Enticing the Earl (31 page)

Carter came next, while she waited with her heart in her throat, hearing sounds of blows and shouts above them on the deck. At last, there was Marcus, half climbing, half falling down the ladder.

One of the men pushed their boat away from the larger ship. Around her, the men bent to wield their oars with all their strength. Lauryn felt for Marcus in the darkness, even as they thrust themselves away from the blacker silhouette looming above them. He clasped her hand in reassurance.

Their boat rose and fell on the waves that tossed them about like a scrap of seaweed on the vast, trackless ocean. She heard a noise like a hornet zipping over them, and realized with a shiver that bullets were flying past their heads.

“Down!” Marcus pushed her toward the damp musty bottom of the boat. “They are shooting.” To the men he called, “Row for your lives!”

Around them the men bent over the oars and plied them with grim energy. Lauren bent lower, too, but she was more interested in the earl's condition. She smelled fresh blood, even with the strong scent of brine on the wind that buffeted their faces and snatched away their voices. When she touched his face, she could feel traces of sticky moisture.

“Are you all right?” she yelled at him as sea spray stung their faces and drenched their clothes.

“Yes.” He pressed her hand again and put one arm around her, gripping her, holding tight to the boat with the other as it rocked and swayed.

The moon came out from behind a cloud, and the smugglers on the ship sent more bullets flying their way, but they were almost out of range. She strained her eyes to see Marcus more clearly, but it was still too hard to make out details.

She clung to him as the small boat rose and fell, shifting as the waves lifted, then dropped them. Around them, his men plied the oars that took them away from the ship and back to safety.

When they reached the dock at last, they paused only long enough for Marcus to have a knife wound on one shoulder bound up. When she could see the blood that soaked one side of his shirt, her face paled.

“Don't fret,” he told her. “The wound is shallow and not to be considered.”

She had her own views about that, but at least the bandages seemed to stop the bleeding. The colonel stayed to inform the new Harbor Master of the night's events, and Marcus promised to return first thing in the morning to add his own information.

“I have a lady here, my fiancée,” Marcus explained. “She was kidnapped by the smugglers and has had a harrowing ordeal. And then, too, her chaperone is back at the lodge and will be worried sick about her.”

The Harbor Master looked shocked. “Of course, of course, dreadful experience for a lady. You must get her back as soon as may be!”

Lauryn wasn't sure which the man was most concerned about—her safety or her good name. It was a bit amusing to find herself put back on the side of proper ladies once more.

They accepted the loan of Colonel Swift's carriage, and she and Marcus and Carter traveled back to the hunting lodge. While they rode, she and Marcus sat side by side and discussed what would happen to Tweed and the Chinese gang.

“The smugglers will no longer be able to operate here, now that they have been found out,” Marcus told them. “How long before they pop up somewhere else, it's hard to say.”

“You don't think Tweed will travel back to China with his coconspirators, do you?” Lauryn asked.

“I doubt it,” Marcus said, while Carter yawned in the other corner of the carriage. “He would be in an alien land, with no one whom he cared about. And really, I don't know if there is enough hard evidence here to convict him.”

“He may get off?” Lauryn widened her eyes when she remembered how close she and Carter had come—and Marcus, too—to dying.

“Not really. Still, I think he will face his own worst nightmares,” Marcus said, to her mystification.

“What do you mean?”

“That high-flying fiancée of his, who wanted so much, will not be pleased to have rumors flying about. I rather think she may not stay the course.”

“Oh.” Lauryn lifted her brows. “No, she doesn't sound the type given to unswerving devotion, does she?”

“So when gossip buzzes, he may find he has lost all the things he really wanted—an aristocratic wife and entry into the highest circles—at the first hint of scandal.”

Lauryn sighed and rested her head on his healthy shoulder. She didn't care about scandals. At least Marcus was still relatively well and they had all come out in one piece.

