Reckless - By Anne Stuart Page 0,106

him, but at that point she didn't have much of a choice. If she was to get away before Adrian came searching for her she was going to have to take the help offered. "Yes," she said. "He's trying to force me to marry him and I don't want to."

His thick eyebrows rose. "Indeed? Then you shouldn't have to. I can help you get away, mademoiselle. Otherwise you might find yourself...how do you clever British say it...leg shackled before you know what happened."

She looked at him for a long, cautious moment. Why would this man help her? He was Adrian's cousin—wouldn't he want to help him instead?

It wasn't as if she had any choice. "I would appriciate your help, monsieur," she said politely.

He smiled at her, warm and avuncular smile that wreathed his thick lips and didn't reach his eyes.

But then, he was French, she reminded herself. Perhaps it took a lol more lo make him smile. 'Then I will take care of things. En avant! Come with me and I'll spirit you away where no one will ever find you."

"And where is that, Monsieur le comte?" she asked in a calm voice.

He took her hand in his heavy hand, bringing it to his mouth, and she wished she dared to pull it away. "You will have to leave it up to me, mademoiselle. Trust me, I can be quite ingenious. He may scour the earth to find you, but he will instead find failure."

"And how will you manage that? Sooner or later he's bound to figure out where I am. Where I've gone. Which is...?"

He smiled at her benevolently. She could see tufts of black hair in his ears, his nostrils, creeping over his high neck cloth. It wasn't his fault he was incredibly hairy, but it took all her social graces to keep from

He breathed on her, breath laden with odd cooking flavors that clung most unpleasantly. "Where will you be, mademoiselle, where no one can find you?" he echoed politely. "Why, I'm afraid you'll be dead."

Adrian couldn't find her anywhere. No one could. At some point, in between the time he went storming into Charlotte's room and gave her an ultimatum and when her maid had brought her a late luncheon, Charlotte had disappeared, taking her clothes, leaving a scribbled note for Lina and vanishing into thin air.

For a moment he wondered if they were all lying to him—some mass conspiracy to help Charlotte escape from the hideous punishment of marriage to a lenient and engaging husband. But they were just as mystified as he was, and the muted warfare that had existed between them all faded into worry, and in his case, something akin to panic.

He felt as if he were walking on ice, with no sense of when he would find steady ground again.

He didn't know what he wanted, what he needed, but he couldn't shake the sense that something was very, very wrong.

No one else seemed to share his panic. They wanted him gone, he knew it, and indeed, he was ready to—inaction making him crazy—when he was called once more into Montague's bedroom.

Montague's color was ashen, and he seemed to have shrunk inside his skin. His eyes were closed when Adrian walked in, and for a moment he had the sick feeling that Monty had died. But his eyes fluttered open, and there was a ghost of his familiar, faintly malicious smile.

"You need to find her." He spoke so softly Adrian wasn't sure he'd heard him clearly.

"How did you know she ran off...? Idiotic question. You knew I'd slept with her. You knew she was pregnant. Is there anything you don't know?"

"I don't know where she is," Monty said, his voice barely more than a whisper. "No one saw her go.

One of my gardeners spotted her several hours ago at the bottom of the walled gardens, talking with a tall man.

Rohan shook his head, the unease that was filling him beginning to spill over. "I haven't seen her outside. She's refused to marry me, and every time I try to talk to her she throws something at me."

"My dear friend, you must have bungled that badly. Which surprises me—you're always so good at handling angry women. Of course, this case is very different."

“Because she's pregnant?"

Montague sighed. "I don't understand how you can be so thickheaded when I've always considered you an eminently intelligent man. Save for the times you've been under your cousin's influence. All of you are complete dunderheads—at this rate I