The Society Catch (Harlequin Historical) Read online

  ‘Oh!’ Joanna gasped at the stinging frankness of his words, even as she recoiled from the volume of his voice. She had never heard Giles raise his voice or lose control of his temper, now she was experiencing both at very short range indeed. ‘I wouldn’t let anyone take liberties,’ she began, wincing at the vapid euphemism even as she used it.

  ‘Like you are not letting me take liberties now?’ Giles enquired, his voice suddenly silkily quiet. Joanna realised that she could not only feel the weight and lines and heat of his body, but that also the fact that he was powerfully aroused. Without conscious thought her untutored body shifted, accommodating itself more closely to his and instantly he snarled at her, ‘Lie still.’

  Shaken beyond words by the reality of his arousal, Joanna froze. After her marriage Grace had been asked by Mama to talk to Joanna about married life. She had given some indication of the changes necessary in a man’s body to allow lovemaking to take place, but she had been very reticent. Giles was so very…but then he was a big man—obviously everything was in proportion.

  Blushing hectically at her own thoughts as much as at the shocking intimacy, she closed her eyes and waited for what would happen next. Then opened them abruptly as she realised just what she was thinking, what she was hoping. Her body was beginning to ache very strangely, not with his weight, but from the inside with an unfamiliar hot yearning. She wanted to move against him, wrap her arms around him, incite him to kiss her again, but the expression in his eyes was so darkly fierce she dared not. ‘Giles, you said I could trust you!’

  ‘Damn it, Joanna, if you could not, neither of us would have a stitch of clothing on by now. And stop looking so scandalised. Your dream lover, whoever the bloody man is, is a man too and if you think you can behave with such recklessness with him without provoking a reaction, then you are deluded, my dear.’ The hard stare softened. ‘If I let you go, will you promise not to run away again?’

  ‘What, not run away now, or not run away again ever?’ she temporised, forcing herself to think about anything but the immediacy of his body, of the thin barrier of clothing between them. About the fact that he undeniably desired her and that she wanted nothing more than for him to prove just how much.

  ‘Never again. I warn you, Joanna, you have run the length of my patience. Any more and you will discover exactly what that means. Promise me.’

  ‘No.’ She shut her eyes, the only defence against his will, which overwhelmed her, mastered her as surely as his long hard body had subdued hers beneath it.

  ‘Promise me.’ He was speaking against her lips, his breath feathering the sensitive flesh like a kiss, his hands cradling her head. She could feel the pulse in his wrists beating strongly and the rhythm of her blood leapt to echo it. ‘Promise me.’ It was a whisper, soft yet compelling. Her lips parted to deny him, but no words came. There was only the heat of his mouth over hers, the insidiously gentle pressure of his fingertips tangling in her hair, the utterly dominant male weight of him fitting so perfectly to her slender frame stretched beneath him.

  Time stopped. Around them the flowers opened to the warm sunlight, to the thrumming bees that pillaged each golden heart for its pollen. Overhead a lark spiralled upwards into a cloudless blue sky, singing as though its heart would break, rising, rising, until the human figures below it were a dot in the green of the meadow.

  They breathed with one breath, shared the same heartbeat. Without conscious thought Joanna breathed, ‘I love—’

  And found herself free of Giles’s weight, jerked upright, shaken until her eyes snapped open. ‘I know you love him!’ She was kneeling, facing Giles, his hands hard on her shoulders. ‘I know you love him,’ he repeated quietly. ‘But how does running away help? What were you going to do?’

  Her breath was coming as though he were still riding her down. His own, despite the control she could feel vibrating through his hands, was short. Shaken out of all attempt at pretence, she gasped, ‘I was going to my aunt near Norwich. I knew you would never find me there.’

  He smiled at her wryly. ‘In fact, I know all about Aunt Caroline; your mama suspected you might go to her. But even without that knowledge, did you think I would give up? Did you really believe I would rest until I had found you again? Joanna, look at me.’

