With This Ring (7 page)

Well, no man is perfect
, his groin commented.
Let the woman work.

However, his better instincts won out.
He placed both his hands on her shoulders and pulled her upward.
She resisted, obviously absorbed in her task.

“Wait—I’ve almost done it.”
She made to reach back down but he held her fast, mercifully high and away from his much-saddened groin, although lifting her had straightened her body to come between his parted knees.
If he squeezed his knees together, he would press his thighs perfectly into the dip of her waist.

He manfully resisted the urge.
Instead, he scowled at his no-longer-precisely kidnapper.
“Who taught you to tie knots, then?”

She shrugged.
“My brothers, I suppose.”

“Well, they made a muck of it.”
Aaron would never say “muck” to a lady, but Hastings would.
“These knots’ll never give.”

She smirked slightly.
“That is the general idea.”

Oh, she was a saucy one.
He did not smile.
It wasn’t easy.
Then again, he was still most thoroughly tied up.
Instead, he let out a long-suffering sigh.
He figured he was entitled to one, since he’d been suffering for a good bit of time.
Then he tilted his head toward the gaping window.
“Is there any broken glass remaining in that window frame?”

She frowned slightly; then her eye lighted.
“No!
But there is a bit left in the dining room window!”

She scrambled to her feet, pulling from his grasp with ease.
His hands closed on empty air as she strode from the room.
She bent to sweep the lantern from the floor as she passed it and left the room, leaving him in utter and sudden darkness.

His stomach lurched slightly at the instant blindness.
He wasn’t afraid of the dark—but he didn’t like being tied up and helpless and blind as well!

His eyes widened, trying to adjust, but this was no moonlit beach in the tropics, where even the slightest star shine reflected in the water and sand.
This was a darker, colder, damper world altogether.
The night sky above gave nothing away, for there was not a star to be seen through the heavy clouds.

The girl tripped lightly back into the room, swinging the lantern with gusto.

“Agh!”
Aaron threw his hands up before his face, but it was too late.
The glow of the lantern had seared his night-expanded vision until all he could see was a harsh greenish smear against his closed lids.

“You ought not to look directly at the light,” she informed him quite seriously.
“It’s bad for your eyes.”

“Do tell,” he muttered.
Well, at least he hadn’t whimpered.
He’d had a very difficult evening at the hands of this—

“What is your name?”

He could feel her hesitation.

“Are you going to call the magistrate on me after all?”

“Probably.”
Probably not, but he wasn’t about to let her off that easy.

He heard her sigh and tried not to imagine the rise and fall of her sweetly curved bosom.

“Even if I cut you loose and get you back to your carriage?
After all, you haven’t been injured.”

“Tell that to my skull.
Your brother packs a wallop.”

He could practically hear her squirm.
He wished he could see it as well, although his active imagination filled in the blanks quite admirably.
It wasn’t fair, really, for her to be so very pretty.
He would have a much easier time despising her if she were large, hairy, and male.

He told her so.

She laughed.
“My brother Orion would say it was a failing of the species or something.”

“If you are any example of the current state of British womanhood, the continuation of humankind depends upon it.”

Her voice came closer and he realized that she had knelt before his feet again and was now sawing at the ropes, presumably with her scavenged shard of glass.
His vision was clearing gradually.
His sense of smell had taken no such holiday.

Pretty girls who smelled like this one could likely get away with murder.
In fact, their victims probably thanked them for it!

*   *   *

In that moment, the looming clouds above them came to a decision and began a downpour.
Not just rain, but a deluge!
Ice-cold and so heavy that it felt as if they stood under a waterfall.

Elektra gasped as the cold water instantly began to soak through her clothing.
She almost scrambled for the lone bit of shelter near the south wall of the ruin, where a bit of scorched roof remained, until she realized that her prisoner could not flee the downpour.
So instead of running away, she found herself rushing back to where he sat, his booted ankles still securely bound to the chair, trying to shield his head from the battering rain with his raised arms.

