How I Married a Marquess Page 9

  When she didn’t answer, he pressed forward. “Well, I certainly enjoyed kissing you.” He slowly brushed his leg against hers, the leather of his boot sliding against the softness of her stocking beneath the hem of her skirt. She shivered with blossoming arousal, her sensuous lips parting delicately, and his heart thudded against his ribs in response. “Tell me you enjoyed it, too,” he urged softly, praying she couldn’t hear the desperation edging his voice. “Come on, Jo. Don’t make me feel like a cad for wanting you.”

  Her eyes widened as they found his, the green seas in their depths turning dark and stormy. She murmured incredulously, “You wanted me?”

  The unintended sultriness of her words cascaded down to the tip of his cock, and he hardened instantly. Jesus. Thank God he was sitting down, or she would have had a clear view of exactly how much he wanted her.

  “I still do,” he answered, in the same sultry tone. She continued to stare at him with a look of confounded disbelief, but there was desire there as well, mirrored back at him. His chest soared like some green boy’s who was alone with his first woman. “But what do you want from me, Josephine?”

  At that moment he would have given her anything she asked as long as she remained with him, keeping the darkness at bay and making him feel alive again. And if she dared to whisper that she wanted him as badly as he wanted her—

  A grim sobriety darkened her pretty face, and she answered so softly he barely heard her, “Coal.”

  “Pardon?” He couldn’t have possibly heard correctly…coal?

  Instead of repeating her words, she stared at him curiously, her head tilting slightly to the side as she studied him. “It doesn’t bother you to know that I’m an orphan?” Disbelief flooded through her soft voice. “It doesn’t make you want to race back to the orphanage to return me?”

  “Absolutely not.” He didn’t give a damn that she was adopted. His best friend and brother-in-law had been an orphan, and he loved Nathaniel Grey like a true brother and thought nothing less of him for it. In fact, he admired him for surviving that horrible childhood and raising himself up to become one of England’s most powerful men.

  But the dubious expression that flitted over her face told him she didn’t believe him. No matter, as long as she let him remain in her presence. As long as he could figure out what it was about her that gave him the only peace he’d experienced since the shooting, so he could take that same peace with him when he found Royston’s highwayman and returned to the War Office.

  She arched a challenging brow. “Then don’t move.”

  Well, that was an unexpected response. The drive had suddenly turned very interesting, and his gut burned with curiosity to discover what thoughts were speeding through her nimble little mind. “All right.”

  Drawing a deep breath, as if gathering her courage, she slowly reached her hand toward his as he held the reins between his knees. Her fingers were gentle and soft as they touched him, and even through his gloves he could feel the heat of her, the tenderness of her fingertips as she explored him curiously. Her hand trembled in its inexperienced innocence despite the sophisticated façade she presented. He would have laughed at her pretense except that an electric shiver that was anything but innocent raced through him, and his cock jumped at the tantalizing thought of her hands exploring lower down his body.

  “There have been previous gentlemen at Blackwood Hall who wanted to catch my attention the way you have,” she admitted quietly as her hand continued along his forearm to the bend at his elbow, then up toward his shoulder, feeling the hard muscle beneath his sleeve.

  A stab of jealousy pierced his chest, but he’d be damned if he’d let her see it. “I don’t blame them.”

  “Hmm. They spent the week giving me posies and compliments, maneuvering their way into being seated next to me at dinner, flattering me with their attentions and invitations for strolls through the gardens, drives in the countryside…”

  Beneath her careful explorations, he remained perfectly still, not daring to say a single word for fear she’d stop touching him. He couldn’t remember the last time any woman had so leisurely discovered him like this. The women he associated with were experienced and world-weary, so much so that feeling a man’s muscles held no fascination for them. But Josie’s touch was curious and unpracticed, most likely driven on by the heat of the encounter they’d shared in the stables, and the last thing he wanted to do was stop her.

