Mad About the Major (3 page)

Her glare of accusation was followed by the eyes of all the servants. And they in turn added their own scowls.

The duke shifted uncomfortably, for ever since his marriage to Elinor, and a bit before, there had been a revolution of sorts among his staff that had left the household united in their opinions.

And not always in the duke's favor.

“Come now,” Parkerton said, sounding nothing like a father but entirely like a duke, nodding toward the open door of the carriage with a curt tip of his head.

Taking a deep breath, Arabella notched her chin up, appearing as brave as she could, as she made her way to the carriage, taking her cue from Aunt Josephine, who always strode through life as if she were a queen without a care.

She climbed into the carriage, reminded herself it wasn't a tumbrel, as much as it felt like one, and sat in the seat opposite Aunt Josephine.

Behind her, Tia followed carrying Fagus. As usual, the little terrier was ready for an adventure, barking and twisting in the younger girl's grasp, and notably the only one eager to be starting out. “Oh, Fagus, do be still!” the girl scolded.

“Haven't you ever wanted to just slip your leash,” Aunt Josephine remarked as Tia settled into the seat next to her. “If not for just a day?” Her eyes were alight with mischief as she echoed the very same sentiment that had gotten Arabella in so much trouble with her father.

If only she could . . .

And then it happened.

Fagus slipped from Tia's grasp—­slipped or prodded loose, who could say?—­and the little dog was off and out of the carriage in a flash.

In an instant, Arabella's world erupted into chaos—­Elinor calling out in distress, Parkerton barking orders to catch that wretched beast, and the servants dashing to and fro trying to be the first to apprehend the escapee.

Only Aunt Josephine remained calmly in her seat, smiling at Arabella, and more notably at the open and unguarded door of the carriage.

And there was something about the sight of Fagus's expression as he'd made his unlikely escape, the unfettered look of joy as he'd jumped from his captivity, that snapped the invisible cords that bound Arabella's life into a tight knot.

Like the wry notes of the milkmaid's song, Arabella once again saw the bright light of freedom.

“
Go.
”

She never did know if it was Aunt Josephine who whispered that command or some long-­held magic inside her, but
go
is exactly what Arabella did.

She dashed out of the carriage, in much the same madcap fashion as Fagus, and then came to a blinding stop.

It was one thing to be free, but what then?

She glanced up to find Mrs. Oxton nodding at her.

But when Cantley spotted her, the old man panicked. He was about to cry out, but his alarm ended in a great
whoosh
as Mrs. Oxton rammed her elbow into his ribs.

The housekeeper pointed down the block, in the opposite direction that Fagus had gone, and Arabella didn't hesitate; she dashed away from Cavendish Square and hurried into the teeming streets of London beyond. Three blocks away, she was still running blindly, bolting into the street in front of a fast-­moving curricle.

The carriage and horses came to a clattering, shuddering halt, the horses' breath hot against her face where she stood frozen in place.

“I say, what is the matter with you?” the driver shouted, rising up in his seat.

That voice stopped her flight cold. Arabella's heart, which had nearly stopped as well, began to pound. Furiously.

Slowly, she tipped her chin up to look out from beneath the brim of her bonnet so she could see his face.

Him.

Though she'd really only glimpsed his face that night, she'd never forget that strong jaw, nor his commanding height. Like he'd been at the ball, he was dressed plainly, today in a driving coat and buff breeches. Even his cravat was knotted into nothing more than a simple mail coach.

Still, she found herself mesmerized. For all she had dreamt of him every night since the ball, now all the pieces—­from his blazing eyes, his high cheekbones and carved jaw—­tumbled together.

It startled her to realize he was even more handsome than she'd dared imagine.

As she tipped back the brim of her poke bonnet, his eyes widened. “You!”

Though it hardly sounded like a happy greeting, it was enough for Arabella.

Taking his recognition as an invitation, she hurried around the horses and then climbed up into the seat beside him.

He gaped at her in shock. Evidently he wasn't that much of a rake, for the unexpected arrival of a lady in his carriage had left him at a loss.