  She shook her head, bending her neck until her hair, loosened in the struggle, shielded her expression from his eyes. Giles lifted his hand from her right shoulder, smoothing back the curtain of black silk that slithered over his fingers with its own caress. Joanna found her chin raised inexorably and met his gaze.

  The anger had gone, and with it the blackness, leaving once again the cool grey stare that seemed to transfix her. ‘You have no hope of eluding me, Joanna. Believe it.’ She nodded, resisting the impulse to turn her cheek against the hard, gentle palm with its calluses from years of riding and weapon-handling. ‘Promise me you will not try to escape and I will take you to Tasborough and Hebe. No chaperon, no carriage. We will ride, stay at out-of-the-way inns.’

  ‘And…’ It was difficult to speak, her voice cracked. Joanna swallowed hard. ‘And if I do not promise?’

  ‘I will tie you to the horse and there will be no inns. I will find barns to sleep in.’

  She met his eyes, met the implacable resolve in them and believed he would take her back, trussed and thrown over his saddle bow if that was what it took. ‘But if we are together for days I will be compromised…’

  ‘I am escorting you with your parents’ permission. This is not what they had envisaged, but I can assure you, as I will assure them if necessary, you are going to be delivered into Hebe’s hands in as perfect condition as you left your own home.’

  Her gaze shifted under his. ‘Being alone is enough. Spending nights alone, however blamelessly, is enough if it is discovered.’

  ‘Then we had better be sure we are not discovered, because believe me, Joanna, I have no wish to find myself married to you.’ He smiled grimly at the sudden flare of feeling reflected in her wide green eyes. ‘I find myself strangely sentimental: I require love in marriage, Joanna.’

  ‘So do I,’ she snapped back, hating herself for the jealousy that flooded through her.

  ‘Then we are agreed.’ She stared back into the inimical eyes and nodded. ‘You do not try to escape? You give me your word?’

  ‘Yes. I give you my word.’ Joanna held his gaze long enough for him to read the truth in what she said, then twisted away to sit with her profile to him.

  Giles let out his breath in a long exhalation and let his long body topple back on to the lush grass beside her. Joanna was conscious that he was letting the tension ebb out of him like a big cat relaxing in the sun as he lay on his back at her side, his eyes narrowed against the glare of the summer sky. He turned his head to look at her, crushing buttercups under his cheek. ‘Did I frighten you? I am sorry if I did.’

  ‘You meant to frighten me,’ Joanna said without rancour. After the almost unbearable closeness and emotion of the past few minutes there was a sense of release. She felt very comfortable with him all of a sudden, just as long as she did not let herself think with her body. ‘It worked. I should not have run when you came into the field, but I had been asleep, you see, and you seemed like someone from a dream that had suddenly become a nightmare.’

  ‘You were dreaming about that damn…that man?’

  ‘Yes,’ Joanna admitted shortly. ‘Oh, look, you like butter—the buttercups are reflecting all gold on your face.’ She smiled as he brushed the flowers away, then added, ‘But I wish you would tell me about your head. How did you hurt it.’

  ‘Ow! Stop touching it,’ Giles protested, pushing her hand away. ‘I hope you are proud of the damage you did when you pitched me into that loose box.’

  ‘I did that? But how?’

  ‘Well, you tripped me up with a trick I would have expected from any street urchin, but not a young lady—more fool me—and then I fell over a pitchfork, landed on a bale, rolled off it and hit my head on a
crate. A most effective attack.’ He studied the mingled horror and shameful pride on her face and added, ‘You make me feel middle-aged, Joanna Fulgrave.’

  ‘Middle-aged! Oh, no—that is preposterous! How could I make you feel middle-aged?’ she protested, laughing at him.

  ‘You and Suzy between you.’ Giles sighed, getting to his feet with the careless grace of a youth of sixteen and reaching out hand. ‘You make me feel middle-aged and sensible.’

  Joanna was very certain that whatever Lady Suzanne made Giles feel, it was not the onset of middle age. The feeling that had swept through her, and which she could only compare to the sensation of having had one glass of champagne too many, left her abruptly. She scrambled to her feet without taking his hand and stalked off towards Moonstone who was making friends with the black hunter.

