“Daniella.” His voice held warning but she ignored it.
“Is this how your grand plan was to have worked out all along?”
“It bloody well is not.”
Hobson spoke up then but they weren’t words she wanted or needed to hear. “The major wanted nothing to do with forcing you to marriage, lass. Nothing to do with it at all.”
James cleared his throat. “That’s enough, Lieutenant. You’re not helping.”
“Now I have nothing.” Not her freedom. Not her ship. Not even her independence. Once again the men around her held all the power while she was thrown back in a cage.
“You have me,” James told her quietly.
Her answering nod was slow to come but her heart was no longer in it. For months she had dreamed of having her own life and making her own decisions. She had thought this Scottish marriage as easy to walk away from as her London life, but James obviously had very different ideas.
If she couldn’t make this right, all she had left was a bottomless crevasse of nothing and a bleak future without choices. Should she have stayed in London, married an old man and waited for him to stick his spoon in the wall so she could sail off with his money? James certainly was not going to turn up his toes anytime soon.
And what of James? How long would it be until he resented her for all of this? He’d told her he needed a wife as pure as snow. If he took her back to London as his bride what would happen to his reputation? And to Amelia’s, if it survived her time on The Aurora?
Her dark musings took them all the way into town, where Darius’s coachman pulled into an inn yard and brought the horses to a stop.
“This is where our time together ends, I’m afraid.” Darius still wore that smug look of triumph and, before anyone could stop her, she launched herself at him again, this time connecting her fist with his nose. She might not be very big or as strong as James, but she knew how to hit a man to make it hurt. He yowled with pain and doubled over, blood dripping through his fingers to fall on his boots.
“If you ever come near me or The Aurora, I will not ask questions. I will not invite you aboard for a drink or to discuss the weather. I will shoot you where you stand and then dance on your grave under the moonlight, you arrogant ass.”
“Well said, my dear,” James added and then switched his attention back to Darius. “You’re lucky she got you first. I can’t hit a man already bleeding but we’d better not see you again in the near future or the ball that finds your chest may not be my wife’s.”
Darius raised one hand in a gesture of compliance, the other still on his nose, and then opened the carriage door. “Give my regards to the captain.”
Daniella curled her fingers back into fists but James was already pushing her out the door ahead of him. “Just go, Daniella. He’s not worth any more of your pique.”
“Bullshit,” she muttered. “I should have kicked him in the—”
“Daniella,” he scolded as he fought laughter. “You’re a proper lady now. You can’t say things like that.”
She stopped in her tracks causing Patrick to linger in the doorway of the carriage. “Don’t think because he made us marry that you own me or can give me orders. If I want to say words like bullshit and talk about bodily harm, I will.”
His nostrils flared and she felt a spark of the fight ignite back to life inside of her. Damn him, she would fight this. She would fight him.
All traces of humour fled and he took her by the elbow to propel her farther towards the shelter of the inn. “You are my wife now and don’t think you can force me to throw you out using lewd behaviour. I’ll lock you in a room before I let you shame yourself again.”
“You could try it,” she said, wrenching her arm from his firm grip. Even now as they argued, his touch ignited more than a fight and heat pooled in her belly. Shame, not over her external reactions but over her unwanted internal reactions, washed through her to burn her cheeks. “I’ll do whatever I must to be free.”
“I don’t doubt that.” His reply was heavily laced but was that sadness weighting his tone? “But I will do whatever I must to keep you safe.” He came closer and cupped her face in his hands so she almost drowned in his nearness.
Under the inn’s wide veranda, he kissed her. Long and slow and delicious. Once again thought fled and she responded in a way no decent lady ever would. Until Hobson cleared his throat behind James, who reluctantly broke contact. Or was it her reluctance that was most keenly obvious between them?
“We should probably get inside before we attract too much attention,” Hobson suggested, always level-headed.
Daniella licked lips that tasted of him and blinked a few times to clear the haze from her vision. How did he always manage to both take her wits away and make her want to hurl fire all at the same time?
Chapter Twenty-Eight
For the first time in more than a decade James felt whole.
He’d have given his life for his country, but as he stared into moss-green eyes swimming with moisture, he was glad he hadn’t. When she licked her lips and had to consciously regain her wits, the beast inside him roared. This was purpose. This was a cause worthy of his last breath. And if it came down to it, she could have it. She could have anything she wanted if it would only erase the sadness from her gaze.
For three of the longest hours in his entire life James had been forced to sit next to a very despondent Daniella. He couldn’t
