Marry the Man Today (3 page)

"That's not what they told me out there. Scuffed shoes and ruffled feathers, bonnets askew. They want your blood, Captain."

"They're not going to get it! My men never touched a one of those women."

"I'm sure your men are as innocent as babes in the woods, Robins. But just who is the press going to believe when the story comes pouring out? You, or the wives and mothers and sisters of two dozen of the most powerful men in London?"

"By God, the press will believe me!" Robins's brows drew together in a sudden, sharp wing, his eyes flaring wide. "Won't they?"

Ross shook his head, slowly, meaningfully. "Everyone knows that a good scandal sells far more newspapers than the unremarkable arrest of a few rebellious women holding a parade down Whitehall. The reporters will tear you to shreds. And then come the gossip sheets."

"Bloody hell!" Robins swabbed his fingers over his gray hair. "So what do you suppose I should do instead?"

"Let them go," Ross whispered.

Robins recoiled in horror. "I can't do that."

"You can and you
must
release them all, Robins. Immediately. No questions asked, and with your deepest apologies. For the good of the Metropolitan Police. For London at large. As well as for the sake of your own job."

The captain's eyes flitted back and forth around the room. He lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "You make an excellent point there, my lord. Wouldn't want to sully the good name of the police department merely because a few harebrained women got out of hand."

Harebrained. "Exactly."

"Besides, it's their first offense. No real harm done. And they are, after all, merely . . . women."

That was where the poor captain was going to find himself wrong-headed in the long run. If only from a pragmatic standpoint. There was nothing
mere
about the situation he had on his hands, least of all about the women.

One woman in particular.

But anything to settle the matter with as little fuss as possible. Because he felt oddly intimate with the whole affair. Responsible somehow because he had watched from above like a secret arbiter.

"And just to be certain that all goes well, Robins, may I suggest that your men escort each of the women safely home, right to their own front doors."

Robins chewed on the end of his moustache for a moment then nodded slowly. "I see what you mean. Keep the affair as quiet as possible. Good, good."

"Including their leader." Ross tried to sound detached. "Did she give her name?"

A sudden fear flashed across Robins's face, then fell to aggravation. "Hasn't said a word on her own behalf. Though she did demand a reporter."

Not her solicitor.

Not her mother.

Or a husband.

Only a reporter.

Ross nearly laughed at the baldness of the woman's designs. "There's your proof, Robins. This whole bloody incident was a stunt concocted strictly to publicize their bootless cause for women's rights."

"Women's rights, my arse. I'll show them what's what!" Robins snorted and turned back to the large ledger lying open on the desk. He dipped the quill and then scratched through a line of words. "I think I'll leave the ringleader to stew for an hour or two. Get herself a real taste of prison life."

Ross had the distinct feeling that it would take more than an hour or two of prison air to affect the indomitable Miss Elizabeth. "Would you mind if I visited the prisoner for a moment? Perhaps I can reason with her."

"Reason with her?" Robins gave a laugh. He grabbed a ring of keys from behind the desk then started toward the corridor of jail cells. "Be my guest. Though I doubt it'll do you a lick of good."

He wasn't looking for good.

Or satisfaction.

He was looking to assuage this bothersome feeling that now grew in his gut with every step nearer the enigmatic woman's cell.

A sizzling feeling that filled up his chest with the tendriling scent of sandalwood and jasmine, and, yes, by God, cinnabar. Exotic and telling.

Fueled by a crystal clear memory of gilded auburn hair spilling over prideful shoulders.

And the certainty that her gaze would be as unflinching as her convictions.

"Take care with your hide, my lord," Robins whispered as he shoved the key into the lock. Blocking the doorway with his shoulder, as though the woman might just leap out of the cell and brave a mad escape.

"I'll be fine, Captain. Thank you." Though with the man filling up the corridor in front of the cell door, Ross had yet to set eyes on his target.

"You've a visitor, Miss Whatever Your Name May Be," Robins growled at the woman through the open cell door. When there was no reply, he turned and gave Ross a quick nod before striding off with a muttered, "She's all yours now, my lord."

All mine.

At least for the moment.

There was no sound at all from the cell, no pacing, or shouting, or shoe rattling against the bars.

Feeling suddenly, unreasonably, as though he was about to face down a tigress unarmed, Ross cleared his throat, squared his shoulders, and stepped in front of the cell door.

Bloody hell, he was done for.

The profound memories of her ostentatious pride had sent him trailing after her from the Admiralty, across Whitehall, and into Scotland Yard. Her haunting scent had drawn him along the corridor, tugging at his core.

But he hadn't expected that the sight of her, standing in the center of the cell, the late afternoon sunlight from the window behind her setting little fires against the bright cloud of her hair, could so completely take his breath away.

And her amazing eyes. Sea green and lushly fringed, challenging him to believe in her.

