Free Lady Arabella's Scandalous Marriage by Carole Mortimer Page A

carriage was suddenly wrenched open and one of the grooms, his grey wig askew, peered down at them in the darkness. ‘Your Grace?’ he gasped as he gazed in upon the tangle of legs, arms and bodies. ‘Are you injured?’
    ‘I myself am not,’ Darius answered grimly as he attempted to sit up and found Arabella’s arms so tightly clutched about his neck he could barely move. ‘Are you hurt, Arabella?’ he asked with concern, and he released her clinging fingers and held her slightly away from him so that he might inspect her for obvious injury.
    ‘I do not—do not know.’ Her voice was faint and slightly shaky. ‘Please get me out of here, Darius.’ Her eyes glittered wildly in the darkness as she reached up and clung to him once again. ‘Please!’
    Darius had become accustomed to her stoicism this past week, her bewitching and tempting air of self-sufficiency that challenged him into wanting to tame her. In his bed, if not out of it. To see her reduced to such trembling distress by a simple carriage accident seemed totally out of character.
    Until, that was, he suddenly recalled that the ninth Duke of Stourbridge and his duchess, Arabella’s parents, had both been killed in a carriage accident eleven years ago….
    Darius’s face was like stone as he turned to look up at the groom. ‘I am going to lift my wife so that you can remove her to safety.’ He wasted no time in suiting his actions to his words as he placed his hands about Arabella’s waist and lifted her up, allowing the other man to pull her outside into the darkened night. Darius quickly followed by placing his hands either side of the open doorway and levering himself up and out of the badly listing carriage.
    Another of the grooms had managed to quieten the horses by the time Darius lowered himself down onto the cobbled road beside a now quietly sobbing Arabella.He moved to place his arms protectively about her as he turned to take in the scene of the accident.
    There was no other carriage in sight, but one of their nearside back wheels had come completely adrift and lay some distance away. The terrible screeching noise Darius had heard earlier had obviously been that of the axle of the carriage as it was dragged along the cobbles for several feet before the groom had managed to bring the horses to a halt.
    Luckily they had not been travelling at any speed when the wheel had parted company with the carriage, which accounted for the lack of any serious injury. Even so, Darius’s face was stern as he turned his attention back to his distraught young wife. ‘You really must calm yourself, Arabella.’ He frowned as he realised how harsh his voice sounded. ‘It is all over now and there is no harm done,’ he added in a much gentler tone.
    Arabella was shaking so badly, her teeth chattering together so loudly, that for a moment she didn’t hear Darius, let alone comprehend what he had just said to her. Even once she did understand his reassurances she could not stop the trembling of her body or the shaking of her hands as she still clung to—and no doubt ruined—the lapels of his jacket. ‘I thought—I believed we were about to—to—’ She broke off with a telling shudder.
    ‘I understand, Arabella.’
    Looking up into Darius’s face, Arabella saw that he did indeed understand the reason for the depth of her distress. Understood it, perhaps, but the harshness of his expression implied that he also found her hysteria less than becoming in his wife. In his duchess. His rigidlycontrolled demeanour was so like Hawk’s would have been in the same circumstances that Arabella instantly calmed, straightening her back and shoulders and releasing Darius’s jacket before turning to look at the carriage.
    ‘The grooms and horses also escaped injury?’
    ‘Yes. But at a guess more by luck than judgement.’ Darius nodded, his eyes narrowed as he looked again at the precariously tilted carriage.
    ‘What do you mean?’ Arabella frowned her