Elektra bent to pry at the ropes with her fingertips, but the thick hemp had already become soaked and was now swollen into impenetrable knots.
The rain beat down so hard she could scarcely breathe, but she had no choice but to stand and lean over him from the front, taking the worst of the rain on her back and shoulders.
If she bowed her head over his, the rain ran down over her hair, forming a curtain behind which they both could draw breath.

Then the hail began.

Aaron had been perfectly content to allow the girl to protect his head from the cold rain—until, that is, he saw the walnut-sized hailstones bouncing on the rotted carpet.
He looked up at once to find her bent over him with her arms stretched to the back of the chair, sheltering him like a human tent.

Her face was hidden behind her streaming hair, but Aaron heard a single cry of pain when her body shook from a particularly hard impact.

“Get off, you fool!
Get to shelter!”

She ignored him, even as her body cringed from more and more blows.
Beside him he could see that the hailstones had grown to the size of peaches, some of them harmless and slushy, but some quite hard ones that bounced and rolled away.
The impact had to be considerable.

And yet not one had struck him yet.

“Go!”

But she stubbornly remained where she was.
Aaron had no choice but to grab her about the waist and force her down to his lap so that he could bow his shoulders over both their bodies.
It wasn’t a complete shelter for her, but it was better than before.
She struggled, but he bent his head to growl in her ear.
“Stay!”

Relenting, she curled up in his protection, only disobeying him enough to cup one hand over each of their skulls in meager protection.

The hail passed in moments, as hail does, though it seemed as if they were battered for an hour.
Each mushy ice wad that struck them made them gasp.
Each frozen lump made them yelp.
Their heads stayed tucked together, his arms wrapped about her, hers curled above them.
Their breath mingled, and he heard every gasp and whimper she made.

Then, with a few last rolling icy cannonballs the size of hearty pinecones, the hail ceased completely.

They waited for a long moment, unwilling to risk unwinding from their mutually protective posture.
Elektra lifted her head first.

“It’s done,” Aaron whispered.
“It’s over.”

She only nodded.
Much of the spirit seemed leached from her by the cold and wet.
Slowly, she slid off his lap and knelt beside him.
She found the shard of window glass and wrapped it in her sodden handkerchief to protect her hand.
Silence grew around them as she sawed at the rope.

Aaron found himself missing the exasperatingly animated girl who’d held him at the point of a pistol and ruined his life.
This creature was just an exhausted young woman who needed dry clothes and a warm bed.
He actually felt a little guilty that she’d stayed and protected him—as if he’d somehow caused the ropes to wind so inconveniently about himself!

The hemp ropes gave quickly before the wickedly sharp glass.
Aaron was soon free.
Taking the lantern in one hand and supporting his captor’s elbow with the other, he led her from the ruin back to the front drive where she’d left the carriage and team.

Together they gazed blankly at the vast, long empty drive that connected the main road to the looping curve that passed before the house.

“Horses,” Aaron mused wearily, “must dislike hail as much as we do.
I don’t think we can find them in the dark.”

“Oh.”
She didn’t cry, not really.
She simply sort of … crumpled.
That haughty arch to her neck that he’d first noted disappeared.
She slumped forlornly with her arms about her drenched body and trembled in silence.

Taking the only route open to them, they slowly walked back into the ruin.
The fire that Elektra had built while Aaron was unconscious was now a pile of damp, steaming char.
He might have managed to get the last few coals going, if there had been anything dry to burn.

Instead, they searched the place until they had gathered several lengths of draperies, rotted dustcovers, and even a moth-eaten pillow, and made a slightly squishy nest in the most sheltered corner of the ruin.

“You’d best lay close t’me,” he told her.
“For warmth.
You’ll catch your death in them wet clothes.”

He thought she would make some ladylike protest, but she simply curled against him, tucked into his side, and pulled a musty velvet drapery over them both.

It was a testament to their exhaustion and chill that they soon relaxed into the relative warmth of each other’s bodies.

“Y’know, this is all your fault,” he said softly.

“It usually is,” she replied regretfully.

