In Bed with the Duke

He ground his teeth at the effort it took to keep completely still, when what he wanted was to roll over and flatten her beneath him.

No—no, he didn’t! To do anything of the sort would be worse than anything that had befallen her thus far. She trusted him. Had told him she would even trust him with her fortune, her future, before curling up at his side and trusting him with her very virtue.

He bit back a groan. She’d told him she thought he was upright, when the truth was that the only upright part of him was the very part that wanted to betray her. Not that he would betray her. Whatever it cost him in terms of comfort, tonight he wouldn’t do that.

He wasn’t an idiot. Later, when she learned the truth about him, he needed to be able to remind her that he had been true to her—in this if in nothing else.

Someone up there, he mused, looking at the stars peeping through a gap in the roof, must be laughing at him. Because the first time he’d ever strayed from the narrow confines of his life—from the straight and narrow, if you wanted to put it like that—was the first and only time a woman had placed such faith in him. The first time that he had even cared about a woman’s opinion of him, come to that.

Heaven help him, now she was sliding her cold little hand round his waist. It was just as he’d predicted. The temperature had plummeted once the sun had gone down. The fact that he could see all those stars through the barn roof meant that the sky had stayed as clear as it had been all day. There might even be a touch of ground frost by morning. He’d think about frost. Or snow. Or ice. Anything cold. To take his mind off the way she was squirming closer to him in her sleep, seeking the warmth of his body.

It probably didn’t help that he’d slept so deeply the night before. It meant that now he didn’t feel in the least drowsy. Right, then... Since he was wide awake, he might as well turn the sleepless hours to good account. He would consider Prudence’s future, rather than what he wanted to do with her now. The satisfaction he’d gain from bringing down the pair of villains who’d cheated her and dragged him into their plot.

There. That was better. Considering the cold, relentless march of justice was a much more sensible way to spend the night than revelling in the way all her trusting softness felt in his arms. Or savouring the scent of her body mingled with the scent of warmed hay.

Damn. That had only worked for—what?—less than ten seconds?

It was going to be a very long night.

But at some point he must have drifted off. Because the next thing he knew he was being woken, for the second day in a row, by a voice raised in anger.

This time when he opened his eyes it was to see a ruddy-faced man pointing a gun in his face, rather than merely a woman threatening him with a bony finger.

‘Do you realise,’ he said coldly, ‘how dangerous it is to point a gun at someone?’

At his side, Prudence gasped, and stiffened in his hold.

‘Don’t be frightened,’ he said, remembering that it was the second time in as many days that she’d been shocked awake, too. ‘He won’t shoot us.’

‘Oh, won’t I?’ said the man with the gun.

‘No. There are laws preventing such things.’

‘I can do what I like on my own land,’ said the man with the gun, belligerently. ‘Since you got no right to be ’ere.’

‘No, perhaps not,’ admitted Gregory, for he had very little patience with people who trespassed on his own land.

‘Ain’t no perhaps about it! I don’t hold with vagrants making free with decent folk’s property.’

‘Oh, but we’re not vagrants,’ said Prudence, sitting up and pushing her wildly tousled hair out of her eyes.

The farmer—for he had to assume that was this man’s status, since he’d claimed they were trespassing on his land—glowered at her. ‘Thieves, then. On the run from the law I ’spect.’

‘We are no such thing,’ said Gregory, sitting up and putting his arm round Prudence’s shoulders. It said something about how frightened she was that she shrank into his side and clutched at his shirt front. ‘In fact the very opposite. We have been robbed.’

‘Oh-ar?’ The farmer sneered at them.

‘Yes. You see, this young lady’s guardians formed a plot to rob her of her inheritance. They drugged us both and abandoned her in my bed, then made off with all her belongings. And then,’ he said, rubbing his hand over his head in what was probably a vain attempt to remove all traces of hay. ‘Then I was robbed, too—of my purse. And I had to leave my horse and gig at an inn as surety. Which is why we are cutting across country on foot to...’