Chapter Four
Oliver was cold, hungry, and exhausted. Beyond the biting frost, he’d also been forced to endure a snowstorm, and he was not accustomed to handling a carriage of this size. His coat was sodden through, he had no desire to be amorous, and he’d been seized with misgivings about his entire plan.
And now he faced down the barrel of a gun.
Snow landed wetly on his hat, and his fingers felt numb. What he really wanted was a hot drink, a bath, and a bed. Preferably with a beautiful woman in it.
Not this woman. Isabella Brunton was a blonde-haired, buxom beauty. She had a wicked laugh, a sweet button nose, and was adorably flirtatious.
This lady had frizzy red hair that stuck out around her face, a sharp, angular jawline, eyes like gimlets, and a pistol. Pointed at his head.
He really needed that drink.
Holding both hands in the air, he stepped back to give her leave to descend the carriage. She did so, trailing one of the rugs as it half fell off her shoulder. With a curse, she shrugged it back on, glaring at him all the while.
“What the devil do you think you’re doing?” she demanded.
“I might ask you the same question,” he said, looking from the butt of the pistol into her face. He had never met Isabella’s sister, but he could only presume this was the lady in question—and now he understood her reputation. “What are you doing here?”
“You kidnapped me.”
He glanced over his shoulder at the blacksmith’s forge behind him, where the bulk of Gretna Green’s weddings took place. “On the contrary—you entered the carriage of your own volition.”
“I would not have done if I had any inkling we were going so far.”
“And I would never have taken you here if I had known who you were,” he countered. “I intended to marry your sister, not you.”
Her jaw dropped, shock written so plainly across her face, he could have laughed. “Marry,” she repeated. “You were going to marry Isabella?”
“I can think of no other reason to take such a miserable trip across the border.” He sighed, trying to think his way through the mess.
In the dawn light, with the scarf and the cloak, he hadn’t noticed it wasn’t Isabella.
That ought to be any man’s first step in arranging a runaway wedding, but the fact of the matter was, he hadn’t been expecting anyone else.
And she had climbed into the carriage under her own power.
“Well, this is a bloody mess,” he said. “I presume you are the infamous Emily.”
She blinked, and her fingers shook a little around the pistol. The next second, she adjusted her grasp. “You may address me as Miss Brunton. And yes, I am Isabella’s sister.”
“Miss Brunton.” He swept off his hat and sank into a low bow, replacing it on his head with a wince at the cold. “I’m The Honourable Oliver Beaumont. Now we are both acquainted, let us get to the heart of the matter. Why are you here?”
“I received the note you were so obliging as to send my sister,” she said, her face heating a little, fiery red giving her some wonderful colour that disguised the thinness of her cheeks.
“And you decided the best course of action would be to take her place,” he said dryly. “No doubt you thought you would rather find yourself the wife of a gentleman.”
Fire flashed in those eyes. He’d assumed them to be the same blue as her sister’s, but now he rather suspected they were grey, like steel. “Your note said nothing of marriage.”
He barked a bitter laugh before he could help himself. So, Isabella had kept their arrangement secret, and thus Miss Brunton had seen his note and assumed a mere assignation.
None of this explained why she had chosen to take Isabella’s place.
“I need a drink,” he said. “And these horses need a rest. I’ll find us a nearby inn.”
“Together?”
“Unless you would prefer to remain in the carriage?”
He could see from her face she did not. No doubt she was nearly as cold as he was, and just as exhausted. Against the paleness of her skin, her freckles stood stark like constellations. She was not soft or delicate enough to be pretty, but he conceded that the freckles were taking.
Not that it mattered one way or the other.
He gestured at the carriage, entirely out of patience. “Get in, or I’ll leave you here.”
She huffed in irritation, but climbed back inside. He slammed the door and went to climb onto the coachman’s seat, every muscle in his body aching. If anything, the snow only came down faster. “Damn weather,” he muttered, and flicked the reins.
The ride to the inn took around five minutes, which gave Emily just enough time to find her composure from where Mr Beaumont had disposed of it.
He’d been intending to bring Isabella to Scotland—most likely Gretna Green—to marry her. Marriage. Her mind felt as though he had dipped a spoon into her brain and twirled it around. All this time, she’d been assuming the worst, and he’d planned this.
Had she ruined everything?
Of course not, she told herself. If he wanted to marry her clandestinely, he probably had evil plans for her.
The Honourable Oliver Beaumont. If he was in the area, close enough that he might have met Isabella, the only person she could think of that he might visit was Lord Marlbury—a man who ruined women and abandoned them with heartless regularity.
If that was the case, Isabella would have known about the connection.
For her to have continued to encourage him—and Emily was not so foolish as to think Mr Beaumont acted without consent—then the only explanation could be infatuation.
Like countless women before her, Isabella had fallen prey to a set of devilish hazel eyes and artful curls, and that childish inclination had been enough to overpower every warning Emily could give her.
What a mess.
They rattled into the coaching inn, which, given the early hour of the morning, was not as busy as it might have been. Emily rejoiced silently; the fewer witnesses, the better.
Mr Beaumont hopped down and after a few moments’ conversation with an ostler, he opened the door for her.
“Sister,” he said pointedly, holding out his hand.
His fingers looked reddened and sore from the cold, and after a moment, she placed hers atop them.
His skin was just as chilled as it appeared, and she almost jerked her hand free again.
Brows lowering, he gripped her tighter and tucked the same hand firmly in his arm.
“Breakfast is served in the taproom,” he said conversationally as he led her towards the door.
