The Devil and Miss Jones

But the day she had seen the hall had been a bright, clear, crisp morning, with the sun high in a wide blue sky. The sweeping drive up to the big house had been clear of the mist that had swirled around it this morning, and the temperature had been a good ten degrees or more higher than the bitter chill that seemed to have crept into her bones, turning them to ice as she had trudged up the path towards the road.

It had never seemed such a long, long trek either, when she had first imagined the journey in a horse-drawn carriage that would take her from her fairy-tale wedding and off on the honeymoon of a lifetime, her new husband at her side. But that had been when she had only driven down it in the secure, warm confines of a sleek, powerful car, snugly wrapped in jeans and a cashmere sweater. She would give her soul to be able to wrap something like that around her right now and ease some of the chill that had made the last half an hour or more such sheer misery. Though the truth was that it was the coldness inside that was far worse even than the weather.

Back then, her feet had been comfy and protected inside soft leather boots, not the delicate satin, crystal-decorated slippers that were now totally soaked through and feeling like little more than sodden paper between her feet and the rough surface of the road. Her hair was damp and had started to slide out of the ornate style that had been created only an hour or so before, her carefully applied make-up running down her face, washed away by the rain as she ran down the drive.

And the man she had been planning on marrying was still somewhere back in the Hall, hastily erasing all evidence of the dirty, illicit passion he had just indulged in. A passion that he had never felt for her, except in his lies.

‘Please stop…’

She couldn’t get to her rescuer fast enough, almost tripping over her long skirts as she ran towards him.

Two cars had already rushed past her. She wasn’t sure if the drivers had actually seen her or, having seen, had decided to put their foot down and rush past, the sight of a bedraggled, mud-splattered bride, miles from anywhere, just too much for them to cope with. And she’d stood there, her feet turning into blocks of ice, her hands going blue, the skin of her face stinging with the cold.

She had thought that today was to be the start of her happy ever after. But for that to happen, then Gavin would have had to be her prince, instead of the ugly toad he had turned out to be. She supposed it could have been worse. If she’d still been caught up in the fantasy of being in love—in love with the idea of being in love—then she could have had her heart shattered as well. But she’d already had second thoughts, and it seemed that her instincts had been working true. But all the same the vicious, cruel words she had heard had taken every last trace of her self-esteem, her sense of herself as a woman, and shattered it into tiny pieces.

The thrum of the motorbike’s engine had her running headlong down the rutted road, suddenly fearful that this unexpected rescuer too would put his foot on the accelerator and speed away, abandoning her totally.

‘Please—please don’t go…’

‘I’m not going anywhere.’

The voice, muffled slightly by the silver helmet he wore, didn’t sound quite English. Or perhaps that was because of the wind roaring in her ears, the racing of her heart in panic at the thought that he might be about to leave her alone again. She was so cold she couldn’t think straight.

But at least he had switched off the engine on his bike, had swung his long leg over the machine so that he was standing, tall and dark—so tall!—in front of her.

‘I promise I’m not going anywhere,’ he repeated.

‘Oh, thank heaven!’ It was a fervent sigh, rather ruined by the way that her teeth chattered together on the last word. ‘I…’

‘What the hell happened to you?’ he demanded, the rich dark voice rough with something she hoped was concern.

How much did she tell him? What did she tell him? It wasn’t just the cold that had numbed her brain so that she couldn’t think straight. In the moments that she had run to be near him, coming to a halt at his side, she had suddenly found that her mood had swung from relief and delight to a new and disturbing rush of something very different. A sense of apprehension mixed with a sharp, intense awareness of the simple fact that he was a man. A man whose powerful figure and strong frame suddenly made her heart lurch in a mind-spinning shock of response.

‘No—wait!’

It was a command, sharp, autocratic, and she realised that he was unzipping the substantial leather jacket he wore with battered denim jeans and heavy black leather boots. Shrugging himself out of it, he moved closer.

‘Here…’

He slung it around her shoulders, letting it settle like a thick black cape over the exposed skin, the soaked silk of her bodice.

‘You’re frozen.’

‘U-understatement.’

It was all that Martha could manage and even then her voice shook on the words. She was beginning to feel as if she had lost contact with her mouth, her lips frozen stiff so that it was hard to speak. The shivers she had been fighting off suddenly returned in full force, driving her to tug the jacket tightly around her, huddling into it for comfort. It was still deliciously warm from his body and it smelled faintly of clean musky male skin, and some tangy cologne that unexpectedly made her heart skip a beat. The feeling of relief from the cold was overlaid with another, unexpected pulse of heat that had nothing to do with the jacket but was a stunning, unexpected sensual response.

‘Th-thank you.’

She wasn’t quite sure how she got the words out. The shock that ricocheted through her in that moment seemed to clear her head, bringing her up short. She had been so overjoyed to have help, to see some other human being out here in the wilds, to have someone actually stop to help, that she hadn’t stopped to think—about anything. But right now she realised that thinking was what she had to do—and fast.

