Run Wild (Escape with a Scoundrel) - By Shelly Thacker Page 0,72

her hands and turned away. “Just leave me alone. Please. Just... just...”

Go away. She didn’t say it, but he knew that was what she wanted. Bloody hell, it should be what he wanted too. Faced with a delicate, emotional situation like this, his usual tactic was to turn on his heel and make a speedy exit.

But this time, that was impossible.

Even without the chain, something inside him made it impossible.

He couldn’t walk away from her. Couldn’t stand by and watch her hurting because of whatever some heedless bastard had done to her.

“Tell me, Samantha,” he urged quietly. Driven by some force he could not name and could not fight, he moved toward her, slowly. “Tell me.”

“No.” She hunched her shoulders as if she wished she could disappear. “I don’t want to talk about any of it. I’ll be all right if you’ll just leave me alone. Just—”

“Tell me.”

“No, damn you!”

Ignoring her anger, her stubbornness, her curses, he turned her toward him and drew her carefully back into his arms. He wanted to pick her up and carry her ashore, but he couldn’t. The shackles wouldn’t allow it.

So he stood there hip-deep in the muddy water, holding her close, and simply refused to let her go. But she remained stiff, unyielding, angry. Frightened.

He stroked her hair, her back. Patiently showing her what he had already told her: that he had no intention of hurting her.

Gradually she seemed to understand, to believe. She stopped fighting and relaxed against him, yielding as she had before, but in a different way this time, a way that was more than physical. Then he led her out of the water, back to their place beneath the trees. Drawing her down beside him, he sat with his back against an evergreen trunk and eased her into his arms again.

“Samantha,” he said quietly, holding her.

Still trembling, breathing hard, she shook her head against his chest, remained silent for a long time.

But then the words began to come, slowly.

“It was summer,” she said, so quietly he had to strain to hear her. “The most beautiful summer night. A night just like this. I was sixteen and I didn’t have a care in the world... until that night. Until we heard the voices outside, strangers.”

“Where?” he whispered.

“Home.”

That single word, so heavy with emotion, choked off her voice for a moment. Nicholas had to swallow hard past a lump in his own throat. He kept moving his hand along her back, slowly, waiting.

“We lived in Northamptonshire,” she explained softly. “In the country. My father was a baronet. My sister Jessica and I—our whole world was... perfect.” A smile touched her lips for a moment. “Mother and Jess used to play the harpsichord in the evenings after supper... and we would hold marionette shows in a puppet theater that Father built for us... and every spring we made kites to fly out in the gardens, though the four of us always seemed to end up all tangled together.”

Nicholas shut his eyes at the wistfulness and love in her voice, keeping his arms strong around her.

“My father’s name was Sir Matthew Hibbert and my mother’s name was Mary,” she whispered, her smile fading. “And on that night... that beautiful summer night... the two of them had been to visit friends in Wellingborough. B-but on their way home, their coach was waylaid by riders. Highwaymen. Three of them, drunk, shooting off their guns. The coachman said that... that Father tried to protect Mother but...” Her voice broke. “They were both killed. Jessica and I were asleep when... the local magistrate came to tell us... our parents were dead. He asked me to... identify the bodies. They couldn’t recognize my father, be... because he’d been shot in the face.”

A shudder went through her slender frame, and Nicholas drew her closer, feeling the dampness of her tears on his chest. His throat tightened. He had witnessed horrors like that and worse in his lifetime—but for an innocent girl to see that, at such a tender age...

He wished he had words to comfort her, but could find none. So they shared the moment in silence, and he simply held her, letting her pain pour out. Pain and loss that reminded him so vividly of his own.

“Jessica and I were left all alone,” she said after a long moment. “We went to live with our only relatives, our Uncle Prescott and his wife Octavia, in London.” She wiped at her eyes, her voice shifting, becoming tense. “They took