Page 14 of Outrageous

Godric shifted into the corner so his bound hands weren’t pressing against the seat back.

“I don’t know what you’re smiling at,” the little shrew snapped, giving him a look of pure loathing.

“I’m just imagining the tale you’ll tell the local magistrate when we reach Doncaster. Sir Bertram Woodville is in charge of that area, and he and I were chums at Eton.”

“How nice for you.”

“His younger brother was in my regiment.”

The young giant groaned and his head fell back with a thunk.

Lady Eva elbowed him hard in the side. “What is wrong with you, James?”

“It wasn’t right, my lady.”

“What wasn’t right?”

“Making mock of a war hero.”

Her eyes slid to Godric and he raised his eyebrows. She opened her mouth—no doubt to scold—but the boy wasn’t done.

“They’re going to clap me in leg irons and summon the marquess.” His head rolled from side to side. “And there is probably some special crime I’m guilty of for abducting a war hero.”

Lady Eva’s jaw worked, the gears in her pretty head grinding away while she fixed her remarkable blue-violet eyes on Godric.

“This is all your fault,” she said.

“Ha! I’m afraid I don’t see how that can be.”

“You forced me to do this because you wouldn’t leave Gabriel be. Why do you hate my brother? What has he ever done to you?”

Godric felt the amusement drain from his face. “That is men’s business and none of your affair, little girl.”

“I beg to differ. He is my brother and I love him. Thanks to you, he is married to my best friend, whom I also love. While I might be happy they’re married, their happiness was not your goal when you forced them to wed, was it? You only made sure they had to marry because you knew Gabriel had shown interest in The Kitten and you wanted to make him suffer.”

Godric shrugged, hoping the mortification he felt at her apt assessment did not show on his face.

Her mouth tightened and her expression became speculative. “I don’t think you even know what you are doing or why, do you? I think you’re suffering from some form of madness—something brought on by the war: the male hysteria.”

“My lady!” Her groom’s voice was sharp and his eyes bulged, his chastisement making the girl’s face flush.

Godric noticed all this through a red haze of fury and his hands shook and his heart pounded in his ears. “Well, you would know all about madness, wouldn’t you?”

Lady Eva’s nostrils flared and the boy’s chin pulled down, his brown eyes blazing just as fiercely as his mistress’s.

“That was ill done of you, my lord,” the groom said.

Godric could face the girl’s anger, but the boy’s disappointed, accusing eyes were something else. They spoke more loudly than words and their expression was damning. It made him see himself plainly. He was being a bully; what he’d said was wrong and ungentlemanly and cruel.

“I apologize.” He could barely grind out the words. “Your groom is correct: that was ill done of me.”

She shrugged, but her full lips had tightened and there were bright spots of color on her cheeks. “It doesn’t matter a whit to me what you say.”

Godric knew that for a lie, but he kept his mouth shut.

“What matters is that you cannot hurt my brother from where you sit right now. That,” she said, giving him a hard, chill look that should have been ludicrous on such a beautiful, youthful face but wasn’t, “is what matters now.”

Godric shifted in his seat, his arms aching and his shoulders sore. The physical discomfort added to his shame over his wretched behavior, making him even more irritable. Good God, but it was annoying to be wrong in front of such an infant. He seized on that annoyance, even though he knew he was only adding to the large pile of wrongs he’d already created. “I beg to differ, my lady. The issue of kidnapping is what will matter when we reach Doncaster and I speak to Sir Bertram.”