Turning up at the corners with the hint of a smile that seemed to be trying to take purchase on the rosy fullness of her lips.

"How excellent, sir." Her sultry voice lifted across to him like a butterfly, perched itself in the center of his chest. Wings beating a velvety rhythm, brilliant with all the colors of the rainbow. "I see you wasted no time."

Wasted no time
?
His sodden mind stumbled around the blocky words, wondering what they meant.

Had she been expecting him? How? More's the point, why would she be expecting him
?

Damnation, had she actually seen him hanging out the window of the Admiralty? Nearly drooling after her like a besotted chump?

"Shall I go first then, sir?
"

"First?" Ross swallowed his confusion and took a long breath to clear out the cobwebs.

She crossed her arms beneath her breasts and tipped her chin at him. "I'm ready to tell you most of my secrets. You can ask me anything you like."

"Anything
I
.. . ?" Well, now that was an invitation he'd not expected from the woman. The possibilities left him stammering like an idiot.

And yet something was niggling at him. Something the captain had said.

That she was their ringleader.

And unreasonable.

Bloody hell, that she'd sent for a reporter!

"Are you from the
Times,
sir?"

"Am
I
. . . wel
l
—" Hell and damnation! The truth was balanced there on the tip of his tongue, digging in, prompting him to speak it aloud. "That is to say, madam . . . I'v
e
—"

Been
to
the
Times.

Subscribe to the
Times.

Read the
Times
every morning, like clockwork, with my eggs and toast.

But, no . . .
I
. ..

"Because, sir, I was hoping that the
Times
reporter would be the first on the scene."

"Oh? Why is that?"

"Circulation, of course." Her fawn-colored brows dipped above her small nose. "I'm sure you know that the
Times
has the largest circulation of any newspaper in London. In the entire kingdom. Fifty thousand copies a day. Imagine that. More than all the other papers combined."

"Indeed."

"And, although every newspaper has its obvious biases"—
s
he reached into the pocketbook hanging from her waist and pulled out a folded sheet of pape
r
—"I have a great deal of respect for the integrity of your editor, Mr. Delane."

"I'll have to tell him so." Bloody hell, the woman couldn't be as naive as that; editors were biased toward the power of the pound.

"Which is why I'm certain that you'll treat me with equal respect, Mister. ..." She flashed him a disarming smile. "I'm sorry, I didn't get your name."

"It's Carrington. Ross Carrington."

"Very nice to meet you, Mr. Carrington." She put out her hand to him, as bare and shapely as a swan. "My name is Elizabeth Dunaway.
"

Given his unreasonable interest in the woman, Ross could only hope that her hand wasn't as silky soft as it looked. He held his breath as he reached for it, and was nearly knocked backward by the bolt of desire that zinged up his arm and into his chest.

He heard himself babble out a guttural, "Howdy-adoMissElizabethDunaway,
"
but resisted the seething urge to pull her into his arms and dance his mouth across those lush lips.

Instead, he dropped her hand like a hot stone. He fumbled for the notepad in his jacket pocket and poised the short pencil against the page, ready to write and
w
rite, convincing himself that he was only doing what any spy would do in the same situation.

Take advantage.

Complete advantage.

"Tell me everything, Miss Dunaway. Your public eagerly awaits."

Chapter 3

A woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hinder legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.

Samuel Johnson,
17
09-
17
84

_T
ell
him everything
?
Elizabeth wasn't sure she wanted to tell this particular man anything at all. Let alone everything that was important to her.

She certainly couldn't tell him the way he made her feel as he filled the doorway of the cell with his broad shoulders, or the delicious way he smelled of bay and lemon and the afternoon sun.

Or the way he was looking at her just now, with his dark, smoke-shadowed eyes. Staring at her, really, charting her. As though he was planning a libertine route that would take him nibbling along her collarbone, tasting her from nape to toe.

And back again.

As though he would kiss her right here and now.

Or carry her off to some starry-edged kingdom where he would endlessly pamper and caress her, and lavish her with feathers and chocolate an
d
—

Oh, great heavens above! What an utterly ridiculous daydream to be conjuring! Right here in the middle of her protest.

She couldn't tell a reporter from the
Times
anything like that!

After all, she was the owner of the Abigail Adams and had a reputation to uphold!

Gathering up her scattered senses, Elizabeth threw back her shoulders, struck a firm pose, then directed a scathing glare toward the man who seemed to overwhelm the cell by just being there.

"If you want to know everything about me for your story, Mr. Carrington, then I suggest you begin by understanding that everything I say, everything I do, is in the cause of equal rights for women."

He took a long step toward her, cocked his dark head as though trying to study her from a different angle. "Go on, Miss Dunaway. I'm listening."

