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‘Oh...aye.’ The man looked over his shoulder with an apologetic expression. ‘I’m sorry, miss, but we won’t make it to Helmsley now. We might be stuck at t’mines for a bit making repairs and it’s no fit place for a lady.’
‘There you are.’ Her pursuer’s expression was glacial. ‘It seems you’ve no choice. You’ll have to come back to Whitby with me after all.’
She held his stare resentfully. It was true, she had no choice. Even if it weren’t snowing, it was too far to walk to Helmsley and, as usual, no one was paying any attention to what she wanted. Besides, she had the strong suspicion that her pursuer wasn’t going to take no for an answer. If she kept on refusing, he’d probably throw her over his saddle anyway.
She gestured towards a carpet bag on the back of the cart, trying to feign an appearance of composure. ‘My bag.’
‘Is that all you’ve brought?’ He glanced towards it and frowned.
‘Yes. Since I was going to be disinherited, it seemed wrong to take more than was rightfully mine.’
‘And those are all your belongings?’
‘Yes.’
‘How very honest of you.’ He sounded less than impressed, jerking his head at his companion. ‘Martin will bring your bag. Now might I suggest we get moving before the snow gets any worse?’
She walked stiffly towards him, unable to delay any longer, looking between him and his horse with an almost equal sense of trepidation. From a distance, she’d hoped that the scale of the animal might have been deceptive, but up close it was even bigger than she’d feared, so tall that the top of her head barely came level with the saddle.
She stopped beside it, lowering her voice with embarrassment. ‘I can’t ride.’
‘Of course you can’t.’ He let out a small sigh. ‘Just put your foot into the stirrup and pull yourself up. I won’t let you fall.’
She tensed instantly. I won’t let you fall... He’d said those words to her before, five years ago when he’d asked her to dance. She knew them by heart, had spent hours reliving every humiliating moment of that evening, wishing she’d never followed him out on to the dance floor. That had been her first taste of freedom, or so she’d thought at the time, the only time since her long-ago childhood when she’d felt happy and carefree. Whirling around in his arms, she’d felt as if she’d been breaking out of her prison at last—before reality had set in with a vengeance.
His casual mockery had made her feel even worse than she had before. She’d made a fool of herself in front of everyone, dancing with a reprobate who’d only encouraged her to rebel for his own amusement, so that he could mock her more easily. And now he was mocking her and her attempt at rebellion again, as if she were just a child who couldn’t take care of herself. He’d already said as much. It seemed that every time she tried to assert herself, he ruined it somehow.
She gritted her teeth at the thought. Well, this time she wasn’t going to let him. She wasn’t going to be small and helpless any more. He might have thwarted her escape attempt, but that was the only victory she’d allow him. She’d go back to Whitby, but she would never marry him, no matter how much he tried to convince or intimidate her. She loathed him.
‘You look cold.’
‘What?’ His words jolted her back to the present.
‘I said that you look cold.’ He sounded impatient.
‘No,’ she lied. ‘Not at all.’
She pulled her cloak tighter around her shoulders defensively. It was the warmest garment she owned, though still sadly lacking. Her father had never allowed her to spend much time out of doors so she’d never had need of very warm clothes, but she certainly wasn’t going to tell Captain Amberton that. He’d only take it as further evidence that she wasn’t able to take care of herself.
‘Here.’ He shrugged himself out of his greatcoat and draped it around her shoulders.
‘You’ll be freezing!’ She gestured at his jacket sleeves in protest.
‘I’ve been living in Canada. I’m used to it.’
‘But you’re injured!’
‘Then we’re fortunate my injury isn’t one that’s affected by cold.’ He heaved another sigh. ‘Now can you mount before we all freeze to death? I believe you’ve inconvenienced these men, not to mention myself, long enough.’
She glared at him, cheeks flaring despite the cold. Inconvenienced. He couldn’t have said it any more clearly. That was all she was to him, an inconvenient woman with a convenient fortune. That was why he’d pursued her—for the money, not her. She jammed her foot in the stirrup angrily, hoisting herself up into the saddle, then gasped in shock as his fingers wrapped around her ankle, wrenching it loose again.
