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Authors: Joan Johnston

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BOOK: Captive
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That was no excuse for subjecting his sister and his ward to the presence of his mistress. He was suddenly glad that Lady Frockman was leaving. It was plain he would be needing all his time and attention to deal with his new ward. He made a mental note to have his steward send Lady Frockman a diamond bracelet, along with a letter ending their relationship. But his mind was already racing ahead to the inevitable confrontation with his ward.

Assuming he could find the rebellious chit.

Samuels, the butler, was standing ramrod straight, cheeks ruddy with color, holding the front door open for him. “Sorry, milord. She caught me by surprise. I had no idea she would—”

“Never mind, Samuels. I doubt the devil himself could have stopped her.”

Denbigh took one step outside the portals of Denbigh Castle and looked past the long, sloping lawn to the forest of ash and oak trees beyond. They provided a leafy refuge that could easily hide Lady Charlotte. But it was too far a distance for her to
have managed to travel in the few moments since she had so precipitately ended his lovemaking.

Denbigh shuddered as he thought of what the girl must have seen. A picture of her wide-eyed, ashen face rose before his, and he felt something he had not believed he could still feel after an entire year of excess.
Shame
. What if it had been Olivia who had opened that door? Of course, Olivia would have knocked, but that was no excuse. He probably owed the chit an apology. Damn and blast her.

He glanced to the east, to the cliffs above the sea, and the treacherous path that led down to the pounding surf. He tried to imagine her running that far in the time since she had slammed the front door. Impossible. She was fast, but not that fast.

He looked west to the stable. It was closer than the other two hiding places she could have sought. He began striding toward it without further consideration. She was probably saddling that stallion of hers right now to make good her escape. She was a bruising rider, especially astride. If memory served, the chit had still been wearing trousers when she interrupted him in the study.

Denbigh frowned. The girl had no sense of decency. Dressed in trousers, every delectable line of her body was visible to any rake or rogue who cared to look. Heaven help him, he was as guilty as the worst of them. And every time he looked, he was reminded that his ward was a grown woman.

Not that she acted like one.

It was time Lady Charlotte Edgerton learned that he would not tolerate her crotchets. He was the one in control. He gave the orders in this house. It was her duty to obey them.

He stepped inside the stable and waited for his eyes to adjust to the dark. It was cooler inside than out, and he stood quietly, inhaling the familiar scents of leather and horse and manure, listening, waiting for her to reveal herself. He could not see her, but he knew she was there.

One of his pair of chestnut geldings swished its tail to whisk away a buzzing fly. A tiger-striped barn cat brushed against his Wellingtons, weaving itself between his legs, purring softly. He strained to hear some human movement, anything that would give away the girl’s location.

And heard her panting.

The sound came from the loft above him. He looked up but could not see her through the narrow cracks in the wooden floor. Was she frightened of him? She ought to be. He was furious enough to give her a lesson that would keep her standing for days. But he could not very well spank her. She was not a child. She was a young lady. Hard as that was to remember at times.

He looked around for the hostler but remembered he had asked Jeremy to take his favorite hunter into the village to have a loose shoe replaced.

“I know you’re up there, Lady Charlotte,” Denbigh said. “I can hear you breathing. There is no one here but the two of us. You might as well come down and take your punishment.”

He heard the rustle of straw, and several wisps floated down from above to land on the dirt floor. But no mutinous, heart-shaped face surrounded by golden curls appeared over the edge of the loft.

“If you do not come down here at once, I will have to come up there after you,” he warned.

Still nothing.

“Very well.” Denbigh put his hands on the rough-hewn ladder and began to climb.

He could hear her scrambling around above him and hurried his ascent. When his eyes breached the edge of the loft he saw her racing toward the open second-story doors through which hay was loaded into the barn. For an instant he thought she was going to jump out through the doors to escape him. She would break a leg at the least, and most likely her neck.

“Don’t do it!” he yelled, clambering up into the loft and racing toward her. At the precise moment he lunged for her, she whirled. Too late he saw she held a pitchfork braced defensively in front of her.

