The Courtship (Sherbrooke Brides 5)

He whistled into the soft night air as he drove the ten miles to the small hunting box he had rented yesterday morning at ten o’clock from Lord Marchhaven, who had asked Lord Beecham if he was planning on entertaining a hunting party. Spenser had just shaken his head and smiled. “Ah,” said Lord Marchhaven, nodding. “I am pleased that it is a nice house.”

“I will require it for perhaps a week,” Lord Beecham had said.

Again Lord Marchhaven merely nodded, then said as he and Spenser shook hands, “I have learned that sometimes in life a man is forced to do something that sits perilously close to the edge of scandalous to obtain the indispensable. Enjoy yourself, my lord.” It was obvious that Lord Marchhaven sniffed a week’s worth of wickedness. Lord Beecham should have told him that he intended a lifetime of marital wickedness.

Well, as he figured it, Helen was indispensable to him. He believed, deep down, that he was also indispensable to her. Why had she refused him? It didn’t make any sense.

The Marchhaven hunting box was an elegant little Georgian brick house, all stiff and starchy, nearly a perfect square, two stories high, ivy twining in and out of the red bricks. It was set on the edge of the Houghton Forest, much of it owned by the Marchhaven family, for hunting parties. No one was there at present.

When he finally carried Helen into the house, he was still whistling, thinking of how he had wheedled and pleaded and even drunk a glass of champagne with Bishop Horton to obtain a Special License, but he had done it. He whistled louder, so pleased with himself that he nearly droppe

d Helen on the stairs. His back hurt a bit, but he discounted it.

The house was simply set out. Upstairs there were four bedchambers, the master’s bedchamber at the end of the hall. It was nice and big. So was the bed, at least large enough to hold six men side by side. Helen would be quite comfortable here. The headboard was slatted, a truly convenient thing for him.

He shook off the blankets and his cloak and gently eased Helen under the covers. He whistled while he lit three branches of candles, then started a fire in the large fireplace.

He looked around the bedchamber. It was excellent, just excellent. It was an ideal place for a man to bring the woman he’d kidnapped, the woman who must need learn that not marrying the man she bit on the neck wasn’t to be tolerated.

He had given it a good deal of thought. Helen wasn’t a milksop. If she could, she would brain him at the first opportunity. He couldn’t allow her any opportunities, but accomplishing this did set many problems in his path.

He went back to the carriage, brought up the two valises, the second one his, and took the nice old gelding to the small stable to stick his nose in a trough of oats. Back in the bedchamber, he pulled out four of his cravats.

She would awaken soon enough. Ah, that marvelous potion Mrs. Toop had given him, stars in her eyes when he had pleaded his case, giving in quickly because of the glorious romance of all of it. “Just imagine,” she said, her hands over her large bosom, “my mistress will learn more about discipline. Oh, goodness, she will, won’t she, my lord? Do you promise?”

Since this seemed inordinately important to her, Lord Beecham had quickly nodded and given her endless assurances that he had more to teach Miss Helen than any other man in all of England, and she would enjoy herself immensely, he gave her his word. Mrs. Toop had given him the vial of chloroform and told him how much to use on her sweet mistress.

His last view of Mrs. Toop was her standing at the inn door, her rheumy eyes glittering beneath the lamp that Geordie had proudly held up for three hours the previous evening.

Everyone, it seemed, wanted Helen to marry him. It was up to him now to convince her. He was prepared to do whatever it took.

He gave the smoking fire a big grin, added a couple more small sticks, turned on his heel and walked back to the bed.

Helen awoke slowly, which was strange, because usually her eyes opened and she was ready to bound out of bed, her body and brain thrumming with energy. But her eyes were slow to open. When she finally opened them she saw that it was daylight, bright daylight, with the morning sun shining through the uncurtained windows just to her left.

But she didn’t have windows to her left. They were to her right. Something was wrong.

Her brain seemed on the blurry side, the way it felt just after Spenser had loved her until all she had left was a silly grin on her face.

She tried to sit up. She couldn’t move. That was surely odd. She tried again. Then she realized that her hands were tied above her head. Tied?

She blinked at the sound of his voice.

He cupped her cheek in his palm. He kissed her mouth, lightly. “Good morning, Helen. I hope you’re feeling more alert now? You’ve been moaning a bit for the last several hours.”

“Spenser?”

“Yes,” he said, lightly stroked his fingertip over her eyebrows, leaned down and kissed her mouth again.

She kissed him back before she quite realized what she was doing. She blinked up at him. “Why are my hands tied above my head?”

“So that you won’t try to kill me. That is, you could try, but I don’t believe that even you, my dearest, could manage it.”

“Why would I want to kill you?”

“The complete truth is that I have kidnapped you. You are quite alone with me. I have tied you down to my bed. In short, my sweet little Nellie, you are completely and thoroughly at my mercy.”

She did try to bring her arms down to punch him in the nose, but even though the bonds around her wrists didn’t hurt or rub, and she realized they were his soft cravats and thus there was just a bit of pull in them, she couldn’t get free.