How to Lose a Bride in One Night

Paget had been there, too. Eating more than her share. Too much for a girl of her slight frame. He had no idea where she put it, but she matched him bite for bite. She’d always been there. A permanent fixture of his boyhood. Now she belonged to Jamie.

A wave of longing swept through him. Not because he wanted Paget for himself. God, no. He’d released the thought of them, together, from his mind long ago. His first year in India ruined him for any respectable woman. He was glad she and Jamie had found each other. He simply wished for carefree days again.

Days like the ones he spent at his mother’s home in London, quiet evenings reading alongside her in the library or helping her in the garden. His grandfather had spent his final years there. Owen could still recall his large, callused hand rumpling the hair on his head as he played with his toy soldiers before the fireplace. If he closed his eyes, he could still hear the old Scot’s brogue. That’s my fine lad.

Shaking off the nostalgic thoughts, he continued to scan the merrymaking, feeling more isolated than ever. He didn’t belong here any more than he had in India. His mouth flattened in a grim line. Perhaps he was more at home among battle cries, wielding a pistol or a rifle or plunging his blade into an enemy than here. A sad testament to the man he had become.

Although he knew he could never recapture the innocence from his youth again, he longed to return to his mother’s town house in London and find the peace and contentment he had once known there.

Suddenly, something caught his eye. A brown-haired head bobbing amid the fairgoers. The afternoon sunlight cast the hair into burnished mahogany. His gut twisted in annoyance. He knew that hair. A contrast to the other occasions he’d viewed it—a sopping wet mess or cloaked in the dim confines of a wagon. But he knew it. Anna.

What was she doing out of bed? Bewildered, he tracked her in the crowd. Even dressed in a deep red gown with a single blue ribbon pulling back the top half of her hair from her face, she looked fresh and clean. And in Luca’s arms.

He scowled. Before he could consider his actions, he was moving across the fair, elbowing past hawkers dangling their wares before him.

He trained his gaze on her, eyeing with disapproval the way she laughed at something Luca said as he pointed into a pen full of pigs waiting to be auctioned.

He stopped beside the ramshackle pen. “Anna,” he greeted tersely.

She turned her head at the sound of his voice.

“Oh, hello, Mr. Crawford. Fine day for a fair, is it not?”

He ground his teeth, certain he heard snideness in her comment. “What are you doing up and about from bed?”

“Mirela said it was perfectly safe as long as I was carried. Luca here graciously offered to let me see some of the fair and get a bit of fresh air.”

Owen eyed the brute’s hands on her. One of his large paws cupped her beneath the legs, holding her carefully at her splinted leg. The other was wrapped around her back.

“If you insist on leaving your bed—”

“Mirela said it would be fine.” Her bright brown eyes sparked defiantly.

He ignored her interruption. “You should be in a cart and not carried about. You could still jostle your leg.”

“I’m in good hands with Luca.” She smiled at Owen as if he were a child and she the tolerant parent. The little minx. She knew he was annoyed, and she was enjoying it.

Luca adjusted her in his arms, and his hands moved a little too much against her back for Owen’s liking. His own hands opened and closed at his sides.

Anna stared at him patiently, those amazing eyes of hers blinking with innocence.

Luca looked bored. “Come. The pie eating contest is about to start.”

Owen watched as they strolled away, Anna’s head bobbing among the villagers as she was carried.

“The sunlight will do her some good.” Once again, Mirela appeared at his side with no warning. He looked down at her, a surge of resentment flaring inside him.

“That’s what I hear.”

A mocking smile curved her wrinkled lips. “Should have taken her about the fair yourself.”

He crossed his arms, losing sight of Luca and Anna as they became lost in the throng of people waiting for the pie eating spectacle.

“I have no wish to carry her around the fair.”

Mirela gave a low, cackling laugh and walked away, leaving him standing by himself.

Annalise laughed with delight as a scrawny boy of no more than ten years was declared the winner of the contest and presented a ribbon. His mother appeared, wiping pie from his face fondly with her apron, looking every bit as proud as the boy himself.

