d ever laid hands on her in the first place and watched those very hands with revulsion, like a very masculine Lady Macbeth, after she’d driven herself mad with murder and ambition and couldn’t wash the imaginary blood off them.

‘I know, so how can I wed your sister? I forgot what I am in the heat of the moment,’ he whispered and it was as if he and Kit were talking about something deeply important she wasn’t going to be told.

‘Whilst I suspect I don’t want to know about the heat of that particular moment, we both know there’s nothing to stop you marrying. The rub will come if you fail to make my sister happy afterwards and I’m forced to kill you,’ Kit told him implacably, and any illusion she’d suffered that he was resigned to what had taken place between herself and Hugh tonight melted away like mist in the July sun.

‘That would go quite badly with me, either way,’ she muttered mutinously.

‘Not as badly as you knowing the truth about me would,’ Hugh said, looking glum about her predicted unhappiness and softening her heart, if he did but know it.

‘I told you my tale,’ she challenged him, and if Kit chose to think it was the one about her abduction and lost reputation, then so be it.

‘And you think mine is that simple—just a few words and a rueful smile at how easy that was to get out of the way and go on?’

‘As mine was?’ she demanded, furious with him for brushing aside her fears and peculiarities as if they didn’t matter.

‘I didn’t mean …’ he blundered on.

‘Never mind what you meant, never mind your secrets. I haven’t got all night to spare for arguing with you. I’m tired and hungry and downright weary of rescuing ungrateful, lying, mistrustful idiots from their enemies. If neither of you intends to take me somewhere safe and warm and feed me, pray give me a hand up on to that brig of yours, brother mine, and I’ll get the master to drop me off at the nearest port downriver where I can buy myself a bedchamber for the night and a decent meal.’

‘Not in a hundred years, sister dear, and he’s long gone. I thought half of London must know he was casting off and none too happy to be going in the middle of the night, given the amount of noise he made about it.’

‘I didn’t hear him,’ she said stiffly and actually caught herself out in a flounce as she spun round to glare at her would-be bridegroom and dare him to comment.

‘Neither did I,’ he admitted meekly.

‘Lovebirds,’ Kit added sarcastically and Louisa wondered if she ought to kick one of them, even if it was just because they were men and couldn’t help being infuriating any more than they could voluntarily stop breathing.

‘What are we going to do, then?’ she demanded.

‘Go home,’ Kit told her implacably and, since there was nowhere she’d rather be, she allowed him to bustle her out of the warehouse and along narrow streets and alleys he knew even better than she did in the dark, then out on to wider and marginally more respectable streets where he hailed a cab, then sat back to watch the night-time streets roll past as if they fascinated him.