It Begins with a Kiss (4 page)

“She is not.” But he needed to be alone with Fiona to tell her why.

“What do you mean to do, Alex?” Pip interrupted, bristling with impatience.

He assessed the three young women before him. “I understand that Miss Tregallan is heading home to be married?”

Sarah Tregallan, a slim, brown hen of a girl with not much other than sparkling brown eyes to recommend her, nodded. “I am. I was about to see Fiona to a northbound coach before going home to Lyme Regis.”

“Then I will offer my felicitations and see you on your way.” Giving her a quick bow, he turned back to the others. “And then I’m taking you two back to school.”

He’d expected anger. He’d hoped for a full-blown explosion. He wasn’t disappointed. All three girls crowded in on him, yelling and gesticulating. Fiona was saying something about her sister, and Sarah something about rights and responsibilities. Pip, tears in her eyes, leveled the worst accusation.

“I was wrong,” she said, her eyes huge with disillusionment. “I was so sure you’d help.”

“I
am
helping, Pip.”

She shook her head. “They’ll starve her this time,” she accused, grabbing his arm as if she could physically prevent him from carrying out his plan. “They’ll whip her till she bleeds.”

“No they won’t.”

Pip shoved him away. “Oh, what do you know? Today is the first time you’ve even been to Miss Chase’s. How could you possibly know what happens there?”

“I told you, Pip. If there have been abuses, they will stop today. I will see to it. But you two are going back there if I have to bind and gag you both to get you there.”

Unable to face the betrayal in his little sister’s eyes, Alex stepped away and divested himself of his greatcoat. “Now, I don’t know about you,” he said, tossing it over a chair, “but I’m famished. I’ve asked the publican to serve us breakfast. It will give you three a bit more time to say good-bye.”

Turning away from them, he called Bart over and gave him brief, murmured instructions. Bart, a wizened ex-jockey with a questionable taste in waistcoats and a wicked left hook, cast a quick, grinning glance at the girls and nodded.

Now, if the girls would only cooperate.

“We need to freshen up,” Pip declared, as if she were demanding a fresh dress to wear to the guillotine.

Alex walked over and opened the door. “A room is available with everything you need.”

As the girls swept out, a maid entered carrying a tray with coffee and ale. Alex smiled at the buxom blond. Retrieving his mug, he sank onto the settle by the fire. He might as well rest while he could. If things worked out the way he needed them to, he would soon be very busy.

Fiona didn’t know what to do. She had escaped out the back window, just as they had planned, and run for the road. Not the Pangbourne Road north, which Pip’s brother would have anticipated, but southwest along the Bath Road. Carefully skirting the road to prevent discovery, she meant to meet Sarah at Beenham.

And it had been working very well. She’d been walking for about an hour, she thought, maintaining a course through the copses of trees that peppered the high ground to the north of the road, where Pip’s brother hopefully wouldn’t find her.

It couldn’t be much farther to Beenham, surely. She could swear she saw a square church tower through the trees. She felt her spirits begin to rise as she thought that maybe, just maybe, she would get to Edinburgh after all.

And then she made her mistake. Through the trees to the right, she again caught sight of the church tower. This time, though, she realized that no more than a pasture separated her from the village and its pub, where she could sit in the shade and wait for Sarah. A pasture had to be far easier to cross than all the undergrowth in these woods.

Backtracking a bit, she checked to see that the road behind her was still empty. It was the perfect time to make a dash through open ground. All she had to do was get past the hedgerow.

She hadn’t taken into account the fact that she’d never really spent any time on a farm. Actually, she hadn’t spent any time out of a city. She could navigate markets, docks, slums, and cemeteries. She had no idea how to withstand brambles. Halfway along the hedgerow, she saw a stile. Easy, she thought. A few steps up, a quick hop, and a drop onto the soft sponge of grass. She could see the church more clearly now, and it beckoned. The sky was beginning to thicken, presaging rain, and the wind had gone cold. She needed to hurry. So she did. And ended caught by her hair in the bramble bush that bordered the stile when she lost her balance on a step.

