Lessons from a Scandalous Bride (12 page)

Dixon cursed and fell down beside his friend. “Ansel! Gor, Ansel! You’ve been stabbed!”

“I know that!” Ansel cried, his face a contortion of pain and panic.

Shaking her head, Cleo jumped to action and scrambled for the forgotten pistol. She located it on the ground several feet away. Snatching up the weapon, she grasped it in her hands and pointed it at the unsavory pair.

She’d barely had time to acclimate to the heavy feel of it before it was plucked from her hand. Strong fingers stole it away as if she weren’t gripping it at all.

Her gaze shot to Logan. He stood beside her, his expression revealing none of her anxiety, just stony resolve.

“Now,” he announced, his deep voice maddeningly calm. “Listen to me . . . Dixon, is it?”

Without a word, Logan moved, positioning his body between Cleo and the men on the ground. She peered around him to see Dixon’s face as he looked up at Logan, his sunken eyes wide and unblinking.

Logan’s voice continued, deep and authoritative, “You’re going to collect your friend there and disappear back into the trees . . . after you return my knife to me, of course. I’m rather fond of it.”

Nodding, Dixon turned to Ansel, grimacing as he pulled the knife free of his shoulder. Ansel cried out and pressed a hand over the gushing wound. Cleo almost felt sorry for him in that moment—until she recalled that he’d threatened to blow her to bits all over the road moments before.

Dixon wiped the blade clean and then offered the dagger back to Logan.

“Very good.” Logan secured the knife. “Now, toss down the rest of your weapons. Including Ansel’s blade tucked away inside his boot.”

“Bastard,” Ansel growled as Dixon removed his blade and tossed it to the ground, followed by his own knife.

Logan ignored him and stepped forward to kick the weapons farther away from the men. “Cleo, gather those up.”

She quickly obliged, collecting the two knives in her hands. Rising again, she watched the drama unfolding in front of her, marveling that Logan had thrown a knife into her attacker across goodness knows how far a distance. She tried to imagine Thrumgoodie defending her in such a manner and nearly snorted at the implausible image. She quickly chased the thought away. She didn’t have Thrumgoodie in her life anymore, so there was no point comparing him to Logan. Or pondering his inability to protect her. That’s not why she’d wanted to marry him in the first place.

And yet a man capable of protecting her wouldn’t be remiss. She had never considered that benefit to having a strong, virile man in her life. Perhaps he could give her stepfather the thrashing he deserved. Of course he had to care enough about her to do that, and nothing indicated Logan’s feelings for her ran that deeply.

Her gaze devoured the sight of Logan standing with his legs braced, looking so powerful, so strong, in the middle of the road. She filled her lungs with an exhilarated breath. It was a heady sight.

“We’ll be keeping these,” Logan announced, waving the confiscated pistol and motioning to Cleo with his other hand, indicating the knives she held.

“What are you going to do to us?” Ansel gasped.

“What should I do?” Logan straightened his arm, aiming directly for the man’s face. “What would you do?” Tension radiated from every inch of him.

Cleo reached out and rested a hand on Logan’s arm, squeezing the tightly corded muscle there gently, hoping to ease him. She whispered his name, drawing his attention. Logan’s gaze slid to her and the barely leashed anger there shook something deep inside her. “Don’t.”

Saving the life of the man who’d been ready and willing to end her life didn’t matter. Logan, however, mattered. She didn’t want him to dirty his hands this night. Not for her.

With the barest nod, Logan looked back at the unsavory pair on the ground. “Count yourself lucky I don’t leave you in pieces all over this road as you threatened to do to her.”

A shuddery breath spilled from her.

At those final words, his voice trembled slightly. From rage or emotion, she wasn’t certain, but he made his point.

With his face twisted in pain, Ansel muttered some bitter-sounding words of gratitude.

Dixon nodded anxiously, his stocky frame lifting Ansel with ease. “We’ll be going. Won’t bother you again, sir.”

Cleo watched as the pair disappeared into the trees.

Then Logan was there, sliding his hand along her cheek, pulling her to him. “Are you all right?”

She nodded, a lump forming in her throat. For some absurd reason, she felt the urge to weep. A hint of a sob broke free from her lips before she managed to swallow it back. With a deep breath, she reclaimed her composure and pulled away. “Forgive me. I’m rather emotional.”

She made out his crooked smile. “You’re entitled to that. A man just held a pistol to your head and threatened to kill you. Most females would weep under such circumstances.”