  Yet he found her innocent touch more than just sexually intoxicating. He found it healing. Because when she rested her other hand lightly on his arm, her fingertips touching that spot on his wrist just above the end of his glove where the bindings still held him prisoner in his nightmares, the itching ebbed away until only the warmth of her touch remained.

  “One or two of them went so far as to take me shopping for ribbons at the mercantile.” She laughed faintly at the ludicrousness of that. “Can you imagine—ribbons?”

  “They must not have known you very well.” His voice came ragged with arousal, his lips thick from craving the taste of her.

  “Oh, they thought they knew me well enough. After all, they’d found out that I was an orphan.”

  Her hand trailed along the collar of his redingote to his lapels and down his chest. Inwardly cursing the phaeton now and his inability to remove his hands from the reins to put them on her, he forced himself to breathe slowly and steadily, only to give a shuddering pant when her hand slipped beneath his jacket to fondle the buttons of his waistcoat.

  “Which meant they thought they could enjoy the pleasures of ruining me—those who didn’t presume that I’d already been bedded, that is. They thought they could put their hands on me however they pleased.”

  He sharply sucked in a mouthful of air beneath clenched teeth at the thought of doing just that…of his hands exploring beneath her skirt and finding her damp and hot for him, of his mouth suckling at her breasts. Of having her touch on him, her hands running across the muscles of his chest and that ripe mouth of hers closed around his cock. There would certainly be no fear of the darkness beneath that distraction, and when they’d finished taking their pleasure in each other, he would sleep. Without nightmares, without the terror of waking alone in the darkness. With Josephine still lying in his arms.

  “You see, they believed they wouldn’t be forced to take responsibility for it. After all, I might be a baron’s adopted daughter, but underneath all the silk and lace, I’m still just an orphan.” In the green pools of her eyes, he saw arousal and desire; there was no denying that. But he also saw something else—suspicion. “The ton would never cut one of their own for refusing to marry someone like me. And they knew it. You know it.”

  “I’m not one of those men,” he ground out, anger mixing with his arousal. “I would never dare to presume that about you.”

  His hands tightened around the ribbons. He was furious at those men for thinking they could ruin her and simply walk away, as if she were nothing more than another party entertainment. And then his fury turned on himself when he realized that was exactly what he wanted to do, too—take selfish pleasures in her, then somehow keep the peace she brought him after he returned to his old life. A life that didn’t allow for the distractions she’d bring.

  Her fingers slipped the top button free, and his breath hitched. She was playing a dangerous game now. “Josephine—”

  She placed her lips near his ear and whispered, “So I’m to believe that you’re paying me attention, kidnapping me for drives, and kissing me only because you enjoy spending time with me?”

  Her fingertips slipped beneath his waistcoat and cravat to caress the bare skin of his neck…so soft and delicate, so tantalizingly erotic in their featherlight touches. The irony wasn’t lost on him that she was purposefully mimicking the same way he’d touched her yesterday morning in the stable, the same way he’d tugged open her collar to feel her soft skin beneath. She was using his own seduction against him.

  “And for no other reason tha
n that?” Her soft words tickled against his ear like a dare.

  With arousal and anger speeding his heartbeat in equal measure, he refused to answer. He couldn’t deny wanting to seduce her, and more with each passing moment. The damned woman knew it, too. But he wanted her for more than just physical release, and how could he explain that without frightening her away?

  “Be honest with me, Thomas.” Each word came as a hot, shivering breath. “Do you have intentions of courting me after the party ends?”

  It would have been so easy to lie to her and get exactly what he wanted—her company for the next four days, the delicious distraction of her keeping away the darkness, perhaps additional kisses and even more shared intimacies. But he wanted his old life back more, and there wasn’t a place in it for a woman. Even one as special as her.

  “No,” he bit out honestly, the frustration pounding achingly through him.

