The Baron’s Betrothal: An On-Again, Off-Again, On-Again Regency Romance (The Horsemen of the Apocalypse Series) (11 page)

“By that, you mean I’m too young to know?” She stood up to face him.

“Young, yes, and typically naïve.” He stalked back and forth, stabbing the air in her direction. “But willful foolishness is the prerogative of your gender,” he growled at her, much like a wolf. (The wolf, she refrained from telling him, also mates for life.)
 

“You’ve never been married either, so what makes you an expert?” She watched him scrape his hair roughly back from his face, grabbing it as if to tear it out in frustration. “Just look at you, listen to you, Lord Clun, you’re a passionate man, why pretend otherwise?” She drew herself up to her full height and inquired, “Would you fight for me?”
 

He spun around to stare at her from under black brows. “What the devil?”
 

“If there were a rival for my affections, would you fight for me?” She repeated.

“What have you been up to here, Lady Elizabeth? Inciting duels?”

During the fraught silence, she studied him. His face appeared chiseled from stone, except for the pulsing muscles at the corners of his jaw. She hit a nerve, as she’d hoped.

“It’s a hypothetical question but I’d like your answer.”

“I would hypothetically tear the head off any fool brainless enough to sniff after my betrothed. Is that satisfactory?”

She smiled at him. “Very. Mrs. Abeel always said possessiveness is a sure sign of a man’s affection.”
¹³

“Oh, no! I will not play the lovesick suitor, I vow.” He bit out the words, enunciating them with harsh precision. He did that to intimidate her, as if his absurd bombast could sway her from her purpose. The man was sadly fuddled and in need of her help. She
 
stifled her chuckle just in time. No need to enrage him unnecessarily. It would rankle him to come around to her point of view, but she knew he would. Eventually.
 

He gave her a filthy look and she watched him stomp out the door. Poor man. He was gruff, volatile and somehow so endearing.
 

Elizabeth believed with all her heart that she understood Lord Clun better than he himself did. She never considered for a moment that she might be mistaken.

* * *

Despite his quelling words, Lady Elizabeth’s siren’s smile affected Clun far more than he wished to acknowledge. It rattled through his eyes into his head and reverberated down his spine to start an unholy clangor in his groin. He slapped his forehead and stomped out of the little cottage just in time.
 

“‘Swans mate for life,’ she said,” he snorted. Why did she have to bring up
mating
? If he hadn’t beaten his hasty retreat, he would’ve divulged yet another sure sign of a man’s affection: a display of happily-agitated man parts in protruding buckskins.
 

But the rumpus she stirred up was lust not love, he reassured himself as he stalked off. He had nothing to fear. If he stuck to his guns, she would come to appreciate the advantages of a rational marriage.
 

Chapter 8

In which the impasse continues with one minor development.

T
ucked in the remote hill country of southwestern Shropshire, the village of Clun had existed as a market town since early Saxon history. After the Conquest, the first de Sayre Marcher lord founded another market town closer to his lands and castle but it couldn’t compete with the established village. Later Lords Clun accommodated reality rather than lose money trying to impose their will upon it. Thus, Clun village became the principal market town as far as Carreg Castle despite the inconvenience.
 

In modern times, the village supplied The Graces as well as smaller estates and freeholds scattered in the area. The River Clun flowed placidly through its center and on market day, the high street and the town square teemed with merchants, tradesmen and local farmers pushing handcarts heaped with autumn’s final bounty.
 

Clun picked his way through the hubbub on Algernon. He’d just purchased two more rams of a new breed developed locally, named as yet only Clun Forest sheep. Roddy was enthusiastic about them because they thrived on typical Shropshire pasturage and produced fine milk, wool and meat. The transaction concluded, Roddy directed the shepherd to load the animals onto a cart for delivery to the home farm.
 

At a distance, Clun heard a breathy laugh he recognized instantly. His whole body snapped to attention. He swept the market with battlefield eyes.
 

Lady Elizabeth patted a dairyman’s arm, as she put a small wedge of cheese into a strange-looking, ruffled market bag. She gathered it into her hand and exclaimed, “I shall feast indeed, Mr. Madog, my thanks.”
 