Aaron blinked against the weariness flooding his body.
Shivering was exhausting.
Although he’d done nothing for a decade but wish he could return to England, he now felt most nostalgic for the endless sun and balmy summer days of the islands.
Half an hour on a sunny Nassau beach would set him up right, he was sure.

Elektra felt herself nodding.
She couldn’t help but allow her head to rest on the broad wet shoulder next to her cheek.
The clammy shirt made her flinch, but soon the heat of his body seeped through the damp fabric and she snuggled deeper.

“Still … you ought not to ride in your master’s carriage,” she informed him sleepily.
“People ought not to be blamed for getting the wrong idea.”

She felt his shoulder move under her cheek and realized that he was laughing at her.
Well, laughing was usually better than shouting.… or at least, it would be if her pride were not involved.
This time, however, she had no pride.
She’d mucked it but good and there was no getting around that.
Mr.
Hastings had every right to laugh at her.

Besides, he was big and warm and she was very tired and very cold.

*   *   *

I smell jasmine.

Even with the deluge, somewhere on her skin remained a slight scent of rain-washed jasmine.

She shivered against him.
Almost against his will, he put his arms about her and pulled her closer to his body.
He at least had a bigger body to stay warm.
She was a slight little thing despite her curves.

No.
No English ladies!
Even the best of them assumed that he would do the protecting, that he would fix all the ruin they had wrought, that he would take the consequences for their errors …

She’d stood over him like the sheltering wings of an angel.

Angel.
Devil.
What an odd girl.

She pressed closer to him in her chilled sleep and he reminded himself, Woman.
Grown woman, capable of making ridiculous amounts of trouble for him if she ever discovered the truth of his identity.

He had even begun to feel responsible for her.
True, he was here alone with her against his will.
True, he’d arrived unconscious and bound.
True, he hadn’t asked for this and wished he’d never laid eyes on her.

Yet surely she had people who missed her.
Surely all her brothers weren’t as mad as the silent, vicious bloke who’d taken him down so fast and so hard that he was a bit embarrassed to think on it.
Humiliated, really.
Of course, he’d been taken by surprise … and he’d been unarmed.

But he was too weary to swing back to anger now.
If he remembered how angry he was, he would have to set her aside and stalk away and she was very soft and the poor thing was so cold and he was so weary.…

*   *   *

Henry Hastings, former unrepentant gambler and convicted felon, now semi-reluctant valet and parolee, wasn’t the sort of man to believe in heaven, at least not for the likes of him.

Hell, on the other hand, was a concept a man like him ought to keep conversant with.
His own hell would likely involve alternating waves of fire and ice, of sweating and shivering, of noises that rang through his aching head like great brass gongs—yes, he could believe in that sort of hell quite easily.

A place he seemed to be right at that moment.
He tried to thrash his way free of some torturously constricting trap.

“Shh, milord.
Don’t fret now.
You’ll only tire yourself.”

He stilled.
At last a sound that did not grate his ears raw.
A voice like that, rich with a lilt he almost recognized, soft and light, was a balm across his exposed nerves.
But the voice fell silent and although Hastings strained heroically, he could not summon it again.

His bonds were fair to smothering him.
He kicked madly, trying to free his trapped legs.

“It’s all right, milord.”

Who?
Who was “milord”?
Was it him?
He tried to remember, almost had the thought pinned down, then lost the thread as his blood abruptly switched from boiling to freezing.

So cold.
He tried to worm his way deeper into his bonds, seeking warmth, desperate to stop the shivers that racked his body.
A tender touch upon his brow stopped him.
Fingers, warm and gentle, stroking soothing smoothing—

The fingers moved to his chest, caressing his bare skin.
Bare?
When had his bonds been released?
He could escape now.
He could flee this hell.

He did not move, lulled to stillness by the sweet, circular strokes of those small, gentle fingers.
He could stay in hell a bit longer for that touch, although now hell included a strange, green odor like rotted vegetables, or a pond gone stagnant—with perhaps a goat carcass submerged for extra flavor.