Page 106 of A Scottish Bride for the Duke
A scuff behind him made him turn, expecting to see Briggs emerging from the mist.
Instead, he saw someone far more unexpected.
“Isobel,” he gasped, and before he knew what he was doing, he was striding over to her, hands grasping at her shoulders.
She wore a thick cloak and a bonnet low over her brow, but he would have recognized her anywhere. The gas lamps gleamed against the beads of water against her curls, and her skin looked dewy and damp as she stared up at him.
“Good evening, husband,” she said evenly.
“What the devil are you doing here?” He looked her over again to see if she had any injuries. None that he could see. His hands felt as though they were shaking. “Go home at once! What did you bring to come here. The carriage?”
All he wanted was to draw her close and hold onto her.
“Leave. Now.”
“No.” Her little chin tilted in that adorable, stubborn gesture he found so endearing. “I came here for ye, Adrian. And I’m not leaving alone.”
“It’sdangerous.” He shook her then, that same fear creeping into his lungs.
It was one thing for him to come there alone, his sword in his cane and his thirty-one years of experience behind him. But Isobel was so young, so soft, so innocent. For all she had fire inher like a hellcat, she was too delicate for the kinds of danger they faced.
Too lovely for Moreton to ruin and destroy.
Isobel put her hands up to his, gripping his wrists and holding him tight. “Ye can send me to the country and put guards around me. Ye can drag me back to the carriage and demand that I leave. But there is one thing ye must know, Adrian. I amnotleaving ye. Not now, not here, and not whenever it suits ye.”
She glared up at him with such fierceness that he almost took a step back. “I granted ye leave to command me in the bedchamber, but nowhere else. We are a unit, Adrian. We are a team. That is what marriage ought to be.
“My parents wrote to me on the occasion of our marriage telling me to be patient with ye, and I will be, but ye must be understanding of me. I am not a convenient wife to tuck away when the fancy takes ye. I am a woman, and if ye don’t see me as yer equal, then tell me now, so I can find a way of procuring an annulment.”
“I—”
“What do ye want, Adrian? A marriage and a wife? Or to be alone for the rest of your days?”
He stared at her, this hellcat that he had married. “I want to protect you,” he said hoarsely. “How can I do that if you walk into danger with me?”
She brought a hand into her cloak and pulled out a pistol he recognized—Joseph’s. What was the idiot thinking, giving her a loaded weapon?
“I am not helpless,” she said.
Adrian sighed.
No, she most certainly was not. Of all the women in London, she was perhaps the only one who could match him in boldness. The only one who could make him feel as though he was cast adrift on an ocean of her making.
She made him mad, and she made him burn for her the way he had never thought he would burn for another person.
“I never said you were helpless, Isobel. But when we married, the responsibility for your wellbeing fell to me, and I have been doing my best to fulfill that requirement.”
“By sending me away?”
“Yes! If Moreton can’t reach you, he can’t hurt you.”
“And what of ye?” she asked, looking at him steadily. He felt as though something had battered him in the chest. “What of the hurtyecause me? Because it’s not physical, it doesn’t matter?”
“I—” He found himself reaching for her, and to his surprise, she allowed him to, allowed him to draw her close.
He made no attempt to reach for her weapon; he knew it was loaded, and that she could do plenty of damage if she so wished.
And he also doubted she would hesitate too much at the idea of harming him if she decided he deserved it.