She didn’t know this man from Adam. Had no idea who he was and why he had actually stopped. She was here in the middle of nowhere, alone, defenceless— she couldn’t even run if she wanted to with the narrow, sleek skirt of her dress clinging close around her legs and ankles. She had thought that it looked so elegant when she had first tried it on. She had even—wonder of wonders—felt almost beautiful when she had looked in the mirror of her room back in the Hall when she had got ready. Well, Gavin had taken that impression and crushed it beneath his heel just moments later.

Was it really just an hour or so before?

His cruelty had driven her out of the house in a desperate need to escape—first from the wedding that had turned into her idea of a personal sort of hell and now, possibly from this man—this stranger…

Did he even plan to help her?

All at once the rush of warmth and delight that had sizzled through her when she had first seen him ebbed away fast, leaving behind a sort of bruised, painful feeling. Still clutching the jacket around her, pulling it tighter than ever as a sort of protection against the way she was feeling, at the same time she knew a longing to tear it off and throw it from her as if accepting it had led her into reckless danger. Unable to think straight, she took a couple of hasty steps backwards, almost missing her footing on a rough patch of grass and turning her ankle sharply so that she cried out in shock and pain.

‘Hey…’

The man’s hands, big, strong, encased in black leather gloves, came out to catch her, pulling her upright when she almost fell. Supporting her easily, he shook his head.

‘No—do not look at me like that.’

It was there again, that hint of something foreign—exotic—in his words. This time she was sure that it was not her hearing that was deceiving her, but very definitely the sound of some accent that was nothing like the local flat-vowelled burr. It was unexpected, somehow shockingly appealing.

‘I have no intention of hurting you, I swear… Look—’

His free hand unfastened his helmet swiftly. As he pulled it off he shook his head sharply, freeing the rather long jet black hair that was now exposed. The wind howled round them, blowing it against his face so that as he turned back to her he had to toss it out of his eyes.

And what eyes! Martha didn’t know what she had been expecting. She could see so little of him, with his long body, those powerful hands, all encased in black leather and denim, his face hidden under the silver helmet. But from the hint of skin she could just see—golden, olive-toned skin that was not the pallid white of an Englishman at the tag end of winter—and the trace of accent she realised that she had anticipated something dark, deep brown or maybe a polished jet. Instead she found herself looking into a pair of mossy green eyes, glinting with the light of a many-faceted jewel stone that made them deep and dark while at the same time shot through with an almost golden hue. They gleamed above high, slanting cheekbones, fringed with impossibly long, lush black lashes that should have looked effeminate on a man but that somehow, in this strongly carved, stunning face just looked amazing—and incredibly, gorgeously sexy.

But he also looked dangerous. Big and dark and powerful. Those impossibly long, lush eyelashes should have softened his face, but instead they somehow contrasted so sharply with the high, carved cheekbones, the square, forceful jaw and uncompromising mouth that the impression they left was one of concealment, hiding the beauty of those stunning green eyes behind their dark fringe, and turning it into something secret, inscrutable—disturbing.

Just who was this man who had come to her rescue—knight in shining armour or the devil himself?

‘Believe me, I have no intention of hurting you.’

He repeated the words with an added edge for emphasis and while they relieved her tension, that double edge to them had exactly the opposite effect. That accent didn’t help either. It was too foreign, too exotic, to belong in any sort of world where she lived.

‘How do I know that?’

He sighed, tossed back an overlong strand of hair that the wind had blown against his face. As she watched that sensual mouth twitch in something that might have been amusement—or an acknowledgement of her right to indignation—she felt a twisting bite of response that had nothing to do with unease and everything to do with a purely female reaction to a glorious specimen of manhood.

The problem was that it was not usually the way she felt about the opposite sex. The way she had ever felt about any man… even Gavin. That was one of the things that had made her face the fact that she was deluding herself about her proposed marriage.

‘I can give you my word.’

‘And what exactly will that mean to me?’

Once awoken, her sense of self-preservation had coming rushing back in double force. If she hadn’t learned anything about the way that since her life had changed, everyone would react so differently towards her, then surely the devastating scene she had witnessed back at the Hall would finally—finally have taught her that she needed to take so much more care with relationships from now on.

But surprisingly, the memory of the sight that had met her eyes as she had walked into Cindy’s room was having the strangest effect on her. Just when it should have made her stop and think, should have pushed her to have second and then very probably third thoughts about what she was doing, instead it seemed to have exactly the opposite effect. When she should have thought extra carefully and played things cautiously, sensibly, in the way that she had lived most of her life up to now, she suddenly felt that what she actually wanted was to break free, be less constrained. Sensible was very definitely not what she wanted to be.

Her life had been turned on its head. It had been blasted apart and there was no way she was ever going to be able to put the pieces back together again. At least not in a way that rebuilt the picture as it had been before. She had tried the safe, the careful—the damn sensible—and look where it had got her. Out here on an exposed moor, wearing a bridal dress for a wedding that had never meant a single thing that she had believed in. A future that had been a mistake from the start.