Viscount Breckenridge to the Rescue (12 page)

As for his choice of subject matter fit for the dinner table . . .

Pushing pieces of overcooked haddock around her plate, she listened in fascinated horror as he bandied details of cockfights he’d witnessed with Fletcher and Cobbins. Glancing at Martha, Heather saw that even she was following the often gruesome details. Suppressing a shudder—describing chickens decapitated or ripped to shreds by spurs fixed to other chickens’ talons wasn’t her notion of uplifting discourse—she tried to focus on something else, but the haddock was uninspiring.

Her mind drifted . . . to the peculiar fact that despite Breckenridge not sounding or appearing like himself, she still felt enveloped by the aura of comfort, of security, that she now associated with being near him. And even in his currently rumpled, distinctly unelegant state, she was still aware of the underlying attraction. . . . which was strange. She’d always assumed it was his handsomeness that so effortlessly held her interest. But if not that, then what?

For long moments—in the taproom of a tiny inn at Gretna Green—she tried to puzzle it out, tried to solve the riddle of what it was in Breckenridge that had always commanded that particular, intense, oh-so-feminine awareness.

Then Fletcher grunted and she jerked back to the present.

She hadn’t heard how Breckenridge had managed to redirect the conversation, but Fletcher readily volunteered, “We’ll definitely be here all tomorrow, and most likely the day after that, too. I thought I’d counted the days right, but I did another reckoning this morning, and seems I was a day out.”

Fletcher focused, rather blearily, on Breckenridge, who was looking increasingly disreputable. “What about you, then? You well enough to drive on tomorrow?”

Staring at the ale mug he held clasped between his hands, Breckenridge seemed to think, then slowly shook his head from side to side. “Nope. Wound’s still aching something fierce.” His lips curved in what appeared to be an intoxicated smile. He raised his glass to Fletcher. “But this helps.”

“Good excuse.” Fletcher lifted the pitcher the girl had left on the table. “Here—never let it be said I denied an injured man his medicine.”

Breckenridge grinned in a thoroughly idiotic male way, and when Fletcher filled the mug, raised it and saluted him. “You’re a scholar and a gentleman, sir.”

Fletcher grinned. Cobbins guffawed.

They were all well-flown. Even Martha’s head was nodding, lower and lower.

Fletcher noticed. He poked Martha’s arm. “Here—you and the young miss ought to get upstairs.”

Martha snorted and shook herself, then glanced at Heather. “You’re right. I’m for bed.” Hauling her bulk up, she jerked her head, signaling Heather to follow suit.

Stifling a sigh, she slid along the bench and rose. As she did, she glanced at Breckenridge, but he was looking at Martha and nodding a vacuous farewell.

With an inward sniff, she followed her “maid” from the table. Without a backward glance, she left the room in Martha’s wake.

T
he inn quieted early that night. Heather made her way cautiously down the stairs as soon as the silence grew thick; waiting in the tiny cloakroom for Breckenridge to appear was better than listening to Martha’s snores.

Her gusty, inebriated snores.

Reaching the hall, she slipped around the counter and cautiously opened the cloakroom door. Inside, the confined space was dark and gloomy, but her eyes were well enough adjusted to the night to be sure there was no one inside.

It wasn’t only her eyesight that informed her Breckenridge wasn’t there waiting.

Tense, she hesitated, not liking the idea of stepping into the dark alone. He might be another hour; he might be as intoxicated as Martha. They hadn’t agreed on any specific time—

A sound cut across her senses; silently whirling, she saw candlelight wavering in the taproom, the bearer still out of her sight, heard heavy footsteps plodding her way.

A dark shadow swooped down the stairs, straight to her.

She opened her lips—

A hard palm slapped over them. A steely arm wrapped around her.

Breckenridge lifted her from her feet and, holding her against him, slipped them both into the cloakroom and nudged the door closed . . . almost shut.

Removing his hand from her lips, he lowered his head and whispered, ghostlike, in her ear, “Be quiet.”

She wasn’t about to say anything; she wasn’t sure she could manage a single word—not a coherent one. From his crisp tone, she surmised he wasn’t at all inebriated. He hadn’t, however, let her go.

