Claiming the Courtesan

“As you wish, madam,” he said wearily. He rolled away and went back to sleep with annoying speed.

Verity listened to Kylemore’s even breathing, while her heart pounded with dread and self-doubt. How could she snuggle up to him with the trust of a child? She hated him. She feared him. And if she’d learned anything, it was that she had to be constantly on her guard. This time, her blistering contempt focused solely on her own ruinous weakness rather than on the obliviously slumbering rake beside her.

Chapter 8

The rain stopped before dawn, and the day promised to set fair. Verity stood next to the duke in the unreliable sunshine and watched the detested coach rattle away down the hill.

“Is this our final destination?” she asked incredulously. “I imagined something more fitting to Your Grace’s consequence.”

She’d left—under his escort, of course—to wash in a stream that ran behind the ruin. Now she found their transport abandoning them. Doubtfully, she glanced at the tumbledown cottage. It was whole but hardly luxurious.

“The coach can go no further in these hills. Now we take the ponies.” He gestured with one elegant hand toward a previously unnoticed string of horses tied under a tree.

This was the most information she’d managed to coax out of him in days. “But didn’t you say we go to Kylemore Castle?”

“No. I said the Macleishes did. My home isn’t nearly private enough for what I intend.” His voice bit, as if he realized he’d briefly treated her as a fellow human being and now regretted it. He strode over to where Angus and Andy, apparently all that remained of their escort, waited.

She stumbled after him, risking another withering setdown. “That’s very well, except for one thing.”

He turned to her. Ill-concealed impatience shadowed his fine-boned, intelligent face. “I’ve already told you—what you wish is of no consequence.”

She gritted her teeth. “But it is of very great consequence that I don’t ride.”

The blank look of genuine amazement that chased his annoyance away would have made her laugh in other circumstances. Obviously, the thought had never occurred to this scion of the aristocracy that the entire world wasn’t flung on horseback before it could walk. But Verity had never ridden. She was frightened of horses, a legacy of a childhood accident when one of her father’s draft team had trampled her.

“You’ll pick it up soon enough,” he said flatly after a pause. He left her and headed toward the ponies as though his pronouncement solved the issue. When she didn’t immediately follow, he stopped and turned his head. “Come on.”

“No,” she said sullenly.

Nothing on earth—dangerous noblemen with uncertain tempers included—was coaxing her any closer to those snorting, murderous beasts.

He sighed with irritation and stalked back in her direction. “We can’t stay here. You must see that. The coach has gone. The ponies are the only way we can proceed.”

“Then I’ll walk.”

He cast a speaking look at her slight figure. “You’d collapse halfway up the first hill.”

“Then leave me here to starve,” she snapped. “That should be plenty of revenge for you.”

“Not nearly.” He spoke lightly, although she had no doubt he meant what he said.

“I’m not riding.”

His jaw firmed in a way she’d have found daunting if she hadn’t already been so daunted by the prospect of getting on a horse. “Yes, you are.”

She sidled away but not quickly enough. He caught her wrist and tugged her closer. “You’re not going anywhere.”

Without releasing her, he bent and scooped her into his arms. He hadn’t carried her since they’d left Hinton Stacey. For a moment, surprise and unwelcome memories of how he’d kissed her in the carriage held her quiescent.

Then she started to wriggle. “Put me down!”

He laughed, damn him. “Behave or I’ll throw you over my shoulder again. We haven’t time for thi

s nonsense. If the weather breaks, you’ll think our journey until now paradise in comparison.”

“I don’t ride!” she protested.

“You do now.” He paused and gave her a searching look. “You’re shaking like a leaf.”