‘What are you doing?’ Her breath caught in her throat at his touch. No man had ever seen, let alone touched, her leg before!
‘I’d like to ride, too.’ He looked up at her scathingly. ‘Or do you think I should walk?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Good. Because if it’s propriety you’re worried about, I’d remind you that we are engaged. If it hadn’t been for this little escapade, we’d be married already.’
He mounted behind her, uttering a small grunt as he swung his injured leg over the horse’s back. She shifted forward quickly, trying to keep their bodies from touching, though the curve of the leather saddle made that impossible. His thighs were already wrapped tight around hers, her bottom pressed against his... She closed her eyes in mortification.
‘Comfortable?’
‘No!’ By the tone of his voice she could tell he was mocking her again.
‘Then let’s get this over with, shall we?’ He reached around her, imprisoning her within the circle of his arms as he grasped hold of the reins and gave them a decisive flick.
Violet fumed inwardly, her fear of the horse all but forgotten. She had no qualms about accepting his greatcoat now. On the contrary, she hoped he was cold. It would serve him right, not just for ruining her plans, but for making her feel such a fool as well. A tiny, naive, helpless fool. Just as her father had always said—just as he’d always made her feel, too!
She looked past her captor’s shoulder, blinking back tears of frustration as she watched the cart recede into the distance, obscured by a shifting, lace-like curtain of snow. How had her plans failed so badly? How had he found her? She wasn’t about to deign to ask him, no more than she was actually going to cry in front of him, but she still wanted to know, even if it didn’t matter any more. Her escape plan had failed and now he was taking her...
She straightened up with a jolt. Where was he taking her? This wasn’t the road the cart had followed that morning. It wasn’t a road at all. It was the moorland itself, the wild and boggy terrain she’d always been warned about. She spun around in alarm, only to find her captor’s companion, or manservant as he seemed to be, riding alongside, though whoever he was, he still hadn’t uttered a word. Where were they taking her?
‘You said we were going back to Whitby.’ She tried to keep the panic out of her voice.
‘I lied.’ Her captor’s tone was implacable. ‘Although I’m sure Martin here would enjoy standing guard outside your house, it’s far easier to keep an eye on you at Amberton Castle.’
‘You think I’ll try to run away again?’
‘Won’t you?’
Yes. She didn’t say the word aloud, though now more than ever the answer was obvious. She was riding over the moors with a man she despised, back to the scene of her hurt and humiliation five years ago, a place she’d hoped never to visit again. Of course she was going to try to run away. As soon as she could.
‘That’s what I thought.’ His mouth set in a hard, firm line. ‘I’m taking you back to Amberton Castle, Miss Harper, your new home.’
Chapter Two (#u932573ea-bb54-5701-b75d-555159dd7067)
Lance looked down at the woollen lapels of his greatcoat and muttered one of his most colourful soldiers’ oaths. From his companion’s audible gasp, he could tell that she recognised the inflection, if not the exact meaning of the words. Somehow he doubted she’d ever heard such language before, but he wasn’t in the mood to be polite. He was in the mood to swear like a trooper and invent a few more words besides. His leg hurt, his head ached and his temper was close to breaking point. The rest of him was freezing and it was all her fault.
‘Shouldn’t we keep to the road?’
She sounded anxious and he felt a vindictive sense of satisfaction. Good. If she was worried, then it was revenge for all the trouble she’d caused him that morning.
‘I’ve heard the moors are dangerous.’ She tried again when he didn’t answer.
‘You’ve heard right.’
He gave a twisted smile. In fact, they were following a trail, an old farm track known only to locals, though it was admittedly hard to tell in the snow. Not that he’d any intention of reassuring her. If she was frightened of the moors, then so much the better. They might deter her from making another misguided escape attempt—something she was clearly already considering, if her earlier silence was anything to go by.
