Run Wild (Escape with a Scoundrel) - By Shelly Thacker Page 0,40

getting into bed. The hilt felt cold and solid and at least a little reassuring against her palm.

And he couldn’t be much of a threat at the moment... could he? After all, he had been bruised, battered, shot at, and run ragged today too. Not to mention the fact that he’d been wounded, lost a great deal of blood, and had a bullet dug out of his shoulder. He was hardly in any shape to... to...

She opened her eyes again. Her stomach felt queasy. Perhaps it was all the honey she had eaten earlier, but she didn’t think so.

It was the fact that she had never slept beside a man before. Ever.

If not for the accursed shackles, she wouldn’t be sleeping beside one now. The chain wouldn’t reach far enough for her to sleep on the floor. She had tried. Then she had suggested rolling up the blanket and placing it between them, but he had only laughed at her again.

Blackguard.

Staring into the darkness, she knew it was ridiculous to think that a blanket would protect her virtue. If he wanted to make any unsavory advances, a tattered length of wool wouldn’t stop him.

Nothing would stop him.

She clutched the knife tighter, her throat closing off as the memories sliced through her. A place where she had thought herself safe. A night when the lock on her door hadn’t been enough to protect her, when her Uncle Prescott had forced his way inside, had very nearly...

No! Digging her nails into her palm, she forced herself to forget. Uncle Prescott was in London. She would never let him close enough to have another chance to touch her. She would never let any man hurt her that way again. Never.

If the rogue so much as placed a hand on her, she would fight to her dying breath.

She wasn’t a naive girl of sixteen anymore. She was older, smarter, armed with the truth about men and their lust. Armed with a knife—and the many tricks she had learned while living in the streets for six years. She could protect herself.

Closing her eyes for the third time in the past hour, she tried to put her troubling memories aside, tried to find the sleep she so desperately needed. But the late summer heat made the cabin sultry, even in the darkness, and no breeze, not even a whisper of fresh air, managed to slip through the fabric tacked over the windows.

The uncomfortable warmth made her all the more aware of the rough iron shackle around her ankle, binding her to this man.

Just when she despaired of ever getting a moment’s rest, a soft sound came from behind her.

A snore.

Finally. The object of all her worry and dread was peacefully asleep. She frowned, not sure which she felt more—resentment or relief. For the moment at least, she could relax her guard.

Still, she could sense his very large, very male presence so close. Too close. By all the graces, when she awoke this morning, she had certainly never expected to end the day in bed with a man!

A man whose name she didn’t even know. A powerfully built, dark stranger with eyes that had seen too much and hands that could kill too easily. She shivered despite the summery heat. The sooner she got away from him, the happier she would be. They would find some way to get the shackles off. They had to. And then she would go straight to her flat in Merseyside, grab her hidden cache of money, and leave the country.

For six years she had saved every shilling she made. Whenever she finished her work in a particular district, she visited Merseyside and added to her stash. Two hundred pounds wasn’t much to show for all the risks she had taken as an outlaw.

And it wasn’t nearly enough to get her where she really wanted to go.

But it would be enough for passage to one of the colonies. Or perhaps France. She would just have to be practical. Settle for what she had. As before, as so often in her life, the choice wasn’t hers to make. It had been made for her. She had to leave England as quickly as possible. Marshalmen had been killed, and the law wouldn’t rest until the culprits had been tracked down.

She had to run and keep running and just be grateful that she was still alive.

Exhaustion—or perhaps it was despair—began to pull her downward toward unconsciousness, and she finally let it take her. But even