The Husband Hunt (22 page)

C
atriona made a furtive escape
to the stables two hours later. Good heavens, it had grown chilly outside, and this on the spring evening of her elopement. Did the wind portend an unfavorable outcome? Wrapping her pelisse around her more tightly, she settled down on a bale of hay to watch Knight and Wendell, who were apparently engaged in a friendly argument at the opposite end of the dark, empty stall.

Every time she looked at her future husband, she just wanted to smile and throw her arms around him out of utter happiness. He didn't appear very happy himself at the moment, however. In fact, he was so engrossed in his conversation that he hadn't even noticed she had sneaked into the stables.

"And I swear to you that the bloody ladder was against the paddock fence before dawn this morning," Wendell said in an irate voice. "1 nearly broke my back dragging it in the dark around the garden."

"Well, I didn't want it in the paddock," Knight said. "I'm not eloping with a horse. Anyway, it isn't that heavy."

Wendell looked insulted. "It's heavy enough that a woman couldn't have moved it."

"No," Knight said. "But three of them could." And both men paused, presumably trying to picture Olivia, Marigold, and Mrs. Evans meddling in their plans.

"Why do you need a ladder, anyway?" Catriona asked behind them.

The two men turned to stare at her; although Wendell was a handsome devil, a golden young god of the
ton,
it was Knight's dark beauty, the intensity in his eyes, that grabbed hold of her vulnerable heart. She spent several moments admiring the way his black greatcoat and pantaloons emphasized his manly build. He affected her now no less profoundly than he had the first time he had stared her down with all his aristocratic hauteur.

She slid to her feet. "What is it?"

Wendell grinned. "So much for abducting your betrothed, Romeo."

"Oh." Catriona felt a frisson of pleasure race down her spine. Knight had meant to make it a genuine steal-the-woman-from-the-tower elopement. "Do you want me to sneak back into my room? I didn't mean to spoil your plans."

He only smiled. "How did you get down here without rousing the Gorgons, anyway?"

"I used the stairs. Everyone seemed to be asleep."

There was a loud bang behind the stables, followed by a great trembling through the walls that disturbed  the  horses   in  their  stalls.   "What  was that?" Wendell asked in alarm. "Surely not the wind again."

"We've found the ladder, my lord," Howard announced triumphantly a few seconds later from the door. "The ladies had hidden it in the maze, but Smythe spotted it from an upstairs window. Clever, ain't we?"

Knight shook his head. "Clever and extremely loud. If all that banging around did not draw attention and awaken the household, then nothing will." He smiled again at Catriona. "Are you ready to go?"

"Yes. Oh." She ran back to the bale of hay and retrieved her bag, that smile of his making her almost forget what she was doing. "Now I am."

He nodded and took the bag from her hand, his fingers closing around hers. She gave a sigh of pleasure. His touch always ignited her female senses.

"Damn it," he said, looking down at her slender fingers. "I've forgotten the ring. I left it on the dressing table."

"Shall I fetch it for you, my lord?" Howard asked.

Knight hesitated. He could just imagine Howard tramping up the stairs and into his room with all the discretion of a baby elephant. "I'll fetch it."

"No," Wendell said. "Let me. Holmes is waiting for you in the woods."

"Do you want me to go?" Catriona asked. "I don't mind. I'm good at pinching things."

A burst of wind blew beneath the stable door and sent a handful of straw flying around them. Knight pulled her closer to him, the gesture instinctual and protective.

"What an exciting night for a runaway marriage," Wendell exclaimed. "At this rate, you'll be blown halfway to Scotland."

"I'll buy you a ring in Carlisle," Knight said quietly to Catriona. "A windstorm isn't going to stop us."

"The house looks awfully quiet," Wendell observed as they paused several minutes later at the edge of the darkened estate.

Knight glanced up at the darkened windows. "Too quiet. I don't trust it."

Wendell shook his friend's hand, then turned to give Catriona a fierce hug. "As Horace said, although probably under different circumstances,
Tempus abire tibi est.
The time has come for you to depart. Take care of yourselves."

Knight nodded distractedly, taking Catriona's hand to turn her toward the woods where the cloaked figures of his sister and Marigold stood, their faces white and anxious.

"I knew it," he said in utter disgust as Olivia rushed up to him, Marigold following more slowly. "I never could go anywhere without Olivia tagging along. It's a miracle she didn't enlist in the army."

