Page 40 of Miss Harvey's Horribly Lovable Fiancé
“I’ll be leaving you in a few minutes. My great thanks for your hospitality.” She had to leave before Ida Watts ran her out.
Were runaway brides now the scourge of every country inn? Esme sniffed. It wasn’t as if she had brought a lover here…or stolen goods…or…
It didn’t matter. She wasn’t welcome.
She strode over to William and stuffed a pound note into his hand. “My thanks for your shelter. And at an odd hour of the night, too.”
His expression went to wonder as he noted the size of the note. “Too much. I’ll not take it.”
“You will.” She put her hand over his and curled his fingers over the paper. “I appreciate your help and your friendship.”
His wife came to stand beside him and uncurl his fingers. Whatever her previous misgivings about Esme’s nature, she showed her nothing but delight at the money. “Too grand.”
“Not at all,” she said. “Excuse me.”
She took the front stairs at a run and threw open the door to her room.
The light through the small grimy window threw the tall figure before it into silhouette.
But the height, the breadth, the folded arms, the tilt of the head told her who it was.
His clothes were rumpled, stained with dirt from his ride. His thick curls were blown back from the wind and some rain and his own raking. But he gazed at her with curiosity, more than anger.
That took her aback.
“Good morning, Esme. Needed fresh air, did you?”
* * *
It was allhe could do to stand still and not crush her in his arms. Christ! He’d been so frightened that she’d come to harm. An accident, a highwayman, a wrong turn on the road at night—any one might have meant her demise. His visions had been ghouls that drove him on to her aunt’s and then here. Fortuitous were all of Courtland’s and his conclusions about her destination. Lucky, too, that he’d run across her Great Aunt’s gardener who told him Esme was most likely headed to this inn.
She lifted her chin, brave woman that she was, and met him eye-to-eye. “I had to leave. I could not bear that you would pay prices for marrying me. My father, too, would pay prices he never intended. Never should have to pay.”
“I hated the prospect too.”
She let out a breath. “So you understand.”
“I do. You don’t.”
“What?”
“You are wrong about a few things.”
“Such as?”
He stepped toward her. God in His Heaven, she was so lovely in the svelte trousers, waistcoat and Hessians. “He’s been squeezing me for money for years. He lives beyond his means.”
“For years? But he…he put it out in gossip sheets that you deserved more than a viscount’s daughter. He wanted an earls or duke’s girl.”
“The man has said many things over the years. The one consistent theme was money. He needed more of it. That was his reason to refuse to sign. Your dowry is so rich, I would have thought him at my door demanding the full of it the day my solicitor told him I was to wed you.”
Giles ran his hands up her arms, over the linen shirt sleeves, to her elegant throat. She was warm, alive, her pulse beating beneath his fingertips. He had to hold her, assure himself she was no apparition. For years to come, he’d not let her out of his sight. “He cares not for your status, only your extreme wealth. He held out for more and more money. It’s the only thing he’s ever wanted.”
“But everyone believed he wanted a girl of blue blood for you.”
“But that was never my desire.” He stroked her cheek with his thumb. “You are.”
She swallowed so loud and hard his own heart broke. And he stepped nearer to cradle her against him. In her spare clothes, without layers of silly silk and whalebone between them, she rested against him.
