Linda Needham (2 page)

C
aro was so startled by the huge man’s shockingly rude behavior, she couldn’t find her tongue, or her breath.

Couldn’t hear a thing over the roaring rush of her own heart, couldn’t think for the spicy bay scent of the rogue’s coat, the wall of exotic heat and the thunderous power of him keeping her against the hedge.

She tried to wriggle around him but he only became broader, more immovable.

She found her voice at the very same moment she heard the giggling chatter coming toward them from around the next bend.

“Ooo, Hammy, dear, kiss me again! Your moustache tickles me so!”

“Oh, my delicious little Adelaide, I just want to eat you up.”

Gad! It was Lord Hamilton and that silly daughter of Lord Melborough’s. A pair of incurable gossips, who were sure to spread word of her misadventures
in the maze, if they found her here with the great brute.

Which meant that she had no choice but to keep absolutely quiet and suffer the pointed branches grabbing her from behind as well as the sultry, unsubtle pressure of the huge man in front of her.

“I think the path goes this way…. Eeeeek! Oh, what is that, Hammy? A ghost?”

The brigand shifted his weight against her, broadened his shoulders, but said nothing.

“Here, here, sir!” good old Hammy said with a blustery roar and a lot of scuffling and brush quaking. “I say, who goes there?”

Her abductor scoffed with an actor’s ease. “You injure me to the quick, Hamilton.”

“Lord Wexford, as I live and breathe!” Hamilton must know the man, must now be shaking his hand. “Nothing to fear, Adelaide, this is Andrew Chase, the Earl of Wexford. My lord, this is Lady Adelaide Melborough.”

An earl? This presumptuous man with the shoulders of an ox and the disposition of a bear and muscles of molten granite, was a peer?

“My deepest apologies if I startled you, Lady Adelaide,” he said, settling his weight on his right foot. “I was just taking a bit of cool air.”

Caro felt the man bend a slight bow toward the lady, a motion that brought her belly in direct contact with the hard flexing muscles of his backside for a short, wildly thrilling moment that made her breath catch in her throat and her heart rattle in her chest.

“I do understand, my lord Wexford. Hammy and I were just taking the air ourselves.”

“We’re engaged to be married, don’t you know.” Hamilton gave a belly-laugh.

“Then my best wishes to you both.” Wexford’s impatience for them to be gone rumbled across the bare expanse of her bosom, sifting like a breath through her gown and the silk of her camisole.

Caro wanted them gone just as surely, but Adelaide went on merrily. “Such an exciting ball, don’t you think, Lord Wexford? With the princess arriving in all her glory. Looking just like a queen. Such an exquisite young woman. Regal to her fingertips! Don’t you think so, my lord?”

Caro waited breathless for Wexford’s response to Adelaide’s question, though wondering why she cared. But his pause was every bit as prickly as his, “Mmmmmm…I didn’t really notice.”

“You didn’t see her?”

Those huge shoulders rose and fell in a shrug. “One princess is more or less like another.”

Adelaide gasped and then giggled.

Caro reached down and pinched the back of his knee, but he didn’t even flinch.

“You’ll think differently, my lord, when you take a good look at her. Right, Hammy dear?”

“Decidedly, Wexford! Come now, Adelaide, my love, let’s us back to the ball before we’re missed and tongues start to waggle.”

“Good-bye, my lord! Do enjoy the night air!”

The moment Adelaide’s trilling voice trailed off into the larger part of the garden, Caro gave the huge man a shove. “Get off me, you big lout!”

The beastly earl let up just far enough to turn before bearing down on her again in the darkness, so
that all she could see of him was the pearly reflection of his white teeth.

“You have a very large temper for such a little princess.”

“The size of my temper, sir, is in direct proportion to the size of my outrage. And you, Wexford, are completely outrageous. Now, let me go immediately, else you’ll find my knee making direct contact with your precious family jewels.”

The horrible man threw back his head and laughed. A full bellowing roar that filled the tight spaces between them and stole her breath away.

“Then, by all means, Your Highness, don’t let me detain you.” He then took a long step backward, swept his thickly muscled arm in front of him as he bowed his head and dropped to a very proper and elegant half-knee in front of her.

