AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Very well,” she muttered as he helped her out of the carriage. Gabriel was right; they couldn’t leave the poor coachman alone on the road. She’d just have to keep her wits about her.
Gabriel swung up on the horse and helped Evie up into his lap. She was sitting with her backside propped against his left thigh and her legs swinging over his right leg. He put his right hand over her waist, propped her back with his left, and urged the horse into a canter. It wasn’t the most comfortable position for Evie, so she wiggled and shifted in her seat.
“Would you care to cease doing that?” Gabriel said on a hiss.
“Doing what?”
“Wiggling your bottom. Repeatedly. It’s very… er… distracting.”
“Distracting?”
“Uncomfortable,” Gabriel muttered.
“Well, it is not exactly a picnic for me here either,” she complained. “Do you think it’s comfortable being propped sideways on a human being?”
Gabriel gave a soft laugh. “How about you try to relax? You can rest your head against me, like so”—with his right hand, he pressed her cheek against his shoulder—“and try not to move.”
“Splendid,” she muttered against him.
They rode in silence for a little while. The horse’s unhurried pace and the warmth of Gabriel’s embrace started to lull Evie into sleep. She slipped her right arm around his back and pressed herself closer, cushioning her head against his chest. His left arm tensed around her, and he pressed her closer. His scent, his warmth, enveloped her in its comfort. She sighed and relaxed against him, pretending that he held her close because he wanted to, not because he had to, that they shared a horse, not because they had no choice, but because he couldn’t spend a moment apart from her. One more daydream wouldn’t hurt, right?
She was drifting off to sleep when she heard distant thunder rumbling. She immediately tensed.
“Wonderful,” Gabriel muttered under his breath. Evie felt a wet drop on her hair, and then another, and another until a heavy rain descended upon them.
“Hold on to me,” he said over the sound of rain and urged the horse to a gallop.
About half an hour later, they were standing on the doorstep of a tiny inn, drenched and dirty up to their waist.
“Why is it,” she said after running into an inn and shaking her hair off of excess water, “that I seem to be constantly wet around you?”
He cocked an arrogant brow at her. “I get asked that all the time.”
She threw him a suspicious gaze, and he laughed heartily.
Gabriel was soaked in rainwater. His hair was plastered to his face, his coat clung to his wide shoulders, breeches outlined every muscle of his thighs, and rivulets of water trickled down his face. All in all, he looked magnificent. Why? Evie had no answer to this question. It was one of those unfair truths of the universe. It bestowed beauty upon the undeserving. The more bedraggled he looked, and the less put together, the more his natural beauty shone.
Evie couldn’t seem to take her gaze off him. Which was absolutely unfair and completely one-sided. Since they’d dismounted, he had looked at her only once, to make that scathing comment to her remark. Now he headed to the innkeeper without a backward glance. Well, what did she expect from the notorious rake? Besides, she probably looked a fright.
* * *
Gabriel walked to the reception desk and away from the seductive vixen he was traveling with. It wasn’t enough that he’d spent an hour on horseback with her backside pressed against his inner thigh, the scent of her soap and skin under his nostrils. Now, she stood in the doorway bunching parts of her gown that were plastered to her skin, unsuccessfully trying to wring the water out of her clothing. The only thing she managed to do was give Gabriel an aching erection. He almost groaned and forced his thoughts to return to their predicament at hand.
He approached the innkeeper in the crowded hallway, but he didn’t have time to ask anything as the innkeeper said in a raised tone of voice, “There is no more room. I am sorry, folks, but you’ll have to disperse.”
Groans and exclamations of outrage followed this announcement. The innkeeper was about to leave, but Gabriel caught him by the arm.
“Here, good sir, you wouldn’t turn away guests of noble origin, now would you?”
“Who?” The innkeeper frowned at Gabriel’s rain-soaked appearance.
“Look there. The beautiful young lady by the doorway is my wife. We’ve been traveling from London nonstop.” He turned to Evie.
She was still shaking out her skirts; her gown was dirty almost to her waist, her bodice soaked, and her hair, darkened to the color of burgundy, was plastered to her head. She looked pitiful but also magnificent. With her hair messy and tangled over her shoulders, her sodden gown outlining every curve of her athletic form, her chin lifted up in defiance, she was like a warrior queen from the Highlands.
The innkeeper didn’t seem to see her the same way, though; he looked her over with an unflattering gaze. “Noblemen, eh? Then I’m the pope.” He turned on his heel and stalked out of the common room so fast Gabriel had barely opened his mouth to retort.
The door opened, and their coachman walked straight to Gabriel. “My lord, I took care of the horses and found willing bodies to fix the axle on the morrow. However, it looks like we’ll have to spend the night here.”
