My Favorite Marquess. Alexandra BassettЧитать онлайн книгу.
reckless part of her no longer cared what Robert the Brute thought.
When they came across a largish boulder, she dug in her sore heels, bringing them to a dead stop. The Brute swung around, nearly yanking her arm out of its socket. She winced but managed to suppress the squeal of pain that was in her throat.
“What do you think you’re about?” he growled at her, pronouncing the word you with such a thick Cornish accent that it sounded like “yow.” Really, the man was barely intelligible at times. “We’re not out here to enjoy a night stroll, Highness. There’s nae time to rest.”
She lifted her chin and glared at him. Murderous reputation be damned. She was not going to cower before this bully. “I am taking off my shoe to remove a stone.”
“You’ll stop when I say.”
“Oh, really?” she barked back at him. “That’s fascinating—because it appears to me that we are stopped, and I don’t recall asking yowr permission.”
The man’s mouth dropped open at her audacity and then quickly clamped shut. For a moment Violet feared that he would deliver a blow to her. Instead, he muttered a curse at her and then roared, “Be quick!”
Hopping on one sore foot, she sank against the boulder and wrestled her shoe off her foot, a task that would have been easier had her hands not been tied. She shook a small quarry of stones onto the ground as her captor sighed and fidgeted. Her toe felt immense relief to be free of its torment, though she of course would have to put the shoe on again. There was no way she could scrabble about this countryside with bare feet.
She reluctantly bent to secure her shoe once more.
“Quickly, damn you!”
She narrowed her eyes on the savage. “If I do not buckle my shoe, I will stumble all the more, thereby slowing you down even further in the long run.” When the tilt of his head let her know he didn’t give a jot for her reasoning, she said hotly, “If you’re in such a hurry, you should not have dragged a lady with you!”
“Would that I hadn’t!” he shot back.
Her sentiments exactly. He could have as easily taken Old Hal or Peabody, but no, he had taken her, and she was not some big lummox who could walk for miles and miles without rest.
Not to say that Peabody was a lummox. And indeed, she wouldn’t wish this misfortune on Peabody or Hal. But she was so tired, and hungry, and she felt so unlucky, a little self-pity was difficult to resist. Why did things never seem to go right for her?
“Be done, now!” the ogre yelled at her over the wind whipping around them.
That wasn’t helping things, either. The biting wind caused her eyes to squint shut at times. If she died on this night, she decided it would almost be a mercy, because she shuddered to think what result all this cold salt air would have on her complexion. Small wonder all the locals at the last carriage stop had appeared so leathery!
“Get up now, Highness,” the man said, grabbing her arm once again.
She attempted to shrug him off. “If you’re in that much of a hurry, you can always leave me here. Just point the way to Trembledown and I’ll be happy to continue on without your escort!”
“Thank you for your consideration, but I’m not as yet ready for us to part.” The man shook his head. “Haven’t you finished yet?”
“I have to do my other shoe. It’s not such an easy task when my hands are literally tied. If you would care to untie me, I could make faster work of the job.”
A smirk touched the man’s lips, and he made a show of kneeling at her feet. “Allow me, Highness!” He yanked her shoe off and shook the pebbles out of it. Then he shoved the shoe back on her foot so fast the whole exercise seemed to have been executed in one economical, uninterrupted motion.
Yet when it came to fastening the shoe, he suddenly started to linger about the task, taking an excessive amount of time to see that it was on her foot securely. After buckling it, his hand closed around her ankle. Sensation shot up her leg; Violet was breathless. Despite the coolness of the evening and the sharp wind, she felt too warm. As she looked into the face of her captor, his eyes glinted. She could not discern their color, exactly, because they were obscured by the mask and the dark. Yet the leather mask itself, which had seemed so grotesque by the light of the carriage lamps, now gave him a rather roguish appearance.
Good heavens, what an odd feeling this gave her, alone in the dark with this strange beast’s hand about her leg. How long had it been since anyone had touched her there…or had anyone ever? When was the last time she had even been alone with a man?
When he spoke, it was in a gravelly purr. “What a neat ankle you have, Highness.”
He moved his hand slowly up to her calf and was continuing toward her knee when Violet came to her senses. Disgust—with him, with herself—welled in her, and she delivered a swift kick to his chest. To her delight, the man toppled backward. She was tempted to make a mad dash for freedom, but no sooner had she stood than Robert the Brute jumped up and clamped his hand about her.
“I should tear you apart for that!”
“I would have done the same to any gentleman who manhandled me so!” she fired back.
“Aye, but I’m not a gentleman,” he said, tightening his grip on her.
Something in his tone, and the threat of his bulk looming over her, caused fear to quiver through her once again. Perhaps she had been a tad bit rash in kicking the man. She swallowed against the dry lump of fright in her throat. “Let us just forget about it, shall we? The sooner we get to where you want to be, the sooner I can make my way back home. As you promised.”
To her immense relief, the man seemed to retreat a step from her. He shook his head. “Sure you really wish to return to home, are you now? Perhaps you’re of a mind to go adventuring wi’ me. I’m always on the lookout for a sassy wench with pretty ankles.”
“You disgust me!” Violet exclaimed.
Her tormentor gave out an exaggerated sigh of regret. “So be it. You don’t know what you’re missing, Your Highness.”
“Then I shall just have to muddle along the best I can in ignorance,” she sniped, though the thunderous look he sent her made her regret answering back at all.
After another fifteen minutes of rough terrain, the ground suddenly began to dip sharply, and the air was thick with the sound of waves slapping the not-too-far-away shore. Violet glanced up from the rocky terrain at her feet for a moment and suddenly there it was—a vast plain of water with caps of white illuminated by the stars on this moonless night. It should have been beautiful, yet now its dark expanse seemed frightening.
The angle of the descent didn’t make her walk any easier—and her shoes were now filled with both pebbles and sand. A new torment. Every time she stumbled in the dark, she could sense Robert the Brute’s amusement. When she fell to her knees and let out one of her father’s favorite oaths, she actually heard him snicker. His laughter infuriated her. Was that why he’d taken her hostage, so he could humiliate her?
The sound of that laughter made bile rise in her throat. Why her? What had she ever done to deserve this? Had she not endured enough abuse in her life; did she have to stand for a dirty smuggler’s derision as well?
Back in school she had been laughed at because her father was in trade and had purchased his knighthood after becoming rich. During her Seasons in London, she had also sensed the sneers. Everyone assumed that any man interested in a woman of such undistinguished birth would simply be looking to scare up a fortune for himself. And when Violet discovered after her marriage that those whispers had proved 100 percent correct, she had sworn she would comport herself in such a way that no man would dare look down on her.
And yet here was a ruffian beast, laughing at her!
She was so consumed with her thoughts that she failed at first to notice that her