Madog nodded with a shy, delighted smile before the lady took her leave of him. As usual, she was dressed in her too-short, too-snug homespun frock, still the dairyman instinctively deferred to her. Other men, farmers and laborers, ogled the heedless minx as she sashayed down the street. She didn’t notice Clun riding up behind her.

He dismounted quietly, took a few steps to reach her and slipped his arm around her waist to tug her hard against him. She yelped at his manhandling until she saw who it was.
 

He boxed her in between his body and Algernon’s side and rumbled low in her ear to avoid attracting attention, “Do you have any notion what could happen to a beautiful woman like you traipsing around the market alone, bartering poached game like a fishwife?”

“You said I was beautiful,” she said, distracted.

“I state the obvious, Bess, don’t fall to pieces.”
 

“No one calls me Bess,” she murmured.
 

“You dislike it?”
 

“Not when you say it. My mother was Elizabeth, too. The earl called her Bess so I never was.” She leaned back to look up at Clun as he stepped away from her. With one hand, he took up the slack in Algernon’s reins and with the other he gripped her elbow.

“Now where was I?” He asked himself as he towed her along like a recalcitrant child.

“You were saying I was beautiful.”

“Don’t be jingle-brained, we’ve already exhausted the subject. Ah, yes. I was ripping up at you for flouncing around here on your own. I shudder to think what might’ve happened if I hadn’t shown up at The Sundew when I did. Of all the heedless —”

“I wasn’t frightened.”
 

Clun sputtered incoherently at her but finally managed to spit out. “No more of that.”

“Of what, Clun?”

“Whatever the devil you were doing before bandits accosted you. No. More. Of. That. Not if you’re to be my wife.” He could feel the crease between his brows deepen as he frowned at her as fiercely as he was able. He stared at her to penetrate her bemused distraction.
 

None of it worked.
 

So he stopped in his tracks, held her still and awaited her reply.
 

She flicked a glance up at him and sighed, “I suppose you’re right.” A small grin grew into a radiant smile. “According to Mrs. Abeel, protectiveness is another sure sign of a man’s affection.”

Clun rolled his eyes and groaned. “I’ll make arrangements for you to stay at the Graces. In the meantime, I’ll send a maid to the cottage with supplies. And milk,” he enunciated. He leaned close to give her a filthy look that made clear there was to be no more dairy-maiding for her either. “It won’t take long. A day at most.”
 

“There’s no room for staff in the cottage. Really, Clun,” she cried in amusement. “Don’t be silly.”

“Silly.” Clun now stopped his horse and his fiancée in the middle of bustling Broad Street though they blocked traffic in both directions.
 

Everyone was only too happy to wait politely while his lordship and the pretty, pixilated gypsy lady sorted things out. In fact, it promised to be grand entertainment. Those closest whispered over their shoulders to keep those farther back informed of the couple’s open-air discussion.

“Better yet, you’ll come now,” Clun stated. “We’ll find a lady’s maid. Must see to that first. I’ll send a letter to your father and invite him to join us at his earliest convenience. We must think of some suitable explanation for your presence here.”
 

“That’s not necessary, Clun.”

“I’ll not rest easy until you are properly situated, my lady,” he declared.
 

Low murmurs of approval rippled through the crowd though the couple remained oblivious.
 

“You haven’t minded my situation since we first met,” Elizabeth said. “You knew who I was yet you left me on my own at the cottage.”

“I most certainly did not, you goose! I spent cold hours under the stars on guard that first night. Then I arranged for Roddy to put men to work nearby so you’d come to no harm. Oh no!” He held up a hand to silence her reply. “I’ll have no more of that ‘signs of affection’ blather, by God,” he barked. “Bathing in the stream, will you. I wouldn’t let
anyone
bathe in that stream. It’s only commonsense, you hear me? You could catch your death! Or drown.”
 

There were chuckles among the onlookers. The majority opinion whispered back and forth was that his lordship must take the moonchild in hand, and not a moment too soon, for a young lady who dances around cows would only come to harm otherwise.
 

Didn’t bode well for their children’s good sense, others muttered darkly, but who were they to naysay?

