“Bloody hell, you’re right.” Jason rubbed the back of his neck. “She could be with child.”
With child?Trick couldn’t believe what he was hearing. One minute he was washing out a wine stain, the next he was accused of fathering a babe. With a woman he’d never even kissed.
Never mind that he wanted to.
Six
KENDRA WASsoaked to the skin. Water streamed from her hair into her tear-blurred eyes. She was shivering. But she’d rip her own tongue out before asking her infuriating brothers for one of their cloaks.
Riding behind them, she heard the murmurs of a deeply involved conversation. She took slow, fortifying breaths, wishing she could make out their words. She couldn’t let them make her go through with this. But they wouldn’t, would they? Surely they didn’t intend for her to actually wed a highwayman. A highwayman she hadn’t so much as kissed!
Which was a pity. Because she’d wanted to kiss Trick more than she’d wanted to do most anything else, ever.
She knew full well he’d been about to kiss her, and she’d been ready—no, not just ready,thrilled—to cooperate. But the kiss hadn’t happened. Not to mention a mere kiss didn’t warrant a forced marriage.
But, dear heavens, he’d turned out to be everything she’d fantasized and more. She’d melted just looking at him, and when he’d wrapped his arms around her, her whole body had felt on fire. She’d been dying for that kiss.
It would have been the first time she’d kissed anyone.
Oh, she’d been kissed, of course—she was twenty-three, after all, and not unattractive—but she’d never kissed anyone back. She blamed those brothers of hers. Every time a gentleman managed to pull her into an alcove or onto a balcony and press his lips to hers, one of her brothers would materialize, staring daggers into the unfortunate swain’s eyes. And until now, she hadn’t been enamored enough of any man to make an issue of it.
Why did her brothers always have to show up and ruin it all?
At long last, Jason sent the others ahead, then halted until she caught up. “I cannot believe you did that,” he said.
“It was raining.” She was seething inside, but somehow she managed to sound calm. “All I did was come in from the rain.”
“That’s not the way it looked,” he said as though that were the end of the discussion.
She stared at his determined profile. A highwayman…her brother was letting—no,making—her wed a highwayman. Regardless of whether Jason thought she’d lost her virtue to the man, the fact that he’d as good as pledged her to a robber was beyond belief.
Her stare turned to a glare that drew his gaze. He blinked. “What were you thinking, riding out alone?”
Ignoring that, she drew breath. “I cannot believe you expect me to marry a highwayman. You, who wouldn’t let Lord Harrison near me because he was only a baron!”
For a moment, Jason just looked at her. Then his lips quirked into a smile, and he threw back his head and laughed.
Incredulous, Kendra watched, wishing the rain pouring into his mouth would drown him.
“You—you—you don’t know who he is, do you?” he choked out.
“Trick Caldwell. Patrick Iain Caldwell,” Kendra returned through clenched teeth. “Do you think you would have found me in a man’s bedchamber—never mind that nothing happened there—if I didn’t so much as know his name?”
Jason only laughed harder. “Patrick Iain Caldwell What?”
“What? What do you mean, what? That’s not his name?” Kendra bit the inside of her cheek. “I should have guessed he’d lie to me,” she muttered, more to herself than her brother. “He’s a bloody highwayman, after all.”
“You don’t know who he is.” Apparently failing to notice her unladylike language, Jason actually snorted. “You really don’t know who he is.” With another shout of laughter, he dug in his heels and raced up to meet their brothers.
Kendra could hear their loud guffaws through the distance and the driving rain.
She rode behind them for another few minutes, listening to their whoops of laughter, hoping they’d expire from lack of air. A buzzard circled lazily overhead. Not exactly Ares’s bird, the vulture, but close enough. A fury was rising in her that would do Ares, the God of War, proud.
At last she couldn’t stand it. She raced up to meet her brothers, nosing Pandora between Jason’s and Ford’s mounts.
“He’s titled, isn’t he?” she demanded. “Or you wouldn’t even be jesting about this marriage. Who is he?”
Ford looked at her, his blue eyes all innocence. “Who?”