"Yes, wel
l
..." She had expected the man to sneer at her, or snigger. At least to start scribbling down her words on his ruffled notepad. Instead he was still staring at her. Into her.

She blinked away from him for a moment, but the stone floor wasn't nearly as compelling as the sun-bronzed, rough-planed face of this eccentric reporter from the
Times.

"As you know, sir," she said against the pressing thickness of his silence, her fingers fiddling with the treatise she had been prepared to hand out to members of the press at just the right moment, "today's peacefu
l
protest was intended to illuminate the plight of the female citizens of Britain. As I have shown here in my essay."

She thrust the noisy piece of paper toward him, feeling more clumsy than usual. He had the good grace to glance down at her words. "Interesting, madam."

"Yes, well, sir, we were merely walking down the center of Whitehall, carrying signs and banners, when we were rudely interrupted by the Metropolitan Police."

"And you were also shouting 'Votes for women,' weren't you?" The man leaned back against the bars, arching a brow at her, a smile caught in the corner of his mouth.

"Indeed, we were."

"And liberty, equality, sorority."

"Were you there, Mr. Carrington? Did see our parade?" Not that it made a whit of difference. Except that it meant he'd been witness to her march, her private passions, her shouted protests . .. and well, there was nothing she could do about it now. It just suddenly seemed too intimate an idea for such a small room and with so little space between them.

But he had narrowed his eyes. "The captain reported your activities when I arrived."

"Ah! And was he outraged?
"
Better outrage than the jeers and laughter she'd heard from the street as the police loaded them into the wagons.

"I wouldn't call Captain Robins outraged, Miss Dunaway, but he was completely scandalized."

Good. Excellent, in fact! Elizabeth hid her smile inside her chest, where the man couldn't see how very pleased she was that she had scandalized the captain.

"Now, I can't help that, can I, Mr. Carrington? Depriving women of the same legal rights that a man has is scandalous. Refusing us an education is scandalous. So is robbing us of all property rights the moment we are married." She reined in the usual bellow of her hustings voice. "But forbidding us the vote is the most scandalous of all."

"I see." The man still hadn't taken down a single note in his notebook.

In fact, he looked thoroughly amused by her speech. He'd moved completely into the room and was leaning against the wall of bars, the heel of his highly polished boot propped against the bench. The rich linen of his suiting still crisp with expensive creases. The finely crested gold buttons matching at his waistcoat and jacket and cuffs.

His deep chestnut hair trimmed just so. His square jaw barbered by a professional.

A man whose hobby must be either chasing the news or tormenting women in jail cells, because the smug Mr. Carrington was just too well dressed to be a penny-poor newsman.

"I don't think you see at all, Mr. Carrington. Though I shouldn't really expect you to. Few men do."

"What about your husband? Does he . . . see what you want him to see?"

"I am unmarried, sir, and have vowed to remain so for the rest of my life."

"Ah, you're a nun, then, Miss Dunaway. Hoping to proselytize to the male masses in Westminster to give women the vote?" He cocked that cocky eyebrow again, surely thinking himself a London wit. "I didn't know the Church went in for that kind of thing."

"I'm not a nun, Mr. Carrington, I'm a prag
m
atist. And you're not a reporter, are you?"

"No, I'm not," he said without a moment's hesitation. The answer to a question she should have asked the moment she saw him in the doorway looking so .. . feral.

"Then who are you, sir?" She could feel the telltale spots of crimson blooming high on her cheeks, a sure symptom of her smoldering outrage. And not of the trembling embarrassment that the arrogant man would surely surmise.

He straightened and became taller. "I'm Ross Carrington, the Earl of Blakestone."

Blakestone. The name sounded familiar, tinted by exotic images of danger and rife with legends.

"If that's so, your lordship, why did you pretend that you were from the
Times?"

The lout had the decency to catch his smile behind his teeth before he said, "Curiosity."

"Curiosity? About what? Do you loiter around Scotland Yard just for amusement?"

"Not usually. Then again, Scotland Yard usually isn't brimming over with rebellious women."

"So I'm a curiosity? Like one of the elephants at the London zoo. Or a zebra."

The lout gave a broad, encompassing laugh that echoed against the brick walls and slipped easily between her ribs. "Not like them at all, madam. I merely wanted to see what all the commotion was about."

"Commotion! How dare you! I'll have you know we're not just a commotion! We're a movement which is growing every day."

"That's just what I'm afraid of." The man's jaw squared suddenly, his amusement gone as he strode toward the door, then turned and reached out for her. "Now come on out of here, please. You're going home."

"I'm what?" Elizabeth glanced down at his huge, open palm and felt her knees loosen at the implication. "What do you
mean,
going home? I'm not ready to go! I'm waiting here for the press to interview me. The real press!"