Her heart was thudding; she couldn’t see properly, but sensed he was listening intently to movement beyond the door. She swallowed, strained to listen, too. Eventually, over the beating of her heart she heard mumbling grumbles from just beyond the door . . . the innkeeper. He must have come to check something at the counter.

A thin line of light delineated the edge of the almost-closed door.

They waited, silent and still, for the innkeeper to finish his business and leave. She worked on simply breathing, on slowing her racing pulse, on telling herself she was safe—safe. Safe in Breckenridge’s arms.

One part of her mind reeled.

The rest was too busy absorbing the warmth, the alluring masculine heat that seeped through the layers of cloth between them and stroked over her skin.

She was wearing her customary nighttime garb, her coverlet wrapped over her filmy chemise and cinched at her waist with her silk shawl. He was wearing his cloak; it had swept about her and now half enveloped her, shielding her from the chill night air.

As her pulse slowed, she struggled to draw air into lungs inexplicably constricted. She’d tensed with terror in the instant before he’d touched her, then had all but slumped, limp with relief, when his touch, his nearness, had impinged on her senses and she’d known who had seized her. Almost immediately, however, her nerves had started to tense again, steadily drawing taut with every second she remained clasped against him—every second his hard, undeniably male body remained flush against her much softer form.

He was protecting her, shielding her. She kept telling herself that, yet her senses remained giddy, distracted.

She’d managed to regain some hold on her composure when the innkeeper uttered a distinct, “Aha!”

The sounds of a drawer shutting reached them. Seconds later, the light seeping past the door flickered, then steadily faded.

“Don’t move.”

The warning was less than a breath stirring errant wisps of her hair, brushing tantalizingly past her ear.

By main force suppressing a shiver, she told herself he couldn’t help it; that was probably how he always whispered to women he held in his arms.

She waited for him to release her.

After several moments, she felt the battle-ready tension that had invested his muscles, his entire frame, slowly, gradually, ease.

But he didn’t entirely relax.

He didn’t let her go, either. He did rearrange the cloak so it enveloped her completely, cocooning her within the contained warmth.

“We can’t risk a light,” he murmured.

His deep voice at such close quarters all but frazzled her nerves.

She tipped her face up, trying to make out his features in the gloom. All she could see was a pale outline, cheeks shaded with black beard, eyes too shadowed for her to even glimpse, and the lines of his lips and chin, both presently uncompromisingly grim.

“We’ll have to make this quick.”

She nodded. They would. Or else she might do something unutterably stupid. She made a mental note never to let him ever again seize her in the dark.

“As you heard, the laird won’t arrive until at least the day after tomorrow. That makes it an odds-on certainty that he’s a highlander, which means his reasons for kidnapping you or one of the others could well be buried in the mists of time. Worse, both Fletcher and Cobbins are very sure, for multiple reasons, that their employer is someone accustomed to wielding power—to giving orders and expecting to be obeyed.” He studied her. “Did you learn anything from Martha?”

She cleared her throat. Breathed back, “A little. From her reading of how Fletcher and Cobbins reacted to the man, she says he, the laird, is, in her words, powerful. Fletcher and Cobbins found him impressive, imposing, and she’s also certain he’s a toff, because only a toff would have thought of hiring a maid to give me countenance.”

Breckenridge’s lips twisted in a grimace. “She’s right.”

After a moment of staring down into her face, he murmured, “We have a problem.”

She certainly did; she was finding it difficult to breathe enough not to feel giddy.

“This laird . . . from all Martha, Fletcher, and Cobbins have said, he’s a laird with a capital L. Almost certainly a noble. He’s not going to be easy to counter, especially not on his home turf.”

Face like hewn rock and eyes like ice.

Breckenridge hadn’t forgotten Fletcher’s description. “By all accounts, he’s not the sort of man we want to find ourselves facing. Not here in Scotland, too far from anyone who can vouch for our identities.”

He watched a frown overtake Heather’s fine features. Until then, they’d been . . . a trifle wide-eyed, a touch arrested. He knew perfectly well why. Her heartbeat . . . he couldn’t exactly feel it, but he’d seduced far too many women not to sense it. To know that she was as attracted to him as he was to her.

