Page 14 of The Boys of Summer
Dismounting quickly, Augustus kept his other pistol trained on the man as he approached the carriage. Kicking Milson’s firearm well out of reach, he peered inside the carriage and found Clarissa bound and gagged on the seat.
“I should have killed him,” Augustus said as he climbed into the ancient conveyance and began to gently remove her bonds. “Are you hurt?”
“A bit bruised but nothing serious,” she said. “You came for me! How did you know?”
“Lady Helmsley… she found your note but the disarray in your room had her worried. She thought perhaps you had not left willingly… and not with me,” he said.
“God bless, Agatha. I owe her more than I will ever be able to repay.”
They climbed down from the carriage together, leaving Milson bleeding in the roadway.
“I need help!” Milson cried out. “You cannot just leave me here!”
“I’ll send the magistrate back for you,” Augustus replied with a satisfied smirk. “While I cannot have you arrested for kidnapping your daughter, I can have you arrested for kidnapping my wife. And she will be that as soon as we reach the village.”
Chapter Nine
It had notbeen the sort of wedding one would have imagined for a duke. In the village church with the vicar in his dressing gown, the vicar’s wife and the local innkeeper had served as witnesses. And now she was a duchess.A very unlikely duchess.
Alone in their room at the inn, she removed her rumpled and dirty gown to don a borrowed nightrail. Clarissa tried to make sense of all that had occurred that day. The enormity of it all was simply beyond comprehension. Augustus had gone to make good on his promise to send the magistrate for her father. Given what he’d planned for her, she could not muster any sympathy for him. While she had no wish to see him hang, she would certainly say a prayer of thanks if he was transported.
A hairbrush, also borrowed from the innkeeper’s kindly wife, had been left on the washstand. Removing the few pins from her hair that still remained intact, she brushed the tangled strands until they had been restored to some sort of order. Just as the task was completed, she heard a key clicking in the lock. When the door opened, Augustus stepped inside, running a hand through his rain-slicked black hair. He removed his sodden coat next and draped it over the back of a chair which he promptly seated himself in.
“What happened?” she asked.
“Your father has been taken into custody by the local magistrate and housed in the gaol. Court will be held here next week and they mean to keep him until that time… not for the offenses against you. The coach he was using was his, but the horses hitched to it belonged to Viscount Marchwood.”
“So kidnapping, threatening to sell me for payment of his debt, assaulting me, threatening to kill me and you—those are perfectly fine. But horse thievery is frowned upon?” she mused.
“English law rarely favors an unmarried woman for any reason. As for nearly shooting me… well, I did shoot him first. The magistrate thinks that settles the matter,” Augustus replied with a wry grin. “However, on a brighter note, your role as my wife supersedes your role as his daughter. Anything he does to you now will carry swift and terrible consequences.”
His wife.
They were alone in a bedchamber at a local inn. Newly married. And she was wearing only a worn nightrail while he sat before her in his damp, white linen shirt that clung to his muscular form and revealed far more than it concealed. Her breath caught as that same strange awareness she’d felt in the garden, and in the gallery, once more settled between them.
As if he’d sensed the direction her thoughts had taken, he said, “We need not consummate our union tonight, Clarissa. I would not have you do anything you do not wish.”
It wasn’t that she didn’t want to. It was more that she simply had only the faintest notion of what consummation entailed. Waiting would not rectify that fact. “We aren’t truly married until it is done, are we?”
“No, though I cannot imagine anyone would dare contest it,” he offered.
She nodded. That was likely true. Clenching her hands tightly in front of her, she admitted, “I find that the more time I have to worry about something, the more worrisome it all becomes, so if you don’t mind—I’d rather proceed.”
He smiled again, warm and sweet and, for just a moment, offering a glimpse of the boy he had once been. Then he rose from the chair and walked toward her. When he reached her, he bent forward and cupped her face gently in his hands and dipped his head to kiss her. It was gentle but far from chaste, and made her heartbeat quicken while a heated flush suffused her skin.
When he withdrew his lips from hers, he left his hands on her face, his thumbs stroking gently over her skin. “It isn’t unpleasant. In fact, if I do things properly, it’s pleasure beyond anything you’ve ever dreamed,” he said. “But you have to trust me, Clarissa… you have to forget about things like modesty. There is no place for embarrassment between us.”
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do,” she said.
“I’ll teach you.” His hands drifted from her face, down her shoulders, her arms, and then clasped her hands in his to pull her to her feet.
Standing before him, scant inches between them, she could feel the power and strength of him. But she wasn’t afraid of him. Her fear had never truly been of him. In everything he had done and said, he had shown her that the man he’d become was just as perfect as the boy he had once been. Kind, protective, honorable. But none of that explained why she wanted to be closer to him still, why she wanted to feel his slightly callused fingers on her skin once more, and why she craved his kiss more than her next breath.
*
Augustus let outa slow breath. If he wanted to make it perfect for her, he had to control his own urges. Lifting her hands, he placed them on his chest, directly over his heart. It pounded heavily there, his blood rushing with anticipation and desire. “This is what you do to me, Clarissa. Never think that what is between us is only about obligation.”
“Kiss me,” she implored. “When you do, I cannot think and, right now, my thoughts are my worst enemy.”
