Regency High Society Vol 2: Sparhawk's Lady / The Earl's Intended Wife / Lord Calthorpe's Promise / The Society Catch. Miranda Jarrett

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СКАЧАТЬ supposed, her savior, but she hadn’t counted on being saved quite this way, and she’d certainly no intention of throwing herself into his arms the way the heroines did in operas and plays.

      “Has Stanhope hurt you, lass?” He was breathing hard, his face shiny with sweat, and she wondered what he’d had to do to reach her. She had no experience with men as purely physical as this one, but she’d guess that Captain Sparhawk could leave a whole trail of bodies behind him. “Has he used you ill?”

      “Oh no, not like that!” She was glad that in the gray moonlight through the window he couldn’t see how she blushed. He might not have meant ‘like that’ at all; it was only her thoughts that ran that way. “That is, I am well enough.”

      He rubbed his sleeve across his forehead, his gaze sweeping around the tiny room. “Damnation, didn’t he even give you a candlestick?”

      She shook her head. “George probably believed I’d try to burn his house down.”

      “Then let’s shove off before that damned footman I had to cosh wakes. Come on, lass, hurry!”

      “Have you lost your wits?” She stared at him indignantly. “I can’t possibly go with you! Can you imagine what George would think?”

      “I can’t, and I don’t care.”

      “Well, perhaps you just should. Do you think George has forgotten that you were the highwayman who robbed him the other night? He’s already filed a complaint against you, and I shouldn’t wonder if they’re printing broadsides with your description even now. Of course this footman you so elegantly—what was the word?—coshed will say it was the same man who came here and kidnapped me, and you’ll find yourself at the hangman’s tree so fast you’ll wonder how it happened.”

      Now it was his turn to stare at her. “That’s the greatest pack of claptrap I’ve ever heard! You were the one who forced me into that nonsense about being a highwayman, and it was Stanhope, not me, who kidnapped You in the first place! No court in the world could make any of that stick!”

      “Not in the world, no,” she admitted, “but here in Hampshire George has enough friends that he probably could bring it to pass. I really wouldn’t want you hung on my account.”

      “And neither, ma’am, would I.” He held his hand out to her, more a command than an invitation. “So let’s clear off while we can.”

      Still she hesitated. True, she’d sought the man’s help for Frederick’s sake, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to be indebted to him for her own, as well. “I’ve made great progress with that Mrs. Warren, you know. I think she’d be willing to let me escape some morning if I paid her enough. George isn’t the only one who can bribe servants.”

      Jeremiah swore. “Will you come, or do I have to carry you?”

      “That won’t be necessary.” She lifted her chin and swept past him, the coverlet dragging behind her like a train.

      “Damnation, I forgot you hadn’t any clothes!”

      She let the coverlet slip a bit, and grinned over her bare shoulder. “George has them somewhere, and I don’t think he’d return them now if we asked.”

      “We’ll deal with it later,” he said. “Now hurry!”

      She skipped along ahead of him, her bare feet silent on the stairs. With her hair loose and tousled around her shoulders, she looked like what she was, a woman roused from her bed, and in spite of everything else, Jeremiah couldn’t forget it as he followed close behind.

      Close enough that he could smell her fragrance, close enough that he could see the soft curves of her body through the coverlet—God help him, was she naked beneath it?—close enough to remind him all too well of how sweet she’d been to kiss.…

      Blast, did she mean to be so teasing, or was it just another of her unending games? She’d made it clear enough that she loved her husband, and Jeremiah would respect that, not wishing to poach on another man’s well-staked territory. He never had before. But still Caro seemed determined to play the coquette with him, even now, when he should have been concentrating on getting her safely from this house. Any other woman would have been terrified, clinging to him from sheer gratitude, but she was treating the whole business like a lark. Telling him he’d be dancing on a rope’s end for kidnapping her! His sister was right: the sooner he disentangled himself from Lady Byfield’s affairs, the better.

      And then at the bottom of the steps to the street, she turned up and smiled at him, a smile so breathtakingly art less in the moonlight that he nearly forgot all his intentions and kissed her. “You did it, Captain Sparhawk, didn’t you? Rescued me from the dragon’s lair like some poor fair damsel?”

      “Not quite. The dragon could still wake and eat you up.” He grabbed her by her elbow and hustled her across the street to the little park. She seemed shorter somehow, and then he remembered her bare feet. “Oh, hell, you can’t walk, can you?”

      “Of course I can walk. I’m a countess, not a ninny. I’ve told you before I rather like doing without shoes.” She looked around the trees, her curiosity as frank as a child’s. “How far is your carriage?”

      “There isn’t any damned carriage.” His frustration growing, he uncocked the pistol and shoved it back into his belt. “Hired carriages are easy to trace. I’d thought we’d walk down near the waterfront and hire a chaise there to take you to your friends.”

      “Then I suppose we should begin walking, shouldn’t we?” She hiked the coverlet higher over her shoulders and began striding resolutely off in the wrong direction. He caught her by the arm and turned her around, and she laughed merrily at her own mistake.

      “Hush now, lass,” he said uneasily. “Won’t do to call attention to ourselves.”

      She clapped her hand over her mouth, then lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Forgive me, Captain. I forgot that strolling along Queen’s Court in my shift at midnight isn’t enough to get me—even me—noticed.”

      “We’ll find you some clothes soon enough.” Damnation, why had she had to tell him that? She was as good as naked beside him, and he felt his own body responding with alarming interest. “Now tell me the names of your friends here in town I could take you to.”

      Her head bowed, she didn’t answer at first. “There aren’t any.”

      “All right then, in the countryside,” he said, exasperated by her pickiness. “I forget you fashionable gentry don’t believe in living in towns.”

      “No, that’s not it.” Her voice was so soft that he had to strain to hear it. “I meant that I don’t have any friends. Before Frederick married me, none of his friends’ wives would receive me, and afterward Frederick decided we wouldn’t receive them. So you see we’ve always kept to ourselves at Blackstone House, and that’s always been enough. Until now, anyway.”

      “Then there must be a someone else. An aunt or uncle, or some business acquaintance of your husband’s?”

      “Only George on Frederick’s side.” She smiled bitterly. Once she would have turned to Mr. Perkins, but now she didn’t trust George not to have poisoned the lawyer against her, too, just as he had her own servants. She’d always suspected how little they’d СКАЧАТЬ