“Yes, Your Grace?”
Philip maneuvered her until she stood between them. “Be a good fellow and hold on to her for a moment, would you? Don’t let her escape.”
“Er, yes, Your Grace.” Denby settled his thick, ring-laden fingers on her shoulders.
“What is the meaning of this?” she demanded, twisting in his grip, her eyes furious, darkening from sapphire to the dusky haze of twilight.
Philip ignored her struggles. He drew her arms together with one hand and draped his cravat over her wrists with the other. Then, quickly so she didn’t have a chance to resist, he knotted the material and gave it a tug.
Perfect.
“Very good. You may release her now, Lord Denby.”
“What are you doing, Philip? This is ridiculous. Untie me at once!”
It had been a very long time since she had said his name. Even though it fell like a curse from her lips, it was good to hear it all the same.
Philip grasped her upper arm again and looked around the room. Trollops and whores, rakes and scoundrels gaped at him, openmouthed. He nodded to them, ever aware of the sinuous heat seeping from her skin—a twisting, vagrant fire now burning past his gloves to the flesh of his palm.
The woman tried to jerk away, but Philip held her tightly. He would never let her go again. “Release me, you arrogant son of a—”
Philip clapped his hand over her mouth. With a shake of his head, he withdrew a linen kerchief from his pocket. “I had hoped this wouldn’t be necessary, but you force my hand, dearest.”
She tried to sink her teeth into the flesh of his palm, but fortunately he withdrew it in time. He was certain she’d meant to draw blood. While she sputtered more curses, he proceeded to wrap the cloth around her head, careful only to muffle and not gag her. He tied it at the back of her head, his fingers lingering on the silken tresses of her upswept hair. The sable locks gleamed beneath the dim, smoky lights, tempting his restraint, provoking memories of a time when his hands had tangled freely in her hair. When she had sought his touch, his embrace—
Philip wasn’t fast enough to block her kick, her foot connecting painfully with his lower shin.
He crushed her against him, her back to his front, his hands clasped together beneath the delicious swell of her breasts. He tried to move her toward the door, but she hung like a dead weight in his arms. Only when he dragged her did she begin to writhe against him, her body pitching against his.
His audience had apparently recovered from their stupor, for their voices rose in a fevered crescendo as he neared the exit. But the noise was only an indistinct rumble in the background as he focused on her attempts at freedom.
Her elbow managed a sharp blow to his ribs. Philip grunted, then hoisted her over his shoulder and carried her out the door. Her gag was loose enough that her curses brutalized his ears, but Philip continued on with grim determination. She struck his back with her bound fists at every step, but he didn’t stop until he stood in front of his carriage.
The groom opened the door.
“Here we are.”
She shrieked as he dragged her down and shoved her headfirst through the entrance, his hands helping as they pushed against her bottom.
“Damn you, Philip!”
He climbed in after her, careful to avoid stepping on her skirts or any scattered appendages. Leaning down, he grabbed her by the elbows and assisted her to a seated position.
The door closed, the carriage shifting as the coachman and groom took their places. The sharp crack of the whip rent the air, and they were off.
Philip allowed a brief sigh of victory.
He’d done it. He had kidnapped his wife.
Chapter 2
C
harlotte took a deep breath, but it did nothing to stop her fists from shaking or her knuckles from knocking together in her lap. He had bound her. She inhaled the masculine scent of his handkerchief, draped loosely across her mouth. He had bound
and
gagged her.
“I hate you, you know,” she mumbled, the angry thrum of her blood beating a furious tattoo in her temple. After three years of almost completely ignoring her, tonight he had intentionally and ruthlessly humiliated her.
“Yes, I know. You are always so accommodating as to remind me, lest I forget.”
Charlotte considered him carefully. His response was uttered in the same stiff, mocking tone he always adopted with her. Despite this, she could come to only one conclusion: the man sitting across from her was not her husband, the Duke of Rutherford. He was a stranger.
For one, her husband made it a habit to never seek her out. If not for the despicable habit he’d acquired in the past few months of escorting her to the theater or the opera, Charlotte doubted he ever thought about her existence.
He certainly didn’t care how much she disliked—no, absolutely
loathed
—the theater and the opera.
But secondly—and most importantly—her husband hated scandals, and especially the people who created them. This, of course, was the primary reason she made her own actions as shocking and outrageous as possible.
It was why she’d become a whore, refusing to relinquish the hope that she would one day break him . . . Only she’d never thought he would abduct her and make a scandal of them both.
As he leaned forward to peer out the curtained window, Charlotte studied his profile. Despite his uncharacteristic display, he did not appear any different externally.
He looked as cold as ever, more marble than man. The carved line of his jaw, the firm sculpture of his mouth—not even a strand of black hair dared to stray from its place.
The violent sway of the carriage as the coachman urged the horses faster and faster did not seem to unnerve him. She, on the other hand, was close to lurching forward into the chasm of space between them.
He turned to face her, and she started with the realization that she’d been staring at him for quite a while. And he must have known she was; Philip somehow always seemed to know everything.
“Shall I remove the handkerchief?”
His polite tone and small smile made Charlotte narrow her eyes in suspicion.
She knew this tilt of his lips at five degrees indicated humor, whereas an exaggeration at forty degrees revealed his condescension and indulgence. Over the past three years she had become rather adept at reading his every expression, picking apart his every utterance to find the meaning behind the screen of words.
