Chapter Ten
“How much farther?” Abigail asked tersely, her gaze pinned to the carriage window and the snow-covered fields beyond it.
By her best calculations, she and Stephen had been silent traveling companions for better part of three hours.
London, and her beloved cats, were already far behind while an ambiguous fate awaited her some unknown distance ahead.
After telling her they were traveling to his country estate, Stephen had given her just enough time to dash off a letter to Mara before he’d taken her portmanteau (already packed in preparation for her impending departure to Southwick Castle) and handed it off to the driver of his black town coach, a carriage so large that it had barely fit down the narrow street in front of her home.
How she hadn’t seen or heard it coming was a testament to how deep she’d fallen into the well of past thoughts.
But while the coach may have been cumbersome in the city, it set a fair pace once they were on the open road, each rotation of the large wheels a stomach-sinking reminder of the dire predicament she had suddenly found herself in.
Absconded with was one way to describe it.
Kidnapped another.
Of course, the law wouldn’t view it that way. A man—particularly a powerful, wealthy, titled man with innumerable resources—could not kidnap his own wife. And yet, that was precisely what the Earl of Lancaster had done.
Worst of all, he’d left Susan and company behind.
“We will reach our destination before the sun has set.” Stephen did not bother to glance up from the paper he was reading when he spoke.
Turning the page with a flick of his wrist, he crossed his legs at the knee and angled his body away from her in a cool rebuff that could not have been more obvious.
Tucking her nose into the wool scarf she’d hastily grabbed before being more or less forced out of her own house, Abigail pursed her lips as she sank farther into her corner of the carriage while wishing she’d had the foresight to also bring a book for the journey.
Or a journal. Anything to occupy her mind other than the unpleasant imaginings of what might happen to her when they pulled up in front of Summerwind House.
In the letters they’d exchanged, Stephen had described the sprawling manor in great detail and with quite a degree of affection.
She knew it was of a classical Greek revival design, with stately columns in the front and an intricate hedgerow maze in the back that Stephen had used to hide from his nanny when he was young.
She knew that it had over a hundred rooms, including seventeen bedchambers and a glass-domed orangery with citrus trees imported from the Mediterranean.
She knew the parlor was painted blue. She knew the long, straight stone drive was lined with English oaks that had been planted by his great-great-great-grandfather.
And she also knew Summerwind House was the sole reason Stephen had pursued her in the first place because he’d told her as much.
“I cannot wait for you to see the manor I hold in such high regard,” he’d written in his neat, crisp penmanship that slanted just a touch too far to the right.
“Since it was released into my sole ownership following our elopement, I have begun extensive renovations. Summerwind House is a grand old dame. I look forward to bringing back her luster, and to the day you might walk her halls.”
By what he had said—and what he hadn’t—it was evident that if the pursuit of a medical degree was her motivation for the marriage, then the country house she was now being brought to was Stephen’s.
Why it was of such importance remained a mystery, as did what he would do with her upon their arrival.
“I should like to know your plan,” she said, raising her head.
Stephen turned another page. “What plan is that?”
“Your plan for me,” she clarified. “For us. I want to know why you are bringing me to Summerwind House.”
“I believe you’ll find the majority of landed gentry take it upon themselves to visit their estates over the holidays. Parliament will resume session the end of January, at which time we will return to London.”
“January?” Her palms bit into the burgundy seat as she shot to the edge of it. “I cannot leave my practice, or my cats, for such a length of time! That’s nearly five weeks!”
Stephen’s gaze, as icy as weather outside, snapped upward with such ferocity that an audible gasp spilled from her lips. “You complain of five weeks, when you had me running in circles for twelve months? Do not sit there and lecture me on time, Abigail. You’ve no ground on which to stand.”
He was different, she realized belatedly.
In the three years since they’d last seen each other, his physical appearance had altered only slightly.
A small line in his brow that hadn’t been there before.
Hair that was slightly longer. But his demeanor .
. . his demeanor had changed. If she’d thought him cold when they’d parted ways in Connecticut, it was nothing compared to what he was now.
Frozen.
Dominant.
Unforgiving.
“I am . . . sorry.” The word stuck in her throat. A bone that refused to go down even when she swallowed. “I didn’t know you would go to such great lengths to find me. I assumed you would search for a little while, and then—”
“And then what?” The newspaper fell to the carpeted floor when he tipped forward, his muscular body suddenly making the large interior of the coach feel drastically smaller.
“And then I would resign myself to being married to a ghost and give up?” His jaw clenched.
“You are my wife, Abigail. We took vows. Vows that I understand now to be meaningless to you, but they are not to me. Our agreement is not meaningless to me. You collected on your end. It is time for me to collect on mine.”
She wanted to ask him what he meant, but she was too afraid of what the answer might be. Shoving her chin back into her scarf, she returned to staring out the window as Stephen picked up his paper and they resumed their brittle silence.
*
Somewhere in the middle of their journey, Abigail fell asleep. It began with a slight head nodding. A fluttering of lashes. And finally, to Stephen’s unwilling amusement, a soft symphony of feminine snores.
Against his better judgment, he leaned toward her, his gaze drawn to the freckles that still dusted her nose and cheeks in a random pattern of tawny gold flecks. When his hand tingled, his fingertips magnetically drawn to trace short lines between the dots, he crossed his arms and scowled.
While Abigail may have looked as innocent as an angel with her lashes fanning out across the top of her cheeks in a spill of inky soot, he was no longer fooled by her act as he now recognized her for the deceptive creature that she was.