So she gave him the prompt he needed. “Whatever are you waiting for? Drive, will you?”

Arabella settled back in the seat, hands folded properly in her lap. She glanced over at her still dumbfounded Sir Galahad and nodded at the street before them. “If you don't mind. I'm in a bit of a hurry.”

For couldn't he see, all of London lay before them.

 

C
HAPTER 3

“I
n a hurry? The only place I'm taking you is to your home.” Kingsley glanced around to see if anyone was going to come collect her.

Like the wardens from Bedlam.

“I'm not going there.” She made her declaration as if she had underlined it. “I've only just left.”

Only just left,
or
been cast out, he wondered.

“Oh, yes, you are,” he shot back as he picked up the reins, again looking around the crowded street and spying no one who appeared to be looking for an errant miss. “I don't fancy another run-­in with that bruiser who left me in half mourning.” He turned his head toward her so she could see the last remnants of the black eye he'd been sporting since the Setchfield ball.

“The bruiser would be my father,” she supplied, her eyes widening as she looked directly at him. “Oh, dear! Did he do that?”

“If he was the one who floored me, then yes, he did.”

“I'm so terribly sorry,” she replied, her hand reaching up to touch his cheek, but just before her fingers grazed over the tender spot, she pulled her hand back. “I fear he has a devil of a temper. Or so my aunt always says.”

Devil of a temper, indeed! The man should be in the boxing circuit. Might well be, for all Kingsley knew. That thought gave him both pause and the resolve to wash his hands of this vexing bit of muslin as quickly as he could.

“I'm taking you home,” he told her. Or at the very least, dropping her off on the nearest corner, since he didn't relish another encounter with her father nor the thought of a matching black eye.

“Home?” Her eyes immediately began to well up and her lower lip quivered. “No, no. I beg of you, don't make me go there. I won't.” Then the lady burst into tears.

Oh, hell! Not tears. Anything but tears.

“I'm . . . I'm . . . hardly prone to such . . . such . . . displays,” she sobbed. “But I've never run away from home before. Or had to ask for aid from a stranger.”

“We are hardly strangers,” he teased, if only to get her to stop crying. Sadly, his remark prodded on a new river of tears down her cheeks. “Oh, good Lord,” he muttered as she dug around unsuccessfully in her reticule for a handkerchief, her sniffles and sobs continuing unabated. He reached into his pocket and found his, giving it to her.

Yet when she blew her nose, he regretted his gallantry immediately, for he wasn't positive he had another one packed in his valise.

“Do stop,” he implored as she made another loud, messy noise into the confines of his once perfectly clean handkerchief.

“I cannot.” The chit sobbed anew. “My life is a horrible mess.”

“How horrible can it be?”

Her tears, most thankfully, took a respite for a moment as she considered her next lament. And when she began, her words tumbled out in a steady stream, much like her sobs. “My father is forcing me into a marriage with . . . with . . .” The tears overtook her again.

“It can hardly be as bad—­”

“—­and it is all your fault,” she managed to sputter.

That stopped him. “My fault?”

“Yes,” she blurted out, along with another sob. “If you hadn't . . . That is . . . When you . . .” Her cheeks blushed deeply.

“If I hadn't what?” he demanded. He damned well knew what she meant. Hell, he had the last vestiges of a black eye to prove his part in all of it.

His little nemesis huffed loudly, with all the air of a duchess, and went back to wiping her nose.

With his handkerchief.

“If you hadn't done what you did the other night—­” she declared, once again all lofty airs, “my father wouldn't be forcing me to marry—­” She stopped there, not naming her intended, as if she'd realized in that instance that a single name would be all the clue he needed to deliver her up . . . somewhere, anywhere, anyplace other than in his company.

And whoever the poor devil was, Kingsley said a hasty prayer for the fellow. Still he had to ask, “How bad can he be?”

“Oh, heavens! He's a dreadful beast!”

Kingsley was glad for the clarification. Especially since that covered a good part of London's male population. Still he couldn't help asking—­and teasing a bit—­“How dreadful?”