"Thank goodness I caught you in time," Olivia said, taking a deep breath. She bumped against him with the enormous basket she carried in her slender arms.

He raked his hand through his hair. "Look, we were just out enjoying the evening—"

"Stop it," she said. "I know perfectly well what you were doing. I've known since last night. Howard is incapable of keeping a secret."

"Then what are you doing here?" he shouted. "Is it possible to take two steps on this estate without my behavior being censured?"

She blinked, falling back a step. "Well, really, I only wanted to give my blessing on your elopement."

Wendell grinned. "Except, darling, I don't think it qualifies as an elopement with a family blessing. That's the whole point."

"In that case, I don't suppose you want the picnic hamper, either, that Mrs. Evans packed," she said meekly.

Catriona's face softened. "Of course we want it, otherwise we'll probably starve." She glanced around, struck by a sudden realization. "If our elopement was that obvious to everyone, then where is Uncle Murdo?"

Olivia smiled gratefully at Wendell as he wrestled the hamper from her grasp, offering to take it to his carriage. "I think he went to bed. Didn't he, Marigold?"

The older woman nodded. "Yes, and he will be very upset when he learns that you youngsters set off for Scotland without so much as a by-your-leave."

Catriona looked through the trees at the house. It seemed rather suspicious that Murdo had given up his cause that easily, but perhaps he realized that the breach between them just couldn't be easily mended. For some reason, it saddened her. She might not be quite ready to forgive him, but he was family, a part of her past.

She felt a rush of tenderness as she saw Knight enfold Olivia in a hard, awkward hug, then bend his tall frame to kiss Marigold on the cheek. "Now, you two Gorgons behave yourselves while we're gone," he said with gruff affection. "And you, Olivia, don't go feeling so sorry for Sir Alistair that you start inviting him to the house, or he'll be sending you roses next, and I really will have to kill him."

She nodded, tears in her eyes. "I only wanted you to be happy. A summer wedding would have been nice, but an elopement, oh, as if you were some fortune hunter chasing after an heiress. I could die of embarrassment."

"Except that I don't have a shilling to my name," Catriona said soberly, then turned back to Olivia. "It's not that I'm ungrateful, but James has been weighing on my mind lately, and I think he might need me. I have a hunch where his daughter Gaela is being kept. I want to see them together."

"Then be careful," Olivia whispered.

Knight looked up, his dark face reflective as Wendell reappeared from the road. "Perhaps you will have that summer wedding, Olivia."

She shook her head. "I'm done with matchmaking, thank you very much. Look what a mess I've made."

Wendell glanced from Knight to Olivia. "Well, is everyone made up?"

"I was never angry at anyone to begin with," Catriona said.

Knight stared down at his sister. "Nor I. Well, not really."

"I was never angry," Olivia exclaimed. "I only wanted to see Catriona married to a decent man." She smiled reluctantly at Knight. "Which she will be, in a very indecent way."

Wendell raised his brow. "They won't be married at all if they don't leave soon. There's the devil's own wind blowing down from the moor, fiercer than anything I can remember. Holmes is having a time controlling the horses."

"Then go now if you must," Olivia said, embracing Catriona in such a tearful hug one would think they'd never see each other again. "And for heaven's sake, send word from the yacht that you've made it across the Channel. I don't like you sailing off in a storm."

"Go before your uncle awakens," Marigold said. "I shall have a terrible time as it is, looking the dear man in the face when he learns I did nothing to stop you."

Catriona resisted the urge to glance back at the house. She was too afraid that she would see Murdo's face in the window. Instead, she concentrated on the blissful feeling that enveloped her as Knight took her arm and told his aunt, "Just tell him you couldn't stop us. It's the truth, anyway. I am marrying his niece if I have to walk through fire to do—"

"Oh, good heavens!" Olivia said with a muffled shriek; the wind had just torn loose the uppermost branch of a hazel tree and sent it flying across the garden beyond.

"Now we really have to go," Knight said firmly, his hand gripping Catriona's. "And, trust me, I will not let anything happen to my woman."

Catriona could only smile, feeling protected—and refusing to believe that the strange windstorm had anything to do with her elopement.

