Free Captured by a Gentleman (Regency Unlaced 6) by Carole Mortimer Page A

been as quiet as possible when he brought in several armfuls of wood to keep the fire alight and the two of them warm overnight.
    Once Darcy woke, they had consumed some of the food and drunk some of the wine provided by the inn for their picnic.
    The latter they’d done without either of them speaking a word to the other.
    Ranulf, because he wished to keep his thoughts to himself.
    Darcy, he believed, because she was belatedly feeling embarrassment at their earlier intimacy.
    Although her invitation now for him to join her on the cot would seem she had now recovered from that embarrassment too!
    “One of us needs to remain alert,” he dismissed offhandedly.
    Darcy sat up on the cot, looping her arms about her bent knees covered by the blanket as she looked at the pistol Ranulf held resting on one of his thighs. “Do you think they are outside? Watching us? Waiting for us to fall asleep and then—”
    “Do not let your imagination run away with you.” Ranulf gave her a censorious glance. “There is only a possibility we were followed. My pistol is merely a precaution.”
    A quiver of fear ran the length of her spine. “Your pistol will be of no use if he sets fire to the cottage. We could both burn in our beds.”
    “Not when I am seated in a chair,” he bit out dryly.
    “You are mocking me again.”
    He stood up restlessly. “I am endeavoring to allay your approaching hysteria.”
    She sat up straighter. “I am never hysterical.”
    “In the same way you do not prattle? Or sigh loudly when you are thinking?”
    Darcy frowned. “I proved I do not prattle. And I only sigh loudly when you make it obvious you have no interest in listening to my thoughts or ideas on a subject.”
    She looked so indignant, it was all Ranulf could do to stop himself from smiling. No woman dressed only in her nightgown, her hair a glorious red-gold shimmer down her spine, should be able to look quite so prim and rebuking.
    He sobered. “I already know your thoughts on this subject. Talking about them will not change them.”
    “What shall we converse about, then?”
    He sighed his impatience. “Why do we have to converse at all?”
    She shrugged bare shoulders. “We are both awake, so why not talk to pass the time?”
    Because Ranulf chose not to fully reveal himself to anyone anymore. Not since Millicent. He had trusted her as his wife, allowed her to share his hopes and dreams, to know him, and in return, he had received only deception and betrayal.
    “I am not Millicent.”
    Ranulf’s gaze sharpened as he looked at Darcy. He could clearly see from those red-gold curls tumbling down her back and her forthright brown eyes that she was not Millicent. But she was a woman. One he had already made love to. And women, so different from men, very often thought intimacy gave them the right to ask personal questions. Worse, they expected the man to answer those questions.
    “You would not be here if you were,” he assured her harshly.
    “Were you so unhappy with her? Did you not find any happiness together at all? Before?”
    Until a few minutes before Millicent’s death, when Ranulf learned the truth, he had believed himself to be content enough in his choice of wife.
    If anything, having lived in ignorance of his wife’s true nature for the previous four months, the happiness he had thought was his had made the truth even more painful to bear.
    He sighed as he saw the determined glitter in Darcy’s dark eyes. “I was content enough. What of you?” He was just as determined to change the subject. “You are almost one and twenty years old. Why are you not betrothed or married?”
    Her gaze avoided meeting his. “My parents were happy together, and they would never have pressured me into accepting a betrothal with a man I did not love.”
    “I did not ask about love, Darcy,” Ranulf drawled. “The emotion, I have discovered, rarely has anything to do with Society marriages. Even indulgent parents such as yours must have