Page 10 of The Rogue and the Viscountess

“Lydia? I mean, the Dowager Viscountess Penrydd.”

“Not here?”

“It’s just me.”

“Aight, come along then.”

“I am not going anywhere with you,” Prunella said with all the indignation she could muster, even though she battled the insane urge to throw herself at him and see if he would catch her.

“Oh, have it that way, then.” He rolled his eyes.

And the next thing she knew, Prunella was in his arms again. Though she’d revisit the moment many times in her mind, trying to sort how it had happened, she’d never actually recall. Had he grasped her arm and simply hauled her out of the carriage as if she were as light as one of those seed pods decorating the hedgerows? Had she launched herself at him in truth, so startled at the reappearance of this man who haunted her dreams?

The result was, a flurry of movement threw her off balance, there was a blaze of light as she went from the dark confines of the chaise to the bright afternoon sun, and she could manage no more than a breathless squawk because an enormous shoulder was pressing into her midsection. An arm the size of an oaken timber fastened across the backs of her thighs, one hand clamped on her rump—he was touching her backside—and a great swoop of terror held her immobile. He was going to drop her. She was going to faint.

“What about me?” Jenny bleated, her voice sounding far away.

“’Ere’s what happened, post boy.” The vibration of his deep voice passed into Prunella’s body, through his wool coat, through the sensible thick cloth of her carriage dress. “Her ladyship stopped in Chippenham to visit a friend. She paid you to go off, and so ye did. For all ye know, she ran away with a lover to live grand and well in a big house, and ye wouldn’t advise anyone to bother with her.”

A clink of coins followed this exchange, with a grunt of assent from the postillion. Her captor shifted slightly, anchoring Prunella against him, and he leaned forward as if peering into the carriage. “And ye’ll go back to where ye came from, after yer mistress turned ye off.”

“But I doan wants to go back to Upper Cheyney,” Jenny groused. “S’posed to be goin’ to London, I am.”

Clearly Jenny felt no terror at the situation, even though Prunella was being stolen. She struggled to shift her position so she could draw air into her midsection and loose a nice, long, loud scream. One that would echo off that inn across the way and bring men running, preferably the watch, the constable, and the magistrate all together.

“Say Calne is where she lit out. Or Marlborough,” suggested another voice. Prunella was certain she’d heard it before, too. “Further along the road.”

“But we’s in Pickwick,” the postillion argued.

The bear of a man holding her firmed his grip on Prunella’s rump, squeezing her flesh through the cloth of her gown. She gasped.

“That purse,” he growled, “should be enough to make the both of ye forget ye ever saw the lady.”

“Lady who?” said the other voice. “Go along then, there’s another coach coming up the pike.”

A slap of the ribbons, a jangle of harness, one last squawk from Jenny, and the chaise rolled away. That one creaking wheel had annoyed her to distraction all the way from Bath, and now it was the sound of safety receding into the distance.

“Put. Me. Down,” Prunella gasped.

“As the lady wishes.” He hoisted her—that was the only word for it—into a small gig with caned sides. Prunella immediately tried to rise from the seat, but in a flash he was beside her, the whiskey dipped beneath his weight, and his arm snaked about her middle, holding her to him.

Her mind was a wall of confusion, a blank door she couldn’t go through. Sensation ruled her. A sense of weightlessness, of floating free of the natural forces that typically bound her to earth. The scent of the man beside her, earth and musk and something woody and delicious. Heat that seared as if she stood too close to a fireplace, and the knowledge that her middle had become hollow, an empty space for bees and butterflies to riot.

She ought most definitely to shrug his arm off. Fight free. Get her feet beneath her. Instead she succumbed to the most unwise urge—just for the briefest, fleetingest moment, she promised herself—to lean against the glorious weight of him, to sink into someone, finally, stronger than she was.

Who was kidnapping her. Prunella stiffened her back. In her moment of madness he’d set the horse in motion, and now the gig sprinted merrily forward, and she clutched the caned sides.

“Where are you taking me?”

“Away,” he said, in the pleasant tone one might say, for a healthful stroll through the shrubbery.

“Where to?”

“You’ll see.”

“Let me down. I’ll scream.”

“If you do, someone will see, and then they might say something when th’others come askin’. If you want to give yourself away, scream yer head off.”