“For abducting me! Ruining me! For trussing me up like some … some …” She could not find the word, which only frustrated her more, making her slap him across the other cheek instead.
“Damn blast it!” He quickly bound her wrists again. “I thought you’d be more rational, woman, but clearly you are?—”
“Rational?” Annabelle’s rage reached new peaks. “I’ll tell you what is rational, sir.Rationalwould be delivering me to my father’s house.Rationalwould be dancing like a gentleman, rather than tripping and kissing me so shamelessly I?—”
His whiskey-flavored tongue invaded her mouth as Arthur Harris took full advantage of her restrained state. He plundered her lips with abandon, stroking and teasing so thoroughly she relived last night’s kiss all over again.
When he was done, he met her eyes with thinly veiled desire, and she felt it too: a shameless hunger.
“Slap me again and I’ll do more than steal a kiss, Bella.” He panted, out of breath.
“You wouldn’t … dare.” She panted back.
“Wouldn’t I?” He crushed her to his chest, his waistcoat rough against her bodice.
Annabelle struggled to think straight. “I require you to stop the carriage, sir.”
He was not the least bit swayed.
“I must … I am in need of …” Her cheeks flushed. “I must relieve myself, and if you do not wish me to do so here upon the carriage seat, you will stop this coach at once and let me out.”
The blasted man laughed.
“I mean it, Mr. Harris. I will?—”
“Piss yerself, Bella? Very well, miss.” He rapped the carriage roof until the wheels jolted to a stop. “Out y’ go.” He opened the door for her.
She looked from him, to her bound wrists, and scowled.
“Y’ wish me t’ untie yer first?” He smirked. “Oh no, dearie, you’ve proven yerself too reckless fer that.” He jumped out and neatly lifted her down, then nudged her toward the wooded roadside. “Be a minute, Fred,” he told the driver, who hopped down to check his team.
“Mr. Harris, you will untie me this instant and allow me the dignity I am afforded as a woman of?—”
“Genteel birth? Esteemed society?” He somehow managed to make those words sound coarse. “Miss, you’re but a bird in need o’ pissin’, who’ll squat an’ do her business whether I hold yer upright or not.”
Her jaw dropped.
“And if you think I’d be so foolish as to bloody let you loose, Bella darlin’, you don’t know the half of me.”
He pushed her forward, and Annabelle, unable to delay nature’s call a moment longer, blushed five shades of red behind the copse of bush where he assisted her in her bodily function.
Elizabeth looked from her father’s scowling visage to her husband’s furious face and fast regained her wits. “Milton,please pour my father a stiff drink. And Papa, you will explain to us, calmly, I beg,preciselywhat has happened to Annabelle.”
Her father frowned at Elizabeth’s half-dressed state a second longer before he downed the brandy Milton handed him. “That swine Harris did not deliver Annabelle home last night.” His tone was bitter. “I took early to bed, in quite the state”—he glared again at Milton—“unaware she’d not returned. A maid discovered her bed unslept in this morning, and when we scoured the house, she was nowhere to be found.”
Elizabeth’s right leg seized into a painful cramp; she hadn’t realized she’d been tapping her foot this entire time. What father does not wait up for his daughter’s return after such ruinous night as was Bella’s?
She began to tap her left foot instead, grumbling, “I should never have left them alone. Never. Why did I let her convince me otherwise?”
“You left them alone?” Papa’s eyes flashed. “After that man?—”
“Well,youdid not check to see that she had returned safely!”
“Listen, both of you.” Milton paused to swig brandy straight from the bottle, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He looked equal parts disgusted and exhausted. “If I know Harris, he’s either hidden Annabelle away atThe Leaf, or he’s ferreted her to Gretna, both of which?—”
“Gretna?” Papa’s face turned purple.
“To marry?” Elizabeth’s own voice squeaked.
