Escape with A Rogue (18 page)

“You wouldn’t have thought it, if you’ve never been betrayed—”

“Oh, rubbish,” she cried. “I’m not so different from you. You seem to think I live in a different world because of my title. I’ve been betrayed over and over. Servants do steal, you know. Merchants will cheat you if they can. I know that someone can murder two innocent young women. And I know the man I trusted most, my grandfather, could lie to me. I think I know a little about betrayal. Still, I was so wretchedly
stupid
.”

He embraced her. “Stop it, Lady M. Tell me what the third man said.”

“I didn’t hear the words, just his voice. That was how I knew there was someone else. Both Beausoleil and Simon spoke to him, then he muttered something in return.”

“What was his tone? Friendly or threatening?”

“I couldn’t even tell you that, Jack.”

Who was the man who’d found them? If it had been a guard, why had Beau and Simon gone off alone with him?

“What are we going to do without Beausoleil to guide us?” Her eyes were huge and frightened. “Do we go back to the Lych Way?”

“It will take us out to one of the roads eventually, where we’ll be exposed.”

“But the other alternative is the bogs.”

“For now, my lady, we’ll sleep. Then decide.”

“We cannot possibly try to get across the bog. I am beginning to fear . . . I never thought we could actually fail, Jack.”

He kissed the top of her head. “We won’t, Lady M.”

She sagged against him. Unconvinced, he guessed, so he tipped up her chin, intending to look into her eyes with smooth reassurances. But Lady M., vulnerable and uncertain, was more temptation than any ordinary man could bear. He tightened his grip on her waist.

Travers, you blinking idiot, this is what happened before in her cottage.

His mouth was on hers, lips parted and hard, and she kissed him back. Next thing he knew, her hands gripped his arse, and she pulled him so tight against her, he almost exploded in his trousers.

They stopped for frantic breaths and he saw the same bewilderment in her eyes for one moment before the craving for her mouth—for her—overtook him. A hand on her rounded rump, one at the small of her back, and he scooped her into his arms.

She was beautiful—womanly, passionate, proud, strong. An earl’s daughter. The
haute vollée
. A woman like no other he had ever known before. And it wasn’t his lust-addled mind convincing him that her fevered breaths and hungry kisses meant she wanted him.

He lowered her to the stone plinth and he saw sudden surprise come into her eyes as she lay on the rough surface. “Are you certain about this?”

Her tongue ran over her lips. “I—I don’t know.”

Her vulnerability went to his heart, and he lifted her hand to put it to his lips. His blood thundered in his head, and desire and need were squeezing the life out of him. If he didn’t take her, he was going to explode. But he forced himself to ask, “Why haven’t you married?”

Jack knew what he was asking: permission to take her.

Madeline stiffened as the stone brushed against her low back—her trousers had dipped perilously off her hips, and she sat up. She’d thought he would sweep her into passion. She’d never thought he would stop and wait for her answer.

“After Grace and Sarah’s deaths, I realized I couldn’t trust myself to choose a husband.” She could see he didn’t understand. “I could never believe you were guilty so I feared I was no judge of men. Now that I know you’re innocent, I can’t tell which of the other men it could be. How can I marry a man, when I can’t judge what one is capable of?”

He leaned forward and his lips lightly touched hers. Just that soft caress made her ache with need. “The truth is,” she whispered, “I wanted to find a man who made me feel as you did—comfortable enough to speak of my dreams. I never found one.”

His hands skimmed up her arms. Heat followed—glorious heat and desire. She reached for his shirt, knowing the madness of this, but not caring. With his hands over hers, he stopped her. Shook his head. Then straddled the bench and tugged her loose trousers down off her hips.

The speed of it stunned her. As her drawers came into view, she felt impossibly tight all over. Would he kiss her again? Touch her breasts? Or touch her between her legs, where she ached madly?

He dropped her trousers, slid her underclothes to her thighs, and her skin was bared to the cool moor air. Goosebumps washed over her. Laid flat, she could see him lowering his lips toward her belly, tugging her small clothes even lower as he did.

She squirmed on the bench, cool on the outside, but burning within. She touched his shoulders, savoring their straight, strong shape. And stroked his biceps, following the curve through his sleeves. Touching his body was thrilling and she never wanted to stop.