  ‘Well, if we are to travel in easy stages because of your age, we had better get going again,’ she threw over her shoulder, then dodged laughing behind Moonstone’s dappled hindquarters as Giles made a mock-threatening grab for her.

  Once mounted, Joanna asked, ‘How long will it take us?’

  ‘Two days, three possibly.’ He squinted up at the sun, appeared to do a rapid mental calculation and turned left out of the gate. ‘You really were going to go to your aunt this morning? You did not have some other bolt hole you haven’t told me about?’

  ‘No, really,’ she admitted ruefully. ‘I knew that if she would not take me in I had run out of options, other than to go to my sister Grace. But she would have only sent me home and, in any case, I have no idea how to get there. Not like when I ran away from the Geddings. I had worked out my strategy and made notes from atlases…do not laugh at me!’

  Giles was failing to suppress a grin, but he apologised solemnly in the face of her indignation. ‘And where did you learn all about strategy, might I ask?’

  ‘Er…I read about it because of William,’ she said hastily, crossing her fingers. ‘When he was army-mad, you remember. He kept wanting to talk about famous battles and marches and so I read some books so I could talk more sensibly to him.’ Well, it was partly the truth, although the person she wanted to have the conversations was not her young brother. ‘And I remembered about having an objective and then working out one’s strategy for achieving it, and what tactics one needed to employ.’

  ‘I am impressed: most people get in a muddle over the difference between strategy and tactics. Shall we canter? I think we cannot be far from March.’

  The long, fine July day passed for Joanna in unalloyed happiness. She was with Giles, riding in easy companionship, and although they spoke little it seemed as though they had no need to and understood each other without words. He would glance at her and she would nod and urge Moonstone into a canter, then just as she was feeling a little tired, he would rein in and they would walk along the quiet lanes, heavily fringed with white clouds of cow parsley, occasionally pointing out to each other a view, a picturesque ruined church or a deer grazing at the edge of a coppice.

  They found an inn on the outskirts of Chatteris where the landlady served them thick slices of ham and wickedly vinegary pickled onions with slabs of crusty bread and fresh churned butter. When they had finished Giles pushed aside his tankard and pulled out his notes, gleaned from Lord Brandon’s head groom.

  ‘Can you face another twenty miles?’ he asked. ‘If you cannot, we will stop for the night at Huntingdon, but if we can make it to St Neots we will be that much further on our way tomorrow.’

  Joanna was beginning to feel both tired and stiff, but she nodded firmly. ‘Of course, that sounds far the best thing to do.’

  To her surprise Giles reached out a hand and caught the point of her chin in his fingers. ‘Brave Joanna,’ he said softly. ‘I know you are tired, I know you cannot help but be apprehensive about how all this is going to turn out, and I do believe you when you tell me your heart is broken—even if you don’t think I take it seriously. Any other young woman of my acquaintance would be treating me to tears, sulks or tantrums by now.’ The strong fingers gently caressed the soft skin of her throat and Joanna swallowed hard at the feeling it evoked.

  ‘Even Lady Suzanne?’ she queried tartly in an effort to suppress the desire to turn her cheek into the palm of his hand, to beg for caresses.

  ‘Suzy?’ Giles snorted with laughter, the all-too-familiar expression of tender forbearance coming into his eyes. ‘Suzy would have decided to run away with her maid, her lapdog, at least two portmanteaux of garments and a courier to enable her to secure the most comfortable accommodation at every stop. Under these conditions she would have burst decoratively into tears fifteen miles ago, called me the greatest beast in nature and insisted on a detour into Huntingdon for some shopping to soothe her fractured nerves. The temptation to elope with Suzy, just to watch the havoc she would wreak along the way, is almost irresistible.’

  ‘But doubtless the thought of your father’s disapproval prevents you?’ Joanna said sweetly, her nails digging into her palms.

