I took any lasting damage, though.”
A few blows from her wouldn’t have done him any harm, of course. But if that odious highwayman had managed to get off a shot with his pistol…Felicity would never have forgiven herself if Thorn had been injured on her account.
“Well?” she prompted him, bracing herself for the reprimand she probably deserved. Thorn Greenwood seemed like a man who could deliver a stern scolding when one was called for.
“Well…what?” He sounded genuinely puzzled.
“The dressing-down you’ve been rehearsing in your mind ever since you left Bath.” Felicity blew her nose again. “Where is it?”
“Oh…that.” Thorn gave a wry chuckle which succumbed to a deep, weary yawn. “It’ll keep until morning. For now, I believe we’d both be better served by an hour’s sleep if we can get it.”
The poor fellow, he must be perfectly exhausted after spending the evening in search of his sister, then the last several hours in pursuit of her.
“You talk sound sense, as always, Mr. Greenwood.” Felicity made a halfhearted attempt to rise from Thorn’s lap. “No doubt you would rest more comfortably without the burden of a blubbering woman to squash you.”
She would likely benefit from putting some distance between them, too. It was difficult enough to keep regrets at bay without the sensation of his arms around her to remind Felicity what she would soon be missing.
“You’re no burden.” With gentle insistence, Thorn drew her back into the protective circle of his arms. “Besides, I’m apt to sleep more soundly for the reminder that you are out of danger.”
“In that case…” Felicity settled back into Thorn’s embrace. “I’m content to remain where I am.”
More than content, in fact. Though she did not dare tell him so.
“Thorn?”
“Yes?” He sounded halfway to sleep already.
She shouldn’t pester him with questions, Felicity chided herself, but she so liked the sound of his voice. “Wherever did you get a horse to come after me?”
“From St. Just.” Thorn patted his pocket. “I’ve got blunt, too. Won it in a card game.”
If Thorn had confessed to stealing the money, Felicity could not have been more surprised. “I thought you never gambled.”
“Never did till tonight.” His words had the slurred, dreamy quality Felicity had heard so often in the past weeks when he’d held her close after their lovemaking. “Don’t know the devil about cards. It may have helped that I was the only sober fellow at the table.”
“Perhaps a little beginner’s luck?” Knowing full well she shouldn’t do it, Felicity could not stop herself reaching up to brush her knuckles against Thorn’s side whiskers.
“Perhaps.” He whispered the word as if it was the sweetest of endearments.
Then, before Felicity could withdraw her hand, he tilted his head to catch her fingers between his shoulder and his cheek, nuzzling them in a chaste gesture of affection that brought a lump to her throat.
She forced her question out past the obstruction. “How could you possibly stake yourself in the sort of bankrupting card game Weston St. Just favors?”
Thorn’s head snapped up again, flinching from her touch in a way he had not flinched from her earlier attack. “I’m not a complete pauper, you know.”
His fortune—or rather his lack of it. Even as she regretted her question, Felicity could not stifle a twinge of annoyance. How many years had she tread with bated breath around the subject of her late husband’s want of prosperity?
At least Thorn Greenwood was making an effort to repair his family’s fortune. And by a more principled means than simply marrying the first available heiress.
“I didn’t say you were a pauper. Most men don’t carry a great deal of ready money around in the middle of the night, that’s all.”
Thorn did not answer at once. Had he fallen asleep, Felicity wondered, or was he too offended to reply?
“I have an old watch and a signet ring,” he said at last, as if confessing to a crime. “St. Just managed to convince the other players they were worth something.”
His admission stung Felicity in a vulnerable spot, just as her question about his gambling stakes must have done to Thorn. She knew very well the watch and ring to which he’d alluded. What price they might fetch from a jeweller, she could not guess. Yet they were priceless to Thorn—a reminder that he belonged to an old family of good breeding.
Despite her fortune and the title for which she’d paid so dear a price, Felicity knew many people still scorned her as an upstart tradesman’s daughter. Suitable only as a mistress for a respectable gentleman like Thorn Greenwood, but never a wife.
Such a union would cause no end of talk. And respectable gentlemen abhorred being a topic of gossip among tattles like Weston St. Just.
Thorn’s arms relaxed their grip on Felicity, and his breath warmed her hair in slow, rhythmic gusts. As she steeled herself to put a great deal more distance between them on the morrow, a further significance of his gambling stakes struck her.
He had gone to a great deal of trouble on her account. First, gambling his most valued possessions, then riding through the night to overtake her carriage. Finally, risking his life to rescue her from danger. Thorn Greenwood was not a man given to pretty speeches, but his actions spoke eloquently of his feelings for her.
Percy Lyte had never valued her as anything more than a source of hard cash and heirs. And when she’d proven deficient in the latter capacity, her husband’s thinly veiled contempt had eroded something vital within her. Something that Thorn’s honest, unconditional affection promised to nourish.
He had put aside his natural prudence to take a gamble for her sake, Felicity mused as the first feeble glimmer of daybreak gilded his strong, agreeable features. She, on the other hand, would need to curb her own daring impulses, lest they induce her to take a reckless gamble on Thorn Greenwood.
And risk losing far more than she could afford.
Thorn woke with such a violent start he might have dumped Felicity onto the floor of the carriage, if her arms had not been clasped so firmly around his neck.
The jolt did succeed in rousing her from her own sleep, though.
“What’s the matter, my dear?” she asked. “Did you dream about that awful highwayman?”
“Ah…something like that.” Thorn struggled to curb the sensation of panic that galloped within his chest.
He could scarcely recall his dream, now, though it had seemed so real and urgent only a moment ago.
He’d been playing some curious game of cards for stakes that had grown larger and larger. Until he could no longer fold his hand without being ruined. Fear and reckless confidence had warred within him when he’d finally lain down his promising handful of hearts, only to be
