Page 6 of Outrageous

“Think that’s funny, do you?” She lifted the jug and took a noisy slurp. “Mmmm.” She lowered the jug and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “Delicious.” Then she slammed the bung into the jug with her fist and placed the coffee back in the bag before scrabbling up onto the seat, never removing her eyes from his.

His stomach growled loudly enough to be heard over the wheels of the carriage. His foggy brain snagged on the thought: a carriage.

He forgot all about coffee. “We’re in a carriage.”

“Can’t slide much past you, can I?”

“Where are we going?”

“To Liverpool.”

Godric squinted. He could not have heard her correctly. “What?”

“I’ve sold you to a cruel and brutal merchant captain.” She paused, her mouth twisting oddly. “His name is Captain Blackclaw and his ship is called The Torment.” She sucked her lower lip into her mouth, white teeth resting on pink softness. And then a snort broke out of her pretty mouth and she doubled over. “Oh, Lord! You should see your face, Visel.” She rolled around on her seat, howling with delight.

The woman was, Godric decided, every bit as crazy as she was reported to be.

* * *

Eva knew she was behaving badly, but she couldn’t help it. Mocking the haughty, handsome, and furious Lord Visel was simply too much fun to pass up.

“When you are finished amusing yourself, perhaps you might tell me where we are really going.” His voice was like an arctic blast and he was glaring at her through eyes that were almost as pale as her father’s. For one dreadful moment she experienced the same tightening in her chest she did when Lord Exley stared at her with such open disappointment. But then she recalled this man was in her power.

She crossed her arms. “I’ll tell you where we are going when you need to know it.”

His face darkened in a way that was decidedly satisfying.

“Right now the only thing you need to know is that you should behave yourself. Angering me would be ill-advised. In fact, it would be best if you kept me entertained—as you have been doing. Otherwise you shall find yourself tied up on the floor again.” She smirked. “With a rag stuffed into your mouth.”

He cut a glance down at his wrists and the red chafe marks on the tanned skin. Eva had not been happy about inflicting such pain on him. And of course James had almost suffered an apoplexy when he’d gone to loosen the bonds, insisting they remove them entirely rather than simply re-tie them. She’d let him have his way, but only after a very heated argument.

“That’s it, my lady. When he wakes up it will be the end. And if we don’t both swing for this—”

“Oh hush,” she’d told him irritably, tired of his incessant naysaying. Probably because she knew he had a convincing argument for almost everything he said. “You can ride on the box if you’re so terrified about what he will do when he wakes up.”

“It would serve you right if I did,” James snapped right back. “And what would you do when he woke up and found you all alone, I want to know?”

Eva had reached into the big leather satchel she’d taken from her brother Gabriel and produced one of her father’s dueling pistols.

James had howled so loudly it was amazing he hadn’t woken the dead, not to mention the dead-to-the-world peer tied up on the floor between them. “That is one of his lordship’s dueling pistols, isn’t it?”

“Well it certainly isn’t one of her ladyship’s.”

James had rapped on the roof.

“What are you doing?” Eva demanded.

“Riding on the box.”

That had made her frown. “You can’t. I forbid you.”

“You just told me to.”

Lord! But there was nothing she hated more than being proved wrong in the middle of an argument.

James opened the door when the chaise stopped.

“I order you to remain in here with me, James.”