That wasn’t something he’d needed to have proof of, but now he did . . . the knowledge kept circling, prodding and pricking at instincts that, where she was concerned, he’d always kept buried and inflexibly contained.

“But there’s no reason to leave yet,” she murmured. “They’ve said the laird won’t arrive for days yet, and we haven’t yet learned of anything we can use to identify him.” Her frown firmed, giving her expression a mulish cast—one with which he was very familiar. “We can’t leave yet.”

He pressed his lips tight against any unwise utterance. Tried to sort through the contradictory impulses pressing on him from all sides. His deepest instinct was to remove her from all danger, yet while he remained with her, he could and would keep her safe—and he was now convinced that she stood in no danger whatever from Fletcher, Cobbins, or Martha. Indeed, it was in their best interests to protect her from all and any threat, at least until the mysterious laird claimed her. For the moment, she was safe.

And he knew her brothers, her cousins, her father, her uncles. They wouldn’t fault him for cutting and running, and hauling her back to London and safety, but at the same time, they, like him, would dearly love to learn just which laird had had the temerity to kidnap one of their darlings.

One couldn’t arrange for justice if one didn’t know at whom to point the sword.

“All right.” The instant he spoke, her expression softened. He hardened his own. “But just for a day. One more day.”

Her lips curved. “All right. We’ll see what we can learn tomorrow.”

Her smile . . . it flirted with the ends of her lips. He blinked, found a frown. “And regardless of whether we learn anything, after tomorrow, we leave. Understood?”

Even whispering, he made the last word a command.

Her smile only deepened. “Yes, of course. But let’s see what tomorrow brings.”

He looked into her face, and time suspended.

Dangerous, he knew, but he couldn’t seem to move, to break the strengthening spell.

Her smile slowly faded; her eyes searched his . . . her breath all but silently caught, hitched. She started to tip closer . . .

Then she dragged in a quick, too-tight breath and rocked back on her heels. “Wound—you said you had a wound.”

He seized the unexpected lifeline. “I made that up to excuse me staying put and not traveling on. As a reason, it’s open ended, especially in this weather.”

“Oh, good. I mean . . . that you’re not injured.” She finally dropped her gaze, eased back.

He lowered his arms, let her free . . . reluctantly.

Too reluctantly for his peace of mind.

She stepped back and let the folds of his cloak slide from her.

“Go up,” he murmured. He tipped his head to the door. “I’ll watch you, then follow.”

With a nod, she turned. Opening the door, she paused for a moment, then slipped out.

He held the door ajar and from the gloom within the cloakroom watched her slip wraithlike up the stairs.

And wondered why he hadn’t kissed her.

She wouldn’t have objected. She might have been a touch flustered, but . . . he would, at last, have learned what she tasted like—a question that had haunted him for the last four years.

They were, after all, destined to marry. After this little escapade, there was no other choice, not for either of them.

But if he’d kissed her . . . she would have known he’d been thinking along the same lines as she, which was something she didn’t at that moment know. He felt certain that to that point she’d gained no inkling of his true view of her. And if they were indeed to marry . . .

She was a Cynster to her toes. Much better she never knew just how deep his fascination with her ran. Just how persistent and intense—intensely irritating—that fascination had proved to be. Just how impossible to eradicate.

He’d tried. Hundreds of times.

No other female had ever been able to supplant her in his mind. At the core of his desires, at the heart of his passions.

And that was definitely something she never needed to know.

So . . . no kisses. Not yet. Not until she’d realized that their wedding was a foregone conclusion. Him initiating a kiss then wouldn’t be so revealing.

Something within him bucked at the restraint, but he’d long ago learned to keep desire and passion on a very tight leash. No unintended revelations for him.

She had to have reached the room she shared with Martha. He moved out of the shadows, silently climbed the stairs, and headed for his bed.

“Y
ou can’t be serious?” Heather stood in the middle of the inn’s front hall and stared at Fletcher. “I stayed in that room all day yesterday, and you want me to sit quietly and stare at Martha knitting for another whole day?”