How to Lose a Bride in One Night (Forgotten Princesses #3)(11)

Another long pause. In the hazy fog of her thoughts, she began to wonder if he was even beside her anymore.

At last his voice came, as distant as thunder on a sweeping Yorkshire plain. “I’m not going anywhere. I’ll be here when you wake.”



She awake?”

Owen turned to where Mirela stood in the doorway. Afternoon light flooded around her small frame, suffusing the interior of the wagon. The caravan had stopped briefly for lunch. They should be arriving in Pedmont, a village outside London later today. Apparently it was Pedmont’s annual fair. Mirela and her kinsmen supported themselves by traveling from fair to fair and offering up their talents.

He nodded. “For a moment, yes.”

“She spoke?”

He nodded, his gaze returning to Anna’s face, the features soft and relaxed in sleep.

“Good. Tomorrow we will have her move about some.”

“Her name is Anna,” he volunteered.

Mirela nodded, hardly seeming to process this as she moved back out the door.

“Thank you,” he called after her, well aware that the girl—Anna—would probably have died if not for Mirela’s care. For all her gruff ways, Mirela had been ever attentive, nursing her through her fever, tending to her leg and barking commands at him.

Standing, he ducked his head to avoid hitting the ceiling, he watched Mirela as she waved a hand in dismissal, moving to rejoin her family lunching beneath a tree outside. He usually stayed in the wagon with Anna or rode his mount behind the wagons when the tight space became too oppressive for him. Luca eyed him resentfully from beside his mother.

A reminder that this was only temporary. He was an outsider, tolerated but not accepted. Which was well and fine with him. He didn’t want to belong here. He didn’t belong anywhere.

Once Anna could move, they would leave.

They.

Dragging a hand through his hair, he turned to stare back down at the girl. It wouldn’t be they for long. Once she was awake and could communicate at any length, she would tell him where her people were and he would safely deliver her into their care.

Then it would be just him again. As it should be.



Less pain greeted her the second time she awoke. She sat up cautiously, her hand brushing the thin fabric of her nightgown. Well, not her nightgown. Someone else’s nightgown.

The tight space was even darker than the last time, but she knew she hadn’t changed location. The same musty, herbed aroma permeated the air.

She listened to the silence for a moment, reassuring herself that she was all alone. She felt herself, her hands patting down her body carefully, testing for injuries. Her palms encountered her splinted leg. Dread filled her chest as she recalled the last time she broke her leg. In the beginning she thought the aching limp would go away. It never had. Again she wondered if she would even be able to walk this time.

The burn of tears prickled her eyes. Following her accident, self-pity had threatened to overwhelm her. There were so many times it took every ounce of her will to face the world. The day she had climbed that tree haunted her. At night, in the bed she had shared with her mother, she would close her eyes and play it over and over in her mind. Only in her wishful imaginings, she refused the dare issued by Mrs. Danvers’s obnoxious son, and never climbed that tree. She never fell.

Now she had broken it again. Regret swept through her. Tears stung her eyes. She squeezed them tight until the burn abated.

If only she hadn’t believed in Jack’s fairy-tale promises and married the duke.

If only she hadn’t allowed Bloodsworth to throw her into that river.

Inhaling sharply, her fingers clenched tightly around the wooden splints on her leg. She shook her head in the dark. No. No more pity. She wouldn’t pity herself ever again. Even if she couldn’t walk. She was finished letting things happen to her. She would make her own fate from now on.

“Anna?”

She jerked, swallowing back a scream.

“It’s me.”

And instantly she knew. She recognized the deep voice of her rescuer. She drew in a shuddery breath. He was somewhere to her left. Below her. Presumably on the floor. “Mr. Crawford?”

“Are you in pain?” he asked.

“No.” Her breath came out whisper-soft. “What are you doing?”

“Sleeping.”

Evidently not. Not if he had heard her slight movements. “On the . . . floor?” In the dark? In such proximity to her bed? Her skin shivered.

“I’ve slept on this pallet since we joined Mirela and her family.”

She realized she still had no clue where she was. She had just vowed to never be a victim again, but she wasn’t exactly in a position of strength. She was completely at the mercy of this man. An altogether untenable situation. One she would change as soon as possible.

“Where are we?”

There was a slight shifting, and she imagined he was scooting closer to her bed—this unknown, faceless man with his deep voice. Goose bumps broke out across her flesh.

“We’re outside a village. Pedmont. How are you feeling?”

“Sore,” she replied.

“You’re very lucky. Mirela is a healer. I don’t think a physician could have cared for you better.”

“Lucky.” The word escaped her like an epithet. Nothing about her life felt lucky. True, she could be dead, but her fate still hung in doubt. She couldn’t surface and reveal herself. The duke would finish what he started on their wedding barge.