Quite elegant for such a huge beast of a man.

Chiding herself for once again yielding a moment to his exotic scent, Caro harrumphed and wrenched herself forward out of the brush.

“Ouch!” She went exactly nowhere.

The pointy hedge held fast to her puffy sleeve and to somewhere near her right hip.

Wexford kept his laughter close as he gestured through the moonlight toward the exit. “That direction, Princess. A quick right and then a left.”

“I know the way out, sir!” More to the point, she knew the way in. So she threw herself forward again, but only caught herself more firmly, now at her left hip and her skirt and the other sleeve. “Blast it all, Wexford, you’ve caught my gown with your manhandling!”

“You’re caught, Princess?” The man’s dark amuse
ment was as palpable as his towering height. “A pity. I’d begun to hope you’d changed your mind about deserting me.”

“Get me out of here!” Time was running out and here she was arguing with a lunatic.

He cocked his head and leaned closer to her, all that stunning nearness a threat to her usual self-control, his whisper thoroughly unbalancing. “Is that a royal command, Your Highness, or would that be a request for me to help you?”

Fiendish man, he didn’t understand a thing. “This is a very old and expensive gown—” And she had work to do tonight.

He chuckled low and took a deep breath. “I doubt you’d ever be caught dead in anything less.”

The bloody rogue! If she could only get a good look at the man, but the hedge shaded his face and the moonlight had disappeared again. “If you will just unhook my skirts for me, then I could—”

“Well, now there’s a proposition I don’t often get from a princess. Unhooking your skirts…”

She heard herself sputter, felt her heart rise up in her throat. “How dare you presume—!”

“Oh, my dear princess, you’d be shocked to the tip of your succulent little toes at just how much I’ve dared to presume about you.”

Succulent? Her toes! Of all the…Oh, my!

She should have felt fear as he moved closer with his enveloping heat.

Should have objected loudly when he wrapped his amazingly strong arms completely around her, wrapped her shoulders and her back and her hips in the hottest, most dazzling embrace of her life.

She certainly should have done much more than
gasp and turn her head toward his mouth when he exhaled along her bare shoulder, more than merely whisper a breathy little “Whatever are you doing, sir?” against his temple.

He paused for a long, motionless moment as though pondering something, then grumbled low and cleared his throat. “I’m unhooking your skirts, Princess, just as you commanded.”

Oh, but he seemed to be doing more than that. Much more. His hands were huge, the heat of them playing in the heavy satin folds against her hip and then along her waist, sliding down the back of her thigh until she was holding her breath, a hundred curses, a thousand sighs trapped in her chest.

“Tell me, Your Highness, are these merely bits of glass bedecking your…
bunting
back here, or are they the crown jewels of Boratania?”

Caro could hardly think for the sound of her heart in her ears, for the stunning sensation of the ever so slight whisper of his masculine chin brushing across her very bare shoulder as he worked behind her.

“Are they, Princess?”

“What?” she finally managed, still not sure of his meaning, still reveling in the scent of him. Beads? The crown jewels? “Why, sir?”

He blew out another torrid breath of exasperation. It broke against her shoulder and danced across her bosom to lodge between her breasts like a delicious, stealthy caress.

“Because, Your Highness, I damn well don’t want to be accused of being careless of your treasure.”

He was too late for that. She was nearly out of time tonight and out of breath. Possibly out of her mind for coming out to the maze in the first place.

“The beads are glass, Wexford.”

“Good, then I can…” He grunted, shifted his weight closer against her, thrusting her hip into his thigh, balancing her there.

“Then you can what, sir?”

He seemed to be gritting his teeth, growling under his breath as he started to tug on her skirt. “I can simply force the issue.”

“Force? No! Wait!” She had been studiously not touching him anywhere—there was too much of him, too much power leashed inside him. Now she grabbed hold of his waist, the only part of him within reach. “Stop right there! What do you mean, force the issue?”

He stepped back to stare at her, his eyes glittering from his great height, the stars at his back, the moon painting his shoulders with silver. “You’re stuck, Princess. I’ve freed your sleeves and your lovely hips, but from what I can tell, the beadwork at the back of your skirt has become permanently entwined in a couple of stubborn twigs.”

