The Wedding Runaway

His Touch

It was a simple matter, really, to move his hand to cup her head and bring her forward. With her height
,
there was an easy fit
,
and no long delay to the meeting of their mouths.

Lydia kissed with innocence that shifted to eagerness and her essence swirled on his tongue. Her willing participation was like ambrosia to a starving man. Need throbbed through him as Victor pulled her closer and deepened his kiss. He urged with a persuasive touch to loosen her hold on the slit nightshirt. She complied, wrapping her arms around him.

He wanted to touch every inch of her skin
,
to trace the lines of her every curve
,
to taste her flesh. The material slipped from her shoulder and offered him a tantalizing glimpse of heaven.

THE WEDDING RUNAWAY

by

Katy Madison

Amazon edition © 2012

Original Copyright © 2005 by Karen L. King

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the author, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

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This book is a work of fiction.  Any resemblance to any person living or dead is purely coincidental.

This book was originally published in paperback by Kensington Publishing Corp.

as The Wedding Runaway by Karen L. King

Chapter One

November
,
1818
,
Southern England

Lydia Margaret Hamilton ran up the stairs two at a time and burst into the private sitting room at the Cock and Bull Inn.
"
I bought two tickets for the mail coach and no one even looked at me.
"

Her mouth pursed in disapproval
,
Jenny tossed a handful of Lydia
'
s newly shorn blond curls into the small blaze behind the grate. Initially
,
the maid had refused to cut Lydia
'
s hair. So Lydia had hacked off a big chunk with her sewing scissors. Once she had a big hole in her hair
,
Jenny had to even it up.

"
Oh
,
that smells awful.
"
Draping one leg over the chair arm
,
Lydia sprawled in her seat the way her brothers would. In spite of herself
,
her enthusiasm gushed
,
"
I am to ride on the outside on the coachman
'
s box.
"

Jenny put her hands on her slim hips and said as sternly as a girl of her diminutive stature could manage
,
"
Miss Hamilton
,
you cannot ride on the outside.
"

"
Quit being missish
,
Jenny. You are my maid
,
not my minder
,
and I refuse to let you ruin my last moments of freedom.
"

"
Hardly freedom to be dressed in trousers and riding on a carriage box
with the coachman
,
Miss.
"

On the contrary
,
for the first time in her life
,
Lydia was making all her own decisions. She had never experienced greater liberty and she lived in the freest country in the world.
"
I had to take an outside seat for one of us. There was only one inside seat left, or we
'
d have to wait for the next mail coach. It
'
s not as if the weather is inclement
,
and I won
'
t miss a bit of the countryside.
"
Lydia smiled brightly. Snow probably covered Boston.

Lydia bounced out of the chair, too excited by her adventure to sit still
,
even if pantaloons allowed her to sprawl with unfettered abandonment.
"
You
'
ll have to stop calling me Miss
,
or we
'
ll get stares. Besides, riding on top is what a young man would do.
"

Jenny folded her arms.
"
But you
'
re not a young man
,
and pretending to be one will get us both in a peck of trouble.
"

"
I pass
,
don
'
t I? No one looked twice at me.
"
Lydia spun around.

She
'
d registered in the mail coach logbook as Mr. Leonard M. Hall
,
from Boston
,
Massachusetts, America. She didn
'
t want her brothers
,
father
,
or abandoned fiancé to easily chase after her if they followed her across the ocean.

"
From Plymouth Rock to Plymouth
,
England
,"
she joked to the clerk. He had given her one of those absent smiles as if he were trying to appear amused by the young American
,
but really hadn
'
t paid her any mind.

Jenny stared at Lydia
'
s front
,
specifically at the juncture at the top of her thighs.
"
You don
'
t quite look a man.
"

The two pads strapped around her waist straightened her midsection, hiding her curved-in sides. She didn
'
t have much to bind down on top
,
but she planned to wear her coat and waistcoat at all times. The towering concoction of her cravat hid her lack of an Adam
'
s apple. While pretending to be a young man
,
her ungainly height became a blessing. Yet
,
Jenny frowned.

"
What is it?
"

Jenny blushed.
"
Well, a man is...has other parts.
"

Lydia twisted her lips to the side and looked down. Jenny at sixteen had more experience with male parts than Lydia had at twenty-one
,
even though she had five older brothers and had a fairly good idea of the differences in their anatomy.

