Their Harlot Bride (Bridgewater Brides 7)

Run, run, run, run…

The word echoed in my head. I had to run. I had to get out of there. I would not meet that awful end he’d described. I would not. And I could not risk waiting to escape.

Spinning, I rolled off the table onto all fours next to the fireplace, wincing as he shouted. A hand grabbed my ankle, and I reached out, my fingers wrapping around the first thing they found—the hot poker in the fire.

He spun me around, and my arm arced in front of me, wielding the poker like a club, and he screamed when it connected with his face. Skin sizzled, and he fell back, hands to his face. The smell… God, the smell… I nearly choked on it.

Run, run, run…

A lord… I’

d just attacked a lord. I would hang for sure if they caught me—if he didn’t get to me first.

Run, run, run, run, Sassy, run, and never look back.

I scrambled to my feet, leaving the poker beside him. He was lying on his back, moaning faintly. I could see the blistered skin of his face between his fingers. Gulping, I forced myself to look away.

I had to run. But where? Anywhere I went, I would need money…

His purse.

It was by the bed, along with his coat, which he’d taken off when he first came into the room. Rushing over, I picked it up. A sick feeling roiled in my stomach. Assaulting a lord, stealing from him… I had no choice, but if I was caught…

I could not think about it.

I stuffed his purse down the front of my low-cut dress and ran to the door, hurriedly unlocking it as Lord Carmichael’s groans began to grow louder. Dashing into the hall, it was blessedly empty, so I ran.

I ran down the stairs, past the startled expressions of my fellow whores and the men they were entertaining in the common room, and out the front door into the night. The shouts that followed me spurred me to run faster, and for some reason, I began to laugh, the sound slightly hysterical.

I was free.

1

William

* * *

“I can’t believe someone answered the ad,” Clive muttered under his breath as he climbed onto the bench of their wagon and picked up the reins. I was already waiting, a small bouquet of wildflowers for our new wife on my lap. I bit my tongue against snapping back at him because I knew he didn’t mean it personally. He wasn’t insulting me, even though it felt that way.

I was the one who had written the ad.

I was the one who had told him someone would answer.

I was right.

Clive didn’t like it when things didn’t go his way. It wasn’t that he didn’t want a wife, we both wanted a woman in our lives, but he didn’t like that my way had worked when he’d told me it wouldn’t.

As much as my fingers itched to be the one driving, for once, I didn’t fight him on it. He was already on edge over the woman arriving today. He couldn’t control who she was, what she looked like, or what kind of wife she’d be, but he could control the horses. Over the years, I’d learned to pick my battles. Sometimes, I thought he still saw me as the scrawny teenager I’d been when he’d rescued me from the gang of men intent on stealing my week’s pay.

Back then, he’d been twenty-two, four years older than me, bigger and stronger than most young men his age. With regular meals and working the ranch we shared, I’d caught up to him in weight and muscle, but he didn’t seem to notice, and to be truthful, I had trouble pushing him on it. Since I owed him my life, was it really too much to let him take the lead when it was something that didn’t matter much?

He was more than my partner—he was the brother I’d never had and the man I was going to share my wife with, in the Bridgewater manner. When we’d heard about Bridgewater and the way they married, two men to one woman, we’d known it was the place for us. We shared everything else, so it just made sense.

Today, I was getting my way, and our new wife was arriving. My dick was already hardening in anticipation. It had been far too long since we’d had a woman between us. I doubted any woman would be ready to jump in the middle of us immediately, but we would enjoy working her up to it and drowning her with pleasure in the meantime. When I answered him, there was no bite to my tone because I’d already won.

“There was nothing wrong with the ad. At least I didn’t say she had to come with a horse like Justin and Caleb did.”

Of course, somehow, they’d received an answer to their ad before we had, so the requirement hadn’t set them back. I still didn’t know why my ad had taken longer to find us a woman, but it had worked in the end, and that was what was important.