She would not cry, she thought ten minutes later as she stared down at the bonnet that had inexplicably come loose during her struggles and now lay out of reach on the ground. She would
not
. She’d survived worse. She was in a tight spot, though. She was caught hard, her dress torn and her hair too entangled to free. Blood seeped from a dozen scratches on her scalp and more on her hands from trying to get loose. She could feel the minutes creep inexorably by, each one bringing the Honorable Mr. Knight closer. She was losing her chance to reach Mairead.

“All in all,” she heard behind her, “a valiant attempt.”

Her heart dropping in her chest, Fiona squeezed her eyes shut. There could be no mistaking that amused drawl. Mr. Knight had found her. Mr. Knight, who would keep her from Mairead.

If only it could have been someone else who’d found her. A grizzled shepherd who smelled of lanolin and sweat. A pale, too-thin curate who clucked in disapproval. She could have handled either. But she felt completely inadequate around Pip’s brother. He was too elegantly masculine. Too beautiful. He frightened her.

There was a scraping noise and then Alex Knight leapt into the pasture before her, his greatcoat gently flapping behind him, his tall beaver hat set securely atop his thick, waving mahogany hair.

“You seem to have run afoul of the landscape, Miss Ferguson.”

“You seem to have mastered a grasp of the obvious, Mr. Knight.”

She flinched, clamping her mouth shut. She should know better. At best he would cut her with that quick tongue of his. At worst… well, she’d survived worst. What was one caning more in her life?

Amazingly, he chuckled. “I do respect a fox that pokes his nose out of his den to taunt the dogs,” he murmured. Stepping right up to her, he leaned over to assess her gnarled hair. “You don’t do things by half-measures, do you?”

She meant to set him in his place. But when she drew breath, she caught the scent of him: sandalwood, soap, and horse. A man scent, which had been conspicuously absent from her life since she’d been abandoned to the Last Chance Academy. It confused her, made her uncertain and anxious. It made her want to take a deep breath, like she did around roses and the sea; it set up an odd urgency that skittered across her skin like a warm shower.

“No matter how we go about this,” he said, snapping her back to attention, “it’s going to hurt. You’re not going to cry on me, are you?”

She stiffened before it occurred to her that umbrage was just what he wanted from her. Anything but tears. Truth be told, she did feel oddly teary, but she didn’t know why. She just knew that it was Pip’s brother who was causing it.

“Oh no,” she assured him, swallowing the ache of helplessness. “I have far different ideas about what I want to do.”

He grinned, and a pair of roguish dimples peeked out. “Are lips involved?”

He’s trying to distract me, Fiona thought. It worked. She was beset again by the oddest shiver, which seemed to resonate with his voice. From her scalp to her toes, her body suddenly felt impatient, sensitive. Something built in her chest that hurt almost as badly as the scrapes on her scalp. It made her breathless. Oddly upended.

So she smiled. “No,” she said thoughtfully. “No lips. I was thinking more of knees and fingernails.”

His chuckle was earthy and compelling. “Do you want me to get you out or not?”

Fiona wished he had never mentioned crying. She hadn’t wept since the day she’d sent Mairead back home, but suddenly her throat burned.

In that moment she understood why animals chewed off their legs to get free. Suddenly she couldn’t bear being trapped another minute. Certainly not this close to Mr. Knight, with his sharp, dark looks and easy command. Just his proximity seemed to electrify her skin. Her fingers tingled, and her heart thumped uncomfortably. She needed to move, to flee. To escape the maelstrom that was building in her.

She just wanted to get to Mairead. If she could only do that, the world would right itself.

“Mr. Knight,” she said, holding still by dint of will. “I need to find my sister. Please. Let me go to Edinburgh.”

Stepping around so that he was facing her fully, Mr. Knight rested his hands on his hips, the greatcoat flaring behind them. He sighed. “You can’t,” he said quietly, “go to Edinburgh. If I release you from your rather uncomfortable prison, will you promise to stay right here until I tell you why?”

