Free Nicola Cornick, Margaret McPhee, et al by Christmas Wedding Belles Page B

the edge of the fur covers as though to slip
underneath.
    ‘What are you doing?’ Lucinda asked, scooting across to the other
side of the sleigh.
    Daniel paused. ‘I am coming in there with you. What do you expect
me to do? Shiver all night in a snowdrift?’
    ‘But…’ Lucinda grabbed the rugs up to her chin. ‘Surely you
should go with Holroyd back to the ship? I will be quite safe here.’ She took a
deep breath. This might be her best opportunity to explain to Daniel the
half-formed plan that she had made concerning the future.
    ‘I have been thinking,’ she said. ‘I have a plan, Daniel, which
means that neither you nor I need be trapped into anything we do not wish. I
thought that if you were to return to the Defiance now, without me,
someone would be bound to find me before too long. And when they do I will
simply pretend that you coerced me at the ball and that I am blameless of all
crime…’
    Her voice trailed away as she sensed the rather ominous silence
that greeted her words. She could not see Daniel clearly in the near-darkness,
but she could feel his outrage.
    ‘Let me understand you,’ he said, after a long moment. ‘Having
taken me to task for abandoning you in the past, you are now suggesting that I
should behave like a complete scoundrel, leave you here at the mercy of whoever
should stumble out of the storm and find you, and that I should run back to my
ship, make my escape, and leave you to take all the consequences?’
    Lucinda had seldom heard him so angry. Not since she had been in
her teens, when an irate farmer had shouted at her for trying to free his
exhausted ploughing team and Daniel had practically threatened to run the man
through.
    ‘Well,’ Lucinda said, through suddenly chattering teeth, ‘I
thought it was a good plan.’
    ‘It is the stupidest plan that I have heard in an age,’ Daniel
said, in the same hard, insulted voice. ‘For once in my life, Lucy, permit me
to do the right thing .’
    These last words were hissed through his teeth.
    ‘But—’
    ‘I will stay with you,’ Daniel continued, as though she had not
spoken. ‘When the snow ceases we will finish the journey back to the ship, and
there I will marry you.’
    Lucinda sat bolt upright. ‘Now, just a minute! That will not be
necessary, Daniel. I have already said that I will not marry you.’
    ‘You will marry me. As ship’s captain I have the right to
conduct marriage services, and the first one I shall perform is my own.’
    ‘That is definitely illegal,’ Lucinda said, hoping she was right.
    Daniel ignored her. He slid beneath the blankets and his body
grazed against hers. Lucinda felt the long, hard length of him, felt his legs
entangle with hers beneath the petticoats, and tried to shift away as far as
she could. Her throat was dry, and her heart was thundering in her ears, a
counterpoint to the soft swish of the snow against the roof of the sleigh. A
moment later he had put out a negligent hand and pulled her into his arms. Her
hands came up against the hard, warm barrier of his chest.
    ‘You are cold and you are suffering from shock,’ he said against
her hair. ‘You need to stop worrying about what is going to happen and allow me
to warm you.’
    Lucinda was shivering violently, but not with either cold or
shock now. ‘I do not need you to warm me,’ she argued. ‘I certainly do not need
you to marry me, and I cannot permit you to do the right thing.’
    She felt him smile. His cheek was pressed to hers, his lips
resting in the little, sensitive hollow beneath her ear. He reached with his
free hand and pulled his jacket towards them, delving in the pocket.
    ‘Take some of this brandy, Lucy, and please stop arguing with me.
You know I can be at least as stubborn as you, if not more so.’
    Their fingers touched as Lucinda took the small flask of brandy
from him. ‘Is this the brandy that you smuggle?’ She enquired.
    ‘It is. Drink it up.’
    ‘I hate brandy.’ Even so she tilted it