Read Online Captured by a Gentleman (Regency Unlaced 6) by Carole Mortimer - Free Book Online

along with a dark bruise already starting to appear beneath the ivory skin.
    “The back axle of the landau had been tampered with, weakened,” he answered Darcy. “So that it would break while we were traveling.” Luckily for them both, Ranulf had slowed the horses to a gentle trot as he and Darcy conversed.
    “Were you hurt?” Darcy now looked up at him with dark and pained eyes.
    Ranulf smoothed back the red-gold curls at her left temple, well away from where a sizeable lump showed clearly on her brow. “Only badly shaken.”
    She gave a half smile. “Well, at least my being in the carriage with you, and also risking being killed, means you must now accept I am not a viper.”
    Of course Ranulf now accepted that.
    As he must now, logically, also accept that everything Darcy had told him of Cecil Sugdon was the truth?
    He believed so, yes.
    Which meant he had treated Darcy badly these past twenty-four hours, with his accusations and distrust, for the simple reason she was related to Millicent and Cecil Sugdon. It was clear now Darcy could not have been involved in these attempts to harm him. As she said, she might have been killed herself earlier, rather than merely battered and bruised.
    Ranulf’s jaw tensed. “I owe you an apology for my earlier suspicions.”
    “It is of no consequence as long as you believe me now.”
    “I do,” he assured her gravely.
    She glanced at their surroundings. “How did I get here?”
    “I carried you here. I then went back for our luggage and the picnic basket so that we should not starve.”
    Darcy attempted to sit up, only to fall back with a wince as the movement caused her pain. “What is this place?”
    Ranulf gave a grimace as he looked at the single room. “I believe it is a hut where a woodcutter sleeps when he is felling trees in this part of the forest.” He turned back to Darcy. “It was the best shelter I could find for us in the area.”
    “The horses?”
    “All unharmed and tied up outside beneath a lean-to.”
    “Are we safe here?”
    “Safe?”
    She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. “The person who damaged the other coach last night and is responsible for our accident today surely cannot be far away.”
    Ranulf could have wished that Darcy was less intelligent than she was. But perhaps her narrow escape from Sugdon’s lecherous clutches had honed her senses more than most.
    The fear they may have been followed, despite his having found no sign of it, was the reason he had brought Darcy and the horses into the woods. He had also thought to collect his pistol from his luggage and brought it with him. It was now within reach but out of sight beneath the cot on which Darcy lay, if he should have need of it.
    Ranulf had no choice now but to accept that someone wanted him dead, and they did not care who else was injured or killed while they were about it.
    Darcy drew in a deep breath, this time ignoring the nausea roiling through her bruised body, as she pulled herself up into a sitting position.
    She appeared to be lying on what was a low and lumpy cot placed to one side of the room. The top two buttons of her gown were unfastened at the throat, with Ranulf’s superfine acting as a pillow beneath her head and his topcoat lying across her as a blanket.
    The single room had a rough wooden floor, with only a primitive-looking table and a chair as furniture besides this cot. There were a couple of battered pots next to the fireplace, where Ranulf appeared to have lit a small fire, which was struggling to keep alight.
    Ranulf himself looked less than his pristine self. His dark hair was disheveled and falling across his brow, dirt was smeared across one cheek, and he wore only his waistcoat, shirt, and pantaloons.
    He had never appeared more handsome to her.
    Nor had Darcy ever been more pleased to be alive. “Do you think this is an appropriate occasion upon which I might be allowed to ‘throw myself at a gentleman’?”
    Ranulf’s expression