Page 45 of The Forbidden Lord (Lord Trilogy #2)

Chapter Seventeen

I hate the noise and hurry inseparable from great Estates and Titles, and look upon both as blessings that ought only to be given to fools, for ’tis only to them that they are blessings.”

When Jordan came to, he was lying in a puddle of water on the rough wooden floor. Staring up at the stained ceiling, he tried to figure out why he was wet and his head hurt like the dickens. He sat up with a groan and rubbed the knot on his head. How did he come to be lying in such a shabby room?

Then he saw the cracked pitcher a few feet from him, and everything came back to him.

“Devil take her!” he growled as he lurched to his feet. Standing up made the throbbing in his head worse, but rage spurred him on.

The chit had actually run off! And after he’d begun to believe she’d resigned herself to their marriage. That’s what he got for underestimating Emily Fairchild.

Stumbling toward the door, he tried to open it, but it was locked. Damn it! She’d locked him in. He pounded on the door, roaring at the top of his lungs for the innkeeper. He heard a flurry of voices in the hall, a woman’s and then a man’s raised in debate.

“She said he kidnapped her,” the woman’s voice muttered.

The second voice was almost assuredly the innkeeper’s. “Yes, but my dove, he’s an earl! We cannot keep an earl prisoner!”

“Open this door!” Jordan thundered, their discussion only enraging him further. “Open it or I swear I’ll have every magistrate in the county down on your head!”

There was a pause, but it was thankfully short. Then he heard the key turn in the lock, and the door swung open to reveal the innkeeper wringing his hands, accompanied by his scowling wife.

Ignoring them both, he hurried down the creaking stairs as quickly as his aching head would allow. He didn’t know how long he’d been out, but it didn’t matter. He would find her. And when he did …

He burst into the dining room, but a cursory survey revealed she wasn’t there. He whirled upon the innkeeper, who’d followed him down the stairs babbling apologies.

“Where is she?” Jordan growled, taking a step toward the innkeeper.

“She … she … said that you kidnapped her against her will. She … she—”

“Where is my wife!” Jordan thundered.

The innkeeper gestured toward the door with one shaky finger.

Jordan hurried out into the inn yard, more in control of his faculties now. Thankfully, she hadn’t hit him hard enough to do any permanent damage. At the other end of the crowded yard, he saw Watkins remonstrating with a burly man who was handing Emily into the driver’s seat of a small gig.

“Unhand my wife!” Jordan roared as he shoved his way through the throng.

Emily’s eyes widened at the sight of him. “Hurry up!” she urged her would-be rescuer. “Get in!”

When the man hesitated, his startled gaze fixed on the sight of a lord of the realm hurtling across the inn yard toward him, she took up the reins, but Watkins stepped forward, grabbing them away from her before she could do anything.

Glaring first at Watkins, then at Jordan, she stood up in the gig. “I’m going back to London, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me!”

“Don’t count on that,” Jordan bit out as he stalked up to the gig.

The burly man stepped in his path. “The lady don’t want to go with you, guv’nor. And she paid me well to carry her back to the city.”

“Paid you—” He fumbled in his coat pocket for his purse, but it was gone.

She’d not only hit him over the head with a pitcher and locked him in, she’d actually had the audacity to steal his money?

“I assure you, your gallantry is misplaced. Whatever fool tale she might have told you, this woman is my wife, as my coachman can attest.”

Watkins nodded vigorously, more than ready to lie for his employer, but Jordan’s challenger would have none of it. “She said you’d say that. She said you been lying to people to keep her from escapin’. Well, I ain’t gonna let no bleedin’ swell with debauchery in his mind hurt no proper young lady.”

Jordan glared up at his challenger. Deuce take her, she’d chosen her protector well.

The hulking brute outweighed him by five stone and was taller by a couple of inches, even though Jordan wasn’t a small man himself.

The man smelled of sweat and field labor, and probably hefted boulders for a living.

Which only enraged Jordan further. “Step aside, or I will make you,” he hissed in a low voice, conscious that half the inn now filled the yard behind him, watching the excitement unfold.

“Make me?” the man laughed. “Make me? Why, you impudent little—”

The man swung one of his beefy fists at Jordan’s head, but Jordan ducked it, countering with a swift blow to the man’s soft belly.

His challenger had just enough time to cast Jordan a look of complete bewilderment, as if shocked that an earl could pack a punch like that, before Jordan gave him a right uppercut to the chin.