There was no way he could stop his momentum. Two of the four razor-sharp tines were driven deep into the flesh of his upper thigh. He was too
shocked even to cry out. His eyes widened in pained surprise as he raised them to meet the girl’s startled, green-eyed gaze.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you!” she cried. “If you hadn’t attacked me like that—”

“I was trying to save your life,” he said through clenched teeth. The pain was growing as the shock wore off. “I thought you were going to jump.”

“Jump?”

“Out the loft door,” he explained, gesturing toward the double doors with his chin.

“Are you crazy?” she said incredulously. “I would have broken my neck.”

“My point precisely.”

He saw the moment she became aware that she was still holding the wooden-handled pitchfork that was deeply imbedded in his flesh. She started to let go, and the angling tines drew a cry of agony from his throat.

“Don’t let go,” he rasped.

She grasped the weight of the pitchfork again and held it steady. “Oh, God,” she croaked. “It’s really stuck.” She looked around wildly for someone to come and take it from her. There was no one. They were alone.

“What are we going to do now?” she asked.

“You’re going to pull it out.”

“I couldn’t possibly!”

“You stuck it in. You can bloody well pull it
out.” Beads of perspiration had formed on his upper lip, and his hands were curled into fists, one of which he pressed against his injured thigh to counter the pain of his wound.

He bit back a groan as the girl gave a slight tug. The tines did not come free.

She shot him a desperate look. “It’s really, really stuck.”

“I know,” he said. “You’ll have to try a little harder.”

She stared fixedly at the worms of blood crawling from the two wounds on his thigh. Her body began to tremble, and she swayed on her feet.

For the first time, he saw a trace of vulnerability beneath the facade of bravado she wore. Before him stood a young woman still grieving the death of a beloved parent, forced to come to a strange land, and faced with a situation that would have sent any delicately nurtured young English lady into a swoon long ago.

“You aren’t going to faint on me, are you, Charlotte? I thought you Americans had better bottom than that,” he chided her gently.

As quickly as the mask had dropped, she pulled it back into place. Her shoulders squared, and she answered, “We do.”

Before he was ready, and with all her strength, she yanked on the pitchfork. When it came free, she
fell backward onto the straw. “It came out!” she said with a relieved laugh.

He felt light-headed and for a moment was afraid
he
was going to faint. Before he could falter, she was beside him with her arm around his waist, lifting his arm onto her shoulder for support. She was holding him closer than his affianced bride ever had.

“Lean on me,” she said.

He did not want her help, but it was either lean on her or fall down. He expected his weight would be too much for her, but though she was small, she was surprisingly sturdy.

“How are we going to get you down from here?” she asked, looking up at him.

“I’ll have to climb down.”

“It’s going to hurt like the devil when you do,” she said.

“Thanks for pointing that out,” he said. “Do you see any way around it?”

She shook her head. “At least let me tie something around your wound to stop the bleeding first.”

He stared down at her. A moment ago she had been about to faint. Now she was offering to doctor him. Lady Charlotte was a most unusual woman. He found himself admiring her again, and realized that was a mistake. She was the reason he had ended up impaled on a pitchfork in the first place. And he
would not have been out in the barn if she had not disobeyed him and left the house.

She pulled her lawn shirt from her breeches and tore a strip from the hem of the gauzy material long enough to tie over his wounds. He was still standing stunned at that bit of nursing ingenuity when she reached toward his thigh as though to bind up his wound.

“I’ll do it,” he said, taking the strip of cloth from her.

It was small satisfaction to see the relief in her face.

“Let me go down first,” she said. “That way, if you fall, I can catch you.”

“I’m not going to fall.”

“Of course not,” she said in a voice he found irritating because it was intended to soothe his ruffled ego. At the same time she was urging him toward the ladder. “Can you stand by yourself?” she asked.

As she let him go, he realized he was able to balance on his uninjured leg. “Yes, I can manage.”

