Claiming the Courtesan

More travel plans. She lost interest. She didn’t know where they were. She didn’t know where they went. Even if she did, her opinion was of no importance.

Kylemore brought over her meal and sat next to her, stretching his long booted legs toward the fire. She’d become inured to his silence. Leaving Whitby, his humor had been to mock and berate. But since she’d threatened him with the poker, he’d hardly said a word to her. The longer they traveled, the further he withdrew into himself.

She didn’t fool herself into thinking that the lack of communication indicated he no longer hungered for her. He hungered, all right. He just didn’t do anything about it. And the delay was gradually sending her mad.

Why didn’t he just take her? What did he wait for? Certainly not her consent. If he preferred privacy, it would be easy enough to send the Macleishes ahead while he took his pleasure.

When they’d left Hinton Stacey, she’d been sure he’d meant to use her without delay. That passionate kiss, regretted more than she could say, had made any protest she voiced moot. But aside from binding and unbinding her, he’d barely touched her.

She was free now, but she knew that he’d tie her up before they slept. She’d reached such a pitch of exhaustion that she could no longer muster even a murmur of objection.

She bent her head and began to eat, although she hardly tasted the humble fare. She was so tired that she wanted to lie down and never move again. Every bone and muscle ached. Perhaps a bed on the ground would provide more rest than sitting up in the coach, but she doubted it. Her abused flesh felt every bump and hollow in the floor beneath the rugs.

Two newcomers joined them around the fire—clearly, the Andy and Angus Kylemore had mentioned.

Then she recognized the overgrown thugs who had assisted so efficiently at her abduction. Her dinner tumbled to the ground as she surged upward on legs that trembled after so long in the carriage.

“What have you done with my brother?” she cried shrilly. “Tell me what you’ve done to Ben.”

“Hold your peace, woman!” Kylemore leaped to his feet and was behind her in an instant. He slid his arms around her waist before she could launch herself upon the two men.

As if a puny creature like her could damage those man mountains. Although she’d dearly love to. Her boiling rage made a mockery of her earlier apathy.

“Let me go!” she snarled, fighting against the duke’s imprisoning hands.

“There’s no use shouting at them. They don’t have the English.”

Kylemore addressed the men in what she guessed was Gaelic. One of them replied readily enough, while keeping an uncertain eye on Verity.

“Your brother is fine.” Kylemore’s deep voice rumbled close to her ear. She tried to ignore the clean, male scent of him. He still smelled like the outdoors, although now it was an outdoors washed clean by the freshness of rain. “They released him in the abbey and have followed us ever since.”

Verity gave up her futile struggle. Bitter experience told her he’d only let her go when he was ready.

“They just left Ben there no worse for the encounter?” she asked, not bothering to hide her mistrust.

Another exchange in Gaelic before Kylemore answered her, still, damn him, without moving away. His breath brushed against her cheek and made the blood surge hot beneath her skin. “Apparently.”

“I don’t believe you,” Verity said coldly, stifling her disquieting sensual awareness. “Ben would come after me.”

More Gaelic. An infuriating burst of masculine laughter. Even the younger Macleishes joined in. Kylemore’s grin was a flash of brilliant white as he released her and stepped in front of her, elegant, handsome, impervious.

How she hated him.

“I’m sure he would have if he’d had a stitch of clothing to cover himself with,” he said.

Anger surged up as strongly as it had when he’d snatched her from her brother’s care in Whitby.

“You, sir, are a member of a barbarous race,” she said with contempt. “All of you disgrace the name of men.”

The duke’s smile froze on his face. “At least none of us is a thief or a liar, madam,” he said in the frigid voice that always sliced her to the quick. It was a voice he’d never used when he’d spoken to Soraya. Not until the day she’d rejected his marriage proposal.

She raised her chin and cast him a disdainful glance. “I was an honest

whore. A pity neither you nor your men can lay claim to so much virtue as that.”

Proudly, she returned to her corner. Curling her legs under her, she stared sightlessly ahead and tried not to watch the Scots’ triumphant hilarity. She blinked away the first tears she’d shed since this ordeal had started.

Poor Ben. He didn’t know if she was alive or dead. Her heart grieved for her brother’s humiliation and his anguish when he failed to find her. It hadn’t missed her notice that Kylemore used mainly side roads. Nor that now they were in the wilderness, anyone would find it impossible to pursue them.