AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Lady Averley? Emily?” Will called.
“If I don’t answer,” Emily said softly, “he will break the door down.”
Edgar put a finger to his lips again and made ashhhsound. Had he even understood her?
“I’m coming in.” That was Will again, and he sounded panicked. Emily cringed back in her chair, afraid of what this Edgar might do when the door crashed open.
Something crashed against the door—most likely Galloway’s boot—and the entire cottage shook. Edgar’s eyes, rather small in his face, bulged wide. He covered his ears again and shut his eyes. Emily had waited long enough. She pushed out of the chair and past Edgar. Her leg, which was stiff and sore from immobility, gave a sharp pang of protest, but she ignored it.
“Will!” she called. “Hurry!” She lurched toward the door just as something slammed against it again, pushing inward and splintering the frame. Emily glanced over her shoulder. Edgar was moving toward her now, hands still over his ears and shaking his head as though to sayno. Just then the door crashed open, hanging at an awkward angle, and Will pushed into the cottage. His eyes, angry and bright, took in the scene quickly. He moved toward Emily, staring at the approaching Edgar and holding up a staying hand.
“No!” Will said, as though he was chastising a child. “Mine. She’s mine.”
Edgar made a sort of keening sound and moved to grab at Emily, but Will was faster. He swept Emily up into his arms as though she weighed nothing and walked out of the cottage, not bothering to look back. Emily blinked at the bright light outside as she realized a half dozen royal guards were in the yard, their rifles drawn.
“Don’t shoot!” an older woman called. “Don’t hurt him!”
Emily couldn’t see behind her, but she could hear the woman talking to Edgar, soothing him as his keening cry grew louder. It was the sound of a child whose toy was taken away. Only she had been the toy.
Emily looked up at Will. Her teeth began to chatter, and her entire body trembled. Will stopped beside a horse, using the animal to shield her from view. “You came,” she said, her voice wavering.
“I told you to stay where you were.”
She couldn’t help it. She began to laugh. He was so angry and so serious, and now that she was free, the entire ordeal was really rather ridiculous. Except she’d been so scared, and now her entire body was shaking.
“You are in shock,” he said.
“No.” She shook her head, but she couldn’t stop laughing.
Will pulled her close. “You’re safe now. You can fall apart.”
Emily clenched her fists, trying to keep her giggles from turning into tears. “Are you angry with me?”
“We’ll discuss it on the way back to London. We are leaving before you run off again.”
That set off a new round of giggles and then sobs. As though she could run anywhere. Will held her tight, caressing her hair as she wept.
She had finally stopped crying and shaking by the time the queen’s coach arrived in the yard. It looked rather dirtier and more tarnished than it had the day before, but Emily wouldn’t complain. She had asked Will to put her down at least ten times, but he had refused. “And lose you again?” he’d said. “I don’t think so.”
He lifted her into the coach, settled her on a plush squab, then climbed in and sat across from her. She shouldn’t have been surprised. She supposed he didn’t trust her not to jump from the moving conveyance.
Emily looked out the window of the coach and saw the older woman speaking to Edgar, who now sat on the ground and pounded his fists on the dirt. “Oh, dear. He looks rather distraught.”
“He’s lucky he’s not rather dead,” Will said coldly. “I’m fighting the urge to kill him right now.”
The coach started forward, and Emily turned away from the view with a shudder. She didn’t want to see the cottage or Edgar. She’d be happy never to see Richmond again. “I didn’t think you were a violent man,” Emily said.
“My lady, even I have my limits.”
She could see that. He had obviously been pushed to the edge. His hair was disheveled, his clothes wrinkled, and his jaw covered in a dark stubble. He looked tired and angry and for some reason she found that all but irresistible. He glanced at her and she could almost feel the magnetic pull of him. Her mind couldn’t help but go back to yesterday, when he’d kissed her and delved beneath her skirts to touch her.
“Would you care to tell me what happened?” he barked. Emily didn’t take his harsh tone personally. He’d been worried about her. He wasn’t angry. He had been scared, and in her experience when men were scared, they often expressed it as anger.
“Where shall I begin?”
“How about the part when I said do not move and you said,I’ll be right here.”
“And I had every intention of staying right there. Do you think I went looking for that man? Edgar?”
