How to Lose a Bride in One Night
Page 11

She watched him across the dark room, her eyes glowing like a timid creature peering out of the woods.
“Mrs. Kirkpatrick will be here momentarily,” he murmured. “She’ll see you settled . . . bring you something to eat. Tell her if you require anything. She will care for your needs.”
He started for the door, stopping in the threshold at the sound of her voice.
“When will I see you again?”
There must have been something in his manner that hinted at his eagerness to leave—to deposit her in the housekeeper’s capable hands and go to ground. After all, when he left Jamie and Paget in Winninghamshire it had been with the express goal of doing that very thing. Burying himself in the comforting familiarity of his mother’s town house.
All of that was before he found her. Before he had, in a moment of weakness, made that promise to her.
“When you’re on your feet, we’ll begin your . . .” He paused, not even knowing what to call it. What was it precisely he intended to do for her?
Prevent her from ending up broken and facedown on a riverbank again, a voice whispered across his mind.
Apparently she understood even as he failed to articulate himself. She nodded from where she sat in the shadows, sitting straight and prim, her legs stretched out over the chaise. “Yes,” she quickly supplied. “Yes, I look forward to that.”
I look forward to that. As if he was going to merely instruct her on the fine points of needlework.
With a nod, he bade her good-night, turning his back on the image of her, so small and alone on the other side of his vast chamber.
He heard her soft echo behind him, “Good night.”
He departed the room, tying to ignore the notion that he should have remained.
It was the same dream.
Annalise woke shaking, lurching upright in the bed she had been sleeping in for the last week. The silken sheets puddled to her waist like a waterfall.
Panting, chest heaving, she stared straight ahead into the dark.
She could still see Bloodsworth’s face, so lifelike in front of her. His whisper still floated in her ear. Nasty bit of rubbish . . .
Annalise swallowed past the lump in her throat and glanced around her darkened bedchamber. She knew it was Owen’s chamber. Mrs. Kirkpatrick had said as much when she helped her settle in the first day. Even though it belonged to him, it bore none of his influence. No personal effects. A wardrobe and a few other simple pieces of masculine furniture. The bed was the most ornate piece in the room. A mammoth, canopied, mahogany four-post.
Filmy curtains fluttered at her balcony window, and her throat constricted as she realized those doors were open.
Her hands pressed down on the mattress on either side of her. If she could have walked, she would have risen, crossed the room and closed the doors. But she was trapped on the bed. Alone with her fear, that thing she loathed so much.
A small sound scratched the air. Her gaze swung around the room, searching for the source.
The pulse in her throat thumped impossibly harder, faster, as the latch to the bedchamber door slowly turned. It swung inward and Owen stood there, light flooding into the room behind him from the corridor. A relieved breath gusted out of her lips, replaced with a different kind of anxiety at the sight of him wearing only a dressing robe, open down the chest. Her mouth dried.
“Anna?”
She nodded for a moment before answering. “Yes.”
“Are you well? I heard you call out.”
Her hands twisted the silken sheets. “Did I disturb you? I’m sorry.”
Annoyance flickered back to life inside her. He’d been avoiding her since they arrived. Now he cared to show himself?
“You needn’t apologize. Nightmares aren’t exactly something we can control.”
Her breath eased from her lips. “You speak from experience?” She didn’t know precisely where the question came from. She supposed from the desire that welled up inside her to know more about him. This earl that wasn’t an earl. At least not like any earl she had ever met. What manner of earl kept the fact that he was an earl to himself? He was not like any of the noblemen her father had thrust upon her. He was deadly with a knife and rescued girls and consorted with Gypsies and eschewed Society and brought strangers into his home. He mystified her.
She wished the room were more well-lit so she might view him better. She craved a glimpse of him. Just to prove that he was as attractive as memory served. He’d been keeping his distance, leaving her to the care of Mrs. Kirkpatrick. Much as he had when they stayed with Mirela and her kinsmen.
She supposed she had not wanted for anything in his neglect. With a staff of Mrs. Kirkpatrick, a cook, two maids, and two grooms, she was well attended. Mrs. Kirkpatrick had left a bell beside her should she ever need assistance. She rarely did.
Finally seeing him again filled her with a strange sense of hunger. She did not want him to go and leave her alone with her nightmares all over again. Desperate to keep him from leaving, she asked what had been weighing on her mind for weeks: “Where did you learn to fight like you did? With those two men?”
Silence met her question. She moistened her lips, wondering if it would always be this way. Would she have to pull speech from him like tugging a heavy bucket from a well?
Just when she was convinced he would ignore her, he replied. “I fought in India.”
She inhaled a ragged breath to have this much from him. Finally. Some bit of himself.
Annalise recalled what the papers said about the rebellion, the horrible brutality the rebels inflicted on Europeans living in India and the equally brutal backlash against them.
“It was . . . difficult,” he continued. “You had to do certain things to survive.”
“Of course,” she murmured in understanding. “It was war.”
“No,” he said, cutting her off quickly. “Certain things were expected, demanded, that went beyond war.”
