Page 67 of Outrageous

He smiled and once again took her hand with a casual confidence that made her breath catch. “I’m sorry, darling, but was there any doubt in your mind about our destination?”

The word darling, spoken in his deep, velvety voice, was distracting to say the least—deeply worrying at most.

“If we could have kept our doings quiet enough, we might have had a choice.”

“Eva, I think you know we never had a choice, no matter how quiet we kept things.”

He didn’t say the words in a harsh or hurtful way, but his meaning was clear: when Eva had kidnapped him, she’d sealed his fate.

He smiled at her and brushed one of her cheeks with his hurt knuckles, the action making her want to crawl into his lap like a cat and just forget about everything: who she was, what she’d done, and how he was trapped with the results of her stupidity.

“I would have preferred to keep it quiet, to protect your reputation as much as possible, but I doubt having a few people know the truth—most of those, hiding from the law—will make a great deal of difference.”

Eva leaned back until his hand dropped away from her face, as much as she wanted it to stay there. But she couldn’t be touching him for what she was about to say. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

She stared at him for a long moment, this man who—against all odds—she’d come to respect, and even like during their brief time together. Right now he was looking at her with sympathetic interest. Once she confessed what a dunce she often was, he would believe in her madness for certain.

You owe him.

Yes, she did owe him. So she took a deep breath and waved a hand.

* * *

“I’m sorry for this—all of it: hitting you on the head, tying you up, getting you beaten half to death, landing you here.” Eva groaned and sprang to her feet. “I’m really not stupid, you know. Nor am I insensible to the fact my behavior is that of a fifteen-year-old boy rather than an adult woman most of the time.”

Godric didn’t think now was the time to smile at the very apt description. “I don’t think you are stupid, Eva.” That was most certainly the truth. No, she was far too clever and would run him a merry chase. “Nor do I think you behave like a fifteen-year-old boy.” So that was a little fib, but she looked so agonized, he didn’t think now was the time for jesting. “I think you were, quite admirably, trying to save the people you loved.”

I would have done things just as mad, and madder, if I’d been given the chance to save Lucia and Carl or the rest of my bloody family, he could have said, but didn’t.

Instead, he said, “Don’t flog yourself over something that is over and done—there is no greater waste of one’s precious time on this earth.”

Listen to you, Godric. Perhaps you might listen to what you are preaching?

Yes, he knew he should, and there was no time like the present to begin.

She shook her head as she paced, her hands raking through her short curls and making them wild. “I wish my father would see it that way, but I dread seeing him. All my life he has cautioned me against my impulsiveness and thoughtlessness.” She glanced over at him, her eyes shadowed with something he couldn’t quite understand. “I suppose you will think this pathetic, but I’ve always worshipped my father and striven to please him and make him proud. But he is—” She flung up her hands. “Well, you must know something about him?”

Godric nodded. Indeed, all the ton knew of the icy peer; it was difficult to imagine the man was a father, but he knew the marquess had at least five children, and his wife was shortly going into the straw for a sixth.

“Well, you needn’t worry about his punishing you, Eva. You will be my wife and he will no longer have that power.”

She shook her head violently, setting her curls dancing. “No, he doesn’t punish me—not in the way you’re thinking. He will just look at me.” She turned and did that thing she was so very good at doing: becoming another person entirely. Godric had to stare: Lord, it was as if the frosty Marquess of Exley had taken possession of his diminutive daughter’s person.

He swallowed. “Yes, that is, er, quite the look,” he admitted, actually feeling nervous under her frigid stare.

In a blink she was once again Eva, a surpassingly lovely, clever, and amusing young woman terrified of disappointing her demanding parent.

Godric felt for her. Even though his own father had been a proud and undemanding parent from the moment Godric could toddle, he’d had friends at school whose fathers had been brutal in their expectations. Seeing her in such a state of misery made him want to thrash the marquess, who sounded like a bit of a tyrant in addition to being cold.

A question occurred to him—something he’d been meaning to ask. “How did you learn about my foolish plans for your brother’s wife?” he asked, his face heating at the memory of his horrid behavior this last Season.

“I knew you were up to something after you called off the duel with Gabriel, so I started to follow you.” She gave him a sheepish look. “James helped me. It took only a few weeks before we learned what you were up to. But I knew nobody would believe me if I told them.”

Unfortunately, Godric thought she was probably right about that. What sane person would have credited him with implementing such a disastrous, venal, cruel plan?

“I’m mortified by all the idiocy I’ve managed to perpetrate in such a short while,” she muttered, kneading her hands as roughly as a lump of dough while pacing close by the bed on her next pass; close enough that Godric’s hand caught hers and then yanked her down into his arms, wincing at the pain the action caused, but still not stopping.