Was this what her mother had felt? This mad need? This almost destructive desire she couldn’t control? “Please—” She stopped because she wanted, wanted, wanted to have him touch her between her legs where she ached so much, and fill her, and take her, but she was scared witless, too.

“Lie back,” Jack murmured. She did and he slid her drawers off her, exposing her completely, at the exact moment he flicked his tongue in her navel.

“Erk.”

His lips curved in a smile at her foolish cry—not a rakish grin but a gentle smile that told her he knew exactly what she was feeling. He circled her navel with kisses and each one set a tiny fire in her blood.

She wasn’t going to marry, which meant this wasn’t her mother’s mistake—infidelity with an inappropriate man. “Take
your
trousers off,” she breathed, as coolly as she could. She could not believe she’d actually dared say it. She, who had always been so restrained that gentlemen gossiped she was frigid.

“Not yet, siren.” Jack kissed her belly again, lower.

She clamped her hands over her chest—she couldn’t quite relax. His mouth on her—licking, nibbling, teasing—made her languorous and tense at the same time.

He kept moving down her belly, laving her skin with his tongue.

If he did not stop, he would touch her pubic hair.

She propped her elbows on the plinth so she could lean up to watch. Slivers of moonlight painted him in silver and shadow—all dark stubble, dimples, and harsh lines. His lashes were lowered, two slashes of black. He looked dangerous. Deliciously so.

He ran his tongue through her nether curls and she squeaked in shock. He didn’t stop. No, he tugged a few curls with his teeth and made her moan. She could smell her most intimate scents, and his mouth was moving down to her most private place . . .

“Really, Jack,” she gasped, “You don’t want—”

He licked her nether lips. His arms curled around her thighs and her legs hung limply off the stone bed. What was he thinking? She smelled so earthy and salty and ripe, what would she taste like?

She had to close her eyes. Out of shock and out of the sheer astonishing sensation of it. His tongue went everywhere—

Even inside her, just a little, just enough to make her gasp in complete surprise.

He stopped, then murmured in a teasing tone, “Relax and enjoy, my dear.”

Then his tongue slicked over a place that made her scream. Her cry echoed in the small stone hut and she clamped her hand to her mouth.

Warm, moist, his tongue made circles in the same place. Her head grew dizzy, her body went weak. She felt like she would when lying on the grass on a hot summer’s day, except it seemed as if she had lifted off the ground and floated in the air. Each caress of his tongue wound her tighter. Her fingers were clenching, her toes curled.

He flicked faster. She arched up and clamped her hands to her breasts.

She was coming apart. Flying to pieces. “God . . . oh, God,” she cried, saying things she never should. “Yes, yes. Oh, more. More. Oh . . . oh, erk!”

Pleasure exploded inside her and her muscles went mad all at once, and so much pleasure swamped her brain that she cried his name, and thrashed and wailed—

And fell off the bench.

Jack scooped her up and held her to him. He cradled her as though she’d been badly hurt. If she’d had enough strength, she’d have danced pirouettes in the hut. Jack tugged up her trousers while nuzzling her neck. Then, gently, he laid her back on the plinth.

Surrounded by silvery-blue moonlight, he smiled down at her.

Wantonly, Madeline reached up and grasped his waistband where it rode low on his hipbones, and tugged at his trousers.

“Enough.” Jack pulled Lady M.’s hands away from his clothing, clasped them in his.

It was like the world was conspiring to make him do the unthinkable. Moonlight streamed down on her, turning her hair to a fairy-spun mixture of silver and gold. She looked like an ethereal goddess. She was offering herself to him because she was scared and he was someone for her to hang on to. Afterward, she’d come to her senses and regret it.

She did not belong here, lost on the moors, facing danger. No matter how stubborn she’d been, how willfully determined to help him, he was to blame for it.

“You’d regret it, Lady M. You’re not thinking sense. I wanted to give you pleasure, but I won’t be the man to take your innocence.”

She sat up. “You saved my life, Jack. The men who chased us at my cottage would have willingly slit my throat. You’ve done nothing to me but try to protect me. I understand why you came to live on my father’s estate. You’d walked away from your life of crime. You’d already made the choice of redemption.”

