Page 5 of The Iron Earl

“Why not?”

“One, I don’t kidnap spry young chits from their marriage-mart-minded mamas. Two, I don’t know you. Three, I have a band of eight men with me.” He leaned down, setting his lips next to her ear, his breath tickling her skin. “Eight healthy, virile, single men.”

He stood straight, his mouth pulling tight into a smug frown.

Smugness that didn’t give her even a moment of pause.

She wasn’t afraid of eight virile men. She couldn’t afford to be. Not with what awaited her in the Duke of Wolfbridge’s ballroom not but a hundred steps away.

“You won’t be kidnapping anyone, Lord Dunhaven. I swear it. I will be joining your traveling party of my own free will.”

“You don’t even know our destination.”

“I heard you say you were ready for the journey home. Your home is in Scotland, correct?”

His dark eyebrows drew together, sending the shadow deeper onto his face. “Stirlingshire. You were eavesdropping in the billiards room? What else did you hear?”

“Nothing. I was standing in the ballroom near the entrance to the room and I heard you speaking with your companions inside. I only overheard that you would be leaving this very night and to a place far, far from here.” She braved her hand upward, her fingers grasping onto his arm. “And Scotland is a place I can disappear into. A place Ineedto disappear into.”

His stare skewered her for a long moment before his gaze moved to her fingers gripping his forearm.

Too forward—far too forward, she knew. As an earl, she couldn’t imagine he would be accustomed to strange ladies grabbing him. Then again, the man had had no problem grabbing her neck and kissing her—a complete stranger—only a moment before.

He shook his arm, flinging her fingers from the sleeve of his dark tailcoat. His look lifted to her face. “What are you running from, lass?”

“My reasons should be of no bother to you.”

“You think an incensed suitor of yours chasing me through the English countryside with a bullet meant for my chest not a bother?”

Her hand flitted in the air. “That is dramatic. There will be no such threats upon your person.”

“Then you won’t mind telling me what you’re hoping to escape.” His arms drew up, crossing over his wide chest.

“Please, my lord, I will do anything. I need to leave and you are my only chance for a true escape.”

His left eyebrow shot upward, the devil pulling his lips back in a terse line that curled up at the corners of his mouth. “Anything, dove?”

Her breath caught in her throat. The man was dangerous. How had she not seen that?

More dangerous than just his brawn, his thick arms that could pop her neck in an instant and not think twice on it. Dangerous in how the wicked gleam palpitated in his eyes—hazel eyes, if she could trust the flicker of moonlight catching his irises.

She wasn’t trading one malicious monster for another, was she?

What had she heard Lord Dalton call him—whisper to his companion as Lord Dunhaven had passed by them?The Iron Earl.

That was it. And that was dangerous.

The man was an iron wall, hard from the tips of his toes to the unyielding glint in his eye.

She started to take a step backward and the lecherous sneer of Mr. Molson’s lips flashed in her mind. The way his fingers had ground into her sides when he’d caught her alone in the south corridor. His whispered words of blades and blood and sinking into her, splitting her in two.

A shudder, and her heel dropped to the ground, digging in.

No. She couldn’t let Mr. Molson happen. She couldn’t let the nightmare of that man and his twisted world capture her.

For a long breath, she stared at the glowing white of Lachlan’s loose cravat. She’d seen this man with his sister, the new Duchess of Wolfbridge. She’d seen the care and adoration he had for her well-being. He was a boulder of unmovable granite with everyone, everyone except his sister. Evalyn had witnessed that in the last day and a half since he’d arrived at the duke’s castle.

This man—Lachlan—he had it in him. Kindness. She’d seen it. No matter what he was to everyone else at Wolfbridge, with his sister he was loving.

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