The carriage sped over ancient bridges and careened around hillocks and fields of tidy apple orchards. The wind seemed to chase them as they squeezed down stone-walled lanes, disturbing the ghost moths that haunted the hedgerows. Holmes swore at the top of his voice from the driver's box that they would be blown to Scotland once he reached the open landscape of the moor.

A few minutes before midnight, they passed through the sleeping village of West Briarcombe. Catriona   frowned   when   she   saw   the  blacksmith working at his forge outside the smithy. Red-hot sparks flew from his anvil into the night, and there was something disturbingly familiar about his black-caped form. He half turned as he heard the carriage pass and… waved?

She sat up, her breathing arrested. "Knight, did you see that? Isn't it a bit late for a smithy to be banging away like that? And he waved at me. He
waved."

He leaned over her shoulder. "I don't see a blessed thing."

"We're past him now," she said, staring back at the rows of thatched cottages that receded into the distance.

"Yes. Almost to the graveyard," he said conversationally, lifting the hair from her nape to blow into her ear. "Hold your breath."

She started to laugh, only to subside into silence at the sight of several ethereal figures floating around the gravestones in some ghastly spectral dance. She pressed her face closer to the window, disbelieving.

"You're shivering," Knight murmured, biting gently at her shoulder. "Cold or excited?"

"Tell me you don't see ghosts dancing around the graves," she whispered.

He glanced up in amusement. "Figments of the mist. That's a bucket swinging over the well, not a ghost."

"Except that there isn't any mist," she said half to herself. "There's a wind. No mist. Something strange is in the air." Or
someone
strange. Surely Lamont did not possess such powers.

Knight brought both his hands to her shoulders. "I have the sovereign cure for nerves," he said in a deep voice, his muscular thigh pressing against hers.

She blinked. "What?"

"Take off your dress, and I'll show you."

"Take off—in the carriage?" she asked, her voice catching on a scandalized laugh.

He pulled off his heavy black coat. "We're going to give it a good try."

"You aren't serious—"

"Do you prefer the summerhouse?" he asked, unbuttoning his shirt. His broad chest bare, he drew her dress and loosened chemise down to her waist.

"I prefer"—she turned to find herself captive in his arms, his eyes dark with sensual intent as he studied her half-naked form—"you," she said, the word almost a whisper. "And I don't care where."

A slow grin spread across his face. "You look very fetching in that dress, by the way, and even better out of it."

He kissed her slowly, then moved his hand under her silk skirt to stroke the skin of her inner thigh. "Oh, my," he said against her mouth, his cool fingers touching the warm hollow of her womanhood, tangling in the curls there. "I've found what I was looking for."

"You really are a wicked man, Knight." She gave another breathless shiver as he began to kiss the aroused tips of her breasts. "And don't tell me you've never done this before in a carriage."

"I haven't." His fingers slid deep inside her slick heat. The invasion into her most sensitive flesh, coupled with his mouth at her breasts, forced a groan from her throat. "But I intend to, at least a dozen times before we reach the coast."

"Rake," she whispered, closing her eyes in erotic surrender.

"One who has apparently been reformed."

"I don't think so," she murmured, her body arching.

His dark eyes gleamed with enjoyment as she writhed against his hand. "But who could blame me for not being able to resist you?"

She laughed softly, loving him so much that her heart ached. "Oh, I can think of quite a few people."

He pretended to frown. "Yes, so can I, now that you mention it." He paused to press his finger so deep inside her that she gasped. "Of course, they'll never know unless you tell."

"Or unless Holmes unexpectedly decides to stop," she said, biting her lip against the sweet pain he inflicted.

"Holmes," he said, taking a moment to watch the pleasure on her face, "is used to this sort of thing. Duke is hardly a saint, either, if the truth be told."

"But he is in love," she whispered.

"Aren't we all?"

He leaned forward to kiss her trembling mouth. With a sigh of sublime pleasure, she locked her arms around his shoulders to anchor herself against his hard body, against the skillful play of his fingers below. It was the strangest feeling, the carriage hurtling across the heath almost as if the driver had surrendered control of the vehicle, while the man she loved seduced her without an inkling of shame. She twined her fingers in the crisp black hair that curled around his neck. Oh, she could die like this, in his arms. Several blurry minutes of pleasure passed before she even realized he had removed his pantaloons and was spreading her legs apart with his bare knee.