The Warrior's Innocent Captive, page 24
But Worsley gave her no chance to finish.
‘I wasn’t born yesterday,’ he snapped. ‘Nor am I the kind that your type of female can manage. I am well up to your weight, even if my ward isn’t.’
His comment drew her attention, once again, to his stature. Because of her height, most men scarcely reached up to her chin. This man, on the other hand, not only topped her in height by several inches, but had shoulders the width of a mantelpiece.
‘So hold your tongue,’ he said. ‘And accept the fact that I have thwarted your plans.’
He might be larger than most men, but he was no more intelligent, she promptly decided. What was more, he was the type who thought he knew better, simply because he was a man, even when he was plainly in the wrong.
Well, let him make an ass of himself. This was nothing to do with her.
Lifting her chin, she gave him the withering look she had already used to such good effect once that day and ceased attempting to explain what was really going on. It wasn’t her place, after all. The argument was really between Worsley and Gregory.
As if coming to the same conclusion, Worsley turned his attention to Gregory.
‘As for you,’ he snapped, ‘you ought to know better. Didn’t I warn you to beware of women like this?’ He waved one arm in Dorothy’s direction. ‘Women who will do just about anything to get their hands on a title? To worm their way into society?’
‘Now see here,’ said Gregory, rather pale-faced, and giving the appearance of girding up his loins, as though he had never attempted to stand up to the larger, older man before. Which, since Worsley had revealed he was Gregory’s guardian, was likely to be the case. ‘You are making a mistake...’
‘No. I am merely making sure that you do not,’ said Worsley. ‘It is not too late to undo what this creature has tried to make you do. You will return to London with me, now, and I will...’
‘No!’ Gregory shook his head. ‘I cannot possibly leave a gently reared female alone and unprotected in an inn. Miles away from anyone she knows. And if you were half the gentleman you keep saying you want me to be, you wouldn’t suggest it!’
Worsley blinked. Appeared to consider Gregory’s argument. And gave a brief nod.
‘You are correct. Much better if I return the hussy to her family instead.’
So saying, he sort of swooped on Dorothy and, before she rightly knew what he intended, he’d heaved her over his shoulder like a sack of coal. A shoulder which she discovered had not only the width, but also the marble-like consistency of a mantelpiece. And which knocked the breath from her lungs.
He had carried her into the corridor before she regained the ability to speak. Or the wits to begin beating at his back with her fists.
‘What are you doing?’
What a stupid thing to say. It was obvious what he was doing. What she ought to be doing was demanding he put her down.
‘Put me down this instant,’ she therefore cried. To no avail. The oaf just kept on walking. Along the corridor, in the direction of the inn door.
Until the landlord stepped in his path.
‘ʼEre,’ he protested. ‘What be you doing?’
Hurrah! Even if Gregory didn’t have the spine to stand up to Worsley, it appeared that the landlord, at least, was not afraid of him.
‘I don’t hold with this sort of thing going on in my ken...’
‘Out of my way,’ growled the walking mantelpiece. ‘Unless you want me to blacken your reputation by letting it be known you have aided and abetted in the elopement of a minor.’
‘I’m not a minor,’ Dorothy protested to the landlord’s knees, which was all she could see of him when she tried to raise her head. ‘Landlord, you know I am not. This is all a dreadful mistake!’ But the landlord’s knees moved out of her line of vision as Worsley carried on walking.
As they reached the door, Dorothy began to get over her initial surprise at being picked up in such a cavalier fashion and experienced a twinge of alarm. And made her first real attempt to wriggle out of his hold. His arm came down like a band of steel, making her realise that until now, he’d only been utilising a fraction of his strength.
‘If you don’t stop trying to thwart me,’ he growled, ‘I shall bind and gag you. Because return you to Coventry I shall. And nothing you do or say is going to stop me.’
‘You cannot return me to Coventry,’ she protested. ‘Since I’ve never been there in my life! Oh, won’t you stop and listen to me, you great...oaf!’
‘Hah,’ he grunted, as he strode across the inn yard. ‘Listen to lies from the likes of you? What do you take me for?’
‘One of...the biggest idiots... I’ve ever had...the misfor...tune to come...across in my...whole life,’ she panted, since the combination of hanging upside down while being clamped to a marble mantelpiece by a bar of steel was making her a bit breathless.
