Run Wild (Escape with a Scoundrel) - By Shelly Thacker Page 0,41

as her eyes drifted closed, she wondered whether she would ever find peace.

Would she ever be safe? Would she ever be able to stop running?

A moment later her muscles began to go slack.

And when the knife slid from her hand and hit the dirt floor with a soft thud, the sound did not wake her.

~ ~ ~

Nicholas groaned, pulled awake by pain... and by a soft scent nearby, like sun and rain, like delicate honey sweetness and lush earth.

Her scent.

Opening his eyes, he found himself unable to see her or anything else. Impenetrable darkness still filled the cabin. How long had he been asleep? A couple of hours? All night?

He lifted his head, shifted his weight—and instantly regretted it, gritting his teeth to bite back a curse as pain burned a hole straight through his shoulder. By hell, it felt worse than before. Probably because his muscles were stiff from a night on the thin mattress.

At least he hoped that was why.

He lay down again, settling into the same position, on his side. He hadn’t been able to sleep on his back or stomach, not without some part of him touching some part of Miss Delafield, which seemed guaranteed to send her into fits.

The lady had the damndest knack for causing him pain and suffering, he thought with a frown in her direction. Sometimes she managed it without even trying.

After a moment, the fiery agony in his shoulder subsided to a dull throbbing, provided he remained still. So he did his best to remain still. Dawn would come soon enough, and he would have no rest after that. Better to steal as much of it as possible before then.

He lay listening to a breeze that rattled the cabin’s broken windows, to the rustling of the trees outside... to the soft breathing of the woman beside him.

He sighed, irritated at the way she reclaimed his attention so easily. Obviously he had been without a female for far too long. That was the only logical reason for this one to seize his awareness so completely.

He didn’t dare allow his thoughts to drift, since they seemed to keep drifting in one direction, so he resolutely turned his mind to a more useful purpose, the puzzle he had been trying to unravel for weeks now: who the devil was blackmailing him?

He had lain awake more nights than he cared to count trying to find an answer to that. But now it seemed more pressing than before—because the blackmailer was closer than before. Whoever the bastard was, he was here, in England, at this very moment. Somewhere.

But who?

Nicholas could name a score of enemies who had once wanted him dead, but most of them were six feet under. Including his two most hated adversaries, Eldridge and Wakefield, the men he had sought vengeance against for fourteen years. They were burning in hell. Sent there by his hand.

And anyone who knew him, even his enemies, would know that he didn’t have fifteen thousand pounds. In fact, anyone even passingly familiar with the realities of piracy would know that.

So it had to be an outsider, a stranger, someone either so naive he didn’t realize that Captain Brogan might show up to silence him...

Or so powerful and protected that he didn’t care.

Perhaps, as Masud had said, it was someone hoping Captain Brogan would show up.

Which led Nicholas right back to the beginning: if it was a ruse, a trap, it could be anyone. Anyone.

He stared into the darkness, willing an answer to come, only to find more questions instead.

If this cove wanted his blood, why go to the trouble of blackmail? Why not just come to South Carolina and kill him? Why alert the quarry that someone was on the hunt? Merely for sport?

What kind of twisted mind was he up against?

Unfortunately, that didn’t narrow it down at all. He had known his share of twisted minds in his day.

Who was it? Who the devil was it?

Frustration roiled in his gut, tormenting him as much as his wounded shoulder. The hell of it was, deep down he knew that he would get no answers until he reached the pub in York.

If he could get there—traveling on foot, wounded, chained to a stubborn female, with half the lawmen in England hot on his trail...

And he had to get there by September twenty-ninth. Which gave him a little less than a fortnight. He’d been in England four days now. At least he thought he had. It was all starting to