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17. Galloping Guilt

17

GALLOPING GUILT

Leo knew the moment she awoke in truth.

'Twas all he could do to keep himself motionless. He needed to hug her so tightly to him with a vengeance that was a chore to tame.

But the slumberous form that had rested against him these last sparse hours so trustingly, so very welcome, had stiffened to the point of pain, he feared. Mayhap needing a moment to orient herself. "All is well," he assured, working to keep his voice even. "Glad you are ready to salute the day."

He knew it wasn't every morning she greeted atop a stranger, no matter how intimate things might have turned between them and the hours since he felt that word applied. The word of stranger .

For it didn't, not any longer.

Nor did he want to frighten her, never that.

His thoughts were still a rictus of mire given everything he'd learned.

So he schooled himself to reveal nothing of the riot blazing through him.

Forced his expression to be as neutral, as blank as he could. Didn't want her to glimpse the rage still firing his every limb.

Took strength in the way she slowly relaxed against him again, before pushing herself up on one arm, to glance down at him in sleepy wonder.

Took solace in the drowse-warmed scent that filtered through his nostrils like a benediction. Such a jewel, this one, who called to him on so many levels.

How could any man treat a female he had sworn to love and to cherish, according to God's holy ordinance, in such a way? And to do so with having escaped any just retribution?

Death? Do you not consider that sufficient and just retribution?

Not even close…

He bit back the rancor bristling to break free. Couldn't let the anger storming through him show. Couldn't frighten her, not when she had already braved so much. So he kept his emotions to himself. Worked to blanket the beast of his anger, lest his ire burn the tenuous, yet so very real, connection between them.

"Susanna." Susanna. A name he wanted to say now. Tonight. Tomorrow. Again and again…

A woman he wanted to cherish and protect for as long as she would let him.

It had taken weeks before Susanna could sleep through the night. Even longer before she could be startled awake without jumping through the roof or trying to flee.

It seemed, once the body was conditioned in certain responses, it took far longer to untrain it and keep oneself at ease.

Coming awake so swiftly, long after the sun rose, with her nose buried in a warm chest and a big hand resting over her thigh didn't send her scurrying for cover as it might have a mere three months prior. Nay, because her nose told her even before her mind realized the truth: that she was safe.

Safe, and within the amazing embrace of Captain Leo Tucker. She wanted to kiss his chest. Wanted to lift herself up over him and push him to his back. Wanted to straddle him and revel in all the sights that had been denied her last night.

She wanted him to make love to her fully, no matter that love was an impossibility at the moment. He could not feel for her anywhere near the depths her feelings approached for him, but she would satisfy herself with his strength and his presence and his big and brawny body for every minute that she could, until he sent her on her way.

"Good morning." Her words were a rasped husk that took her a second or three to realize he could not hear. For she had not faced him.

Smiling, she shifted against his body on the narrow squab and rose to balance upon one arm, seeking his gaze?—

Which looked at her as though she werean unwanted hair in his ale, the warm expression she had come to know the last few hours was gone, frozen into a mask of immobility.

No warmth to his narrowed, hard-held eyes. No inviting tilt to the lips showing smooth and inviting past the thicker stubble shading his jaw.

He looked so cold. So controlled.

His expression void of the caring and heat she had become accustomed to. No amusement now. No indulgent teasing over her reckless whims, only a hardness she didn't understand. Could not have imagined waking to.

"Susanna."

The rumble skittered past her ears and fluttered her belly.

Ah. He would explain now. Tell her what was wrong.

Smiling at him, if a bit uncertainly, she gathered herself (somewhat difficult to do wearing the man's shirt!) and scrabbled backward, gaining the opposite seat.

Only to crinkle something beneath her bare thigh. She darted to the side and glanced down.

DO NOT POST! DO NOT POST!

…no matter how fervently I wished to be a mother, I wished this babe gone from me…

Her letter. To Olivia. The one unsent. The one confessing the worst of her sins.

Her eyes flew to his for a single flicker. But that proved sufficient.

He had read this. Read them.

He knew… everything .

Time halted, heavy with the ever-present regret she could not shake. Only now, instead of occupying a small box where she tried to keep it locked tight, it overflowed, flooded her being.

Her face flamed. Lips numbed. Heart tried to pound away into the past as her frantic gaze took in the pages. The letters. Her secrets. Her shame. All revealed in the murky carriage light.

Her balance bobbled as she tried to blink. To lick her lips.