A doctor in sheep’s clothing, such as it were.
A seductress who agreed to one thing even as she plotted something entirely different.
Dammit, if she’d only told him that she planned to disappear, that she no longer had any interest in honoring their agreement, that she valued her independence more than her word, he would have understood.
Maybe.
But she hadn’t even given him the courtesy of a chance . . . and therein dwelled his greatest vexation. Her dishonesty. Her deceit. Her blatant disregard for his time or emotions.
He had lov—
He had liked her a great deal.
But now that like had turned to loathing, and he wasn’t sure if it could—if he even wanted it to—turn back around.
When her teeth gave a small, involuntary chatter of cold, he gritted his own and removed his greatcoat.
Stretching forward on braced thigh, he spread the heavy garment across her lap, the back of his hand brushing against her arm.
She stirred slightly, her little nose crinkling, and would have likely drifted right back to dream had the coach not chosen that inopportune moment to strike a rut in the road.
Stephen swallowed a curse as he was thrown off balance, his shin enduring the brunt of it, and was there anything other than a year-long betrayal that hurt worse than hitting that bloody bone on a hard surface?
Catching himself mere inches above Abigail, his left palm sinking into the cushion beside her thigh whilst the right made a print on the cold glass window, he steadied his weight before beginning a slow, careful retreat back to his own seat.
And he likely would have made it without his estranged wife being any the wiser had her eyes, drenched in shades of evergreen, not suddenly sprung open and then widened even farther at the sight of him looming over her.
“S-Stephen,” she stuttered, her voice husky from sleep and her gaze flickering with confusion. “What are you doing?”
“You looked cold, the carriage rocked, and I—to hell with it.”
He kissed her.
How could he not?
With her crooked spectacles, her tousled hair, and the rich velvet in her throat, she was irresistible.
It would have been easier to stop breathing than to stop his mouth from covering hers.
The time spent apart may have fostered his anger, but it had done nothing to diminish his ardor.
He desired her now every bit as much as he had then.
Maybe even more so, for was a man not hungriest when he had been denied sustenance?
Kissing Abigail again, tasting her again, touching her again, was like drawing a long breath after being trapped underwater.
A combination of passion and desperation that fueled his blind lust for her as he went to his knees, torso contorting within the confines of the moving coach in an effort not to flatten her smaller frame beneath his considerably larger one.
After a heartbeat of stiffness, Abigail kissed him back, her small hands tentatively resting on his shoulders before digging into the nape of his neck when their lips parted and their tongues met, swirling in a dance that was both old and new, familiar and foreign.
A bolt of need, as potent and powerful as a lightning strike, shot through him when he swallowed her moan, the taste of her own lust an elixir of sweetness that trickled down his throat like warm, sticky honey.
He shot upward, his palms slamming down on either side of her head as he deepened the kiss, taking it somewhere decadent.
Somewhere dark. Somewhere fervor blended into fury until the lines were indistinguishable and heaven threatened to crash into hell.
The carriage jostled again and this time he leaned into the friction, hands gliding down her voluptuous frame to cup her soft, round breasts as his mouth went to her neck, kissing below the crescent of her earlobe as her fingers tightened around the ends of his hair and tugged, the tiny motion setting off an entirely new wave of passion.
“Abigail.” He growled her name against her collarbone, the toes of his boots digging for purchase on the Axminster carpet that covered the floor of the coach.
Her scent teased his nostrils as he explored lower, then lower still until he was half drunk on subtle notes of lavender and the sultry, alluring musk of woman.
She gasped when he shoved her skirts above her knees.
Gave a soft, breathy groan that made his hard cock even harder when he pressed his mouth to the inside of one smooth thigh above the knotted lace of her garter.
He slid his hands under her bottom and squeezed, fingers biting ever-so-lightly into plump flesh as he tilted her hips up and placed her legs on his shoulders so he could kiss her properly.
Under the tented cavern of her petticoat where the cool winter sun filtered in through a sheer wall of white muslin, it was a simple task to forget the past three years had ever happened.
They were still in her bed in a small, cozy house in Connecticut before he’d asked her to be his countess and watched the light dim in her eyes.
Before he’d spent months searching for a wife who didn’t want to be found.
The heels of her leather walking boots dug into his shoulders when he danced his tongue over her slick seam.
Dragging her to the end of the velvet seat cushion, he set to coaxing her toward abandon with the single-minded determination of a man possessed by both fire and fury.
Abigail could hide from him all she wanted. But she couldn’t hide from this.
Her own wet, wanton desires.
He suckled her gently, almost teasingly, then let his mouth wander across her leg until frantic fingernails scraping along his skull directed his attention back to the center of his American rose where the petals were a shiny pink and the nectar most sweet.
He made a circle with his tongue before slowly gliding it back and forth along the stem of the rose, whilst by his own hand he sought simultaneous pleasure, wrist sliding under the buttoned waistband of his breeches to take his manhood in a firm grip.
As her breathing quickened, so did his own, the muscles in his abdomen drawing taut.
Without warning, the coach rocked again, a rear wheel slamming up and over a rock in the road.
The force of it drove his face forward and his wrist down in an explosive release that snared them both its in thrall, Abigail’s hips thrusting off the bench as seed shot from the head of his cock.
The coach slowed, then stilled.
The driver yelled something unintelligible.
They had arrived at Summerwind House.