Page 9 of The Pirate’s Stolen Bride (Cavalier Cove)

CHAPTER NINE

DEFENESTRATION WITHOUT PENETRATION

“ W hat are we going to do?” Harriet demanded. One minute she’d been blissfully experiencing her wildest dreams, and the next, she was fighting him off with the panicked desperation of a madwoman.

Uncle Monty could not see her like this. In bed with a man not her husband. It didn’t matter that she’d been kidnapped. He would be beyond disappointed.

He would get that look on his face that said, You’ve let me down. I trusted you, and you betrayed me. You broke my rules.

What was she doing? Just because she’d decided the pirate wasn’t so bad after all, didn’t give her license to…

She couldn’t even think the word without blushing.

“Get dressed. I will go out the window. You can return to the bosom of your family with my apologies. No one ever needs to know what occurred between us.”

“Nothing occurred,” she huffed, half-complaint, half relief. Harriet had never felt so mixed up.

“Exactement, chérie. Nothing happened.” Was that a sour note in his tone or was she imagining it?

Her hands trembled and her cheeks burned as she discarded the nightgown and yanked on the pieces of her clothing. Chemise. Stays. Petticoat. All the lacings tied in a hurried knot that would no doubt be a bear to untangle later, but for now, she needed clothing. On went her dress, stockings, and spencer.

Although it only took her a few moments, by the time she was finished, Rémy was dressed and standing at the open window, examining the slick roof below.

“You cannot be serious,” she declared, planting her hands on her hips. “You cannot kidnap a lady, kiss her breathless, and then defenestrate yourself!”

“Why not? It is a convenient exit. More convenient than that one.” He pointed to the door.

“I suppose you have extensive experience with hasty exits from ladies’ bedrooms,” she grumbled. He raised one eyebrow. “No. Don’t say anything. I am not interested in the sordid details of your affairs. You are not leaving me here alone.”

“You can’t come with me.”

“You can’t abandon me.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “You’ve kidnapped me and ruined my reputation. Now you’re going to leave me to face the consequences alone? You, sir, are no gentleman.”

“I never said I was.”

The scoundrel slung one leg over the sill, bent, and once he’d found his balance, dragged the other out into the rain.

Speechless, Harriet stuffed her feet into the half-boots and ran to the window, watching incredulously as he half-slid, half-walked down the tiles and dropped over the edge.

“You… pirate ,” she seethed. Before she could rationalize her actions, Harriet perched her bottom on the sill, swung both legs onto the roof, took a deep breath, and let go.

“Help!”

No. Impossible. She couldn’t have.

Rémy turned to the precarious rooftop from which he had descended and saw Harriet teetering on the edge. She couldn’t seem to decide whether to leap or try and climb down, and as a result, was about to fall.

Never mind. Apparently, she could follow him out the window, and had.

With his heart in his throat, Rémy turned back. “Jump, chérie! I will catch you.”

She made a face. Arms windmilling, she toppled from the roof’s edge. Rémy didn’t hesitate. He caught her before she could hit the ground. Pain flared in his shoulder. His tumble out of the bed earlier had bruised, and the strain of catching a falling woman furthered the injury.

“What are you doing?” he demanded.

“You can’t abandon me alone at an inn.”

“Your uncle is right outside.”

“How do you know it’s him and not the Riders?”

She had him there. Rémy had simply done what he always did: bolt at the first sign of trouble. The instinct might not be a noble one, but it had kept him alive.

“I don’t,” he snapped. “But they would return you to your uncle.”

“I’d rather you do it. The fewer people involved, the easier it will be to keep this a secret. You owe me that much.”

She still hoped to marry Lord Lucarran, then. Kissing her this morning had changed nothing. The knowledge that she still intended to go through with her wedding opened a yawning cavern of anger near his heart.

He should have left her back in that tavern. What a mess he’d created.

“Fine. It’s a long walk, Your Ladyship. Try to keep up.”

Hours later, Harriet had ample cause to regret not staying behind at the inn. Shortly after leaving the Windswept Tides, gray clouds rolled across the horizon. Now, water dripped down her neck into the warm knitted vest Rémy had loaned her. He wore his greatcoat buttoned all the way up and the collar popped up against the bad weather.

“Admit it. We’re lost.” Her freshly-cleaned dress was now sodden with a six-inch hem of mud.

“We’re not lost,” Rémy insisted. “This path will take us to Viscount Prescott’s house outside Cavalier Cove. My cousin lives there. Thierry and Ada will give us a place to stay while we sort this out.”

Uncle Monty would be staying with the viscount. It would be an easy thing for Rémy to set her on the path once they got close. He could continue on his way to wherever his companions had stashed the Spectre, and forget all about her.

“How much farther is it?” she panted, which led straight into a hacking cough. Walking for miles through the rainy Cornish countryside couldn’t possibly be helping her fever.

“Ten miles or so.” He trudged onward through the field without meeting her eye. “Give or take.”

“Is that counting the elevation of the hills?” she asked acerbically.

“You’re the one who insisted on being here, chérie,” he said.

A wry smile touched her lips at the memory. “I didn’t think I was brave enough to leap off a roof.”

Or climb a ladder into a ship. Or resist being kidnapped by a pirate, for that matter. Not that she had resisted very hard, in retrospect. Rémy hadn’t exactly held a pistol to her temple.

“Why did you follow me?” he asked conversationally. Whether this was an improvement upon the strained silence that had marked the first hour of their trek, Harriet wasn’t sure. Another coughing fit prevented her from replying immediately.

“I told you. I didn’t want to be abandoned at a roadside inn with strangers.”

“You would have been safer to stay. More comfortable, too, than trudging through the hilly Cornish countryside.”

“I’d rather be with you than abandoned.”