When they entered the shooting box, they found the squire tucked up on Carter's camp bed in the study, his head wrapped in bandages like a turban, looking pale but apparently not too much the worse for wear.

“Lauryn!” he called when he saw her in her strange outfit. “I was coming after you myself, no matter what the damned doctor said, if you had not returned by the morrow—what sort of heathens would kidnap a lady? Thank God you are safe. And you as well, my lord.” He looked at the bloodstained shirt and shook his head. “I am glad to see you on your feet.”

“I had a bad time, too!” Carter pointed out, looking aggrieved. “The bloody opium smugglers pumped all sorts of noxious stuff into me, don't you know.”

“Poor Carter,” the contessa murmured, patting his arm. “Ve are zo glad to zee you zafe.”

Carter said, “Just so,” and didn't appear to notice the slight twinkle in her eyes.

“I am most thankful,
moi
, to zee you all,” the contessa said. “Ve have been most disquieted zince you have gone.”

“Thank you for looking after the squire,” Lauryn told her. “I am so relieved you are all right, sir.”

“Oh, I'm too old and tough to be so easily dispatched.” Her father-in-law nodded, then winced and seemed to regret the motion. “Do you think you have stopped these blackguards, my lord?”

“Only for the time, I'm afraid. They will show up again in another coastal town, when they think the fervor has died down. As long as there are fools who will buy opium, they will traffic in it and as for the corporations—we must push Parliament for intervention there.” Marcus shook his head at the thought. “I suspect we have put the Englishman who dealt in this end of it out of business, however, so that is something. And the most important thing, of course, is that we have our two lost ones back safely.”

“Yes,” Carter agreed. “I was of no mind to be fish food!”

Lauryn shivered, and Marcus frowned at his brother.

“If you'll forgive me, I'd like to get out of these—um—this costume,” Lauryn said. She headed for the staircase, asking the maid to bring warm water when she could.

When she entered the bedchamber, she was almost surprised at the emotions that rushed through her. How could this room feel so much like home? She had not been here that long, but it seemed like such a refuge already. She had to blink away tears. She was safe here; she had been so happy here.

Not long after she had entered and had, with a shudder, peeled off the foreign clothing and begun to scrub off the alien scents that had come with them, she heard the door open. Peering round the screen, she saw that the earl had entered.

“May I come in?” he asked, his tone formal.

“Of course,” she said.

He pulled off his close-fitting jacket and started to shed the shirt that was stained with his blood, but paused; his wound must be tender.

“Let me help,” she said.

Rubbing herself quickly dry with a linen towel, she pulled a robe around her and came out to assist. Pushing him gently down to the chair, she eased the shirt over his bandaged side and over his head.

“Wait,” she told him. She returned to the dressing table, emptied the dirty water into the pail underneath, poured clean water out of the ewer, and readied soap and towels. “All right,” she told him. “Now, come sit in the chair here.”

Looking amused, he obeyed. “I'm not a babe.”

“No, but I like to take care of you, anyhow,” she said. And, she thought, you are weaker than you care to admit from loss of blood. So she bathed him very carefully, cleaning the other scrapes and cuts he had obtained, and he leaned back and seemed to enjoy her tender touch.

When she was done, she took away his soiled and bloodstained clothing and found him fresh nightclothes, then insisted that he lie down in the bed.

“I'll get you a glass of brandy if you like,” she told him. “Or a cup of tea before bed.”

“Yes,” he said. “Anything. But what I want most is you, curled up beside me.”

“That part I pledge,” she told him. “With all my heart and soul.” It sounded much like the wedding vows they would soon be exchanging, and the thought gave her goose bumps, making her skin prickle.

He held out his healthy arm, and she came to him so he could draw her close.

“For all my life, darling Lauryn,” he said. She pressed herself close to him and reflected that never had she imagined that she might end up here, so happy, so blessed.

Marcus seemed to see some doubt in her face. He tightened his hold. “What is it?”

