Page 5 of Runaway Countess (Those Wild Whitbys #2)

Chapter Five

T here was nowhere to run. The dusty little room had only the one door, and a window too small to climb through – not that Jenny wished to try her luck at that a second time in one day.

The closet in the corner was full of shelves. The table had no cloth.

Whoever was knocking at the door, they would see her the moment they entered. See her alone, in a bedroom, with a man she had only just met.

Jenny closed her eyes in horror.

That meant she had no warning of Captain Whitby’s rough hands seizing her by the waist, lifting her bodily into the air, and dumping her down onto the little bed with a thump .

She stifled her shriek of protest just in time, eyes flaring open to catch a glimpse of the captain’s face, taut and serious, before he threw the blankets over her head.

Instinct kicked in before reason. Jenny thrashed at the scratchy wool, trying to free herself.

“ Still ,” Captain Whitby hissed, and her body obeyed automatically.

She clutched her legs to her chest, closed her eyes, and tried to imagine she was nothing more than a heap of unwashed bedding.

“It’s open!” called Captain Whitby, a moment before she was quite ready. A strange bubbling sensation crept up her chest. Not panic, but laughter.

How simply ridiculous to escape from her blanket box only to be trapped in a heap of bedclothes hours later. She’d realised running away would be difficult, but she had not pictured being quite this bad at it.

The door creaked open, and the man – Lord Beeston? Could it be? – strode in with quick, firm steps. The bubbling laughter turned into a terrible urge to cough.

“Ho, Kendrick!” Captain Whitby sang out. Jenny was none the wiser as to whom Kendrick might be. “Care for a drink? I’ll loan you one of mine.”

She bit down hard on the inside of her cheek. There were two glasses of brandy sitting on the table. Surely this Kendrick would know at once that Captain Whitby was not alone.

“Dear lord, Whitby,” said the man. He could not be a servant, nor a sailor. That accent belonged to a gentleman, through and through – the sort of man Aunt Fanny would have given her eyeteeth to introduce to Elspeth. “I was expecting to have to drag you out of some godforsaken hellhole, but this place surpasses my lowest expectations.”

A niggling itch crawled its way up Jenny’s ankle. She tried to inch her fingers down to it, but Captain Whitby gave a sharp whistle, and she froze.

Of course, being caught in a gentleman’s room was bad enough. Being caught in his bed was something much, much worse.

That infuriating rogue. It wasn’t Jenny who was terrible at running away – it was him .

Captain Whitby kept his visitor chatting, friendly and familiar. Jenny’s heartbeat began to slow.

Whoever Kendrick was, he was not looking for her. They discussed money – or Captain Whitby’s lack of it – family – it seemed he really did have a number of sisters – and Lord Beeston, though strangely Captain Whitby did not mention anything about the earl saving his life. Jenny listened with half an ear, distracted by the scratching of the unspent cough in her throat.

“Beeston’s no friend of mine,” Sebastian was saying. “He’s an ornery old dragon, to tell you the truth, and losing a leg has done nothing to ease his temper. The fact is that it seems my father owes him money. Quite a bit of money. And I’ve given my word to stay and assist with his affairs until the debt is paid.”

Jenny frowned, the cheap woollen blanket scratching her nose. Her breath had made it damp and warm, but – despite her fears about fleas and unwashed maleness – it was not actually unpleasant. Each time she breathed in, a fresh, soothing aroma entered her lungs. What was it – some soap the innkeeper used?

She breathed in deeply again. Ah. Like clean air in the early morning, with somebody baking apple cake in a kitchen nearby. Spicy, warm, fresh…

And male . Oh my.

Her eyes flared open. Yes, that would be the scent of a man. The scent of Captain Whitby, to be precise.

Her stomach tingled.

Kendrick was speaking gently now. He did not appear to think there was any chance of Captain Whitby’s father repaying his debt. Jenny’s throat felt impossibly dry; she was sure the cough would burst from her at any moment.

A chair scraped across the floorboards. Footsteps paced restlessly about the room, coming close enough to the bed that Jenny could have reached out and caught at the passing leg. She had a sudden mad impulse to do it – to put an end to this madness. Kendrick seemed kind.

