He instructed his driver to stop and alighted, closing the distance between them with easy strides. “Miss C.E.W., can it be you?” He kept his voice carefully low and intimate as he drew alongside her, touching her elbow lightly.
“Lord in heaven,” she exclaimed in her airy drawl. Surprise mingled with alarm on her beautiful, expressive face. “You gave me a fright, sir.”
What the devil was she thinking, sneaking away from her home with no chaperone, in the midst of the day? Did she truly believe no one would see and recognize her, that she wouldn’t ruin herself? That there wouldn’t be hell to pay? The girl’s temerity knew no bounds. She was either slow-witted or possessed of tremendous audacity. Though, to be fair, shehadstolen her way into his study at midnight and proposed to him—that alone suggested audacity of a most unbecoming and tremendous sort. The sort he quite admired, in fact.
But none of that meant that he was going to allow her to ruin his plans to wallow in her dowry and thoroughly debauch her after she’d become his countess.
“Come,” he said in his most authoritative tone. Clearly, she needed his aid before she committed any more egregious sins. And wasn’t that a laugh, the Earl of Ravenscroft looking after a lady’s reputation? “Into the carriage with you.”
“I can’t go anywhere with you.” Her eyes were wide and bluer than the clearest country sky.
“You can and you will.” He cast a glance around the busy street. It was only a matter of time before they were both recognized. “For your sake, little dove, get into the carriage. I’ll take you safely back home.”
“I’m safe enough.” She cast a pointed look toward her reticule, which bulged in most peculiar fashion. “I carry a pistol with me always. I’ve done this many times before.”
Damnation. He had no doubt that she had. Perhaps she was as much of a cutthroat at heart as her dear papa. “Into the carriage. You cannot run about the streets of London unchaperoned. Mr. Whitney was most firm in his stipulations.”
She frowned at him, her eyes sparkling with mulish heat and her chin tilting in the air. “What business is it of yours whether I run about the streets? I’m my own person, my lord.”
“Of course you are, little dove, but you are also to be my wife. You’re under my protection now.” As he said the words, he couldn’t resist touching the tip of her stubborn chin.
He felt her warmth through his gloves, and the scent of her, orange and musky and dazzling as sunshine, slammed over him. It was delightful, intoxicating.Shewas intoxicating. The notion that he was now her protector oddly aroused him—the juxtaposition of his life of sin with her purity made him harder than a randy youth with his first woman. Right there on the street.
To hell with it. If he didn’t gather his wits and her both, he’d be doing something rash. Like taking her maidenhead in his carriage. It had its appeal, of course, but there was something delicious about waiting, about making her his in good time. No woman he’d bedded had ever been his, whether in heart or in status, and he rather liked the notion of her being the first.
“Lord Ravenscroft, I’d like to be on my way,” she prattled now, oblivious to the mayhem her beauty and bold naïveté wreaked upon him.
“No,” he said thoughtfully. “I don’t think so, my dear.” Without relinquishing his grasp upon her elbow, he hauled her toward his waiting carriage and the relative safety of the privacy waiting therein.
She balked, tugging back and attempting with all her might to resist. But he was stronger than she, and trundling her into his carriage was a small matter indeed. He quietly instructed his driver to take several laps around the neighborhood before returning her to her father’s home. After all, he reasoned, who was he to turn away such a gift from the fates?
He settled himself on the squab opposite her and studied her just long enough to make the blush rise to her cheeks. Seducing her would be most enjoyable. His gaze dipped to her bosom, full and high, and he recalled how the sweet bud of her nipple had felt in his mouth through the fabric of her chemise. Ah, yes. Seducing her would be his manna.
“I fail to see why you insist upon abducting me, my lord.” She was in high dudgeon. “I cannot imagine this is what my father had in mind when he requested a proper courtship.”
He ignored her jibe. “Tell me, love. How often have you snuck away from your father’s keep to prowl the streets of London with a pistol in your reticule?”
Her brows snapped together into a frown. “That’s none of your concern.”
But it was. She was. And he quite liked it. He quite likedher, much to his bemusement. “Perhaps I ought to try a different course, Miss C.E.W. You seem to have no dearth of courage and—one might even venture to say—foolishness. Why not simply steal away from your father’s house in the night and take passage back to America on your own? Your gift for sneaking out of your home is surely unparalleled by any other young lady of an age with you. Why seek me out?”
Her full lips curved into a rueful grin, somehow making her all the more entrancing. “I would beg to differ, sir, that I am anything but a fool. My father is a stubborn man, and in a misplaced effort to keep me close to him, he’s sworn to deny me all funds unless I marry here in England. Think me as feather-headed as you like, but I know the fate that would befall me should I try to return on my own without a cent to my name.”
Jesus, an innocent lovely like her on her own wouldn’t last long in the rough underbelly of the world, even if she actually knew how to fire the pistol hidden in her reticule. At least she wasn’t naïve enough to think to brazen it out on her own. But still, she had sought out him, the blackest soul in all London, to be her savior. And he too was leading her astray. Taking advantage of her just as any other faceless man along her journey would have.
He didn’t like that realization, so he tamped it down, past the place where his conscience once lived. Good and buried, that brief sense of guilt. “I think many things of you, but feather-headed, rest assured, is not one of them.”
She nodded, looking more flustered than ever. “This carriage ride seems to be taking longer than necessary.”
A shrewd little thing, too. Good. He’d never enjoyed the company of vapid women, though he’d suffered it for the sake of survival. “Belgravia is an absolute crush at this time of day.”
“Hmm.”
“Where were you off to, my dear?” He decided to change the subject, distract her quick wit. “As I recall, you were meant to be properly courted by me this afternoon.”
“Of course I was, until Lady Bella’s mother took ill. I dislike being cooped up in a city, if you must know. It makes me feel itchy. So I take walks.”
Itchy. She was the oddest female he’d ever encountered. He found her utterly captivating. He’d wager she was a fair shot with the pistol she kept in her reticule, too.