She headed down the ladder as quick as a monkey and stood on the floor below him looking up with anxious eyes. “Come on down,” she said, gesturing with her hands. “I’ll catch you if you fall.”

It made him smile to picture her squashed beneath
his bulk. But not for long. His leg was killing him.

“I’m not going to fall,” he gritted out as he turned and began making his way down the ladder. By now the left leg of his buckskins was soaked with blood, and he could feel it pooling in his boot. It hurt like the very devil every time he moved his leg. He kept his mind off the pain by imagining the injured look on his valet’s face when he showed up in such disarray. Theobald prided himself on keeping his master looking top-of-the-trees.

As luck would have it, his boot slipped on the last rung of the ladder, and he very nearly did fall. If she had not been there behind him to support him, he would have landed flat on his back. His ears turned red with embarrassment.

“You can let me go,” he said, removing her arms from around his waist. “I can make it to the house by myself.”

She was chewing on her lower lip, something else English ladies never did in public. Now he knew why. It was unbelievably erotic to imagine himself doing the same thing to her.

“You’d better let me help you.”

“I said I can manage on my own,” he snapped.

“Fine! Go ahead.”

She took off for the house at a run—English ladies never ran anywhere, they walked sedately—shouting at the top of her lungs for help. Ladies did
not shout, either, he could have pointed out. Before he was halfway to the house, which he was forced to admit he never would have reached on his own, she was back with Samuels and Galbraith, who made a chair for him with their arms and carted him back to the house.

Meanwhile, the chit was not satisfied with ordering around his servants. He heard her giving commands to his sister, as well.

“Have Mrs. Tinsworthy pull down the covers on your brother’s bed, and get his valet—what is that man’s name?—to come and undress him. I’m going to ride for the doctor.”

She was racing—not walking, not ambling or strolling—but running at full speed back down one side of the stairs as Samuels and Galbraith carried him up the other.

“Slow down, Lady Charlotte,” he called to her. “Walk.”

“The sooner I can get my horse saddled, the sooner the doctor will be here to look at your leg,” she countered.

“You’re not riding to the doctor dressed like that!” She was still wearing those damned skintight breeches.

“Try and stop me!” she called up to him as she flitted down the stairs.

“Charlotte!” he roared. The chit completely
ignored him. He winced as he heard the front door slam.

“That girl is unbelievable!” he muttered.

“She certainly is,” Galbraith agreed. “Astounding really, wouldn’t you say, milord? Can’t think of an English lady who could manage the situation half so well.”

Denbigh realized his footman had misunderstood him. He had been criticizing Charlotte, not commending her. He had to admit that Lady Alice, or even his sister, Olivia, would not have marshaled everyone to do her bidding nearly so effectively. Unfortunately, Charlotte Edgerton utterly lacked the ability to be the only thing required of her in England—a perfect lady.

His valet was every bit as appalled as Denbigh had expected him to be. Theobald had been dressing the earl since he was a boy, and on occasion still treated him like one.

“Your buckskins are ruined, my lord,” Theobald scolded, shaking his head as though the crown jewels themselves had been damaged. “While I could clean your boots, they will never be what they were. I am afraid I could not recommend that you wear them again.”

“Then get rid of them,” Denbigh said.

“Very well, my lord. If that is all, I will leave you until the doctor arrives.”

“Go, Theobald. Please go.” The man was turning
green. Theobald never had been able to stand the sight of blood.

Denbigh had stripped naked, because the tines of the fork had pierced his smallclothes, as well, and put on a dressing gown to wait for the doctor in bed. Unfortunately, he had a great deal too much time to think before the doctor arrived.

The more thinking he did, the more convinced he became that he had handled the matter of Charlotte Edgerton all wrong. He should have sent her to his grandmother in the first place. The Duchess of Trent would have known how to smooth the rough edges off the girl.

However, the longer he pondered that alternative, the less he liked it. His grandfather was in ailing health. Imagine having someone as rambunctious as Charlotte around day in and day out. It was exhausting just to think about it. His elderly grandparents should not be saddled with what, after all, was his responsibility.

BOOK: Captive
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