“He's old,” she said, shuddering as if the cold hand of death was upon her. “At least thirty.”

“Decrepit,” Kingsley agreed, trying not to laugh. With his own thirtieth birthday only a month away, she most likely would declare him Methuselah's closest relation.

“Exactly,” she said, brightening noticeably, having warmed to her subject. “And horribly dull.”

“Why not tell this old, horribly dull fellow you don't want to marry him?”

“How can I?” She heaved another sigh. “I've never met him.”

Kingsley stilled. “You've never met him?”

“No.” She hadn't looked up at him when she'd whispered that one word. As if she were embarrassed of the truth. “And there is no avoiding the matter, my father has made that clear.”

She was being sacrificed to the altar of marriage—­without any choice, without any say in the matter.

A humiliation he knew only too well. Wasn't he in much the same straits?

“That is why I had to leave,” she continued, as if this alone was explanation enough. Yet when she turned her gaze up to his, her blue eyes brightened with an intensity, a resolute will as it were, to avoid her fate.

At any price.

A flicker of admiration lit inside him. She was doing exactly what he'd been threatening to do for nearly a month. Had done for the past three years.

But here he was, packed and ready to ride to the very fate she was running away from. The irony of the situation didn't escape him, so when she nodded for him to drive on, he did.

As he guided the horses into the busy London traffic, Kingsley took a few furtive glances at his passenger. That night had been a bit of a blur, but this chit had left an indelible mark on his imagination.

The curve of her hip. The fullness of her breasts. The way she had fit against him. He'd awakened more than once in the past week, hot and hard, wondering how he could find her again.

Wondering if he dared . . .

Now here she was, dropped back into his grasp by Fate, with only one question prodding him. Who the devil was she?

No, make that two questions. For the second one rang just as loud.

Did he dare now that he had found her?

For one thing, she wasn't a waif. He knew enough about female rigging—­having been dragged up and down Bond Street by his mother—­ to recognize his companion's gown and hat hadn't come cheap. They were the first stare, or so he would guess.

Why not just ask her name?
a practical voice chided him.

If he was being honest, he supposed he didn't want to know who she was—­for it hardly mattered. His path and hers had already been decided.

Still he couldn't help sneaking another searching glance in her direction, but this time found her doing her own reconnaissance.

“Do you ever long to be free?” she asked in that bluntly direct manner of hers.

More so, her question took him aback. As did his answer, for it sprang up before he could stop himself. “Always.”

Especially now. With the war over, his travels completed, there were no more excuses he could make to avoid his destiny.

Yet apparently, she didn't believe him. “You have no idea what I mean.” She sniffed and crossed her arms over chest.

“Enlighten me.” Kingsley only asked because the more she talked, the less she cried. And then he wouldn't be out two handkerchiefs.

That, and he clung to the hope she'd slip up and tell him enough about herself or her family so he could take her home.

“You can go wherever you please, can you not?” she asked.

“Of course.”

“As you please?”

“Yes.” A twinge of guilt pricked at him. His answer wasn't entirely true. For here he was going home.

Make that
summoned
.

“To Astley's? Or to Vauxhall Gardens? Even Bond Street shopping?”

“I suppose, if I wanted to go to those places.” He had no problem being honest there.

She failed to notice his disdain. “Yes, of course you can. Men can go wherever they like. Whereas I cannot.”

“You seemed quite at home the other night in that ballroom,” he pointed out.
And in the garden as well. . .

“The Setchfield masquerade ball, bah!” She shuddered as if it had been an afternoon in a parlor full of gossipy tabbies. “How many times must we all be horrified by the sight of Lady Blundstone done up as Venus?”

Well, there was no arguing that point. Yet he paused for a second, like a bird picking at crumbs. Here was a hint as to who she might be. She knew Lady Blundstone.

Yet that was hardly a defining connection. Everyone in London knew Lady Blundstone—­it was often joked that Gillray himself had modeled most of his buxom bawds after the baroness.