An awkward silence stretched between them before she once again filled it, hoping she did not sound terribly inane. “I’m certain you only did as you were commanded.”
He laughed, and the sound was ugly and harsh. “Yes. I did as I was commanded. I was very good, exemplary even, at following commands.”
She flattened her palms over the counterpane covering her thighs, knowing that complimenting him yet again on this was not the thing to do. Her leg tingled beneath her splint, desperate for a good scratch. She ignored it.
“I am excellent at killing.” There was nothing in his voice as he uttered this, and yet she knew he was disgusted with himself.
He rose in one swift move, and she knew that it was with the same grace, the same quick stealth, that he attacked and took lives. She should be appalled, having just fled one killer to find herself in the company of another. And yet compassion swelled inside her chest because she knew this man was so much more, so much better, than the killer he described himself to be. He was heroic. Nothing demanded him to help her and yet he had. Everything he had done underscored that he valued life.
At her silence, he continued. “I’ve shocked you.”
She lifted one shoulder. “Not so much.”
“Horrified, then?”
“No.”
His head angled to the side. “No?”
“No.”
“You’re a most peculiar female, Anna.”
She smiled. “I cannot argue with that assessment.”
“Aren’t you the least bit concerned that you’re currently residing beneath the roof of a seasoned killer?” His boots thudded across the floor as he moved toward her.
Her heart hammered faster at the knowledge that he wasn’t leaving her. In fact, he was coming closer. He stopped at the foot of the bed. She stared at the lean shape of him, her gaze skimming the narrow waist, the peak of tantalizing, male flesh at his throat, the broad shoulders. Her face heated. The fleeting reminder came that she was still a virgin. Married but a virgin. Never even been kissed. Well, she refused to count those two pecks on the morning of her nuptials. And just as that fleeting idea crossed her mind the next thought came that she should like him to kiss her. She would like to taste his lips and the skin at his throat that always looked so warm and inviting.
Even when he was being taciturn and distant that skin looked somehow warm and male and delicious. Her belly quivered with a sensation she had never experienced.
“I could do anything to you,” he added, his deep voice hard and vaguely disapproving.
And while she should be concerned, even afraid, at the somewhat threatening comment, a frisson of excitement raced down her spine. I could do anything to you. . .
He was no Bloodsworth. He caused her no fear or unease.
The sudden image of him straddling her on this bed without the robe, just his bare body atop hers, leaning over her, his mouth coming toward her, seized her. Her palms prickled and tingled with the urge to touch—to feel him. To live and experience the lovemaking she had been denied on her wedding night.
A wicked thought entered her head. Stuck in this bed for weeks, he could make her time here very diverting.
Her cheeks went from warm to scalding. Apparently all her previous modesty had drowned in the river. Not a terrible thing, she acknowledged.
“I suppose I should be afraid.” She took her bottom lip between her teeth for a moment. “If I didn’t know that you’re an honorable man.”
He pulled back as if she had struck him. “You’re a fool. I’m no hero, Anna.”
Annoyance flared hotly in her chest. “Then why did you promise to help me?” she demanded sharply.
“I don’t know. I’ve asked myself that question countless times since I’ve brought you here.”
He had been thinking about her? Even though he distanced himself. Warm pleasure suffused her. “It’s because I need help. And there is no one better than a man of your talents to teach me. Do you not agree, Mr. Crawford?”
At this, he held silent, but she could almost hear the wheels in his head spinning.
She took a quick breath. “Forgive me. I don’t suppose I should call you that anymore. Should I, my lord?”
He walked around the bed, his movements slow and languid, a direct contradiction to her increasingly speeding heart. He stopped inches from where her left hand rested on the side of the bed. Her pinky finger twitched in reaction.
“Perhaps we should begin with your first lesson now?”
Her breath caught. Even though she knew he was referring to help train her in self-protection, a chill shivered across her skin. As dark as the room was, she felt his stare, the hot crawl of his gaze over her. She wore a prim nightgown buttoned to the throat, but she imagined he could see her through it. Shaking.
Only not with fear.
He leaned down, his palm landing beside her on the bed. Annalise glanced at that hand. Bigger than her own. The back of it lightly sprinkled with golden hairs. She resisted the urge to stroke the blunt-nailed, square-tipped fingers.
She looked back up. His face had moved in closer, and she resisted the urge to shrink back. Her chest tightened, the air trapped inside her lungs as his face stopped mere inches from her own.
“Yes?” she whispered hoarsely.
“Never let a man near you when he tells you he’s especially good at killing.”
Then he was gone, moving across the room. Her gaze followed him, her heart beating hard in her chest, his warning echoing inside her head.
“Too late,” she murmured. She had let him near her, and she wouldn’t pull away now even if she could.
She had let him near her, and the hope was already there, growing and spreading in her blood, that he would come closer again.
Chapter Ten
Owen didn’t stop walking until he reached his room, a chamber that adjoined Anna’s. He supposed Mrs. Kirkpatrick put him here because it was the second largest room in the house, but he couldn’t help regretting the proximity to her. He could hear every sound, every thump through the walls. Every time she cried out from one of her many nightmares, he tensed.