“I’m not most females,” she countered before she could consider her words. “I’m supposed to be stronger.”

“Who says so?”

She held his gaze for a moment, resisting the rejoinder:
Me.

She’d always expected more from herself. The eldest of her mother’s children, she was responsible for keeping everything and everyone together—from shattering within the walls of her stepfather’s house.

She was still that. The responsible one who would save them all. She could show no weakness . . . allow no vulnerability in. Not then. Not now.

“It’s okay to feel fear.” Something flickered in his gaze—a shadow of some emotion she’d never seen from him. “God knows I did when I saw him put that pistol to your head. It took everything for me to stay my hand and wait for the moment when I could get a clean hit on him.”

He’d been afraid? For her?

Suddenly his hand on her face became everything, her entire world, where all sensation ended and began. He bowed his head until their foreheads touched. His breath mingled with hers until it felt as though they were one. She closed her eyes against the fanciful thought . . . tried to push it back to that place where she had long buried her dreams.

“We’d better get moving,” she suggested, stepping away from him.

His sigh floated on the air. “Very well.” He helped her remount, and she heaved her own sigh of relief to escape his touch—to be on their way. One step closer to putting this night behind.

Chapter Sixteen

T
he village was as still and silent as a tomb. They passed a vicarage at the far end of the lane. Not a single light flowed from its windows. A dog woke and barked as they approached the small inn. If it could be called that. It appeared little more than a house with a crooked shingle hanging outside. A candle glowed from an upstairs window and Cleo took comfort in that. Someone would answer their knock and treat them to a modicum of hospitality. Hopefully, at this late hour they would face few questions.

The door was flung open and a bedraggled woman stood there, a lacy old-fashioned cap askew on her head. A gray-streaked plait hung loose and unraveling over her well-padded shoulder.

She lifted her lantern high to better inspect them. “What can I do for you?”

“We need a room for the night, if you please.”

“Late, isn’t it?”

“Quite. And we’re very tired. We’d prefer a warm bed to the hard earth.” Logan flashed her a handsome grin. Cleo rolled her eyes, feeling certain that smile could get him most anything.

The woman looked them over anew, missing nothing. No doubt she was running the odds of them being murderers through her mind. Apparently satisfied with whatever she saw in them—or didn’t see—she flicked a hand toward her stable. “The lad is gone for the night. You’ll have to tend to your own mount. Our lodgings are small. I’ve only four bedchambers and all are taken save one. Fortunate for you. Your lady can follow me and I’ll see her settled whilst you tend to your mount.”

Cleo opened her mouth to object, but Logan sent her a swift shake of his head. “That would be much appreciated,” he said smoothly.

The inn mistress’s already ruddy cheeks deepened in color. “Yes, well, if you’re hungry I suppose I can light the stove and—”

“Please, don’t trouble yourself,” Cleo assured her.

Right now she merely wanted to fall into a bed and lose herself in sleep . . . where she didn’t have to contemplate what was becoming the longest night of her life.

And she especially wouldn’t have to ponder the wondrous and confusing feelings the man beside her stirred inside her heart.

As Logan headed off for the stable, the proprietress led her inside, past a small parlor with a dying fire and up the creaking stairs. A man with wild, sleep-mussed hair peeped out from a room as they walked down the narrow corridor.

“Back to bed with you, sir. Just another guest arriving.”

With a grunted mutter, the man disappeared inside his room.

“My name is Mrs. Cantrell,” she declared as she opened the door to a small gabled room—obviously located at the corner of the house—that smelled of lye.

Entering the room, Cleo rotated in a small circle, surveying where she and Logan would spend the night together. Her gaze drifted to the bed and away. It didn’t look big enough for one person. It couldn’t possibly fit two. At least not comfortably. Heat swamped her face. Not that she was concerned with it holding two bodies. She certainly wouldn’t be sharing the bed with him. Logan might insist they share this room, but she would not share a bed with him.

Her chest tightened almost painfully and she quickly distracted herself by facing Mrs. Cantrell. “Thank you, Mrs. Cantrell. We won’t be needing anything else.”

Mrs. Cantrell looked unimpressed with this assurance. At this late hour, Cleo supposed that could be understood. “Good night to you then.”

Setting the lamp on top of the bureau, she left the room, closing the door behind her with a click.

Cleo studied the room anew, her gaze scanning the way the yellow gold lamplight flickered over the walls. A screen stood along one side of the room. She thought about stepping behind it and changing clothes before Logan returned, but then she recalled she’d left her valise with the horse.

