Bones for Bread (The Scarlet Plumiere) (38 page)

He shook his head. “No going back to being Blair Balliol.”

Her heart sank again. “If ye wish to call me Scotia, do.” She shrugged. What did she care what he called her? The ring could not mean marriage, not to an earl. And if he was going to offer to keep her as his mistress, there would be little need for him to use her name at all, since she would refuse him. And if she refused him, she could not very well live down the road from him, watching him come and go, wondering if he were going to see some woman who’d taken the position she had not wanted.

Heaven help her, she couldn’t go home after all! At least not for long.

Stanley cleared his throat. “If I may—”

“You may not,” said Ash.

His friend snorted. “Miss Balliol, I believe what he is trying to say—”

“Get out, Stanley.” Ash knocked on the roof.

The carriage slowed. Stanley knocked on the roof, and it sped up again.

“I will not get out. It is raining. And the carriage is mine, old sock.”

“Then shut up.” Ash glared at the man.

“Then do it properly. I’ll be damned if I’ll—”

“Give me a moment,” Ash growled.

Stanley laughed and turned his attention out his own window.

Ash turned to her, his eyes still unreadable. The carriage interior was eerily blue and gray with shadow.

“This would be much easier if you were sitting on my lap,” he said.

“No.” She hoped he understood everything she was saying no to.

Ash huffed again. Stanley snorted, but got an elbow in his ribs for his trouble. It only made him snort louder.

Blair simply wished the carriage would stop so she could climb out.

“Marry me, Blair,” Ash said suddenly. “Be my Lady Ashmoore. Blair Merriweather. Not Scotia, not Blair Balliol. Take the bloody ring. Hold my hand tightly until I can purchase a proper one.”

He couldn’t possibly—

“Take the
bloody ring
?!” Stanley choked, then roared with laughter.

While Blair tried to convince herself she hadn’t just imagined a proposal of marriage, the men across from her began to wrestle. Finn’s ability to sleep through it all was nothing if not impressive. She wasn’t certain whose hand it was that got free and knocked on the wall, but the carriage slowed and she was grateful. Perhaps without the wheels spinning, she could think clearly and perhaps catch her breath.

Ash reached over and opened the carriage door before they came to a complete stop.

“Here now!” Stanley complained, but then started laughing—high-pitched and out of control. He was laughing so hard, in fact, he couldn’t defend himself when Ash pushed him toward the door. And with a foot to his backside, His Grace went flying.

Ash pulled the wee door closed and knocked again. The carriage sped on. Stanley’s laughter grew hysterical even as it faded.

The carriage rocked along. Finn’s breathing filled the air. Blair stared into the darkness where she believed Ash’s eyes to be.

“Come here,” he growled.

“Why?”

“So I might convince you.”

Blair was already convinced, but she was so curious, she stood and turned to take Stanley’s seat. But Ash pulled her onto his lap instead. She told herself she was simply too exhausted to fight him.

“Say yes,” he said, and kissed her neck.

She couldn’t say yes. Speech was impossible.

“Say yes,” he said again, kissed her neck again. It was hardly incentive to give in.

She laughed. “Is this the extent of yer powers of persuasion? To bid me, over and over, to say aye?”

“Blair, my love, I will do and say whatever it takes to sway you. I have waited a thousand years. I can wait an entire minute more.” He kissed her lips then. It might have been another thousand years before he paused. They might have been well south of London before his warm mouth released her. “Say yes.”

“I’m hardly the right woman for an English earl.”

“The perfect woman for me,” he whispered against her forehead. “The only woman for me.” He kissed her again. “And you owe me dearly. Marrying me will not cover your debt by half.”

She placed a hand on his glorious chest and pushed back from him.

“My debt?”

“Two years of torture, without you in my arms. Impossible to name a fitting price.”

She wanted to goad him further, to keep him talking, for the rumble of his voice against her hand was a bliss worth any price. Nearly worth her own two years of torture, and she told him so.

“Marry me, Blair. Be my bride forever more and I promise to never rest my tongue.”

She suspected he’d completely missed the point.

“Say yes,” he leaned forward and kissed her just below the collar bone. “I warn you, if you deny me, I shall simply purchase a stone tower and keep you anyway. Our children will grow up believing their father is an ogre.”

“A chatty ogre?”

