The Baron’s Betrothal: An On-Again, Off-Again, On-Again Regency Romance (The Horsemen of the Apocalypse Series) (18 page)

This time was no different. His senses slowly informed him of his actual circumstances. His eyes adjusted to the darkness and he saw a cramped guest room at The Scribe and Scholar, a respectable but unfashionable inn in Oxford. It was the second and last day of their trip. He lay naked on a lumpy mattress with bedclothes wrapped about his bare hips, not long, lean legs. Elizabeth slept in a separate room with a lady’s maid in attendance, at a safe distance down the narrow hall, her virtue intact. (He’d paid for strong hot toddies at the end of their long day to make sure she slept too deeply to scamper off in the night.)
 

Almost nothing in his dream was real.

Except his erection. He lay in bed now fully awake and still it steadfastly refused to subside without satisfaction. He grumbled to himself about being too old for a schoolboy’s cock-stand and tried relaxing to relieve the torment. It only grew more adamant. Making matters worse, his bladder was full.
 

Clun took stock. Though the doors to their rooms were distant, the rooms shared a wall — a thin wall. Last night, he’d heard her murmur to her lady’s maid and the maid’s murmurs in reply. He eyed the chamber pot, judged his need and decided against relieving himself thunderously into the stoneware. Not that he could manage to point himself downward without inflicting serious injury.

Muttering to himself, he dressed in tented breeches, boots and un-tucked shirt and stumbled downstairs in the cold, pre-dawn darkness to find the privy where he might remedy his difficulty well out of range of delicate ears.
 

He soon found himself in a ramshackle structure behind the inn’s stable unbuttoning the falls of his breeches. The shock of cold air helped reduce somewhat his difficulty so that with concentration he managed gingerly to relieve himself. This relief did not address the other outstanding issue. In fact, it recurred.
 

The walls and door of the privy gaped with knotholes and inch-wide open seams between planks. He glanced over his shoulder through the privy door. What choice did he have? He couldn’t very well sport a maypole at breakfast nor could he do what he must in the room next to hers.
 

He leaned with one hand against the back wall and spit into the other, fisted himself and started stroking slowly. To move things along, he recalled some of the most stirring moments of his latest dream: taut nipples, soft curls between her legs, the pink of her sex just where he’d lap up her sweet musk and finally the warm, tight sensation of plunging into her and feeling himself fully sheathed in her as he spent himself explosively.
 

He pumped away, picking up the pace while his recollections had the desired effect. Tension gathered like a rope twisting into knots in his lower belly and groin as he worked himself, accelerating to release. He felt his bollocks tighten. Nearly there, he panted. Nearly. There.
 

“Oh, God,” he groaned aloud, “Ohhhh.”

He moaned louder as he stroked himself and almost missed the sound, slight as it was, of someone approaching.

“Lord Clun?” She cried out.

“Ow!” He nearly yanked himself out by the roots in shock. Biting back a louder, pained scream, he froze, poised on the excruciating cusp of relief. “Not now, Lady Elizabeth,” he panted out in tight gasps, careful to keep his back to the privy door and her voice. He was hardly presentable with his hands full and his damned breeches down around his knees. He prayed she’d leave quickly.
 

“But Lord Cl—”
 

“Go away, blast you. Go. Away. Now!” He roared. The privy shuddered as he leaned into the far corner.

“No need to yell,” she huffed and marched off muttering, “I heard you perfectly well the first time.”

Fearful she might hear him ‘perfectly well’ even at a distance, he waited agonizing minutes before he finished in a frenzy. (With his luck, she’d think he was taking too long and return to check on him.) Sensitivity be damned, he stuffed himself back into his breeches hastily, tucked in his shirt and buttoned his falls before storming back to find her seated by the fire in the private parlor he’d hired.
 

“What is it?” He demanded.
 

“I can’t remember now.” She smiled apologetically and shrugged. “Your bellowing shocked it right out of mind.”
 

“My apologies,” he said through clenched teeth. “If you’ll excuse me, Lady Elizabeth.” And he stalked from the parlor.
 

* * *

Elizabeth hadn’t known what to think. She heard Clun move quietly about his room, though it was still well before dawn. When he tiptoed past her door and stealthily descended the stairs, she panicked. Rather than spend another day with her, he thought to sneak away and let his servants see her home from Oxford. No matter how she tried to reassure herself, fear overwhelmed rational argument.
 

She threw on clothes and shoes to rush after him and prevent his departure. Outside, she ran to the stable looking right and left, hoping to spy him or hear his footfalls on the cobblestones. Algernon wasn’t in the inn yard. It appeared, as she searched, that none of the grooms stirred. She still had time, which came as a relief.
 

As she left the stable, she heard strangled moans of pain. It was Lord Clun. And he groaned as if he were suffering a great deal — gasping and hissing, possibly injured.
 

Where was the man?
 

She hurried around the corner of the stable and scanned the jumble there.

She called his name. There was a high-pitched scream. Now, she panicked that something dire truly had befallen him.

“Not now, Lady Elizabeth,” he finally choked out from somewhere nearby, his voice sharp with pain.

“But Lord Cl—”
 

“Go away, blast you.”
 

Oh.
 

She’d overlooked the ramshackle privy tucked away. Through the gaps she saw someone inside. Someone tall and broad.

Oh dear.

“Go away now!” He yelled at her from inside the shuddering structure.
 

“No need to yell,” she replied with dignity. “I heard you perfectly well the first time.”
 

There came a deep growl from the privy’s shadowy interior. She thought it wisest to hurry back to the inn.

Oddly enough, his bellowing without hesitation was all the reassurance Elizabeth needed. If he’d meant to sneak off, he would’ve remained silent. He was using the privy rather than a chamber pot upstairs. A very thoughtful gesture, she concluded with satisfaction. Mrs. Abeel would approve.
 