She could explain it all away, surely. She could return to Uncle Fitz and Aunt Fanny. Beg Lord Beeston’s forgiveness. By tomorrow morning, she could be a countess.

And it would be his bed – the old dragon’s bed – in which she lay. Would it smell of sea winds and green apples, too? Or did all men have their own particular scent?

What if Beeston smelled the way Uncle Fitz did – of stale cigars and Gowland’s Lotion?

She stayed put. Breath stuttered in her lungs as she swallowed down the cough that desperately needed to burst free.

“I must take my leave of you,” Kendrick was saying. “Give me Beeston’s address and I will call on him to see what I can do. We will haul you all out of this scrape yet.”

There was a bit of leave-taking – handshaking, shoulder-clapping, or whatever it was gentlemen did when they were alone – and then the sound of a bolt sliding firmly across the door.

“Strewth,” said Captain Whitby. “I thought he’d never leave.”

The cough exploded out of Jenny’s chest at last.

An instant later, she was blinking up into his clear blue eyes again, screwing up her own against the light that was suddenly much too bright.

Captain Whitby extended his hand. “Come on out, Lady Beeston,” he said. “We must get you fitted up for a nurse’s apron.”

Jenny eased her arm out from underneath her chest, pin and needle prickles running down it. “What? Whatever for?”

“That was an old friend of mine – the Viscount Kendrick. He’ll stand us the funds to get Beeston out of Plymouth.”

“A viscount!” Jenny repeated, amazed. It was the first time she had been in close proximity to an aristocrat. Of course, should she marry Beeston, she’d doubtless meet plenty of viscounts. She’d have viscounts falling out of her kitchen cupboards. A kitchen she’d rarely enter, since she’d be a countess.

Captain Whitby laughed. “Yes, it takes me that way too, whenever I come back from sea. No such thing as Lord this or that when we’re on board – only the captain, the fleet commander, and the sea herself. You’ll get used to it.”

He was still waiting, hand outstretched. Jenny placed hers on it carefully. She could still not quite feel her fingers.

But she felt the warmth of him, despite that. More shocking than the pins and needles.

She recalled the scent of sea winds and stewed apples and jerked her hand away.

“But I am not going with Lord Beeston,” she said. “And I have no idea how to be a nurse.”

His brows lowered. Jenny bit again on the inside of her cheek. Hard enough to hurt, this time.

What was she doing? She was entirely at this man’s mercy. The last thing she ought to do was make him angry – even if she thought he was mad.

“I can learn, of course,” she amended, smiling through the pain in her cheek. “I’m sure you know best.”

A cloud crossed the clear sky of those blue eyes. To her amazement, Captain Whitby knelt down on the floorboards before the bed, bringing his face lower than hers. His gaze was steady. The close proximity of his face was oddly reassuring.

There was a sprinkling of golden stubble on his upper lip and along his strong jaw. Perhaps, at sea, he’d lost the habit of shaving as often as gentlemen did in society. Or perhaps, with his worries about money and Lord Beeston, he had simply not had the time.

“What frightens you, little mouse?” he asked, his tone light, his mouth soft. “Is it Beeston, or me? Or somebody else, perhaps?”

Jenny drew her knees up to her chest. “I am not frightened.”

“Not used to admitting it, I see.” He cocked his head to one side. He had set his arms against the bed for balance, and his shirt sleeves were rolled up to the elbow. The size of those arms was something astonishing.

He was not like the gentlemen Aunt Fanny admired. He was someone who had worked. Worked hard, sweated, and grown strong.

And yet Jenny did not fear him. Those muscular arms were all that currently stood between herself and Lord Beeston and – she swallowed, wincing at the dryness of her throat – Uncle Fitz and his rage.

She felt safe.

“That’s it,” said Captain Whitby, encouraging. “Breathe a little. Now, I’ll tell you my plan, and you’ll tell me the truth of whether you think you can manage it.

