Chapter 1 #2
She was committing theft. But she’d scrubbed floors until her hands bled. She’d mended gowns and polished silver and endured endless humiliation. Surely, she’d earned this much.
She left the house without looking back.
The journey was a blur of walking through the night, hiring a coach at dawn, and enduring endless hours of rattling roads and aching muscles. By the time the small stone church came into view, isolated and lovely in the countryside, exhaustion had seeped into her very bones.
But she was here. She’d made it.
“Finally,” she sighed.
She approached on foot, having dismissed the coach a mile back. She could hear voices inside, the murmur of the ceremony already begun.
No. She wasn’t too late. She couldn’t be. With that thought pounding at the back of her skull, she burst through the church door.
“Harriet!” she cried out, ready to stop this madness—
But she was yanked back.
A hand clamped over her mouth, large and firm. An arm banded around her waist, lifting her clean off her feet. She was being dragged backward, away from the entrance, away from Harriet, away from everything.
Cressida thrashed wildly, trying to scream against the palm pressed to her lips. Her captor was stronger than anyone she’d ever encountered, hauling her with ridiculous ease. His forearm around her waist held her casually back, and his bare palm burned against her skin.
The church door swung shut before anyone inside could react to the commotion.
Trees surrounded them now, but Cressida did not stop struggling as her captor dragged her backwards. He pushed her against the rough bark of an oak, finally releasing her mouth but keeping her pinned with one hand on her shoulder.
She got her first proper look at him then, and wished immediately that she hadn’t.
He was tall, she realized. Imposingly so. Broad-shouldered and dressed with careless elegance, dark hair falling across his brow. His jaw was strong and uncompromising, and there was something about the set of his mouth that made it plain he was accustomed to being obeyed.
He was not handsome, exactly. Or rather, handsome in the way that certain dangerous things were: a storm rolling in off the sea, a horse that hadn’t yet decided whether to tolerate you.
His eyes were dark brown, nearly black in the dappled light, and they moved over her face with a coolness that made her feel simultaneously catalogued and dismissed.
“Stop acting like a wildcat,” he commanded, his voice low and dark as midnight in her ear. “I’m going to remove my hand, and you will remain silent. Understood?”
Cressida nodded, her heart racing. But the moment his palm left her mouth, she drew breath to shout—
His hand returned, faster than thought.
“I said, silent.” Those dark brown eyes were utterly without mercy. “We are not playing this game. Nod if you comprehend.”
Fury burned through her exhaustion.
Who was this brute? This… this barbarian who dared to manhandle her?
Still, she knew she was outmatched here, so she could do nothing but nod. And again, slowly, he lowered his hand.
Cressida shoved at his chest immediately, but it felt like pushing against a stone wall. “Release me at once, you—you villain! You have no right—”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “You cannot stop this wedding.”
The certainty in his voice made her falter.
“I-I’m merely a guest,” she lied quickly. “I just arrived a little late, nothing more—”
“A guest.” His gaze swept over her with devastating thoroughness, taking in her rumpled riding habit, her windswept hair, the mud on her hem.
“A plainly dressed woman, without a chaperone or a maid, looking as though she’s run for her life, about to burst into a church mid-ceremony. Do not take me for a fool.”
Heat flooded her cheeks. Whether from anger or something else entirely, she couldn’t say.
He was insufferably clever.
“Fine,” she snapped, abandoning pretense. “I must stop this wedding. Harriet is my best friend—she cannot marry Lord Whitebrook. She despises rakes, and he’s the worst of them! I won’t let her ruin her life—”
His eyebrows notched high on his forehead. “Ah. You must be Lady Cressida Whitaker then,” he said, as if uncovering some great mystery.
She blinked. “How do you—”
“The bride mentioned you at her engagement party.” He tilted his head, studying her with unnerving intensity.
“Though she failed to mention your propensity for melodrama. How did you even get here? Your parents would never permit you to ride unescorted. You must have eluded them this morning. Took your horse and fled.”
Every deduction struck true, and Cressida’s frustration mounted.