He was saying something, but she couldn't hear what. Ringing in her ears battered her brain.

It wasn't even a betrayal she could accuse him of. She had handed him the letters, time and again the prior eve. She had failed to secure them once done.

Now 'twas all her secrets and shames laid bare.

His stone-faced hatred was nothing less than she deserved.

Through the haze, he gripped her arms, brought her back to his lap. How could he bear to touch her?

Her head buzzed. Filled with screams of self-derision. She still couldn't hear him.

The screams turned tinny, higher in pitch, and she winced. Wavered in place. Tried to surface above the depths before she drowned.

Escape! Is that not what she'd told herself, when she'd learned she was pregnant? What Sarah would have counseled? Escape while you can.

The advice she had failed to heed that had ended in such unspeakable tragedy.

Escape.

Ignoring the new cracks forming around her fragile heart, she wrenched her unseeing gaze from his and clambered off him, all ungainly grace. She slapped aside his outstretched hand. Babbled over his entreaties, the ones demanding to be heard over the constant buzzing. "Still a moment… Listen, please. Nay, talk to me. I took liberties, should not have?—"

"No." She shoved off him when he would have embraced her, used the impetus to skitter backward, out of the carriage. The noise and clamor disturbed Reaver, who gave a single bark, his confused attention swinging between her gawky retreat and the man who jumped smoothly down after her.

She still wore naught but his shirt. She'd toed off the socks during the short night, to rub her feet along his legs before slumber claimed her.

As he was supposed to this morn. Claim her, fully.

"Nay," she cried, arguing more with herself than the stalwart presence that had come to stand beside her, one full pace away as she stood in front of the big carriage wheel where she'd draped her dress. A single pace that loomed like a chasm as she stared at the wrinkled, mud-stained clothing she'd spread out in the most haphazard fashion.

You cannot arrive to your brother's wearing that!

What choice did she have?

Feeling as though she was tearing off skin, she ripped Leo's shirt over her head and ducked beneath the drying hem of her dress to draw it on.

Along with her composure, any claim to grace had gone flying out the window as she twisted this way and that, tugging the sides ruthlessly, trying to get the uncomfortable garment in place.

And without first donning shift or stays? For shame, young lady.

She wasn't sure who nudged her then—her mama's old teachings? Always beautifully polished Sarah? Or her own conscience which was rent asunder as sure as the broken coach from last night, a good part of her wanting to plop down and have a strong cry—in his arms, if he would let her, while the other, more familiar part, just needed to flee.

When the distraught raffle that was her hair got tangled in her fingers, she debated tying it in a knot or yanking it out by the roots. Surely that, at least, would distract from the pain centered in her chest, the one radiating from inane emotions she should not be having. Not so soon. Not with?—

"May I?" He placed his fingers at her back, indicating the buttons she would have difficulty reaching, gently nudging her abrupt fingers aside.

Silently, still seething with shame and embarrassment, she nodded.

He did up three or four before speaking. "Susanna, I?—"

She whirled on him, still not meeting his eyes. "Nay! I will not listen. Not now. Give me time—" She looked at him then, one fast second that for her, was fraught with so much emotion she wondered how she managed even that. "La-ter," she said, pointing to her nonexistent timepiece. Then her ear. "Will list-en. Listen later. Not now."

Her kiss-awoken lips wobbled. Eyes dared swim. She just needed a hug, drat him. Wanted to inhale him again, to rest against his strength.

But now he knew. Knew everything . Only evil monsters prayed their babies away. Let their husbands barter them as tender.

Captain Tucker will understand.

But that frantic flick of her head, flinging her disastrous hair from her face to glimpse his had only revealed his hard, clenched jaw. Even harder eyes.

He would not understand.

Nor could she blame him.

Only herself.

"Susanna. Please. Halt."

But she was torn, as torn as the stockings she abandoned for the shambling, not-quite-painful act of drawing on her walking boots—her feet sorely abused from the cold and excessive trudge of yesterday.

Lady Adventure? Pah. Lady Tragedy, more like, for she could not even keep her wicked secrets to herself upon such a short acquaintance with such a special man. And who would have thought that she would have been off her guard sufficiently to feel thus so quickly?

"You have me at a significant disadvantage, you know."

Despite the anger shading his features, his voice—that low and sensual ramble, called forth every feminine response she'd denied the last few years. Bade her to jump back into his arms, wrap hers about his neck and hold tight while he spoke, coaxed her back to peace.