Besides, he didn’t want conversation, especially with a woman who’d done her damnedest to humiliate him that morning. He’d arrived at his own wedding to find it all but deserted except for one decidedly anxious-looking lawyer. Mr Rowlinson had gone to collect the bride only to find that she’d run away some time during the night. He’d wrung his hands as he’d told him, looking and sounding far more distressed by her absence than Lance did. But then he hadn’t been distressed. He’d been livid. It wasn’t as if he’d wanted the marriage either, but at least he’d been prepared to honour the terms of their fathers’ agreement. He’d been determined to do the right thing for once in his life, more fool him, and he’d be damned before any woman was going to stop him!
‘I saw her just yesterday,’ Rowlinson had babbled. ‘She told me she’d made all the necessary arrangements.’
‘What arrangements?’ The words had caught his attention. He’d been the one who’d arranged the time and venue. What had she had to arrange? ‘What did she say exactly?’
‘Just that she knew what she had to do. I thought she was talking about the will.’
‘She didn’t say she’d be here?’
‘Not specifically, no.’
He’d stormed away, seething with anger. Whatever arrangements Miss Harper had made, they clearly hadn’t been for their wedding. The idea that she might run away had never even occurred to him. He’d never imagined that she’d have either the nerve or the spirit for it, but any burgeoning admiration he might have felt had been overwhelmed by anger. She’d jilted him without even seeing him first, as if the idea of marriage to him was so abhorrent that she’d rather flee and be penniless than so much as look at him. As if his injured leg was so objectionable to her!
The insult was too great to be borne. Bad enough that he couldn’t walk more than a hundred paces without needing to rest. He wasn’t going to let some minuscule mouse of a woman make a fool of him, too! Her running away only made him doubly determined to go ahead.
Not that it had been easy to find her. She’d done an impressive job of leaving clues, but he’d learned enough about tracking in Canada to recognise a false trail when he saw one. She hadn’t taken the train, that much he’d been certain of, and to his relief no merchant vessels had left Whitby harbour that morning. After a few pointed enquiries, he’d finally taken a gamble on the moorland road, riding so furiously that Martin had eventually told him to slow down or risk laming his horse. Since his former batman only spoke when it was absolutely necessary to do so, he’d listened, then done his best to calm down and look at the situation objectively.
In retrospect, he supposed he hadn’t helped his own cause. He ought to have visited her as soon as he’d found out about the will. He’d intended to, but then his injury had flared up again, putting riding out of the question for a few days. He ought to have ordered the carriage and suffered the bumpy roads anyway, but his mind had shied away from that idea. If he were honest, his injury had been a good excuse. He hadn’t wanted to see her again. No matter how intriguing he’d found her at the ball five years ago, any attraction had long since crystallised into resentment. Aside from the way she’d taken offence—the reasons for which he still wasn’t able to fathom—that night was inextricably bound up with too many other painful memories.
That had been the last time that he’d seen either his father or Arthur, the night that he’d been banished from his home for ever, and it had all been her fault! If she hadn’t been so ridiculously oversensitive over a perfectly innocent comment about suitors, then he might never have got into an argument with his father in the first place, might have made it through the whole week of his leave without any fighting at all! Then he might have listened to Arthur, really listened, might have found a way to help him, too...
So he’d kept away from Miss Violet Harper, reluctant to face any reminder of that night, the very worst of his life until seven months ago, hoping that his mind might somehow adapt to the idea of seeing her again. It hadn’t. Whatever his first impressions had been, they’d long since been replaced by the image of an ice maiden with white hair and piercing blue eyes, cold and casually destructive—Arthur’s unwanted bride, now his.
And now he’d found her, in the midst of a snowstorm of all things! He’d hoped that reality wouldn’t match up to his fears, but the instant he’d glimpsed her—her skirts anyway, just visible beneath the horse’s flanks—he’d felt all the emotions he’d striven so hard to forget come rushing back to the surface. He’d been glad that the wheel of the cart had come loose. It had given him a task to do, something to distract his mind while he’d wrestled with a near-overwhelming feeling of grief. Anger had come next, as he’d known it would, followed by guilt. Most of all guilt. Which led back to anger again.