Kingsley worked his jaw back and forth. However was he going to determine who this minx was, short of rattling it out of her?

Meanwhile, she continued to prattle on about her plight. “Do you know, I've never had a single day to myself. Not one. How fair is that?”

“I can't believe you've never—­”

“Never!” she shot back. “My father dictates every facet of my day. Do this. Don't go there. Accept this invitation.” She shuddered and glanced away. “My life has never been my own.”

On that, Kingsley could sympathize wholeheartedly. Wasn't it very similar to arguments he'd made to his father just a fortnight ago?

How can you insist upon this marriage? I'm the one who will be saddled with this chit for the rest of my days, not you.

Meanwhile, the pretty little mystery beside him continued on. “Why should the milkmaid have every bit of freedom she desires, when I have none?”

A milkmaid. Kingsley's imagination got the better of him and he thought back to that night. When she'd been a very fetching sort of milkmaid. “You mean you aren't one?” he teased.

“No, of course not,” she said, shaking her head at this foolishness, but he didn't miss the hint of smile on her pretty lips.

Still, he had to ask, “Whatever has a milkmaid to do with all this?”

“Everything,” she said, as if that made the entire conversation quite clear. Nor was she done with her lament. “Am I so different from a milkmaid?”

This made him smile.
In about a thousand different ways. . .

“Our milkmaid whistles. I don't even know how.”

“To milk a cow?” he continued to tease, hoping to see that smile again.

“No, you widgeon,” she said, swatting him on the arm. “To whistle.”

He glanced at her and laughed. “You can't whistle? Is that what all this is all about? Quite frankly, I was under the assumption that ladies weren't supposed to—­”

“Bother what ladies are supposed to do!” she told him, swatting him again.

This time he rubbed his arm. She had the subtlety of a pugilist.

That should have been his first warning.

Along with her errant arrival into his life.

And a myriad of other details about her. When her mask had fallen free at the ball, he'd known immediately she wasn't some Incognita. The fresh, innocent—­albeit furious—­face that he'd found looking up at him had said all too clearly she wasn't who he'd thought.

Now, here in the daylight, she was even younger than he remembered, her features bright and rosy. And again, so very innocent.

So much so, when he recalled what he'd said to her that night in the garden, a solid shaft of mortification ran down his spine.

Good God, he'd asked this pretty minx to . . .

No, he didn't want to think about it.

Because worst of all, he still wanted her to . . . to touch him. Writhe naked beneath him. Put her lips on him and kiss him deeply. Everywhere.

Whatever was it about her that left him hungry and hard? It had been that way the first moment he'd spied her at the ball, and now, as he sat next to her, a hint of her perfume teasing his senses, a rising desire to take her in his arms and finish what he'd started that night seemed capable of undoing his best intentions.

Oh, but that air of innocence about her stopped him. And the longer he remained in her company, he knew without a doubt, the more complicated matters would become.

Not that his life wasn't already all tangled up in knots of obligations. Including his own marriage plight. But as much as he could sympathize with her, he could see that there was only one thing he could do. Only one choice to be made.

Kingsley pulled the carriage to a stop. “Who are you? A name, or I won't drive another foot.”

Her chin notched up, defiantly so. Worse, there was a wobble to that chin, and her eyes appeared to be welling up again.

His heart sank. No, that wouldn't do. He was certain he didn't have another handkerchief—­at least not one at the ready—­and he wasn't sure the one she had wound up in her hand could take another flood of tears.

There was a gulp and another sniffle. “Don't make me go back,” she pleaded. “I can't abide the notion of marrying someone horrid. And old.”

“He might be rich,” Kingsley offered. In his experience that was often a deciding factor.

“Of course he's rich,” she complained. “And titled. With a relic of a house.”

“Sounds like a veritable ogre,” he agreed, realizing she might be describing him—­for he was all those things.

Save the old part.

She batted at him again, and he was starting to wonder if her father was Gentleman Jim. “Oh, do stop teasing me. I know I sound dreadfully selfish and spoiled. Which I might be.”