Soon after, Clun filled the private parlor doorway. Disheveled, black hair flying, eyes sparking, muscles tensed magnificently, he brought to mind his ancestral Norman conquerors. Elizabeth clasped her hands in her lap and pleaded forgetfulness rather than disclose her sudden, silly panic.
 

After he stormed off, she contemplated the coming day. Dawn was still some time off. Only the inn’s kitchen staff stirred, with the innkeeper’s wife haranguing the cook about last night’s mutton, complaining that it couldn’t be chewed much less choked down. (She was right.)

This was the last day of travel and Elizabeth’s last opportunity to run away. She’d been too tired and tipsy to consider escape after last night’s dinner. Still queasy from the day, she ate little and her empty stomach much magnified the ‘bracing’ effect of the ‘specially-fortified’ restorative tea Clun insisted she drink. Nor did she awake in the night as planned. If she’d wanted to, she might’ve slipped away while he was occupied in the privy, but that wouldn’t have given her a sufficient head start to elude him for long.

The trouble was she didn’t want to run from him or end their betrothal. The more she thought about it, the more militant her thinking became. She knew only too well the gross impropriety of her actions to date, first running away, then staying at The Graces alone with Clun and finally traveling under his auspices with only a timid maid for a fig leaf. Had anyone beyond his trusted staff known about it, he’d have been obliged to marry her come what may.

Well. That simplified the problem considerably. After years of dire lectures about ruination, Elizabeth knew how to compromise herself beyond all reclamation. And she had what she needed for the task: a private room with him in it and the loud-mouthed innkeeper’s wife as witness.

Elizabeth hoped Clun would forgive her eventually.

Upstairs, she crept past her own room to the far end of the narrow hall and tapped lightly on his door. She held her breath. After an eternity, she heard his footfall on the other side.

“Yes?”
 

“Lord Clun,” she whispered. “I must speak to you.”

“Won’t it wait till breakfast?”
 

“I’m afraid not, my lord.”

There was a moment of silence and a deep sigh before the knob turned and the door swung partly open. He stood in the gap looking warily up and down the hall before settling on her. His eyes, she noted, always dark, appeared almost molten. He stirred not an inch to allow her into his room.

“Don’t be daft, you can’t come in. Say what you will,” he growled. He scrutinized her from her uncombed hair to her worn half boots.
 

“I will not discuss
us
in the hallway of an inn, Clun.” With her last ounce of resolve she pushed against his solid chest and forced her way inside.

He stumbled backward when she flitted past. She waited while he leaned against the door to close it. His eyes were clenched tight. A man was supposed to enjoy having a woman throw herself at him. Then again, Clun didn’t know she intended to do so. She smoothed the hand-me-down gown and looked up at him again. He didn’t look intrigued in the least. Only pained.
 

This pricked her conscience. What was she proposing to do, back him into a corner, attempt his seduction then raise the alarm? He never connived, or threatened or tried to force her to do as he wished. He was too honorable a man. And he deserved better from her.
 

“Lady Elizabeth, please say what you will then I beg you leave.”
 

“I thought to seduce you, Lord Clun,” she confessed with answering formality. His eyes snapped wide open. At that, she scolded, “Don’t look so horrified. I daresay you wouldn’t have
hated
it.” She plucked at her gown. “You needn’t worry. I’ve changed my mind. Besides, I have no practical knowledge of how to do it. I was taught to rebuff unwanted male attention. No one ever offered me any guidance on how to encourage the attention I did want,” she trailed off. “So, you’re safe from me.”
 

“Not safe,” Clun said and relaxed against the door, “but I promise you, when you meet the right man, it sorts itself out naturally.”

“Mrs. Abeel said something to that effect as well,” she trailed off then whispered, “If only—”

“What?” He stared at her.
 

“It’s of no consequence,” she said with a shrug. “I should go.”
 

He moved away from the door and she let herself out.
 

* * *

Long before she’d slipped into his room, Clun had grown increasingly alarmed by Elizabeth’s roguery. The first day of the trip was mostly uneventful, if one discounted her offhand flirtation and the erotic dream that her coquettishness caused. They traveled more than half the distance to London, changing horses, taking tea and using inns’ conveniences several times until they reached Oxford and The Scribe and Scholar, where Clun hired two rooms upstairs and a private parlor on the ground floor. They dined, though Elizabeth ate little, and retired early when she was tipsily toasted by the hot toddies he insisted she drink.

But here, now, this was altogether too much. She stood in his room and bewitched him with her siren’s smile. He couldn’t parse her object, but she was fast working loose his death grip on gentlemanly restraint.
 

“Lady Elizabeth, please say what you will then I beg you leave.”
 

“I thought to seduce you, Lord Clun,” she said.
 

Her comment made certain irrepressible lower parts take note, which appalled him.
 

“Don’t look so horrified,” she huffed, “I daresay you wouldn’t have hated it.”

If only she knew how little he hated the idea, she wouldn’t discuss seduction calmly alone with him in his room.

“But you needn’t worry, I’ve changed my mind,” she said.
 

Though unschooled by her own admission, she had a natural gift for making his blood pound into places better left un-supplied. He clamped his mouth shut. What was he to do with her?
 

Lust, Panic and Rage screamed in his head: Take her! Heaven forbid! God damn it all!

At dinner the previous evening, he’d nearly jumped out of his skin at her casual touches over the course of their meal. He assumed it was the second hot toddy she drank. When Elizabeth handed him a plate of bread, she let her bare fingers brush his hand and smiled that smile. The maid pretended not to see any of it. For the rest of the meal, he ate what was on his plate and didn’t dare ask for any more.