He cocked an eyebrow at her over his shoulder. “That is twice you said that word.”

“Which word?”

“Abandon.”

The cold and fatigue were getting to her. “My own mother barely acknowledges my existence. If not for Uncle Monty, she might have left me at an orphanage. I’m a living reminder of her mistakes. I suppose that’s taken a toll upon my psyche.”

“Apart from this uncle of yours, your entire family abandoned you. A little girl.”

“I’m not little anymore.”

“No. Definitely not. But you were when every adult who should have protected you failed to do more than the bare minimum.”

Harriet peered at him in consternation. The pirate studiously ignored her. “Your English is excellent, when you drop the act,” she said, changing the subject.

“It is no act, chérie. I am French through and through.”

Prideful man. A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. “You could pass as an Englishman if you tried.”

“Why would I want to feign being English?” he said crossly.

“I don’t know. To escape capture, for instance.”

“I do not fear being captured. Fear is for fools. It clouds one’s thinking. I am a man of action. I see the path forward and I take it.” He gestured down the road and avoided her eye.

“What if that path closes?”

“Then I forge a new path.”

Forge a new path. What a novel concept. She had been letting others chart the course of her life until the moment he snatched her away from everything she knew. Yet she’d run away from the chance she’d been given to return to her old life. She was forging a new path, even if she couldn’t see where it was headed other than the next puddle in this potholed pathway.

The next several minutes required climbing a steep hill. She gathered her wet skirts and ignored the fire in her lungs. At the top, Rémy halted abruptly.

“There is a shelter up ahead.” He pointed at what looked like an abandoned cottage. “Let’s get out of the weather for a while?”

She nodded. They slammed into the shack and leaned with their backs against the door as if pursuers were about to break it down. Her stomach grumbled. “I wish we had something to eat.”

“Perhaps the mice have spared us a crumb.” He nudged aside a clump of dead weeds, sending a tiny field mouse bounding across the floor. Raindrops dripped through holes in the ceiling. One landed on Harriet’s nose. Still, one drop was better than hundreds of them.

“Is there any way to make a fire?” she asked. The building’s foundation was constructed of odd-shaped stones held together with crumbling mortar. One section against the short wall rose higher than the rest, with an open fire pit and a rusted iron bar cemented over it. The chimney rising above it formed a spine supporting thick beams and a more or less intact section of roof.

“We can repurpose this.” He wrenched a piece of dry wood away from what had once been a shutter. It came away with a groan. He pulled off more slats and stacked them in the fireplace.

Harriet knelt and twisted to peer up the chimney. No daylight, however wan, shone through the opening. Nor did any rain appear to have fallen through the chimney. The cap had long since blown away, which meant there was likely something blocking it.

Summoning her courage, she chose the longest stick in Rémy’s growing pile and began poking it upward. Dirt rained down.

“Allow me.” He shrugged out of his coat and rolled up one sleeve. Harriet found herself transfixed by his muscular forearm. Tanned skin dusted with fine sun-kissed hairs. Until now, she hadn’t realized that men’s hands could be strong. Aboard the Spectre , she’d been too angry with him to notice anything beyond the broad outlines: his face, his shoulders.

Last night, while he slept, she’d had a chance to look closely and see the finer details. His long lashes. The sweep of his brows. The sharp indentation at the base of his throat.

Now, she couldn’t stop noticing them.

“You are staring, Miss Turner.”

She whirled away.

“Watching,” she insisted with a flutter in her stomach and a pulse that galloped like a frightened horse. “I wasn’t staring.”

She should have better sense than to fall for her own kidnapper. It was embarrassing. Where was her sense of dignity?

Rémy set aside the stick. She heard the scrape of wood on stone and his footfalls on the dry ground. Outside, thunder rolled.

“It’s fine. You can look. I don’t mind.”

The click of a flint and steel striker finally prompted her to turn. He’d coiled a handful of dry grass in the center of the tinder, and within a few expert motions, was blowing the sparks into a flame. She removed the sodden vest and her spencer and spread them on the rocks near the fire to dry.

There was that enticing dip between his clavicles and the long column of his throat. Raising her gaze to his chin made her bring her hand up unconsciously in a wild impulse to run her fingertips along the rough hairs along his jaw. He’d had no time to shave this morning.

He caught her hand and pressed it to his cheek, turning into it. Harriet’s breath caught.

“Why did you follow me?” he asked, his voice rough.

“I didn’t want to be left alone.” She couldn’t stop staring at his lips.

“The real reason, Harriet.”

She swallowed.

“Tell me and I’ll kiss you.”

She shouldn’t speak the words. All her life, she had lived in the shadow of her mother’s mistake. She had paid the penalty for her illegitimacy despite having no control over the circumstances of her birth.

Now, despite her uncle’s careful planning, she had no control over her own fate, except in this regard. She could choose Rémy and all the excitement and chaos that came with him. The man didn’t know the concept of rules.

“I wanted to stay with you,” she whispered.

Those lips curved into a smile that sent her heart soaring. If he didn’t kiss her right now, she was going to collapse from sheer want.

He stroked her jaw with the pad of one thumb. She could imagine the feel of that touch everywhere on her body, trailing fire, igniting desires she had long tried to pretend didn’t exist.

She wasn’t like her mother. She refused to be. But perhaps she was more of her mother’s daughter than she ever wanted to believe. A woman consumed with carnal curiosity, unable to resist the lure of a wholly inappropriate man.

“Do you know why I took you?” His warm breath ghosted across her cheek. Her eyes fluttered closed.

“Why?”

“I have a taste for the finer things in life, and you, Miss Turner, are the finest I have ever tasted.”

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity balancing on the edge of a precipice, the pirate brushed his lips to hers. Harriet opened to him with a low moan, boldly spiked both hands into his hair, and pulled him down to deepen it.