The Brazen Bride

Charles grunted.

Linnet asked a question about Elveden Grange, and the talk veered into less fraught waters.

Leaving the three men reminiscing about the war and their respective parts in it, Linnet climbed the stairs with Phoebe and Penny, very ready to rest. The day had been beyond eventful; quite aside from recouping physically, she had a great deal to review and digest. Parting from the other two at the head of the stairs, she found her way to her comfortable chamber and what promised to be a very comfortable bed.

Undressing by the light of a small lamp some maid had left burning, Linnet let her mind range over all she’d learned that day-the true danger of Logan’s mission, the reality that she could, and now looked set to, play a part, in her mind as his guardian, his keeper, regardless of what he might think. The abrupt shift in her view of aristocratic ladies, the realization that, at least in terms of Phoebe’s and Penny’s world, she might indeed fit in; they thought like her, had so much in common, shared so many attitudes, and had no more patience with social pretense than she did. She had a shrewd suspicion that, given the circumstances, they could both be as bold and as brazen as she.

She found Charles’s and Deverell’s attitudes to their wives interesting, too. Revealing, intriguing-their marriages were definitely not the norm, or at least not the norm as she had previously understood it.

There was a lot to assimilate, a large number of her views to reassess and rescript in light of what she’d observed. Yet one topic, one piece of news, increasingly filled her mind, increasingly captured her thoughts. Increasingly commanded her entire attention.

Logan was an earl’s son.

What did that mean with respect to her?

In a nightgown Penny had loaned her, wrapped in the counterpane for warmth, she was standing by the window staring out at the restless sea and wrestling with that question when the door opened and Logan came in.

She glanced at him. “I wondered if you’d come. I’ve no idea which room you were given.”

With a quirk of his brows, he sat on the end of the bed and bent to ease off his boots. “I could tell you it was my superior tracking skills that led me to your door, but the truth is my room is two doors further along, and going down to dinner I passed this door and heard your voice.” Setting his boots aside, he looked at her. “Regardless, I would have found you. I wasn’t about to stay away.”

She faced him, but didn’t venture closer. “Wasn’t about to sleep alone?”

Logan studied her face in the lamplight; the set of her features was uninformative, her eyes shadowed. “No.” He had no interest in sleeping alone ever again, not if he could help it. “However, if you’re wondering if that was part of the reason I insisted you came with me, the answer is no-that consideration didn’t occur at the time, and weighed not at all in my decision. Yet now you are here, with me, I can’t imagine not lying with you, sleeping with you in my arms.”

She seemed to hear the truth in his words. Yet still she hesitated, her arms wrapped over the counterpane, her gaze on him.

Then her lips firmed, and her gaze grew sharper. “An earl’s son?”

The question was quiet, yet loaded with intensity. With intent.

Mentally cursing his luck, he baldly stated, “My father was the Earl of Kirkcowan.”

“Was? He’s dead. So who’s the earl now?”

“His eldest son.” Standing, he shrugged off his coat, tossed it on a nearby chair. Started unbuttoning his waistcoat.

“From which curt description, I take it you’re estranged?”

He nodded. “I’m…” A bastard. “The black sheep of the family.” He had to tell her, and surely this was the perfect opening, but he hadn’t yet got all in place. He was too good a commander to charge in when his troops weren’t ready. Jaw tightening, he said, “You don’t need to worry about my… elevated connections. In every sense, they’re irrelevant.”

“Are they?”

“Yes.” Laying aside his waistcoat, he turned as she came closer, but she halted more than a yard away, studied his face as, raising his chin, he unknotted, then unwound, his cravat.

From her stance, arms still folded, from her increasingly determined expression, from the frown tangling her brows, she was preparing for battle.

Sure enough…

“Originally you swore you’d return to me. Instead, you’ve managed to whisk me away with you.” Her green gaze locked on his eyes. “But you can’t keep me with you. You’ll have to let me go in the end.”

Meeting her challenging gaze with adamantine stubbornness, he started unbuttoning his shirt. “I am not going to walk away from you.” Stubborn witch . “I won’t be letting you go. Not now, not later. You’d best get used to that.”

The scoffing sound she made stated she was far from that.

“Just how do you see that working?” Temper snapping, Linnet swung out an arm, encompassing the pair of them and the bed. Inside her roiled panicky fear-and the fact she felt it scared her even more. The desperate fight in the narrow yard, the race through the maze with enemies in pursuit, the knowledge that those enemies were still there, lurking beyond the Hall’s thick walls to fall on him again… her reaction to that, and to what that reaction meant and might mean, shook her to the core.

She’d fallen in love with this stubborn, irritating, impossible man, and she’d never be the same again.

Her heart would never be the same again.

That didn’t mean she would let him trample it, cause her more pain-more pain than she would feel anyway when they came to part.

She stepped closer, locked her eyes on his. “I refuse to allow you to keep me with you. I will not be kept.” Raising a finger, she pointed at his patrician nose. “I will not be a kept woman. I will not be your mistress, sitting waiting for you at your house in Glenluce.”

Something flared in his eyes, some emotion so powerful that her unruly heart leapt and her nerves skittered, but then he locked his jaw, reined it, whatever it was, in.

All but ground his teeth as, eyes burning darkly, he stated, “I don’t want you as my mistress.”

She held his gaze. “What, then?”

“I want you as my wife , damn it!”

Slowly, she released the breath she’d been holding. Commendably evenly stated, “Wife.” She’d assumed he’d meant that, but… “You never said anything about marriage. You didn’t mention a single associated word-like wife , bride , wedding .” Belligerently stepping closer still, temper rising as her emotions churned, even more out of control than before-God, how did he make her feel so much?-she deployed her finger again, wagging it under his aristocratic nose. “And don’t you dare suggest that me not jumping to a wedding-bell assumption is in some way a slur on your honor. I can’t read your damned mind-and it’s not as if scions of noble houses don’t keep mistresses. It’s a time-honored tradition for earl’s sons!”

The point that had been preying on her mind for the past hours. Folding her arms, a barrier between them, she glared at him from close quarters.

Somewhat to her surprise, he didn’t glare back.

Hands fisted at his sides, jaw clenched, Logan held his fire-because she was right. He’d spelled out his intentions to her men, but he hadn’t told her, not clearly. He’d sworn he would never give her up, had insisted that once he was free, he wanted to share his life with her, but he hadn’t mentioned marriage.

He’d omitted stating what to him had been the obvious. He’d assumed she had, as he had, come to see their relationship as something any sane man would seek to formalize, that, indeed, being a very sane woman, she would view it in the same light… but she hadn’t.