LITMIR.BIZ

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guilt, the need to explain. After a silent moment during which her cold mask did not melt under his fevered stare, he made her a curt bow.

      “As you wish then, madam. I bid you goodbye.”

      Laura held herself unmoving while his footsteps retreated down the hallway, through the porch door’s slam. Not until the jingle of harness and clip-clop of iron-shod hooves on the lane outside faded, signaling Lord Beaulieu’s final departure, did she stagger from the center of the room to the sofa.

      She collapsed upon the soft padded surface, unable to move or think, conscious only of a bone-deep weariness made weightier by piercing sadness.

      It was over. Over, really, before it ever began. Lord Beaulieu, accustomed to giving orders rather than taking them, summoning ladies of his choice rather than being dismissed by them, would not be back.

      She was still safe, though. Surely some days or weeks or months later, when she could bring herself to truly acknowledge that fact, her heart would agree his loss was worth that gain.

      Spurred on by fury and frustration, Beau drove his mount at a flat gallop through the woods back to Everett Hall. Damn and blast, the woman was stubborn! He could almost feel a kindred sympathy with the rejected reverend.

      But perhaps, his normal clear thinking obscured by the unaccustomed depth of the emotions Mrs. Martin roused in him, he’d misconstrued Mrs. Martin’s reactions over the past few weeks. Perhaps she had not responded to him to the degree he’d thought. In any event, her icy dismissal clearly indicated that she did not harbor the same intensity of feeling for him that he did for her.

      Perhaps she had no wish to wed the vicar and disdained the whole institution of marriage because she abhorred men in general. Such women existed, he knew.

      Whatever her reasons for refusing the vicar, the fact that she had also rejected both Beau and his offer of help was gallingly unambiguous. Scornfully rejected, he recalled with a renewal of ire, as if he were an impotent, bumbling schoolboy.

      Well, he certainly had enough other problems to solve. Now that Kit was on the mend, easing his anxiety about his immediate family, he should apply himself to the weighty matters demanding his attention. He’d pack up and return to London tomorrow at first light.

      Righteous indignation carried him through the swift disposition of the papers brought him by today’s courier, a short afternoon interview with Ellie and Catherine and dinner with the assorted company. During that interminable affair, Lady Winters seemed more than usually vacuous, Ellie tried his patience by several oblique references to Mrs. Martin and the squire chatted on about trivialities with thick-headed obliviousness. With a little difficulty, he managed to squelch the nasty but entirely understandable desire, when Ellie brought Mrs. Martin’s name into the conversation for the fourth time, to drop a tiny hint that the lady might not be who she seemed.

      Regardless of how little others might esteem it, his sense of honor was unbreachable, he told himself when, after the brandy, he was at last able to escape back to his room. He was a man worthy of the highest trust—had not even kings and cabinet ministers deferred to his ingenuity and discretion? And he certainly was not suffering pique at having his desires thwarted, overlayed by more than a little hurt that his regard had been so ignominiously spurned. He was merely … disappointed.

      By the time he’d finished packing his bags, however, the smoldering fury that had carried him through the day had burned itself out. In the cold void left after the heat of anger evaporated, the dispassionate logic upon which he prided himself belatedly resurfaced.

      Mrs. Martin’s wholly unexpected rejection of his overtures had shaken his certitude, but now that he calmly reconsidered the evidence, he was once again convinced he had not misinterpreted her reaction to him. The desire, both physical and emotional, that bound them together was strong and mutual. Why would she then send him away with such cold finality?

      The subtle signals she’d sent during that interview, nagging all day at the edges of consciousness, suddenly combined with everything else he’d observed these past few weeks to coalesce in a conclusion. One in which the apparently disjointed pieces of the puzzle that was Laura Martin fell perfectly into place. The utter certainty of it swept through him with the force of a gale wind.

      Of course she had refused the vicar. Of course she lived quietly, deliberately discouraging the notice of society in general and men in particular. Of course she begged him to leave her in obscurity, proclaiming there was no remedy for the malady that distressed her.

      Laura Martin was neither an abandoned mistress nor a widow. She was a wife. Some powerful man’s runaway wife.

      His heartbeat sped as he tried to grasp all the implications. Laura “Martin” had lived in this small community for nearly two years. If she feared her husband enough to remain in hiding that long—a fear, he realized now, he’d often been puzzled to see lurking in her eyes—the villain must be both a man of far-reaching influence—and dangerous.

      “’Tis nothing that can be helped,” she’d said. Under ordinary circumstances, she’d be right. The law gave a husband absolute ownership of his wife’s property and person, a power neither her family nor any legal authority could contravene, regardless of circumstance. A husband could not be legally convicted of rape or assault if the victim of those crimes was his wife.

      That the sole legal redress would not be easy and would probably damage his own prestige irreparably, Beau dismissed without a qualm. He had considerable influence in the House of Lords and he would use it. Difficult though it be, he would force the loathsome coward who’d called himself Laura’s husband to petition parliament for a bill of divorcement.

      Perhaps deep within he’d known the truth of it even before the vicar’s unexpected proposal shocked him to awareness, but regardless of when the realization struck, he knew it now. Laura Martin was the companion for whom he’d been waiting all his adult life. In order to keep her by his side, however, he must first free her from the man who had dishonored his husband’s vows and abused her trust. Once she was free, Beau could then beg for her hand and the right to guard and protect her forever.

      His most immediate task, however, would be to move her out of that vulnerable cottage, where there was naught but one disreputable mutt to safeguard her. He’d transport her to some location where he could watch over her while the legal proceedings moved forward. He blessed the fact that in his job he’d accumulated contacts who could help with that, as well.

      The disappointment, anguish, hurt of the previous hours dissolved in an upsurge of joyous excitement. Over the past several years he’d perfected his calling, pursuing the enemies of the state with methodical precision, quietly content to have rendered valuable, if unheralded, service to his nation. Now he would use the skills honed in that service to rescue the woman he loved and fashion a place for them to be together for a lifetime.

      He remembered then her stark avowal—that she would never again consider entering the state of wedlock —and some of his ardor dimmed. Would he be able to persuade her to once again trust in a man’s vows to love, cherish and protect?

      He refused to consider now the bleakness his life would become if he could not. But regardless of whether he was eventually successful in winning her hand, he pledged on his sacred honor that he would see her freed of her sham of a marriage, freed of fear, free to live once again in the open.

      When he left for London at dawn tomorrow, Laura Martin must go with him. Now all he needed to do was to convince her.

      The midnight air was cold and clear, the moon full enough that its light cast shadows across the cottage porch as thirty minutes later, Misfit gamboling joyfully at his heels, Beau stood at Laura Martin’s door.

      He fisted his hand to knock and then hesitated. Would an unexpected pounding on her door at midnight terrify her with fears of her husband’s pursuit? Or had she been a healer long enough that she would merely think some individual sought emergency aid?

      He decided on a single sharp rap. “Mrs. Martin, it’s Beau Bradsleigh!” he called through the night stillness. “Please, I must

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