  ‘It would certainly greatly distress him,’ Giles agreed. The General would have another seizure, just at the thought of such a scandalous occurrence, Giles reflected with grim humour, although of all the things that he might do to incur his father’s wrath, eloping with Lady Suzanne was about the least likely.

  As they walked back to the horses, Giles reflected on just why it had never so much as crossed his mind to offer for Suzy until his father had demanded it and why, when the idea was raised, he was so very certain she was entirely wrong for him.

  He loved her, faults and all; he admired her beauty and charm and wilful spirit. She made him laugh, she took his breath away when she was attired for a grand ball, he forgave her whatever pranks she played. And yet he could never recall her arousing the slightest desire in his breast, not the faintest stirring of longing to possess her, either for passion or as his wife. He really must love her like the sister he had never had, he realised.

  Whereas the young woman beside him was stirring emotions in him that were far from brotherly. She was less pretty than Suzy, she employed none of her ladyship’s tricks of flirtation, none of her winsome, charming ploys to attract and amuse. But she had courage far beyond what that shallow, adorable little madam possessed. Courage and an innocent, passionate nature that was making it harder and harder for him to feel towards her as he should.

  Giles came to himself with a start to find Joanna waiting patiently for him to give her a leg up into the saddle. He lifted her swiftly, anxious not to linger, aware of a new scent—something of her friend Lady Brandon’s, perhaps. He swung up into the saddle and tried to make himself forget the long moments when he had lain across her body in the meadow. The feeling of her trembling, warm form against him, the new scent in her hair as it clouded around his nose and mouth.

  And then the even more arousing sensation of her stretched out beneath him, supple and yielding and innocently reacting to the demands of a male body pressing down on hers for the first time. It had taken all his self-control not to lower his mouth to hers, to kiss her until she was dizzy with passion and then…

  ‘Giles?’

  ‘Mmm? Sorry, I was thinking.’ Thinking! Damn it, he was working himself up into a thoroughly uncomfortable state and he must stop it immediately. Unfortunately Joanna’s next hesitant question did nothing to turn his mind from the heated image of what she would look like naked.

  ‘What are we going to do tonight…I mean…when we get to the inn? I have no baggage, and it is going to look very odd, is it not?’ She broke off, blushing slightly and Giles administered a sharp mental kick and set himself to reassure her.

  ‘We must agree our story and stick to it. Let’s think: you are my sister. We set out on a foolish whim from St Ives to visit our great-aunt in Sandy, not considering how far it was in this heat. Then Moonstone lost a shoe and we had to find a blacksmith and you are far too tired to ride on to Great-aunt Julia’s so we are having to spend the night in St Neots. How is that
?’

  ‘That is very convincing,’ Joanna agreed approvingly. ‘It accounts for everything neatly. What a deplorable turn for invention you have!’

  Giles smiled back at her teasing, but his mind was racing. With that story they might find a respectable inn with two bedchambers available and hope their tale would cause no impertinent comment. But he was less sanguine about it than Joanna appeared to be. For a start, they looked not the slightest bit like brother and sister. Even if that went unnoticed, how would she feel when the reality sank in that she was spending a night alone in a strange place with a man? And one who only that morning had tumbled her in the meadow grass and had spoken frankly of male desire to her?

  ‘Yes, quite deplorable,’ Joanna continued brightly. Her mind too was racing with thoughts of the night ahead, although she had no intention of insulting Giles by allowing him to think she did not trust him. But his story, ingenious as it was, could perhaps be improved upon. Not for anything would she have him embarrassed by impertinent assumptions about his motives.

  ‘However, it does not account for your bandaged head. How would it be if we say you had a fall—quite early on, to account for it not being fresh blood—and you thought we could carry on, but you had a worse headache than you expected so we have been riding slowly?’

  She saw his frown and added, ‘I know that you have not regarded it in the slightest, however much it is paining you, but can you not dissemble a little? And we must bicker, too—brothers and sisters do that.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ Giles said briskly. ‘This is not a dramatic performance. I will deal with the landlord, you remain as unobtrusive as possible and we will brush through this as well as may be.’