Chapter One
I wish you were still here to counsel me, Maman. You never warned me that a man’s kiss could be so thrilling, or that a simple embrace could shatter a woman’s senses. It was a most startling revelation!
Near London; September 1817
“Of all the dratted ill luck,” Madeline Ellis muttered as she peered out the inn’s bedchamber window at the dimly lit stableyard below. “First the stage and now Lord Ackerby.”
Her heart sank at her worsening predicament. It was vexing enough that the stagecoach carrying her to London had lost a wheel in the middle of a torrential rainstorm this afternoon, stranding her an hour short of her destination, which meant depleting her meager funds on a night’s lodging at a posting inn. But now the lecherous Baron Ackerby had somehow found her trail.
Madeline had just retired for bed when she was alerted by the commotion of the baron’s traveling chaise arriving in the cobbled yard of The Drake. She could see his lordship’s elegantly garbed figure below in the lamplight, could hear his imperious voice giving orders to change his team while he inquired inside.
When his gaze swept upward, Madeline ducked behind the window curtain to avoid being seen.
“This is beyond maddening,” she said through gritted teeth.
For years Lord Ackerby had merely hinted at his desire to have her for his mistress, but recently his unwanted advances had become disgustingly overt, and eluding him was proving an exercise in futility.
Madeline winced at the thought of the persistent libertine finding her here. She couldn’t believe Ackerby was actually licentious enough to try to ravish her to force her compliance, but even so, she was far too vulnerable in her nightdress and bare feet. Regrettably, though, she had no dressing gown with her, since her trunk was still strapped to the back of the stagecoach. And her cloak was clammy and damp from traipsing down the road in a pouring rain after the wheel mishap. She likely had no time, either, to pull on her muddy half boots. Doubtless the baron would inquire of the innkeep if a lady of her description—medium brown hair, average height, drab attire—had passed this way today. And he would be directed to her bedchamber upstairs, where the flimsy door latch would provide scant deterrence. Heaven forbid.
In determination Madeline squared her shoulders. With her employer’s recent demise and her brother’s untimely departure, she had no one to depend on but herself. So you might as well take action instead of standing here frozen like a halfwit, she scolded herself. Besides, she was a soldier’s daughter who had learned to be strong and self-sufficient.
“He thinks me defenseless, Maman, but he will discover differently,” Madeline added as she searched her reticule in the darkness.
She had the admittedly eccentric habit of talking to her late French mother, seeking her unspoken counsel. Jacqueline Ellis was long in her grave, much to the grief of her husband and two children, having been carried off by a deadly ague the winter when Madeline was thirteen. It had been the saddest day of her life. But carrying on imaginary conversations with her dear departed mother made her feel as if Maman were still with her.
To Madeline’s further sorrow, her father had been killed in the war five years later. And her only remaining family—her younger brother Gerard—had left the district this week, having secretly eloped to Scotland with his childhood sweetheart.
Madeline felt a trifle better when she located her small, single-shot pistol in her reticule. Yet she didn’t relish waiting here like a helpless mouse being hunted by a bird of prey.
“And soldier’s daughter or not, there is no shame in retreating when the odds are against you,” Madeline reminded herself. Papa would have said it wasn’t cowardly to flee under such circumstance, merely wise.
After checking that the pistol was primed and loaded, she opened her bedchamber door and peered out. The corridor was empty, she saw in the dim light of a wall sconce.
Slipping from her room, she shut the door quietly and crept down the hall, heading toward the rear of the inn. She could hear laughter and raucous masculine camaraderie from the taproom below as she rounded the corner searching for a place to hide.
To her relief, she saw an open door to what was obviously a parlor rather than a bedchamber. A welcoming fire crackled in the grate, while a low-burning lamp illuminated the near side of the room.
Hearing an ominous tread of footsteps on the staircase behind her, Madeline slipped inside the parlor and took up a defensive position behind the door.
Dismayingly, Baron Ackerby’s persistence had only been emboldened three weeks ago when her longtime position as a lady’s companion ended with the passing of her elderly employer, a crabby but dear noblewoman. At the moment Madeline was heading to London to seek work at an employment agency, since it was even more imperative now that she find the means to support herself. In championing the course of true love, she’d helped her brother elope to Scotland and had given him all her remaining savings.
Madeline loathed being in such a vulnerable situation, virtually penniless and at the mercy of a powerful, wealthy lord who thought he ruled everything and everyone in proximity to Chelmsford, Essex. She was convinced that Baron Ackerby wanted her chiefly because she had always resisted him. Why else would he pursue a spinster of somewhat plain looks and outspoken wit if not for the challenge of vanquishing her?
Apparently, her stubborn defiance only roused his determination to have her for his mistress. Even so, Madeline could scarcely believe Ackerby’s gall when he’d voiced his humiliating proposition outright not two hours after her employer was laid in her grave!
Madeline’s bloodlines, too, were a strike against her. The French émigrés in their community were generally poor and had little defense against the whims of the nobility and gentry. Madeline was only half French—her father had been a captain in the British Army and a brilliant intelligence
officer serving under General Lord Wellington—but even so, she had little protection now against a lascivious nobleman bent on owning her.
Standing there in the parlor, barefoot and scantily dressed, Madeline shivered. Perhaps she should have wrapped a bed quilt around her to stave off the chill. Even holding her pistol at the ready, she felt vulnerable. She despised this feeling of powerlessness. She could feel her heart beating much too rapidly as she wondered what excuse the baron would have given to the innkeep for following her—
Just then the hair on the back of her neck stood up. Evidently she was mistaken about the parlor being empty, for she sensed a threatening presence behind her.
Her heart practically stopped when a man’s strong fingers suddenly closed around her wrist like a manacle. Gasping, Madeline whirled to face him, but the next instant he claimed her pistol and hauled her against him. She was jolted by the impact as arms of steel clamped around her body, holding her immobile.