She heard the flick of metal, caught the flash of steel in the moonlight. “That’s a knife!”

“I won’t be long.” He started to reach behind her back, but Caro flattened her palm against his chest and he stopped.

“Don’t you dare, Wexford! I’m not going to let you cut my skirts. The beads may be merely glass, sir, but this gown belonged to my dear mother. She wore it when she married my father, which makes it very precious to me, and part of the heritage of Boratania.”

“I promise to do as little damage as possible.” Then the lout ducked to the side, put his huge, hot hand right in the middle of her back, then bent her over his thigh as though to paddle her.

“Are you purposely trying to mortify me?” She tried to wriggle out of his impossible embrace, but he only clamped his hand down on her bottom and pressed her more firmly over his thigh.

“My dear princess, if you want me to save your precious gown then you’ll hold still until I’m finished.” He kept his hand there, his fingers spread across her backside as though he had free reign.

“Finished doing what, sir?” If she could only see. She could feel him sawing at something, muttering blue curses beneath his breath.

“There.” He stopped suddenly and straightened. “That should do it, Your Highness. But come away gently.”

Furious with the man and his methods, and with herself for landing in his path in the first place, Caro flung herself out of her prison into the laurel lane, suffering a pin prick to her arm and a yank at her scalp.

She was free, her dignity scratched but definitely intact.

Caro brushed at her palms, hoping there might still be time for her errand. “That will be all, Wexford. Please take your leave.”

She heard the shadowy branches shifting as he stepped back into the moonlight, as tall as a bear and just as threatening. “Not even a thank-you, Princess?”

“For what? For pushing me into the bushes in the first place?”

“For saving your silky hide from ruin amongst your loyal subjects.”

She hadn’t any subjects, loyal or otherwise. Not that the man needed to know this. “Good-bye, Wexford.”

“Aren’t you forgetting something, Your Worship-fullness?” He was holding out something to her.

A circle of glittering bits of light.

“My tiara!”

“Yes, and what’s a princess without her crown?” He sketched a bow toward her.

“Or a libertine without his conceit.” Caro grabbed her tiara out of his hand and pressed it against her chest. Imagine if she’d lost it out here in the bushes while she was dallying with this phantom bandit who smelled of danger and the whispers of night.

Feeling suddenly horribly exposed to those darkly glittering eyes, she turned away and replaced the circlet, but when she looked back, the man was gone. Vanished without a sound.

Her wish had come true. Though he’d left his heat and his scent to linger on the misty moonlight, a memory which she planned to forget in the next five minutes.

“Blast it all.” She’d been away from the ball too long by now. Too late to work her way through the maze for a look at the statue in the center.

A statue which, according to her exhaustive research had been stolen from her. From her family. From her dear Boratania, when it had been at its lowest ebb.

Not that she was accusing the Duke of Bradford of looting her kingdom himself, he wasn’t old enough. However, if the statue was the one she believed it to be—from the rotunda of the Villa Rosa—then he had at least accepted stolen goods—knowingly or not—and she would have every right to reclaim it in the name of Boratania.

If the statue was here at all.

Well, then, she’d just have to see that the duke invited her back for another garden party. A party that would hopefully exclude the brutish Earl of Wexford.

Caro hurried back toward the conservatory, certain that she was being watched by someone, so distracted that she nearly jumped out of her skin when she pulled the door open.

“What have you been doing out there, Princess Caroline?”

“Lucinda! Sylvia!” Her two very best friends in the world stood blocking her way. “What are you doing
here
?”

“You invited us to the ball, remember,” Lucie said, hooking Caro by the arm and pulling her inside the conservatory.

“Yes, I know! But how did you know where I was?”

Sylvia brushed at Caro’s sleeve. “He said we’d find you here looking a mess, and you certainly do!”

“He who?” Caro’s heart took a guilty leap, though she was perfectly innocent of any wrongdoing and knew exactly which man Syl was talking about.

“A tall, handsome fellow,” Sylvia said, her eyes sparkling bright in the pale light. “Handsome actually doesn’t begin to explain the way he—”