She ducked her head beneath the sloping ceiling as she approached the window and peered out.

The moonlit night stared back, silent and still to her wandering gaze. Not even a breeze disturbed the leaves in the trees. She saw no sign of Logan. The stable was a hulking shadow.

The sound of the door opening behind her brought her whirling around. Logan ducked his head as he entered. Standing inside the small room with its low ceiling only reinforced just how very large he was.

He extended the valise for her to take.

When she didn’t move to take it, he gave the barest shrug and set it near the bed.

She was being foolish, she knew. Too afraid to approach him . . . as if he might accost her. In reality, the person she most feared was herself—and the totally unprecedented way she reacted to him. Around him, she no longer knew herself.

She stared from the valise to him. Suddenly the idea of changing into the same nightgown she’d worn earlier—when he had very nearly seduced her—struck her as a very bad plan.

He sat in a chair and began removing his boots. “Aren’t you going to change?” He motioned to her valise.

With a reluctant nod, she took her valise and moved behind the screen. She undressed, draping her clothes over the screen with slow, measured movements.

Inhaling a deep breath, she acknowledged that she still couldn’t bring herself to strip down to nothing and put that nightgown back on again. Wearing her petticoat and chemise, she stepped around the screen.

Her throat constricted. He was waiting.

He sat upon the bed, his legs stretched out before him with his ankles crossed. And his chest was bare. She gulped. She knew he was no small man, but the muscles there . . . it was just too much. She closed her eyes in a slow, anguished blink. He was the epitome of everything she denied herself. Youth, beauty, virility. If heaven had sent him here to test her, she was on a direct path to failure.

“What are you doing?”

He glanced at the bed. “Hoping to get some sleep.”

Sleep? She eyed him suspiciously. “There?” She motioned toward him upon the bed.

“It is a bed.”

“And you mean to occupy it? With me?”

“Was there another alternative? It’s the only room left. And the hard floor is hardly appealing. Did you wish me to sleep in the stable?”

Cleo stared at him in silence.

He studied her for a moment and then nodded precisely two times. “Apparently you do.” His mouth twisted wryly.

She gestured to him, the bed, herself. “This is hardly appropriate.”

“You’re still concerned with what’s seemly?” His look turned incredulous. “After everything that’s happened? We’ve been alone together for hours now. We were caught in a compromising situation by several witnesses.”

She shook her head, resisting the childish urge to cover her ears. “You don’t understand,” she muttered.

“Then explain it to me.”

She looked at him starkly, wishing she could. She wasn’t about to fall into bed with him simply because her reputation was in tatters and it didn’t matter anymore. That didn’t make it acceptable.

She crossed her arms over her chest and forced her gaze away from him—all that bronze flesh that looked smooth yet she knew was hard and firm beneath her fingers.

She heard his sigh before he asked, “Are you going to sleep in that?”

She nodded, unable to explain her reason for not putting that nightgown on again—that she was afraid it would carry her back to that moment when she was on the verge of giving herself uninhibitedly to him.

“Get into bed, Cleo.”

Her skin prickled at this command. “Don’t tell me what to do.”

“Do you intend to sleep on the floor then? Because I’m not. Don’t think I’ll play the gallant gentleman and take the floor so you can have the bed.”

“I would never mistake you for gallant,” she retorted even as she wondered why she continued to flay him with her barbed tongue. But she knew why.

His eyes narrowed. “I’m too tired for this.”

She was tired, too. And yet she couldn’t drop her guard with him. If that meant constantly haranguing him with prickly words, then so be it. Perhaps she’d earn his enmity and then he’d leave her be.

“What are you so afraid of?” he demanded.

The question made her chest ache. How did he know she was afraid?

“Nothing.”

You can resist him.
Pulling back her shoulders, she strode to the other side of the bed, suppressing her alarm at the sight of how little space remained in the bed beside him.

She pulled back the coverlet on her side of the bed and slid beneath. She lay there for a moment, lacing her hands together atop her chest. She forced her gaze straight ahead, watching the shadows dance over the lighted walls.

“The lamp,” she murmured.

“I’ll take care of it.” He rose and strode across the room. She stared after him, her mouth drying as she appreciated his broad back with its lightly flexing skin.

In moments, they were submerged in darkness. She heard his footsteps and then a slight rustling beside the bed. She waited for the bed to dip with his weight, but nothing—simply more of that rustling noise.

