Page 10 of The Rebellious Countess
His guileless bride didn’t understand Jack’s evil intent, nor did she appreciate Elias’s manner of defending her honor.
He ground his teeth. She was sizing him up like she had never done before, and he had to school the anger seeping through the facade of polite concern he’d worn since the moment she’d walked into the bar and he’d seen her battered face. She knew warm-hearted, polite Ellison Collins, Earl of Dorset, not Sir Elias Drake, ruthless killer, spy, and recovery agent for the Crown.
As a knight, he would be accepted in some circles ofton, but as an earl, all levels of society would open their drawing room doors to him, and they had. Máira had been ripe for the picking from day one. She’d been innocent before she’d met him, desperate to prove she was good enough to wed a member of thetonof her choosing. She had been the perfect mark. Again, his chest pinched, but he ignored it.
He turned and addressed the woman he hadn’t seen in several years. “Pour a pint down him and he’ll be happy in the cellar. Mind you, Hag, don’t give him an inch. He’ll put a knife in your back the size of Gibraltar.”
Hag shook her head. “I’ve never seen Gibraltar.”
“Nor have I. What is it?” Máira added.
It figured Máira would seize the opportunity to bond with Hag. That was the last thing he needed. “It’s a large pointy rock neither of you want buried in your back.”
“I believe I had one put in my back while I naively stood at the altar in my family’s chapel.” Máira’s voice was calm and matter of fact.
Hag smirked. The men in the area who continued to listen out of boredom, snickered. They couldn’t possibly understand what she’d said, but her tone, and the expressions passed between her and Hag were enough for them to understand Elias was the object of their ridicule.
“I deserve your rebuke and more, but I will not discuss it here.”
She eyed him as if she were thinking about how to put something sharp into his back. She was entitled to her rage, but so was he.
“Let’s go, Wife. I’m in need of a bath.” He wouldn’t tell her about his need to ensure that she had not been hurt in more ways than he could see. Elias walked toward the steps where Hag had rooms for let.
“Not in one of my tubs, Elias.”
He turned around and Hag was still smirking.
“What is that supposed to mean?” He asked.
“It means there’s a trough out back you need to use first. Once you’ve rinsed the stench off your person, you can take a flowery bath with your wife. She may need one more than you.” She walked around the back of the bar and began serving her customers once more, and the man named Thomas took control of Jack.
Máira inhaled sharply, her lips pressing together.
“It’s taking all of your self-control not to give her a scathing retort, isn’t it?” he asked.
“If she wasn’t correct, I would, but days of being violently ill onboard your ship with nothing else to wear has taken its toll on my attire. Not to mention the assault I suffered, the murder I witnessed, and the night I slept in an alley.”
Merde!What had he done to her?
“Oh, and the items you purchased for passage on the ship were dropped off here,” Hag yelled from the bar.
“Here?”
“The captain of theConfiancesaid he had no use for the shite. By the looks of things, I’d say she does.”
The cornflower blue dress he’d purchased for Máira wasn’t the height of fashion, nor would it fit her as well as her own clothing he’d left behind in Dumfries. It was for a fresh-faced country girl who welcomed picnics from the man she was falling in love with, and the moment he saw it, it reminded him of the day he’d proposed.
He hadn’t meant to ask her that day. The picnic was a prelude to a chaste kiss he’d planned to place on her cheek before he’d returned her home. The next day was to be the proposal, but the fresh-faced girl who’d secretly met him in the meadow wearing a simple blue dress, had given him a taste of everything he didn’twant—a responsive, passionate, virgin bride. And the blue dress he’d purchased in the shop across the street, had been meant to symbolize her new beginning—a beginning so much different than the day he’d altered her life in a meadow with a kiss neither would forget. Her, because it had been her first. Him, because he’d never wanted anything so much in his life, and he hadn’t even known just how much until their lips met.
He tossed the memory out of his thoughts. It would do him no good to reflect upon the bond he’d destroyed, because her butter-cream gown looked like aged, moldy cheese now. “Is that dried blood staining the front of your gown?” He stepped toward her, intending to grab her arms and scour her body for any hint of injury. The flare of his nostrils, however, reminded him of his own stench and it forced him to search her person from a distance.
“It’s not my blood.” Her voice was flat, as if any emotion she’d felt had been extinguished, but her eyes looked haunted.
“Whose is it?”
“The man who indelicately adorned my forehead with a knot the size of our Queen’s most beautiful amethyst brooch. My jewel, however, should never be worn by the Queen. On anyone other than myself, it’d be garish at best.” It was the type of response he would have expected while in conversation with a man.
“No woman should have such a gem.”