“Who are you?” She gave him a pointed look through narrowed eyes, her question cracking between her teeth.
He did not give an inch. “Answer my question first.”
“Fine. You are correct,” she bit out. “And yes, I left without permission. Are you satisfied? Now, let me pass—”
“So you can humiliate your friend? Ruin her reputation and yours?” He caught her wrist when she tried to push past him. “Use your head, Lady Cressida. Storm into that church right now, and you’ll destroy her. Society will never forgive such a scene.”
Cressida’s nostrils flared. “She deserves better than a debauched scoundrel who’ll break his vows at every turn!”
“And you think causing a scandal will help her?” His grip tightened fractionally. “You’re being reckless and thoughtless. Do you ever consider consequences, or do you simply act on every impulsive whim that accosts you?”
Cressida gasped. “How dare you—”
“I dare because someone must.” He leaned closer, and her breath caught at his proximity. “Your friend is inside that church making a choice, and it is her choice. Not yours.”
Those words made her anger spike. “It’s the wrong choice!”
“Then she’ll discover that on her own.” His voice dropped lower still, intimate and infuriating. “But if you storm in there like some avenging angel, you’re taking that choice away from her. Is that what you want? Not to mention the catastrophic consequences.”
Cressida opened her mouth to argue, and found she had no response. Because he was right, damn him. If she interrupted the ceremony, Harriet would be ruined. The scandal would follow her forever.
But surely that was better than marriage to a rake?
No, she thought, catching herself.
How could she think such a thing about Harriet? How could she wish something so dastardly on her only friend? What—
She looked up then and met his dark brown eyes, trying to summon a crushing retort despite knowing she had none. Instead, she felt something shift in the air between them. A charge, electric and dangerous.
And then it struck her. He had known her name before she’d given it. He had known about the engagement party, known Harriet had mentioned her, known—with baffling certainty—that she could not stop this wedding. Not wouldn’t…
Couldn’t.
Why? What did this man know about Harriet’s circumstances that she did not? And why was he so determined to ensure the ceremony proceeded?
“Let me go,” she said quietly.
He seemed to consider it. “Will you try to enter the church?”
Cressida clenched her jaw once. “No.”
He scoffed in reply. “I don’t believe you.”
At those words, she rolled her eyes. “I don’t particularly care what you believe, you—”
Before she could finish, he bent and tossed her over his shoulder with appalling ease.
What the devil!
“Put me down!” Cressida pounded on his back, mortification flooding through her. “You brute! You absolute—”
He strode through the trees toward a waiting carriage as though she weighed nothing at all. “You’ve left me no choice. I cannot allow you to ruin this wedding.”
“This is kidnapping!” she sputtered.
“This is preventing disaster.” He deposited her onto the carriage seat with surprising gentleness, then climbed in after her and rapped on the ceiling. “London. Quickly.”
“You blackguard!” Cressida lunged for the door, but his hand shot out and covered hers on the handle.
“Are you truly about to leap from a moving vehicle?”
“Yes!”
His hand curled around her wrist and pulled her backward.
The carriage was already pulling away, gathering speed. Through the window, Cressida watched the church recede and, with it, her last chance to save Harriet.
“You had no right,” she whispered, though the fight had drained from her. “No right at all.”
“Perhaps not.” He settled back against the seat, still watching her with that unnerving intensity. “But I couldn’t let you destroy two lives out of misguided loyalty.”
“Misguided?” The word stung. “She’s my dearest friend! I was trying to help—”
“By humiliating her? By forcing her into social ruin just because you’ve decided this wedding is wrong?” He shook his head. “That isn’t help, Lady Cressida. That’s selfishness dressed as devotion.”
The accusation hit harder than it should have, especially because she had no defense against it.
Cressida turned away, throat tight, unwilling to let him see how his words affected her.
The carriage rolled on, carrying her away from Harriet, away from her purpose, away from everything.
It was over… and she still didn’t even know the name of the infuriating man who’d stopped her.
Who on earth was he?