Page 10 of Seducing the Knave

She didn’t move from her seat. “Where are we? Why have we stopped?”

How long had she been asleep?

Bracing his forearm on the top edge of the door, he leaned into the carriage. “We’re in need of a change of horses and a hot meal.”

“Unacceptable,” she asserted with a shake of her head. “We need to keep going.”

He peered back at her, and for a second, she thought she’d made him angry with her demanding tone. His stare was so sharply penetrating she just barely managed to keep from squirming in her seat. When he finally spoke, his tone was as hard and unwavering as his gaze. “Listen, princess, if ye want me help, ye take it as it’s given. We’ve run the horses hard this morning. And in case ye forgot, ye kept me from me breakfast and I’m bloody starving.”

She stubbornly ignored the roll of hunger his words inspired. She hadn’t eaten since supper, which had been sent up to her room last night, and then only a few bites due to her distress.

But she couldn’t forget that Jasper’s men could be gaining on them even now.

“If there’s any trouble, I’ll handle it,” Max said as though reading her mind. “But right now, I need vittles. There’s also the small matter of having to negotiate payment fer yer passage to London.”

“My passage?” she asked, stiffening. “But the broach—”

“The ruby was offered with the request to get ye free of the inn. Which I did. London was never part of that deal.”

Shock blasted through her followed quickly by fury. “You cad! The value of that jewel is worth ten times a journey to London.”

He shrugged. “Ye should’ve thought of that before ye tossed it onto the table.”

She stared at him in stark disbelief. “You would actually strand me here? In the middle of nowhere?”

“Not nowhere,” he mused as he glanced around. “I reckon we’re somewhere in south Surrey.”

“Well, that’s reassuring,” she muttered sarcastically.

A slow smirk twisted his lips. “Don’t worry, luv. Ye’ll pay me to take ye to London. The only question is how much.”

He was right. She had no other choice. He’d made sure of it.

Damn him!

She didn’t think she’d ever been so angry with anyone in her life as she was in that moment.

With a low, guttural sound, she lunged forward, flattening her hand to his chest to shove him out of the way so she could exit the vehicle. But her anger-fueled momentum barely budged him. Which made her even angrier.

“Move!”

The grin he flashed then was full of amusement. And since she’d already shifted her weight forward in anticipation of exiting the carriage, it was far too close. The whole man was far too close. And her hand still pressed firmly to the broad, rock-hard surface of his chest.

“A touch of civility goes a long way, princess.”

Having had such indulgent parents, she knew very well how to get what she wanted with charm and pretty wiles. But for some reason, such tactics had been frustratingly out of reach since her first words to this man. He got right under her skin and it was all she could not to unleash her full temper.

“I should be more civil?” she shouted. “Me? You’re the conscienceless brigand pretending to be a lord.”

His body visibly tensed and his expression turned sharply menacing. She had no idea a person’s demeanor could change so starkly and so swiftly.

“I don’t pretend to be nothing but what I am,” he growled.

Elle was suspended in a moment of frightening uneasiness.

She wanted to be furious. She was furious.

It didn’t matter that he’d gotten her away from Jasper’s men and ensured they wouldn’t easily regain pursuit. He’d done it under false pretenses, forcing her into a position of vulnerability she did not appreciate in the slightest bit. Her fury was entirely justified.

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