‘I cannot...go to Cov...entry,’ she pleaded. She had a seat booked on the Edinburgh stage the next morning. And what would happen when she didn’t arrive to take up her new post? And how on earth was she going to recover her trunk, which contained all her worldly goods? Although it probably wouldn’t, for long, since she’d carelessly left it unlocked when she came down to speak to Gregory, thinking she wouldn’t be long.
‘You...idiot...man,’ she panted. ‘You are g...going to ru...in every...thing!’
She then went a bit dizzy, as Worsley swung round a couple of times while he opened the door to a carriage. And then really dizzy when he flipped her the right way up before tossing her inside.
‘To Coventry you will go,’ he growled, as he straightened up and backed away. ‘So you may as well stop trying to pull the wool over my eyes. I am not some green boy like Gregory, to be taken in by an older, more experienced woman.’
She opened her mouth to protest that she’d never tried to pull the wool over anyone’s eyes. But all that came out of her mouth was a gargling wheeze. And then, as she sat up, her head went all floaty and a crowd of black spots began dancing before her eyes. In the few moments it took for her to regain the ability to breathe in the normal manner, and for her head to stop spinning, Worsley had slammed the coach door, and, to judge from the way the whole equipage rocked, climbed up on to the driver’s seat.
She inched to the door and laid her hand on the release catch.
And then she imagined the scene in the inn yard should she explain that she was no temptress, but a governess who’d only stumbled across the eloping couple he was hunting down, by the merest chance.
With the passengers of who knew how many stagecoaches watching with interest, what a spectacle she would make, with no coat, or hat, and her hair straggling down all over the place, since his method of seeing her into his coach had dislodged most of her hairpins.
And then she thought about what would happen should she finally persuade him he’d made a mistake. And how he would march straight back into the inn and up the stairs, and subject that poor, silly girl to the same Turkish treatment he’d used on her.
And what it would do to a delicate creature like that, who had already been reduced to a state of nervous collapse by the fear of him, never mind the actual presence of him. Because that was why the girl had started up and fainted when Dorothy had walked in, wasn’t it? Yes, because she had suspected that Worsley was pursuing them.
But then she reminded herself that it was her duty to prevent an elopement, if she possibly could, that she ought not to consider her dignity and that even though she didn’t like the methods Worsley might employ, somebody really should return that girl to her parents.
And by the time all those conflicting thoughts had gone through her head, the coach was moving.
She could still leap out and run back to the landlord, enlist his aid and perhaps mount some sort of defence before Worsley could really frighten the Pansy girl...
But even as she considered it, she heard Worsley whip up the horses and put them to a gallop.
And she’d lost her chance of escape.
She put her hands to her mouth as the awful truth hit her squarely in the pit of her rather sore stomach. She was being abducted.
Abducted.
But...things like this didn’t happen to girls like her. Things like this only happened to heiresses, or pretty girls. And that only in stories.
But that was what had happened. Worsley had mistaken a plain, spinster governess for the pretty, flighty young girl with whom Gregory had been attempting to elope. Which was absurd. So absurd that suddenly, she couldn’t help seeing the funny side of it. Which was just as well, or else she might have succumbed to the temptation to cry. Just the thought of crying caused a tear to threaten. Which was always the way, wasn’t it? If you thought about crying, in response to difficulties, that was exactly what you ended up doing. And what good did it do? What did it achieve? Nothing.
She sniffed and reminded herself that she’d been through far worse than this without turning into a watering pot.
Besides, she wouldn’t give that great bully the satisfaction of thinking he’d reduced her to tears. She wasn’t some feeble, nervy creature who could think of nothing better to do than weep and wail, because some idiot man had taken one look at her and decided she was preying on a green boy—and how on earth could he think Gregory was her slave when the lad had made no attempt to defend her? Why, even the landlord had put up more of a protest than he had, when he’d seen Worsley carting her out of the inn.
She dashed away the single tear that had trickled down her cheek while she was giving herself a stern talking-to. And forgave herself for being a bit emotional. After all, it wasn’t every day a girl got thrown over a man’s shoulder and tossed into a coach like a sack of potatoes. Being a bit shocked and upset was perfectly forgivable, providing she didn’t give way to the extent that she ended up having the vapours.
Anyway, she, Dorothy Phillips, was absolutely not the kind of female who would ever have the vapours. She was made of sterner stuff than that.
And so she would jolly well show him.
The moment he let her out of this coach.
Copyright © 2021 by Annie Burrows
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ISBN-13: 9781488071904
The Warrior’s Innocent Captive
Copyright © 2021 by Ella Matthews
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Ella Matthews, The Warrior's Innocent Captive