"Leicester! Loughborough! Then on to Derby!"

The jingle of horses thundering by, the noisy arrival of the first coach to pass this way since she'd arrived—the hue and cry of her destination—for good or for ill, it made her decision for her.

She spun back to the carriage, half climbed in and took no care shoving her possessions back into her valise. The wrapped gifts for the girls went in first. The wretched letters crumpled as she stuffed them deep. When her grasping hand clasped one of his discarded socks by mistake, she shoved it in too.

Finished, she scrambled backward, stumbled down the daft steps, wrenched away when he offered aid and focused just below his neck as she dropped her bag to gather her disarrayed hair and worked to twist what she could into a tight coil at the back of her head.

Bonnet! Where was her bedraggled bonnet? She scoured high and low, damning her gaze when it persisted in flitting his direction time and again.

Reaver had come to lean against Leo, whose fingers absently stroked the dog's head; even sitting the canine came up to the man's thigh. After drying during the night, the dog looked slightly less disreputable. But the man? Even decently, if informally, attired, with his pants on, shirt untucked and without a neckcloth in place, he still made for a commanding presence, drat him.

'Twas the wide breadth of his chest that still drew her, compelled her arm to lift toward him before she ruthlessly forced it back, the muss of his overly long hair, thicker bristle along his cheeks and jaw… The hard jaw and soft lips she would never touch again.

Her recently healed heart cracked even more.

"Leicester! Loughborough!" Even muffled through the planks, the distance, the shouts reached through easily. Would that the rest of her morning had followed.

When has anything been easy , since you persisted in throwing in with Mr. Mitchell?

Last evening had been easy. The last hours, the most blessed she could remember. Until awaking to the hatred in his eyes. The anger. That brief reminder chilled her soul. One final spin refused to reveal her missing bonnet.

"What is it? You have gone frantic." Hands to her shoulders, he stopped her further retreat the second she swooped down and then back up, clutching her bag.

"The coach. 'Tis here. I must go." No inkling whether she spoke slow enough. How could she concentrate, when her heart thundered every bit as much as the hooves that had raced past?

"Stay. Please. We shall?—"

She thrumbled past him. "Move, Reaver!" The dog refused, now standing sentry in front of the door, stupid thing.

So she went round, grappled with the heavy bar that bolted the inside?—

Only to have it miraculously lifted.

Leo. Standing before her. Hand on the door. "I would escort you. Wherever you would go." That deep, comforting rumble. She couldn't let it entice her, not now that he knew.

Can you not? You may see anger in his face, but he has enacted no ire toward you.

"Susanna, please?—"

"Leicester! Derby! Only two seats left!"

Derby. Where she would exit the stage and travel to the smaller village of Duffield.

Duffield, where she'd grieved and started healing this summer. With Nate and Olivia. With her nieces… Charity's baking and adorably imperious ways toward her younger sisters. Sweet Charity, who had grown up far faster than she should have, when her mother started ailing. Young Hope, Faith in the middle, the girls' mischievous youngling kittens so quickly scaling curtains and growing into cats.

Within the three-story ramshackle manor house and grounds that offered an escape once again…

But only if you can forgive yourself.

Reaver bumped against her leg, unbalancing her into Leo. A glance downward revealed the dog had her bonnet in his mouth! Muddied (dried mud, but still!) green ribbons trailing in the dirt. "Give me that."

You really ought to stay, the canine seemed to say, eyes wiser than they should have been, as she pried her battered bonnet free of his teeth. Stay and listen.

"No, you naughty dog!"

"Susanna. Please, wait but a moment. Let me?—"

Aye, the dog gave a gritted-teeth snarl, listen to him. He likes you. You like him back. I can smell things. The canine's brown eyes fairly chortled at her, making a mockery of her morning. He wrinkled his snout at her, tipped his nose upward. Impressive sniffer and all that.

"No matter how wondrous your nose, fiendish dog, you cannot tell how much I like him!"

Can so.

"Susanna, sweet— Wait. Are you arguing with my dog?"

"Leicester! Derby! One ticket remaining."

Giving in to temptation one last time, she threw an arm about his neck—the man, not his contrary canine—and kissed his stubbly jaw. Tucked her face against his chest and inhaled down to her toes. Then she pushed off and wrenched the door open, running for the stage and that last ticket as if Homer's Scylla had escaped the sea and chased after her.

But she still could not outrun her guilt.

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