Page 37 of Rejected
She threw herself between the dueling men, and pushed her brother’s rapier-wielding hand away with her own two hands. The other man fell, already pierced through, and as he did, his body’s dead weight dragged her with him. Trapped under hislimp body, Jo lay there on the ground, dazed, and felt something warm and wet pooling under her bodice. Blood.
Maybe there is something to be said about a lady wearing gloves whenever she goes out,she mused. I really should have put mine on this time, at least.
Justin screamed, the sword dropping from his hand.
“Josephine!” he sounded like a man demented. “What do you think you’re doing, devil take you?”
But Jo was still catching her breath from suddenly jumping between two crossed swords.Please, no.Had she been too late? Had her brother already killed him? It certainly looked that way, judging by the blood gushing out of the man’s white shirt.
She turned around and disentangled herself, but she didn’t get up. She stayed on her knees, fumbling with the man’s bloodied clothes, trying to put his torn flesh together—stupidly. All she succeeded in doing was getting blood all over her hands and riding habit.
Justin was just standing there, panting, in utter shock. Completely still, like his seconds. And then a scream pierced the silence.
“Is she alive?” a voice screamed—screamed—from the distant crowd of her brother’s idiotic friends. “Is shebreathing?”
Only the voice wasn’t idiotic. Well, it was, but it was also extremely familiar.
“Vidal! Have you killed her, you absolute piece of—”
The voice stopped. Hard breathing filled her ears as she was pulled almost violently from the ground and into a pair of rock-hard arms. Then a heart was beating frantically next to her ear.
“Jo,” a voice was gasping for air next to her neck—Laurie’s voice. “God Almighty, Jo. Jo.” Just that. Her name. Over and over again, like a prayer.
“Put me down, you fool,” Jo said, struggling against his iron-grip hold. He was immovable as a wall, his expression stony even as his heart beat like a drum.
‘You look like one of those tragic heroines from a story. You look like you should be carried in a man’s strong arms, away from danger.’
His words from that horrible day of the proposal came back to her unbidden. He shifted her against his sculpted chest and she—
Why did she think of it as ‘sculpted’, for heaven’s sake?
It was sculpted, that was why. Like a piece of marble.
More importantly, she had been there while he ‘sculpted’ it for years, during endless hours of boxing in the stables, and fencing with her, and then wishing he could test his strength against Gentleman Jackson’s in London. Maybe he finally had.
“Teddy, look at me!” she all but screamed up at him. “I am not hurt. It’s not my blood. I am not hurt.”
Something like recognition flickered in his stony eyes. His arms tightened around her like a manacle, but she’d broken through his petrified haze.
“It’s not me,” she repeated patiently. “It’s not my blood; I tried to help that poor man so my brother will not end up a murderer. It’s his blood. So will you stop being an utter oaf?”
He froze, mid-stride, still not letting her go. She waited for his stupid brain to catch up with her words.
“You’re unhurt?” he murmured in a voice raspy as if from screaming.
Hehadscreamed, hadn’t he? He’d screamed bloody murder. For her. No, that was silly; he had merely been frightened for her idiot of a brother, like she was. It hadn’t been for her. She should stop being so foolish—and he should stop carrying her.Right now.
She was still suspended in his arms, and they were gripping her like a drowning man’s.
“M-my head emptied of blood,” he murmured. “S-sorry.”
He let her go so abruptly she stumbled. She righted herself with a most unladylike dive, and dusted off her dress. It was completely unsalvageable, the bodice turning black with blood.
“Forgive me,” Laurie was mumbling, “I need to sit down for a minute.”
Which he did, right there on the grass, his long legs spread out like a spider’s.
Jo took pity on him.
