The Courtship - Catherine Coulter [85]
He carried her all the way past the front entrance to Shugborough Hall, all the way to where the night shadows were deepest, to where he had hidden a carriage. He heard one of the peacocks bleat after him. He was breathing very hard.
He was, he thought, as he gently closed Helen inside the carriage, an amazing man, strong of back, mighty of will. He had wrapped her up in three blankets on the floor of the carriage, and tucked pillows around her. He hadn’t wanted to take the chance that she would roll off the seat. He was still breathing hard when he climbed up onto the box and click-clicked the sturdy gray gelding forward. Both Eleanor and Luther were safe and snug in the Shugborough Hall stables.
He whistled into the soft night air as he drove the ten miles to the small hunting box he had rented yesterday morning at ten o’clock from Lord Marchhaven, who had asked Lord Beecham if he was planning on entertaining a hunting party. Spenser had just shaken his head and smiled. “Ah,” said Lord Marchhaven, nodding. “I am pleased that it is a nice house.”
“I will require it for perhaps a week,” Lord Beecham had said.
Again Lord Marchhaven merely nodded, then said as he and Spenser shook hands, “I have learned that sometimes in life a man is forced to do something that sits perilously close to the edge of scandalous to obtain the indispensable. Enjoy yourself, my lord.” It was obvious that Lord Marchhaven sniffed a week’s worth of wickedness. Lord Beecham should have told him that he intended a lifetime of marital wickedness.
Well, as he figured it, Helen was indispensable to him. He believed, deep down, that he was also indispensable to her. Why had she refused him? It didn’t make any sense.
The Marchhaven hunting box was an elegant little Georgian brick house, all stiff and starchy, nearly a perfect square, two stories high, ivy twining in and out of the red bricks. It was set on the edge of the Houghton Forest, much of it owned by the Marchhaven family, for hunting parties. No one was there at present.
When he finally carried Helen into the house, he was still whistling, thinking of how he had wheedled and pleaded and even drunk a glass of champagne with Bishop Horton to obtain a Special License, but he had done it. He whistled louder, so pleased with himself that he nearly dropped Helen on the stairs. His back hurt a bit, but he discounted it.
The house was simply set out. Upstairs there were four bedchambers, the master’s bedchamber at the end of the hall. It was nice and big. So was the bed, at least large enough to hold six men side by side. Helen would be quite comfortable here. The headboard was slatted, a truly convenient thing for him.
He shook off the blankets and his cloak and gently eased Helen under the covers. He whistled while he lit three branches of candles, then started a fire in the large fireplace.
He looked around the bedchamber. It was excellent, just excellent. It was an ideal place for a man to bring the woman he’d kidnapped, the woman who must need learn that not marrying the man she bit on the neck wasn’t to be tolerated.
He had given it a good deal of thought. Helen wasn’t a milksop. If she could, she would brain him at the first opportunity. He couldn’t allow her any opportunities, but accomplishing this did set many problems in his path.
He went back to the carriage, brought up the two valises, the second one his, and took the nice old gelding to the small stable to stick his nose in a trough of oats. Back in the bedchamber, he pulled out four of his cravats.
She would awaken soon enough. Ah, that marvelous potion Mrs. Toop had given him, stars in her eyes when he had pleaded his case, giving in quickly because of the glorious romance of all of it. “Just imagine,” she said, her hands over her large bosom, “my mistress will learn more about discipline. Oh, goodness, she will, won’t she, my lord? Do you promise?”
Since this seemed inordinately important to her, Lord Beecham had quickly nodded and given her endless assurances that he had more to teach Miss Helen