“If you prefer.”

She laughed.

“Say yes, my precious Scotia. Cease my torment.” He bent to kiss her once more, but suddenly straightened. “Say yes, my love,” he ordered, “or I shall never kiss you again.”

“Oh. Well. You should have said so in the first place. I’d have agreed straight away.”

“Truly?”

“Aye,” she sighed. “Aye, aye, aye,” she said between kisses to his cheeks, eyes, and nose.

He laughed. “I only hope Stanley will forgive me. . .for not catching on much sooner.”

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

Blair woke in the chamber in which Stanley had locked her days before. When she was ready to leave the room, she found her brother lying across her threshold.

“Mornin’, sister mine,” he said cheerfully.

“High spirits with the sun still low, brother.”

“Oh, aye. Seems my choice of pallet didna sit well with yer betrothed, and for some reason, it makes me smile.”

She tried not to blush at the thought of Ash stalking about outside her door.

When she and Martin entered the dining room, her father rose to his feet, as did Ash, Stanley and Finn. She could not help but grow teary at the memory of the last time she and her family were all in the same room together, but she kissed each one on the cheek and blinked her eyes dry. When Stanley turned his head for a turn, Ash mumbled something about giving the man a chance to turn the other cheek as soon as breakfast was over. Stanley rolled his eyes, then gave her a wink instead of taking a kiss.

She stopped next to Ash. He frowned around the table and stooped to accept a kiss on the cheek. Then he gave her a look that promised he would need more later. She hoped they might run into each other in the larder. . .

“I was just pointing out to Ashmoore that it is down to Harcourt and me, and I refuse to be the last of the Four Kings to find a wife. And not any wife, mind you. I want a good one, like The Scarlet Plumiere or The Highland Reaper.”

Ash took a moment to explain to her family about The Scarlet Plumiere, the woman who Northwick recently married.

Stanley sighed heavily. “I don’t trust my own judgment anymore. Not after Irene Goodfellow.”

Blair looked to Ash for an explanation.

He obliged. “Irene was His Grace’s fiancée. Or rather, his former fiancée. She murdered Stanley’s mistress.”

“Murdered?”

Stanley nodded. “You see why I question my own taste in women?”

Blair smiled and looked at Ash. “If I were you, Stanley, I’d just keep tasting.”

Ash smiled in return—a smile that promised retribution for every time he’d imagined her tasting another man’s lips. He’d claimed that particular torture was what had turned two years into a thousand.

Oh, yes. She was going to pay.

Hopefully, for a good long time.

THE END

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Excerpt from BODY AND SOUL

The Scarlet Plumiere Series: Book 3

CHAPTER ONE

“I would very much like to murder your wife.” Stanley bowed to his friend manning the receiving line at the first rout he’d attended since returning to London.

“Your Grace. Good of you to come.” North bowed in return. “I would prefer you did not. Rather fond of her, you know.”

Stan took a step to the side, lifted Livvy’s hand, and kissed it. “Livvy,” he said through clenched teeth.

“Your Grace.” She grinned. “If you must murder me, would you mind waiting until tomorrow? This is my first role as hostess, and I would hate to bleed on my guests.”

Stan turned back to North. “You noticed. She denied nothing.”

North laughed. “Livvy is not the only one who knows how to place notices in the
Journal.
Anyone could have announced you were in the market...” North looked quickly about him, then leaned forward. “…to be in the market, so to speak.”

Stan glared at the still-grinning love of North’s life. “No one else was aware,” he growled.

Livvy laughed and covered her mouth with gloved fingers. “Stanley, please. It was simple retribution for not locking Ashmoore in stocks until we could get to Scotland. Surely you knew how North would feel for missing Ash’s wedding.” She began giggling. “I had no idea you would become a prisoner in your own home.”

Her laughing got the best of her and she was forced to bury her face against Northwick’s chest to keep from drawing more attention. No doubt the entire population of London in full Season had heard of him having to don a disguise to escape his own home. A certain Lady Abernathy had set no less than three men to the task of stalking an eligible duke’s every move in order to drop her daughter in his path at each turn. The fact that it had taken a woman’s disguise to fool the stalkers was a detail he hoped to keep to himself. Considering Livvy’s hysterics, it seemed that detail was a secret no more. At least it had not been included in the
Journal
gossip.