The building was small and ill-kept, though it looked as though it saw a great deal of traffic.
The whitewashed walls were peeling, revealing grey stone underneath, and a great slab served as a front step, the middle dipped from where countless feet had stepped.
The interior of the building was dark and smoky.
Mr Beaumont wrapped a hand around her elbow, shifting her to one side, and with a burst of irritation she noted it was a protective gesture; a drunken man staggered past them in search of fresh air.
“Careful, Emily,” he said in a low voice. “One might think you’d never stepped foot in an inn before.”
She felt her face heat at the derisive note in his voice. “Don’t call me by my Christian name,” she snapped. “It’s not polite.”
“What do you call your sister?”
“How dare you bring my sister up now?”
He gave her a little shake, eyes glinting. “What do you call her?”
“Isabella,” she said, realising too late what he had been forcing her to come to terms with. Siblings, as they were pretending to be, tended to use their first names to address one another.
“Call me Oliver,” he said, and released her, striding into the taproom as though he belonged there.
She followed, hiding her reddened, cracked hands in her cloak.
If anyone believed they were brother and sister, she would eat her bonnet—her bonnet which, thanks to the lateness of the hour last night, she had not put on.
As she followed him further into the room, and sat in the chair he pulled out for her, she kept her hood up.
Even so, unruly curls danced from underneath it, frizzing from the cold and the wind.
Mr Beaumont—she refused to call him by his given name, no matter what liberties he thought he could take with her—made no comment and merely ordered a large breakfast. Sausages, bacon, eggs and ale. All things she was not accustomed to eating first thing in the morning. Or, of late, at all.
Sound from the other patrons cut through the silence between them. Emily merely gazed out of the window, doing her best to ignore her companion.
Eventually, however, she could no longer bear it. “Why are you marrying my sister?” she asked abruptly, turning.
His brows both rose. “Why not?”
“What do you mean? She is seventeen and has no dowry.”
“I have no need for a dowry.” When a buxom maid brought Mr Beaumont his ale, he winked at her, and Emily’s ire rose like bile in her throat.
“How dare you make up to every pretty girl you encounter after claiming to intend marriage for my sister,” she said under her breath.
His gaze flicked to her, as though he, too, was aware that she had condemned herself by not classing herself as one of the said pretty girls.
He tipped the frothy concoction into his mouth, then made a face.
“Tastes like piss.” At her look of irritation, he sighed and rolled his eyes.
“Your sister isn’t here, and thanks to your hand in the matter, I’m not marrying her. What do you expect from me?”
“Some constancy! Fidelity, perhaps?”
“I’ll save that for after I have a wife.”
“And if she were here?”
He gave her a very pointed look. “If she were here instead of you, things would be going rather differently.”
Her cheeks burned, but she resolutely refused to look away. “You are crude.”
“And you are a prude,” he said, almost in dismissal. “Eager to judge. Has no one ever told you not to throw the first stone?”
“Has anyone told you not to seduce underage girls?”
“On the contrary,” he said, irritation flaring in his eyes. “I never seduced her. I courted her.”
“You intended to abscond with her.”
“I intended to marry her,” he said, producing the words as though bored. “Hardly the same thing.”
“And you might have done so honourably!”
“Oh?” He leant closer, bracing on his elbows. “And would you have granted me permission, Miss Brunton? As her guardian, would you have allowed me the privilege of marrying your sister?”
“I might have done,” she said, honesty forcing the truth from her, “if I thought you loved her.”
He canted his head, watching her as though he could read every flicker of expression across her face. “Would you believe me if I said I did?” he asked, sounding almost curious. “Would that absolve me of my sins? Or are you determined to cast me in the role of villain?”
“If the shoe fits,” she said tartly.
“Well then.” He leant back in his chair, the wood creaking ominously, and shrugged. “There’s nothing more to say on the matter. But let me say this. I have never once lied to your sister.”
Emily scoffed. “A likely story.”
“I’m no monster. Your sister wants nice things, and I offered to provide them for her. A house, trinkets, a place in society. It would have been the same as any marriage made for the purpose of marrying.”
Emily reared back in her seat. “My sister loves you.”
“Did she tell you that?”
“Not in as many words, but—”
“Then what do you know about the matter?”
“My sister would never marry a man she didn’t love!”
“Then perhaps you don’t know your sister,” he said. “We have been perfectly clear with each other about what this is. Oh, she likes me well enough, but love? I don’t believe she ever had any intention of loving me.”
Emily shook her head. Isabella was not that materialistic. Yes, she wanted an escape from this life, but not with a near-stranger. Not with a man prepared to whisk her away to Scotland in order to marry her illicitly—she would never have done that unless she loved him.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Mr Beaumont said impatiently. “If she married me, she would have everything she wanted. London society, the association with my excessively titled relatives, and a house she could be mistress of.”
Emily folded her arms, trying to ignore the sheer exhaustion in her limbs. She had been run down for so very long. “And what of you? What do you gain from the arrangement?”
“A wife,” he said at once. “I have need of one.”
Emily buttoned her lips as another maid brought their breakfast over, slamming the plates onto the table. Piles of sausages and bacon and fried eggs, the yolk breaking and seeping out across the grease. She stared, stomach turning. So much rich food—far more than she’d had in a very long time.
“There’s bread coming,” the girl informed them. A different wench from before, but just as comely. And Mr Beaumont seemed just as happy to grin up at her, handsome and boyish, full of charm and boisterous fun.
There seemed not a serious bone in his body.
This was what Isabella had wanted?
If so, could Emily justify standing in her way?