“It’s plain enough you can’t stay in Plymouth. You’ve no friends here but myself, and that’s a sad outlook for anyone. I can’t lend you the money to get to your sister, because I haven’t got it. But I do have Lord Kendrick’s carriage to get Beeston on the move back home to Yorkshire. Seems to me it suits us both to employ you as a nurse for the first leg of the trip. You can get to know Beeston. Who knows? Perhaps you’ll like him better than I do. And I don’t have to break my word. I’ll bring him his bride – it’ll take a mite longer than I planned, but what doesn’t? And you can decide for yourself. If you think you can stand him, marry him. Make your uncle happy. God knows Beeston should be thrilled to have you, cold feet or not. But if you don’t like him, no harm. We’ll concoct a reason to stop off near Shepton Mallet and deliver you to your sister. You go on just as you planned. The spinster in the greengrocer’s shop.”

He stopped talking and waited, eyes on her, strong arms soft at his sides, face grave.

“Go on,” he said. “Can you do it?”

Jenny nodded.

She had no idea if she could. Then again, that morning, she’d had no idea she could escape from marrying Lord Beeston.

And the Jenny Cartwright she’d been when the sun rose had not yet met Captain Whitby.

The corner of his mouth crept up. Something about his smile was so unabashedly wicked . The devil himself probably had that same devious mouth, complete with sharp jaw and golden stubble and the faint white line of a scar cutting down through the upper lip.

“Thought so,” he said, and thrust a hand into his pocket, drawing out –

Jenny let out a squeak of outrage. He had drawn out a handful of black lace, crimson silk, and stockings so flimsy they barely deserved the name.

Her trousseau . Her rope.

“Anyone mad enough to think of shimmying out a window down this is about the right degree of mad to think I’ve had a good idea,” said the captain. Jenny’s face burned.

“Put those down ! They’re not yours!”

He held one of the stockings up to the light, whistling as he twirled a tiny decorative ribbon with a finger. “Might as well have made a rope out of cobwebs,” he sighed, tutting in mock disapproval. “You want something sturdy for a weight-bearing rope, milady. Didn’t you have any winter woollens to string together?” He cocked an eyebrow and let his eyes wander impudently from the tips of her feet in their borrowed white stockings, up past the jumble of legs clutched to chest beneath brown skirts, and to the place where the borrowed poplin dress hadn’t quite fastened tightly enough, leaving a gap of two fingers’ width at Jenny’s neck. “Or do young ladies not feel the cold these days?”

“You’re a scoundrel,” she snapped, and snatched at the mortifying rope of lace and feathers.

“That’s more like it.” Captain Whitby jerked it out of her reach and rose to his feet, grinning like a cat. “I thought I could turn that little mouse back into a lion if I tried.”

He stuffed the knotted undergarments into his trouser pocket and pulled out his greatcoat from the wardrobe. Jenny stormed after him.

“Give those back!”

“Why, will you be needing them?” Captain Whitby shrugged into the battered coat, giving her a wink. “Poor old Beeston. He’s no idea the delights he had in store. I’ll do my best not to let him get too sore about it.” He dodged past Jenny and took up a sheet of paper from the table, setting out the ink pot and pen beside it. “Now, I’m overdue to call in on him already. I’ll give him the bad news about his blushing bride, and the good news about Kendrick sorting him out a way home. You , Lady Beeston, are going to sit down while I’m gone and write a lovely, long letter to your aunt and uncle, telling them you’re safe and well and absolutely nowhere near Plymouth, Shepton Mallet, Lord Beeston, or Whitby Manor.”

“Whitby what?” Jenny stared from him to the ink pot. Captain Whitby pulled out the chair for her to sit down.

“First stop on the way to Yorkshire, milady. And the best possible place for me to hide you away while we all take stock. I’m bringing you home with me.”

And he was gone, leaving behind a burn in Jenny’s cheeks and a sting of outrage at milady .

And the scent of salted apple cake, and the tingling of his devil’s smile in her belly.

Jenny shook herself and sat down to write her letter.

One thing, at least, was terribly clear.

She had better do everything she could to avoid being discovered alone with that man .