She moistened her lips before speaking into the dark. “What are you doing?”

“Undressing for bed.”

A vision of him discarding his breeches flashed in her mind. “What? You cannot—”

“Unlike you, I prefer to be comfortable at night. I don’t typically sleep in my trousers.”

“Perhaps you could be atypical for just tonight?” she suggested, her heart beating a panicky rhythm. “For me?”

His side of the bed sank with his weight and she resisted rolling in that direction.

He chuckled low, and the sound was like velvet stroking her goose-puckered flesh. “You’re like a nun clutching the bedsheets in fear of a marauding Viking.”

She winced at the description, which struck her as strangely appropriate.

He continued. “How did you ever expect to handle your wedding night?”

“I didn’t,” she muttered so low her voice was barely audible.

And yet he heard.

The bed creaked and she guessed he had propped himself up on his elbow. She felt him above her, imagined him looking down.

“What did you say?”

She made a low, noncommittal sound.

“Did you say, ‘I didn’t’?” He made a sound—part laugh, part groan. She winced. His fingers snapped on the air as though he’d made a grand discovery. “You chose Thrumgoodie because he wouldn’t be able to perform. That’s it, isn’t it? You don’t want intimacy.”

“Yes!” She bolted upright in the bed. “That’s it precisely. Is that so unbelievable? Unlike the other females of your undoubtedly vast experience, I don’t want to submit my body to a man! I may have to marry, but I don’t intend to torture myself through child labor again and again and again with no promise for a healthy child, with no promise that I myself shall even survive.”
With no love to make any of it worthwhile
.

Silence fell and stretched between them like a wire pulled taut. She held her breath until her chest ached. The air she was holding escaped, sawing raggedly from her lips.

“Well,” he said, his voice devoid of emotion. “That does paint a rather grim picture.”

“It’s reality,” she retorted, blinking eyes that suddenly burned with tears, hating that she should feel so overwrought when he seemed so calm.

“For some women, I suppose, yes. That is a reality they must bear.”

“For some women,” she agreed fiercely. Like Mama. “But not this one. Not me.”

Suddenly she felt the brush of his fingers against her face. She flinched and pulled back from the tantalizing sensation.

“It doesn’t have to be that way.”

“Oh, no? A man can make such a promise?”

“Well, no—”

“Then I’ll take no such risk.”

“Life is risk. Would you rather not live life?”

The question had been there, on the fringe of her mind ever since Jack’s man arrived on her doorstep. Ever since she met Logan and felt the dangerous feelings he stirred inside her. She’d effectively avoided it until now. “I’ll live. But it will be a life of my own choosing.” A life that shall improve the lives of her siblings.

“So no to passion . . . no to love?”

She stiffened.
Love?
If it were to be believed, if it were real . . .

He went silent after uttering the word and she wondered if he regretted it. Whether he was as shocked as she was at expressing such a sentiment.

“No children?” he asked, his voice suddenly casual, detached. “Sounds infinitely dull, and you’ve never struck me as dull.”

“It sounds wise,” she returned. “Safe.”

“Safety.” He snorted, his voice suddenly hard and unaccountably angry. “My brother and father died on their way home from the Crimea. After surviving three years of war, their carriage lost a wheel and sent them tumbling down a mountain a two-day ride from home. There’s no accounting for when it’s your time . . . or what God has planned for you, and you’re a fool if you think you can plan your life to avoid risk.”

His words deflated her, sapping her of her indignation. She thought of Bess right then—felt the echo of his grief so very keenly. Her fingers itched to reach out and touch him at this confession, but that was just an invitation for disaster. She curled her fingers and sank back down on the bed, struggling to regain her poise.

His voice continued, “I know that you’ve suffered. That you’ve known terrible loss. Maybe more than even I can understand. But I know that you can’t stop life from happening.”

You can’t stop life from happening.

With a gulping breath, she marveled that she had ever judged him shallow. There was more to him than she first thought. He continued to reveal himself to her in ways that made him hard to resist.

He sighed and settled back down beside her, close but still not touching any part of her. “For someone so brave—”

“You think I’m brave?” she asked, her face growing warm at the praise.

“You alone carry your little brothers and sisters to the churchyard following their deaths. Yes, I think you’re brave.

“And for someone so brave,” he finished, “I don’t understand how you can be so afraid.”

“What am I afraid of?” she demanded.

A beat of silence hummed between them before he answered. “Everything, it appears.”