Clun continued his lecture, “And do you think firewood fairies left you that great, heaping pile while you were trading my game in the village?”

For an instant, Elizabeth looked nonplussed. “I hadn’t really thought about it.”

“Right. You’re coming to The Graces now. We’ll gather your things on the way.”

“But—”

He tried to bring her through the crowd surrounding them. Clun finally noticed they were the chief amusement for a sizable gathering of carters, farmers and villagers. Caught gawking, the audience feigned a fascination for the sky, their feet, or their fingernails. They looked anywhere else, in other words, rather than meet Lord Clun’s blackest gaze.

“Not another word, my lady,” he said. She smiled first at him and then at the people surrounding them; they grinned back and parted to let the couple and horse pass.
 

“Pixilated mayhap,” one villager whispered to another, “but in a nice way.”

His lordship led Elizabeth through the crowd and continued his harangue, “I know you relish frigid water but would a hot bath in a big copper tub be such a torment? Wouldn’t you enjoy a nice, warm, relaxing soak? You could wash your hair. Have it combed through and dressed by a lady’s maid.”
 

She stumbled.
 

He couldn’t help grinning like Beelzebub buying a prime soul on the cheap. If he couldn’t yet command her acquiescence, he would tempt her to it.
 

“You’ll have to endure a soft bed without any lumps, fluffy down pillows and clean linen sheets smelling of lav-en-der,” he crooned, playing pied piper to his grubby, tangle-haired lady.
 

She closed her eyes and sighed, “Clean sheets.”

“And Mrs. Wirt would see your unmentionables are cleaned and pressed. Perhaps the Fur-, er, the baroness has left some frocks that might suit in a pinch. That is, if you wouldn’t mind wearing something other than your rustic gowns.”

She blinked. He watched the last of her resistance crumble at the mention of clean, pressed undergarments. He chortled triumphant.

 
“It’s too far to walk. You’ll ride with me, if you please.”
 

He lifted her to sit sidesaddle on Algernon and mounted effortlessly behind her, his thighs bracketing her bottom. For good measure, he pulled her snug against his body. He didn’t have to, he just wanted to.
 

Eyes followed them as they crossed the bridge and left the village at a sedate walk.

Soon after, they reached the thatched cottage. He dismounted first and plucked her down. She hurried inside to gather her few belongings into the small portmanteau she’d brought. In no time, she stood ready to abandon the rustic dwelling and its creatures for The Graces and its creature comforts.

Clun tied her bag behind the saddle and mounted first.
 

“Your hand,” he ordered, reaching down to Lady Elizabeth.

* * *

No point arguing, Elizabeth realized. The baron would’ve known it was only token resistance. She longed for mouse-less nights of sleep in lavender-scented linen sheets.
 

“Your hand,” he repeated calmly from astride Algernon.
 

Elizabeth would normally bristle at such high-handedness. In this instance, she did as she was told, placing her hand in his large, warm grasp and her foot on his in the stirrup. Truth to tell, his managing attitude made her feel cosseted, though a bit roughly, by a strong, supremely confident man.
 

He lifted her up before him with heart-stopping ease. Her stomach fluttered when she settled once again between his legs. To gather the reins in one hand, his brawny arms encircled her and brushed against the sides of her unbound breasts. It sent heat shimmering through her. His free hand came to rest on her waist and she snuggled back against his chest. He nudged Algernon’s forward. They rode, she thought, like a knight and his lady.
 

Approaching The Graces, she sat up tall in his arms. The elegant sprawl crowned a rise that overlooked a meandering lake, its stream and a patchwork of fields delineated by hand-stacked stone walls. Who knew the Elysian Fields lay tucked away in Shropshire! Looking left and right, every vista enchanted her in the same way Lord Clun had, by being handsome in a rugged, unfussy way. Reaching the tall gatehouse, she tilted her head back till it bumped against Clun’s shoulder. They passed under the vaulted stone archway into the courtyard. She felt his rumble of amusement.

“You approve, my lady?” This he purred not an inch from her ear. His breath teased her skin. His ‘app
Rrr
ove’ made her sigh. Oh, she approved. Wholeheartedly.