At last he’d steeled himself to confront her. Not that he’d been able to see much of her, with her hood pulled so low over her face as to make it well nigh invisible. Only her distinctive size had given her identity away, not to mention her voice, that same breathless purr he remembered, the one he’d found so alluring until she’d shown her true colours.
He’d striven to keep a rein on his temper. So much so that his jaw was now aching from the effort. He’d remained calm even when she’d mentioned Arthur, even when she’d flatly stated that she didn’t want to marry him—as if he wanted to marry her! The thought was just as abhorrent now as it had been when Rowlinson had informed him about the terms of the will, but it was still his father’s agreement, one he couldn’t renege on without condemning her to a life of poverty, and he couldn’t do that, no matter how much he was tempted to walk away. He’d been made responsible for her and there was one unlooked-for benefit after all. He might not want the woman, but the money... The money he could definitely do something with.
He was relieved when the trail descended at last into a valley and the imposing, snow-capped turrets of Amberton Castle appeared out of the wintry vista ahead of them. In an ironical twist that had surprised him more than anyone, his father had never actually got around to legally disinheriting him, so that after his death both the title and lands had come to him, informally at least. Returning to claim them, however, had been the hardest thing he’d ever done. After declaring that he’d never set foot in the place again, he’d never thought to return, had initially done so only because he’d had nowhere else to go.
The situation was further complicated by the fact that Arthur’s body had never been found. Without proof of his brother’s demise, the title and estate were effectively frozen, his to look after, but not to legally possess for a period of seven years. Under normal circumstances, his marriage to Violet would never have gone ahead until the legal situation was resolved, but the time limit on her father’s will made it imperative that it did so. He’d already procured a special licence. She had to marry him within one month, whether he were the heir to Amberton Castle or not.
Despite its many negative associations, however, he’d retained a genuine affection for the house itself. Probably because it had been built with his mother’s money and according to her own medieval-inspired designs. She’d been the one who’d insisted on turrets and crenellations and even a few faux arrow slits, all intended to make a thirty-five-year-old building look as if it had stood for centuries. She’d even called it a castle.
That part at least his father had approved of. Anything to bolster the family name, to make the world believe that the Ambertons were still a force to be reckoned with, not just the burnt-out, impoverished end of an ancient family, even if their depleted fortunes were entirely due to the fact that his father had never actually done anything.
Back in their heyday, Ambertons had been soldiers and adventurers, men who’d won their fortunes and titles through action. His father, by contrast, had been content to sit in his study, watching the last of his wife’s money trickle away rather than sully his hands with anything so distasteful as work or, even worse, trade. He’d never let Arthur do anything either. It was no wonder his brother had been depressed, he thought bitterly, trapped inside the house like some kind of museum exhibit. Arthur had never been rebellious enough to defy their father and when he’d asked Lance for help...
He forced the memory away, although the bitter sting of it remained. He didn’t want to think about Arthur, but he was going to honour his family’s promise anyway. He wouldn’t have chosen to shackle himself to Miss Harper either, not by a long chalk, but he was going to go ahead with the marriage, for all the same cynical reasons as his father, and simply because his father had wanted it. At long last, he was going to be the son his father had wanted him to be, with one notable difference. He wasn’t going to simply exist on the money and do nothing. He was going to restore the family fortunes, no matter what anyone might think of an Amberton going into business.
He’d already made a start with his new mining venture, but with the Harper fortune he could achieve even more, could build a blast furnace to go with the new tunnels that had already been dug so that his iron wouldn’t have to be transported for smelting. He could start his own works on the site, provide employment for people in the estate villages, as well as schools, new houses and maybe even a hospital, too. He could revitalise the whole Amberton estate and Violet Harper could pay for it. There was a kind of poetic justice to the idea. Since the rift with his father had been largely her fault, it seemed only appropriate that she ought to pay.