The giant staggered back, but didn’t fall. Then he took Jordan by surprise with a blow to the eye that sent Jordan reeling back. Dimly, Jordan heard Emily cry out, begging them to stop, but stopping was out of the question.

All he knew was the man had tried to steal Emily.

And nobody was going to steal Emily. Quickly, Jordan shot his left fist into the man’s face, then put all his strength into smashing his right fist into the giant’s stomach, the man’s weakest area.

That did the trick. Emily’s hapless Galahad crumpled to the ground, clutching his belly.

Not for nothing had Jordan spent time at the Lyceum studying pugilism for the past five years. One thing he’d learned—size didn’t matter nearly so much as the placement of one’s blows.

“Next time, don’t come between a ‘swell’ and his wife,” Jordan muttered as he stepped over the moaning form and headed to where Emily still stood in the gig, her mouth agape.

Before she could even protest, Jordan swung Emily down and into his arms. Ignoring her gasp, he carried her toward his coach.

“Put me down!” she cried, pounding on his chest. “Curse you, Jordan, I will not go with you!” When he merely threw her over his shoulder like a sack of wheat and nodded to Watkins to open the carriage door, she cried out, “Somebody stop him! Help me, please!”

Grimly, he tossed her into the coach, then faced the grumbling crowd.

Thanks to Emily and his complete miscalculation of her determination not to marry him, he was now in a rather delicate situation.

More than one face looked upon him with suspicion, and a knot of beefy laborers had tumbled out of a cart, armed with pitchforks and shovels.

Crossing his arms over his chest, he feigned a nonchalance he didn’t feel. “Please forgive my wife for any trouble she’s caused. She and I argued, and this is her way of punishing me.”

“You … you liar!” she protested through the open door to the coach. “You scoundrel, you—”

He shut it in her face, then leaned against it, glad that his coach was sturdy enough to muffle her voice. “As you can see, she’ll say anything to strike back at me.”

“She says you kidnapped her,” a belligerent voice called out from the crowd.

He snorted. “Come now, do you really think I need to kidnap a woman for companionship? Besides, I told the innkeeper she was my wife when we entered. She didn’t protest it then, and she had every opportunity to do so.

But she wasn’t angry at me then.” He cast them a rueful look.

“Or at least not as angry as she is now.”

His challenger stumbled to his feet, looking wary and stubborn all at the same time. “The lass said you wanted to take advantage of her. That’s wot she tole me.”

“I must plead guilty to that.” He forced a smile to his face. “I quite often take advantage of my beautiful wife, but then, who wouldn’t?”

To his relief, there were a few titters in the crowd.

“Unfortunately,” he went on, “she detests leaving her fancy friends behind in London for a week at my estate, and she made her wishes quite plain a few moments ago.” He gave an exaggerated sigh.

“But alas, business calls, and I do so like having my wife with me in the country where I can … take advantage of her.”

He could sense their sudden indecision. Their strong belief in the immorality of noblemen was being challenged by their equally strong belief in the frivolous whims of noblewomen.

And the latter, coupled with his ability to trounce a man nearly twice his size, seemed to be winning, though he didn’t intend to stay here and find out for certain.

To further clinch the matter, he turned to his challenger. “You may keep the money my wife gave you. You deserve it.”

He made sure his look amplified his words, reminding the hulking brute that an earl was no one to trifle with, especially one whose “wife” had stolen his purse. When the man blanched and mumbled, “You ought to keep a tight leash on that one, guv’nor,” Jordan knew he’d won his point.

He turned to the innkeeper. “Thank you for your hospitality, but I’m afraid we must be on the road before my wife gets any other fool notions in her head.”

“Yes, milord, I understand.”

Jordan reached for the door handle, and the innkeeper cried, “Wait!”

He froze, wondering if he were about to be stoned by a mob after all. Turning to the innkeeper, he fixed him with as haughty a gaze as he could manage.

“You and your wife will be needing your breakfast,” the innkeeper stammered. He motioned to a servant girl who disappeared into the inn, then hurried back out with a gingham-covered basket. “I took the liberty of having this prepared.”

“Thank you.” At least one person knew on which side his bread was buttered. Jordan’s smile was genuine this time. “Perhaps this will take the edge off my wife’s anger long enough for me to take advantage of her.”

Amid a more general laughter this time, he opened the coach door and climbed in.