Page 35 of The Defiant One
The coach jerked and began to move, showing Andrew a sea of faces just outside the window as it wheeled through a wide turn. Irritably he yanked the shade shut. The team broke into a canter and moments later the well-sprung vehicle was hurtling out of Ravenscombe.
On the seat, Andrew held his burden and stared straight ahead, his jaw hard, his heart pounding with a cacophony of emotions, all of them turbulent, none of them pleasant. He would not look down at her. He would not. No matter how easy it would be to steal a glance at that splendid bosom without her ever knowing. No matter how much he wanted to run his gaze — and his hands — up and down those long, shapely legs so sinfully wrapped in a man's riding breeches. No matter how much the very thought, let alone the possibility, of either caused his manhood to harden against the taut little bottom that lay so innocently pressed against it.
It was a fight that even The Defiant One could not win. Mutinously, he glanced down — and found himself looking into a pair of wide, silvery-green eyes that were staring dazedly up into his.
"Thank you," she murmured.
"For what?"
"Taking me out of there." She closed her eyes, her nape resting on the hard curve of his forearm, her queued hair spilling across his thigh, the seat. "I've never fainted before in my life. How humiliating . . . and to do it in front of several hundred people . . ."
Andrew said nothing. He knew all about how it felt to be humiliated in front of several hundred people.
"Are you all right now?" he asked gruffly.
"Yes. No. Oh, I don't know . . . Things happened so quickly, my head is still spinning."
"Yes, well, yours isn't the only one."
He was angry, and Celsie knew he had every right to be. Beneath the back of her neck and head, his arm felt like a bar of steel. He was staring out the window, his gaze flinty and hard. His jaw was clenched. She could hear his heart beating beneath her ear. She could feel his chest rising and falling with each breath that he took. And she knew that she ought to get up and move to the other seat. In another minute or so, when she felt a little steadier, she would.
"Andrew —"
He stiffened beneath her. "Yes?" he snapped.
"What happened to you out there?"
"Somerfield nearly killed me, Lucien nearly killed Somerfield, and you threw yourself into the fray as some sort of sacrifice on the altar of our mutual freedom, that's what happened."
"I'm not talking about that."
"Then I don't know what the devil you are talking about, except that whatever it is, I don't want to talk about it, is that clear?"
"No, it's not." She searched his face, undaunted by his anger. "I just don't understand any of this . . . such as why you fell out there on the field in the first place. One moment you were toying with Gerald, allowing him his pride and dignity, and the next, you were —
"Nothing happened," he said savagely.
"But —"
"I said, nothing happened."
"It looked like he must have hit you, stunned you, when I wasn't looking. Except I was looking — I mean, I couldn't help but look. Is that what happened, Andrew? Did he stun you with the hilt of the sword or something?"
"Yes, that's exactly what happened, so now that we've got that clear, let's talk about something else, all right? Better yet, let's not talk about anything at all. I'm sick of talking. Just leave me alone."
His abrupt and angry dismissal stung. Reality began to press in on Celsie like frozen hands thawing after a snowball fight. Except it wasn't her fingers that were thawing. It was her head. Her heart. Oh dear God, what have I done? She had just committed herself to marrying this man, that was what she'd done. She had just ruined both his life and her own. And as the layers of protective shock faded, her emotions surfaced: disbelief, guilt, grief, anger, humiliation, denial; they were all there. She wanted to curl up into a little ball and shut everything out. She wanted to run away and never stop until she reached the ends of the earth. She wanted Freckles. What she didn't want was marriage to this man. To any man.
So why did the bitterness in his eyes, his all-too-obvious resentment, hurt so much?
"Andrew," she said tentatively, "I know you're angry, but just because I said I'd marry you doesn't mean you have to marry me."
"And how do you think that will make me look in front of three hundred witnesses, eh?"
"I wouldn't have thought you cared."
"Well I do care. Besides, my brother obviously wants this marriage, and it's quite clear to me now that he's been wanting it from the moment we met at the ball, if not before. Now that he's got what he wanted, don't think he won't blackmail us both if either of us tries to back out."
"He has nothing with which to blackmail me."