Instinctively she opened her mouth to say no. One look at Mr. Knight’s implacable expression changed her mind. “Do you have information I do not?”

Quite gravely, he nodded. “I do. And if you hold still, I will share it.”

Panic bloomed, mixing in with the anxious clamoring in her heart. Dread. “Where are my friends?” she asked, afraid of what he meant to tell her.

“Back at the inn. You need to tell me that you agree, Miss Ferguson, or we can go no further.”

She wanted to think him heartless. Manipulative. But she caught a flicker of emotion in his dark eyes. Where his expression had been wry, suddenly there was a softness in him that made her want him to be as kind as Pip said.

Fighting one last impulse to flee, she met his gaze, praying she was right to trust him. “I would appreciate it, Mr. Knight, if you would get me free. I will hold still, and I will listen to what you have to say.” Because it was Mairead involved, she never wavered before him. “But if I don’t agree with your assessment, I will leave. I may wait until you go. I may wait a few days. But I will go in search of my sister. I’ll find her and bring her home.”

He gave her a small bow. “I would expect no less.”

Reaching into his boot, he pulled out a knife. “I fear you’re about to be shorn like a spring sheep.”

She closed her eyes. “It doesn’t matter.”

It did, of course. Fiona knew that her only claim to beauty was her hair. The thick, curling mane was all that offset her broad shoulders and the aggressive squareness of her face. Rid of that lush banner to a woman’s softness, she would look like a badly groomed mastiff.

It was worth it, she told herself. It was the only way to get to Mairead.

And then Alex Knight laid his palm against the side of her jaw to steady her, and she forgot to care about her looks. She forgot everything but the indescribable sweetness of his touch.

As tangled up as she was in the brambles, his actions should have tortured her. Instead, he threaded his fingers through her locks as if they were strands of the most delicate silk. He applied the knife with quick, sure strokes, drawing her closer as he freed her from her trap.

“You have lovely hair,” he murmured.

She thought his voice sounded odd, strained. Impatient? Angry?

“Thank you.” Her own voice sounded high and young. She hated it.

It began to rain as he freed her. Fiona could feel the drops sliding down her cheek like tears. But when she looked up to assess them, instead she saw Mr. Knight’s eyes. Dark eyes, the brown of bitter chocolate, lazy, as if there was nothing left in the world to surprise him. Melting, compelling eyes, even when his attention was focused solely on his work.

Before Fiona could look away, Mr. Knight’s gaze slid downward. His eyes locked on hers. Fiona stopped breathing. She knew her heart had stumbled, and she wasn’t sure it would ever right itself. She saw his eyes widen, just a fraction, and his nostrils flare, and wondered what it meant. Wondered why just the sight of it made her feel even more apprehensive.

Off in the distance, a church bell chimed. A dog barked. Rain pattered through the trees and splashed on her upturned face. Yet the air caught between Fiona and Mr. Knight seemed preternaturally still. It seemed uncommonly close, as if Alex Knight radiated his own warmth.

For a long, taut moment, they held their pose, inches apart, Fiona unaccountably frozen in place. And then, his breath escaping on a sigh, Alex Knight bent his head, and he kissed her.

A bolt of sheer pleasure shot through her, head to toes. Her fingers curled and lifted, instinctively seeking the solid heat of his chest. Her mouth softened beneath his lips; insistent lips, malleable, soft. Oh, sweet lord, so soft, even as the faint stubble on his cheek chafed her. Contrary sensations, contrary emotions—delight and fear, anticipation and regret. Uncertainty and eagerness. Her entire body thrummed with them. Her heart sped to catch up. She felt the callused length of his fingers sweep down her cheek, as if following the path the raindrops had traced, and she leaned into him.

And found herself brutally jerked backward.

“Ouch!” she cried, her hand going instinctively to the hair that was still caught in the brambles.

Mr. Knight straightened like a shot. Blinked, as if to clear away some kind of fog, his hand still suspended between them. His mouth opened, as if he meant to say something, then abruptly shut. Fiona saw a look of raw horror chill his eyes, and wanted to shrivel within herself.