They rode into the courtyard and he felt an intense sense of relief. What had started as a mild blizzard was rapidly turning into a full-blown snowstorm and he felt as if the cold had seeped into his very bones, making them freeze from the inside out.
‘Bring her in.’
He addressed the words to Martin as he dismounted and limped towards the front door without so much as a backward glance. Even if he had wanted to help her, which in his present state of mind he didn’t, his leg was causing him far too much pain to do anything about it. What he wanted—no, what he needed—was a drink and the stronger the better.
He barged through the front door and headed straight for the drawing room, snatching up a decanter of brandy and gulping straight from the bottle, revelling in the warmth of the liquid as it scoured the back of his throat.
‘Captain Amberton?’
He lowered the bottle again, wiping his mouth on his sleeve at the sound of his housekeeper’s prim voice at his shoulder. Clearly his trials with the opposite sex weren’t yet over with today and Mrs Gargrave was a perpetual trial. He wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that his father had trained her specifically to annoy him. Her strait-laced and perpetually disapproving manner were eerily reminiscent of the old man, not to mention her habit of creeping up silently behind him.
‘Yes?’ He didn’t bother to hide his bad temper.
‘I came to offer my congratulations on your nuptials, sir. Cook has prepared a celebratory luncheon if you’d like to adjourn to the dining room?’
‘No.’ He took another swig from the bottle. ‘She’s not my wife and she can damned well starve for all I care.’
‘Captain!’ The housekeeper’s stiff posture turned more rigid than a guardsman’s. ‘I’ve asked you to moderate your language before.’
‘So you have and, as usual, I apologise. But as I just mentioned, she’s not my wife.’
‘Then might I enquire what the young lady is doing here? If you’re not married, then it’s highly improper for her to be visiting on her own.’
‘She’s not visiting either. She’s moving in early.’
‘But she doesn’t have a chaperon. It’s not seemly.’
‘I can’t see what difference it makes if I intend to marry her anyway.’
‘People will talk.’
‘People already talk. I wouldn’t have thought there was much more they could say.’
‘I won’t be party to any licentiousness. I thought I made that clear when you came home and I agreed to carry on with my duties.’
Lance took another swig of brandy deliberately to provoke her. Mrs Gargrave’s habit of implying that he’d begged her to stay was yet another irritation in his life. Frankly he would have been happy to see the back of her, but she’d been there for so long that he doubted she had anywhere else to go. He’d never heard her mention any family and his conscience had prevented him from simply dismissing her. That and the fact that she was an excellent housekeeper—when she wasn’t lecturing him, that was.
‘You made it crystal-clear, Mrs Gargrave. At great length, too, as I recall, though I don’t believe I’ve given you any cause for complaint.’
‘Until now.’
‘The worst thing I’ve done so far is threaten not to give her luncheon. I haven’t exactly ravished her on the hall table.’ He flashed a sardonic smile. ‘Not yet anyway.’
‘Captain!’
‘But since you object so strenuously, you have my permission to drive her back to Whitby in the snow yourself if you wish. You’ll probably freeze to death, but at least your virtues will be intact.’ His smile widened insincerely. ‘Just be sure to hurry before the roads become completely impassable.’
The housekeeper made an indignant sucking sound, pursing her lips so tightly they looked in danger of turning blue. ‘I suppose, under the circumstances... In that case I’ll take her up to the blue room.’
‘Damned if you will!’
‘Captain Amberton!’
This time he didn’t apologise. This time he raised the bottle to his lips and drained what was left of the liquid in one long draught. The blue room had been his mother’s chamber, adjacent to the master bedroom that had belonged to his father, though he hadn’t summoned the nerve to enter either since his return. He’d avoided the family quarters altogether, to Mrs Gargrave’s frequently expressed disapproval, selecting one of the guest chambers to sleep in instead. He’d intended for his wife to share that, for a while at least, but since they weren’t yet officially married, he supposed for propriety’s sake he ought to make alternative arrangements. After what had happened that morning, however, his mother’s chamber was the very last room she could use.