  “Then you’re no different from those other men after all.” Having proved her point, she dropped her hands away from him, then folded her arms tightly across her chest to erect as much of a barrier between them as she could. Her eyes glowed hard with recrimination. “And I think it best if we stay away from each other from now on.”

  He clenched his jaw. Stubborn, willful, challenging…She was lucky he couldn’t take his hands off the reins or he would have throttled her right there for that damned object lesson she’d just delivered. Stay away from her? He nearly laughed. He was too close to gaining back the life he’d lost, both in Royston’s recommendation for arresting the highwayman and in the receding darkness he’d felt since he met her, to dare to stop now.

  “The devil I will,” he muttered, then gave the ribbons a hard flip and sent the team into a fast gallop to reluctantly return her to the village.

  Chapter Five

  Thomas sat unmoving on his gelding beneath the black cover of the dark woods and tried not to shiver against the cold.

  At well past midnight, he had been here for over two hours, unmoving, waiting at the spot where most of the robberies had taken place. He didn’t mind. What was one more night without sleeping after the year he’d had, especially when tonight might very well put an end to all his nightmares?

  He glanced down at his hands holding the reins, and a crooked smile pulled at his lips. Not one visible tremor.

  But then, since he’d arrived in Lincolnshire, he’d felt better than he had in months. This mission for Royston kept him too busy to dwell on the shooting, and even being out here in the cold night, surrounded by darkness, didn’t raise the panic and anxiety he’d come to expect whenever he ventured from the safety of home and light.

  The frigid night bit into his bones, but after his encounter with Josephine Carlisle in the phaeton yesterday afternoon, he welcomed the cold. The chill kept his blood from boiling in anger at the memory of how unbelievably tempting he’d found her before she gave him that calculated setdown. And at how the blasted woman had been avoiding him since, which he suspected wasn’t completely because she’d told him that she was an orphan or that she considered him no different from the men before him who had tried to use that to their advantage.

  Bloody hell.

  He was losing his mind. Why else would he be thinking of a woman when his chance to prove himself had finally arrived? This was his opportunity, the one he’d wanted for a year. The one that would finally bring back the life he’d had before the shooting. And no woman, not even an extremely intriguing, inexplicably alluring one with big green eyes, a kind heart so generous that she scrubbed orphanage floors, and a stubborn streak the size of London, would interfere with that.

  He rolled his shoulders in an attempt to shake out the tension but failed. The damned woman was going to haunt him all night with her haughty little sniffs and sharp tongue, that thick chestnut hair, and those full lips that tasted of peaches and had him wondering what other delicious flavors she might—

  A sudden movement caught his eye.

  He narrowed his gaze and stilled as shadows shifted below him in the woods along the edge of the road. Every muscle in his body tensed. More shadows moved silently through the trees. In the darkness he could discern a handful of men on horseback, all dressed from head to toe in black, and all wearing masks and tricornered hats. A spike of tension licked at the backs of his knees as electricity crackled in the air.

  A robbery was about to occur.

  His intuition about tonight had proved correct. As the riders stopped moving to blend themselves into the black shadows exactly as he had, he knew his old instincts were still sharp, his skills as an agent still valuable. And tonight he would be vindicated.

  As an approaching coach rumbled down the narrow road, a small man with a build not bigger than a boy rose up from the shadows at the bottom of the hill and waved his arm over his head. A large tree crashed down and blocked the road. The riders in the woods waited unseen in the darkness while two men on foot moved to crouch low in the bushes near the fallen tree, one on either side of the road.

  A moment later the carriage skidded to a stop. The driver drew up the reins and motioned to the two liveried tigers to jump down from their seats and remove the log. In the silence of the woods, Thomas heard the grumbles of the two men, followed by muscled grunts as they struggled to push the fallen tree to the side of the road.

  A shrill whistle tore through the night. The robbers jumped from the bushes to grab the two tigers and wrestle them to the ground as the riders swooped down from the trees, shouting and waving their pistols in the air. Thomas remained right where he was, unmoving, keenly watching it all unfold around him. Within seconds the driver and tigers were bound at the side of the road.