"
Should we roll up a sock? I suppose I could sew up and stuff ah...er...a male appendage
,
but you
'
ll have to help me design it.
"
Lydia opened her trunk to retrieve her sewing supplies.
"
We
'
ve got a few hours
,
until the mail coach leaves this evening.
"

"
I
'
m not going." Jenny gasped and fell on her backside. "You never said anything about pretending to be a young man when you said we were going to London.
"

Lydia sighed. She supposed she should have anticipated this outburst from Jenny. Rummaging in the open trunk exposed Lydia
'
s youngest older brother
,
Trevor
'
s, outgrown shirts
,
jackets and waistcoats along with James
'
s, Lydia
'
s oldest and largest brother
,
breeches and pantaloons. The final clue that this trip
,
despite Lydia
'
s insinuations
,
was not sanctioned by Lydia
'
s father or fiancé.

"
Jenny
,
I am determined to spend time in London and you can go with me or you can find your own way back to Boston.
"
Lydia hated to be mean
,
but she needed Jenny
'
s help.
"
Might I remind you that you would not even have employment if I hadn
'
t interceded on your behalf after you were caught in the bushes with the neighbor
'
s groom.
"

Jenny blushed.
"
Well, I won
'
t likely have employment when I get back after helping you with this nonsense
,
will I?
"

"
When we go back
,
I will tell Papa I left you no choice in the matter and you did your best to protect me from my worst impulses. Fair enough?
"
Lydia grimaced.
"
Or if I end up marrying Mr. Sullivan
,
I will have fits until he finds you a position in my new household.
"

"
Should have married him and be done with it. I don
'
t know what you hope to gain delaying the marriage.
"

There was a way to take the wind out of her sails. Until recently, Lydia had anticipated her impending nuptials with
,
if not enthusiasm, at least a little joy.
"
I overheard him talking about me. He called me mannish. Would you want to marry a man who called you mannish?
"

Jenny, who was petite and perfectly rounded in all the right places, would never have to worry about being called mannish. Her brown eyes filled with sympathy nonetheless.

That statement had been bad enough. While Lydia didn
'
t think herself particularly vain
,
her fiancé
'
s opinion of her had stung. But it didn
'
t end there. Her betrothed had confided in his friend that he meant to take over her father
'
s shipping company and oust her brothers from control...and marrying Lydia was the means and the price of taking over the lucrative enterprise.

Shaken
,
Lydia had tried to tell her father
,
but he
'
d been firm that she would marry Oscar Sullivan and that was that. He thought she was just trying to worm out of another proposal.

If her father
'
s business was her main attraction for Mr. Sullivan
,
then she could act so outrageously that she was disowned. If he thought she was mannish
,
then she would become a man. Coupled with her desire to have a European tour like all her brothers
,
the solution to run away to England and masquerade as a young man struck her as the only way to go.

Besides
,
the only way she could get into the gambling hells and increase her modest amount of money to see them through was as a young man.

~*~

Northern England

The smell of smoke and ash hung heavy in the air. Even after a week
,
pockets of Victor John Bartlett
'
s home still smoldered. A wisp of gray curled in the air above what had been the West wing of his estate. The only part that remained standing was the menacing thirteenth-century keep that loomed sentinel over the river and the road and proclaimed the Earls of Wedmont owned this land and would repel all interlopers.

The destruction had come from the inside.

Eleven of the previous twelve Earls of Wedmont were probably rolling in their graves
,
and blaming Victor for bringing in one not of their kind
,
one who finally finished the destruction. His own father
,
no doubt
,
moldered silently in his crypt. After his wild
,
wicked
,
wastrel life
,
nothing was likely to disturb his eternal rest. He had started the ruin of the long and noble earldom
,
and he had never particularly cared what happened to his son
,
much less the family estate.

Victor kicked a pile of coals in the keep
'
s storage room entrance
,
dispersing their nearly spent heat. He climbed over the blackened remains of a roof beam and crossed into the hollow shell of blackened stone. The once mighty rafters were now jagged black spikes of charred timber on the ash-coated stone floor. Five years ago he
'
d been praying for this to happen. The fates
,
as ever
,
got the timing wrong.

The heat radiating from the scorched stones irritated the burn on his forehead. Picking up a piece of twisted metal that must have been the blade of a medieval battle lance that once hung on the wall
,
Victor climbed back out to the lawn. The neatly kept expanse contrasted oddly with the ruins behind him.