"Consider your protest finished, Miss Dunaway. For your own good." He beckoned to her with a lift of his powerful arm, as though he believed she would just walk forward and place herself under his, doubtless considerable, protection. "You've made your statement. Now, you and your friends are going to be taken safely home, where I hope to God you'll stay until this mess blows over."

"Blows over?" She'd never in her life been so angry, so ready to haul off and slap someone. Her heart was thumping with such force, she was certain the man could hear it from the doorway. "Haven't you heard a thing I've said, Blakestone? This so-called mess will blow over only after you find me facedown in the Thames."

Her anger only seemed to add to his calm. "An event that I would dearly regret, Miss Dunaway, but you're not staying here in this cell another moment. Your compatriots have been sprung and taken discreetly back to the bosom of their families. And you're going too."

"I don't have a bosom." That didn't sound right, but it threw the man momentarily off balance. She stalked forward, slowly moving him back out of the cell. "I mean, sir, that I don't have a family. No one is waiting for me at home. So no one will worry if I spend a night behind bars. Or a week. And when someone from the
fo
urth estate finally takes notice of me and the cause of women's rights, I want to be here to tell my story."

With that, Elizabeth took hold of the barred door, pulled it toward her, and slammed it shut between them.

He stood blinking at her for a moment, studying her as she gripped the cool metal bars, planning something that she wasn't going to like.

"So, Miss Dunaway, you're willing to spend a long, cold night in jail, battling the rats for your threadbare blanket, existing on moldy bread and stale water, all for the sake of making a political statement."

"Absolutely." Though she would rather do without the rats. "I have no choice. Because self-serving men like you won't allow me to take my rightful place in Parliament where I could express my opinion and be grateful for the privilege."

He was silent again, a flame-blue light flickering deeply in his gaze. A light that settled softly on her lashes, then glided across her cheeks.

Such a palpably compelling sensation that she hadn't noticed until seconds too late that the blackguard had slipped off his silken stock and wrapped it around one of her wrists.

"Sorry, my dear, but for better or for worse, that's the way of the world." In a single motion he yanked the door open, caught up her other wrist, bound it to the first and then began tugging her down the corridor.

"No! Let me go! Youuu! You're not a policeman!"

"Sorry for the inconvenience, madam."

"I don't want to leave!" Elizabeth planted her heels against the floor to stop him, but he pulled her gently along beside him anyway, her wrists still wrapped within his stock, his broad palm, his hot fingers, spread low across her waist. "The press are coming! You have no right to remove me from my cell, you lout!"

Ross smiled to himself as he wrangled the young woman along the corridor of barred doors, wondering if Captain Robins would appreciate the trouble he was going through just to protect him and the Metropolitan Police from Miss Dunaway's wrath. She would surely have browbeaten Robins until he'd have been forced to allow her to stay the night.

Now that would be a headline London wouldn't soon forget: Beautiful Suffragette Tortured by Scotland Yard.

At least that's the way the story would read if the beautiful lunatic suffragette were allowed to entertain the press in her jail cell.

They reached the lobby with enough racket that Captain Robins had already popped out of his office.

"Ah, there you are, Blakestone!" A smile suddenly lifted the officer's long face, a look of pure relief, as Ross approached him with the nimble Miss Dunaway tucked against his side. "I see you've got your hands full."

"I demand to be put back into my cell, Captain!" The woman stopped struggling and thrust her chin toward Robins, which gave Ross the chance to wrap his free arm around her fully and pull her perfectly rounded backside against his thigh. "Make this lout let go of me!"

"And what about your other guests, Captain?" Ross nodded toward the courtyard, pleased to see it empty of the sea of women. "How are they faring?"

"Safely on their way home, my lord, just as you suggested."

"As
you
suggested?" Miss Dunaway whipped her head around and glared up at Ross, her fine, full lips in a furious pout, a fire blazing deeply in her eyes. "Just who are you, Blakestone, that you can throw your weight around Scotland Yard!"

Ross did his best to glare back into all that indignation, but he found Miss Dunaway deliciously beguiling.

Every part of her. Including that lovely, ripe hip she was mindlessly grinding into his groin as she frowned up at him in her anger, innocently arousing in him a fever she ought to leave be.

Because he was in no position to be dallying with a woman just now. Though, bloody hell, he'd always been drawn toward the Miss Dunaways of the world. Toward this one especially. Her rare, soaring spirt. Her self-possession.

And those deeply glittering eyes that would tempt him to explore.

Dragging in a huge breath to cool his brain, Ross wrenched his illicit thoughts from his prisoner and directed his attention toward Captain Robins. "Now, if you have a paddy wagon and a driver available . .. ?"

"Ah, Blakestone! I thought I heard your voice!" The Lord Mayor of London strode out of the captain's office, his deputy on his heels. "Good to see you, man. I was planning to pay you a visit this evening."