Lauryn did not try to dissemble. “You know there will be gossip. Someone is bound to recognize me—there were people who saw me at your estate, the house party…”

He grimaced. “Damn Carter and his bright ideas…but it doesn't matter, my love.”

She raised her brows. “These things always matter.”

He shook his head. “No. You are brave enough to stare them down, and we will be together. If there is gossip, it will die. You will be my countess, and even more important, the love of my life. That's what matters.”

The last knot inside her seemed to loosen. She lay her head back down upon his chest.

“I love you, Marcus.”

She heard him sigh deeply. “That's the first time you've told me so, darling Lauryn.”

She punched his good arm lightly. “You forbade me to say it, you wretch. And I have not heard it from you, either!”

“I love you, I adore you, I worship you. I will spend the rest of my life showing you just how much.” He raised his head and looked down at her. “How is that?”

She smiled into his dark eyes. “It will do for a start.”

L
ONDON:
T
WO WEEKS LATER

O
phelia looked over to make sure that her husband,
Giles, and the other men were occupied with their own talk and shook her head. “Really, Lauryn, I cannot believe you got married so quietly and without the support of your sisters!”

“I know, but under the circumstances…” Lauryn began.

“Such as having the honeymoon before the wedding?” Her younger sister's tone was low and teasing. She sipped her flute of champagne. “I never dreamed you could do anything so shocking, Lauryn. But you are safe, thank heavens. Such hair-raising adventures—you turn my blood into ice with your stories!” Ophelia gave a theatrical shiver, adding more thoughtfully, “Although I may borrow the plot for my next play—”

“Don't you dare!” Lauryn interrupted. “That would truly cause gossip.”

Ophelia laughed. “But really, has anything been heard about your villain?”

Lauryn sighed. “Marcus got the news just as we were setting off for London. They found a body washed up on shore several towns to the south. It was hard to determine his identity, but he had a leather wallet on him with Tweed's initials embossed upon it, so it is thought to be him.”

“Oh!” Ophelia shivered for real this time. “Did he do himself in, or was he murdered by his bloodthirsty cohorts, do you think?”

“That, we'll never know.” Lauryn lowered her voice as a maid came by with another tray of delicious savories.

They were having an impromptu celebration at the earl's large house in London. As soon as they had gotten back into town, Lauryn had wasted no time in sending notes around to all available family members.

“At any rate,” Ophelia told her, changing the subject quickly, “I am so happy for you, Lauryn. I have been wishing for years, since your first year of mourning ended, that you would find someone, although I did not expect your romance to be so, ah, dramatic.”

Lauryn made a face. She had used to lecture her harum-scarum younger sisters often enough; she would hardly allow them to scold her about decorum now. “And you would know about dramatic.”

Ophelia giggled. “True.”

“And I understand, too,” Cordelia, the other twin, suggested. “But we must throw a huge reception for you here, and then you can have another in Yorkshire, so Father and the rest of the family can be there, and we will all journey up and celebrate again. I am just so very happy for you! The earl seems a truly agreeable man.”

“Oh, he is, and so much more besides.” Lauryn grinned at them. “It will take me months to tell you how wonderful he is.”

“We look forward to hearing it,” Ophelia agreed, hugging her once more and almost spilling her bubbly on Lauryn's traveling costume. “Although, gracious, you had us so worried. When you have your own little ones, you will know better than to trust an important note to such small hands.”

Laughing reluctantly, Lauryn turned to watch Juliette, just now crawling beneath a table, trying to catch up with her cousin Olivia. “Yes, I suppose so.”

Her gaze traveled on to see Marcus—his wound was healing well—speaking to Giles and to Cordelia's husband, Ransom, about the honeymoon trip they were planning. She felt love well up inside her like a golden fountain. “I look forward to that, as well,” she said. She felt his answered glance, like an unspoken enticement.

“Come,” she told them. “I'm missing Marcus.” She cared not at all that her sisters giggled. So, with the little girls pattering behind them, they headed across the big room to rejoin their husbands.