“I don’t believe in redemption, my lady. I’ve never believed a man should escape his mortal sins.”

“That can’t be true,” she cried. “You walked away from that life for a reason—and I believe it was more than just grief. You
wanted
to escape.”

“You know nothing about me, my lady. There are so many things I’ve done—”

“Tell me about them. Let me judge for myself, Jack.”

She looked so wounded, he despised himself. “I don’t want to be judged by you, Lady M. I’ve destroyed more people than I can count. I don’t want to hurt you.”

She stood up from the stone bed, obviously determined to push and press and command, to make him explain what he’d just said.

“Accept what I say, goddamn it, and leave me alone.” He stalked away from her, pausing when he ducked beneath the door lintel. “Even if you want me, Lady M., there can be no way you’d want a bastard child of mine. I can always walk away from a child—you can’t.” He heard her startled gasp and ruthlessly continued. “Your life would be destroyed.”

He stepped out into the dark. Tonight, he was to have an uncomfortable night outside.

Chapter Eleven

Her clothes stuck to her back, her scalp was gritty, her curls matted snarls. The sun shone gloriously at this moment, bringing heat after the coolness of the raw night, but gray clouds promised more turbulent weather. The hills shimmered with green grasses, pink-flowering heather, and light purple blossoms. Curlews filled the air with their calls of
coor-li
.

Madeline followed Jack on the path. They were descending from yet another hill, possibly the twentieth one they’d climbed today. The grass grew squishy beneath her feet. She was tired of fighting her way through bracken and stumbling over rocks. Tired of walking.

Walking to nowhere.

Just as she was proceeding nowhere with Jack. She tried to believe in him and he pushed her away. His harsh words about a bastard child had driven right into her heart. Fine, then. He’d won. She would not care what his past had been, would not care that he seemed to be a noble man, and would not try to understand what he’d done that haunted him.

She sighed. Yes, she would—because it had been her family’s lies that had stolen his chance at redemption. She would continue to care about him, whether he liked it or not.

“How are you faring, Lady M.?”

“Fine,” she answered brusquely. “I do not need to rest.”

“You’re an admirable woman,” he declared, with a light-hearted wink she fought to ignore. He turned, his shoulders tense at her obvious rejection, and he strode along.

What did he expect? He wanted her to hate him but it wounded him when she did, and she hated to wound. Bother the man.

“I’m not,” Madeline said. “My legs and shoulders ache, my head feels like it will explode from the heat, and I have no blasted idea where I am.” Her emotions felt like boiling soup about to erupt from the pot. “But I’ve asked for everything I’ve gotten, haven’t I?”

Jack turned and took her hand.

“Hell, no.” He struggled to think of something to say, when he heard a low bark, then the baying of several hounds. They must have followed his scent.

Color drained from Lady M.’s face. “They’ve brought dogs again. We can’t stay on the path.”

She was right, and he looked out over the long, waving grass that stretched in each direction off the track. The long grass meant the ponies and sheep didn’t trust the ground. He swallowed hard. He couldn’t even risk giving himself up and pretending Lady M. had been his hostage, not after the attack outside her cottage. He couldn’t be sure she would be safe.

“Off the path.” He pulled her to follow. They raced downhill, weaving between rocks, but running hand in hand proved awkward. He stumbled on a rock hidden by the mossy ground. She tried to pull him up, but she slipped, then clutched her ankle. Hating himself, he got up, jerked her to her feet, and dragged her along with him.

His boots sank suddenly and the ground sucked at him when he tried to pull his feet free. They were plunging into marsh.

Their footprints would be obvious on the wet ground, but he had to pray the men with the dogs would have more sense than to follow them. Their pursuers might just assume they would perish in the bog.

He had to make sure they
didn’t
perish.

“My boot’s almost come off.” Lady Madeline stopped suddenly, and he pulled hard on her arm to drag her free. Black mud hung heavily from her boot and she stamped her foot to knock it off. A great black shadow fell upon them, and rain pelted down.

Lady M.’s face went whiter, and her eyes looked stark and hopeless. “This is a rotten, stupid plan, Jack.”