And it was important to distinguish the two lip movements, if for no other reason than that he very rarely allowed any trace of genuine emotion to escape through his carefully guarded stoicism. She had witnessed his ducal mask slip on only two other occasions, and both times something had gone dismally awry.
Shifting uneasily in her seat, she attempted to decipher the devious thought which had provoked that singularly frightful curve of his lips. He could be smiling simply because he was pleased with himself—the ass—or because he enjoyed the sight of her all trussed and trundled up like a Christmas Day goose. Or, she reflected hopefully, he could be smiling because he was considering sending her to another country, after which he could go about finding a new wife, a better wife. She would like to go to another country, far away from him, where memories could not taint each day.
“Ah, yes.” His slight smile disappeared, his lips folding into a neat, tightly formed line. “I had forgotten for a moment that I am the spawn of Satan. Of course you don’t wish to speak with me.”
“There’s nothing to say that hasn’t already been said between us. Or are you at last willing to petition for a divorce?” Her words were muffled as the linen cloth rubbed over her lips, but she could tell by the way he stared at her, his gaze unreadable, that he understood the words. She was well accustomed to his lack of expression, this defense of his.
It always made her want to shake him until a shadow of humanity slipped through his facade—anything but this emotionless detachment. However, since he had tied her hands together so cleverly with his cravat, she could only swallow her exasperation.
She hated dukes, the whole stupid, stubborn lot of them, but Philip in particular.
The carriage veered around a corner too sharply, sending Charlotte tumbling forward. She screamed, certain that her head was going to catch her fall before she could maneuver her elbows beneath her.
And then she cursed, because rather than either her head or her elbows hitting the floor, her husband caught her.
His hands steadied her shoulders, his breath fanning over her hair. Charlotte looked up. “Why is Fitzjames driving so bloody fast?”
In the pale moonlight streaming through the window, she could see his silver eyes flicker. Charlotte lifted a defiant brow. Along with her flirtations and coquetry, she had refined her rather spectacular flair for profanity.
Take that, your dukeliness.
But Philip only drew her up to sit beside him, his thigh uncomfortably close to hers. Charlotte sucked in a breath when he reached behind her head and untied his handkerchief. Then he leaned back to sit as straight and rigid as before while he tucked the linen cloth into his pocket.
“There. Now you may chatter away as you like.”
“Sod off.”
“Very clever, my dear. Your improvement of mind and vocabulary is impressive, as always.”
Charlotte scowled. She hated when he used that particular condescending tone. Though she tried, she could never quite match it. Instead she settled for shoving her shoulder against him. “At least move over, then.” His nearness was vastly annoying; the heat radiating from his body made her all too aware of him. It had taken her a long time to convince herself she was no longer attracted to him, and she wasn’t willing to give up her hard-won indifference so easily.
Of course, she could have clambered to the other seat, but she didn’t want to face backward. If Philip insisted on being rude and not giving her the forward-facing seat, then he would just have to share it.
But at a distance.
He swiveled his head and looked down his nose at her with those silver moonlight eyes that made her think of angels and demons and soft, quiet rain. “You might discover that if you exercise your manners and ask nicely, I will accede to your wish without the use of physical force.”
Charlotte leaned away, her fingers curling into her palms. “Would you mind terribly, Your Grace, if you scooted your ass over a few inches? Perhaps a foot?” Tilting her head, she batted her eyelashes at him.
His lips quirked to a ten-degree angle. Egad, the man was practically grinning.
“Very nice attempt, sweetheart. But you forgot to say please.”
She bared her teeth. “Very well.
Please
move your rotten, snobbish, narcissistic ass over to the other side.”
He regarded her for a long, silent moment, then: “Perhaps I shouldn’t have removed the kerchief after all.”
Really, it was too much. Charlotte lunged at him.
Philip almost laughed. Almost. But he was too busy defending himself from the hellion who rammed her bound fists at his ribs to give in to the urge.
It was incredible. He hadn’t felt this alive in . . . well, since before they had married, when he was still courting her, wooing her, trying to seduce her.
He winced as her elbow caught his midsection, her body twisting and contorting in curious ways while she attempted to do him injury.
Philip wrapped one arm around her waist and the other around her chest. Amazingly, she had somehow come to be sitting on his lap.
Perhaps not sitting, exactly. Sprawled would be a much more accurate description: her head laid against his shoulder, tipped back so she could glare at him; her legs were parted over his knee, her slippered feet scrambling to find some way to propel herself out of his hold.
He knew he should let her go. He knew she hated being restrained, hated being controlled. But her body was soft, and the light scent of jasmine rose to his nostrils. She was everything he’d never known he’d wanted, and she was in his arms.
“Philip?”
His gullible heart leaped. If he hadn’t known better, he would have thought by the way she said his name—breathy, with a touch of adoration, as if he were the only man in her world—that she actually enjoyed his embrace.
But he did know better. Philip subdued his recalcitrant heart. “Yes?”
“If you do not release me at once, I vow that at the first opportunity I shall incapacitate you, and any hope you have of ever reproducing will be lost.”
Philip carefully set her away from him. “I had forgotten how charming and pleasant you can be.”
“Only with you, dear husband. Only with you.” She thrust out her arms. “You may untie my wrists as well.”
“I don’t suppose you would say please.”
“I don’t suppose you really care that much for a son.”