  The masked leader jumped down from his black horse. He threw open the carriage door, pointed a pistol inside, and held up a sack. A moment passed while the mounted men circled the coach and tonight’s selected passenger filled the bag. Then the highwayman closed the carriage door and swung easily up onto his horse. Another whistle followed, and the robbers scattered in all different directions while the highwayman galloped away into the woods.

  And Thomas set off after him.

  An expert rider familiar with the countryside, the highwayman charged through the black woods, while Thomas stayed carefully behind in the shadows, close enough not to lose sight of him yet far enough away to not be noticed. The highwayman slowed his horse to a loping canter and crossed into an open clearing beside a pond. Pulling up, Thomas watched as the man slowed his black horse to a trot and shoved the sack into a hollow tree as he passed, then spun the horse on its hindquarters with a rear and plunged back into the woods.

  Thomas followed cautiously, his senses alert to the shadows around him, his muscles tense. No one had been hurt in any of the previous robberies, but he would never risk his life unnecessarily. The highwayman carried at least one pistol, and Thomas couldn’t be certain that the man wasn’t riding to meet the rest of his gang or leading him straight into a trap.

  Tucked inside a small clearing in the woods, the black silhouette of a cottage emerged from the darkness of the trees. Thomas silently reined his horse to a stop and leaned forward in his saddle to watch as the highwayman trotted easily up to the tiny stone house, swung down from the saddle, and led the horse into a small lean-to stall attached to the building. Moments later the man left the stall and entered the cottage.

  Careful not to be seen or heard, Thomas slipped from his horse, tied it to a tree, and silently approached the cottage. Slowly he withdrew a pistol from beneath his coat, leaving the second one tucked in its holster. He hadn’t lied to Josie. Since the shooting he’d disliked guns, but he dreaded being vulnerable even more. And tonight he would take no unnecessary chances.

  The front door stood ajar, the faint light from a single candle slanting out into the darkness. As Thomas reached for the door, he considered sneaking around to the rear of the cottage to hunt for a back entry or open window, but from this vantage point, he could clearly see that the cottage wa
s shuttered tight, not even a hint of light shining through any cracks around the windows. The highwayman didn’t know he was there, which gave him the advantage, but if he started prying open shutters and picking locks, the noise would give him away. Coming in through the doorway was dangerous, but there was no other choice. If he waited for a better opportunity, the man might slip away, taking with him Thomas’s best chance at arresting him. No, better to come through the front door with the element of surprise than lose this opportunity by cowardly waiting.

  Standing carefully to the side, he slowly nudged open the door with his foot just far enough to slip through. He paused, listening carefully. No sounds, no rustle of movement—nothing. Keeping his back against the wall, he stepped further inside the cottage.

  “Stop where you are.” The click of a pistol broke the silence. “Or I’ll shoot.”

  For a beat he froze, frustration flooding through him for falling for such an easy trick. Damnation! Inwardly cursing himself and raising his hands slowly, he turned to face the end of a pistol.

  And the woman behind it.

  Josephine Carlisle stood across the room in the dim glow of the candle and pointed the pistol directly at his chest. Dressed in solid black from head to toe, she blended well into the shadows, the boy’s clothing covering her lithe figure from the oversized coat hiding her feminine curves right down to the boots on her feet. Her hair fell loose in a wild mass of chestnut curls around her slender shoulders, the tricornered hat tossed away to the floor, and from her left hand dangled a black mask.

  “You?” he murmured as he stared at her, unable to hide his disbelief. “Impossible.”

  For a moment she did nothing but stare back, as if just as stunned as he. Then, her voice husky with surprise, she answered, “Well, you’re the one who said I was a puzzle.” Despite the brave tone of her words, her hands trembled. “Puzzle solved, then.”

  “Not even close,” he muttered with a scowl, then angrily slammed the door closed with a shove of his hand.