Luca’s voice rumbled beside her ear. “What would you like to see next, Anna?”

She glanced around, eyeing the happy chaos, in the guise of deciding where to go next, but it was just a ruse. She was really looking for Owen. He’d looked decidedly unhappy to see her up and about, which only puzzled her. Why should he care if someone else was kind enough to escort her around the fair? It was no imposition on him.

Then she saw him, pushing a cart in her direction, a decidedly resolute look in his eyes, his handsome features implacable.

He stopped the cart before them. Releasing the handles, he rounded the cart and walked toward her. “In you go.”

Annalise blinked and looked from the cart to Owen.

At her hesitation, he sighed and gestured at it. “This is far safer for your leg than being carried about.”

She opened her mouth to insist she was fine, but before she had the chance, Luca was lowering her to the blanket-lined cart. She pressed her lips shut, feeling very much like a child. An invalid. A bitter taste filled her mouth. Granted, a broken leg inhibited her and made asserting her independence somewhat of a challenge, but this . . . being deposited in a cart with no thought to her wishes, no care for what she wanted, it rankled.

Crossing her arms, she glared up at Owen. “I’m not going back to the wagon if that’s what you’re thinking.” She looked at Luca again, ready to suggest they move along to admire the display of horseflesh up for auction.

Suddenly the cart was moving. She was being rolled away and leaving Luca behind.

She heard Owen’s voice call out above her, “I’ll take her from here, thank you.”

Annalise tossed a glance over her shoulder. Luca was already walking away, shrugging his shoulders.

The colors of the fair whirled past her as she was rolled over the grounds. It appeared as though they were leaving. She bit her lip to stop an angry retort.

With every second that passed, her face grew hotter. Arms crossed over her chest, she hugged herself tightly.

A young girl stepped in front of the cart, myriad ribbons woven in her lovely hair. “Would the lady like her hair plaited?” She motioned to a trio of young girls working deft fingers through the hair of bright-cheeked women.

She huffed, certain Owen was scoffing at the offer above her.

His deep voice floated down to her. “Would you?”

Startled, she looked up and found herself ensnared in the blue of his eyes. Did he mean it? She nodded hastily, fearful that he would change his mind and take her back to the wagon.

“Follow me,” the young girl trilled enthusiastically before Annalise could form a response.

Owen obeyed. Grabbing a fistful of ribbons, the young girl faced Annalise and hesitated, unsure how to attack her hair from her position in the cart.

“Come, this way.” Owen moved around so the girl could stand at the end of the cart. He stood awkwardly beside it, surrounded by women in the process of having their hair plaited. Annalise suppressed a smile and lowered her gaze as the girl’s fingers worked quickly, weaving a coronet of plaits around her head with various colored ribbons. The vibrant ends dangled in her face until the girl finished and gathered them up.

Moving to the front of the cart, the girl admired her work. “There. Beautiful, is she not?” Annalise looked at Owen for assent, her cheerful smile slipping when she caught sight of his brooding expression.

With a muttered, indecipherable reply, he fished a coin from inside his jacket pocket and paid the girl. A moment later he was pushing her along again, moving quickly through the fair. She frowned and crossed her arms, guessing that now he would return her to the wagon where she could resume her examination of the ceiling.

“Are you hungry?” he asked, his voice rising to be heard over a nearby orchestra.

She craned her neck around to look at him, wondering if she had misunderstood him.

He stared straight ahead, his gaze not dipping to look at her.

She moistened her lips. “I could eat . . .”

He finally glanced down, his lips unsmiling, his expression unreadable. Everything about him seemed to indicate that he was only tolerating her. He stopped before a hawker selling meat pasties. Another hawker quickly appeared, proffering lemonade. Owen set the meat pasties in the cart and handed her the carafe of lemonade to hold.

She settled the carafe carefully on her lap as he pushed them from the center of the village toward the outskirts of the community—but not, she noticed, in the direction of the Gypsy camp. Her shoulders eased. That’s all that really mattered to her at the moment. He wasn’t taking her back to that dreadful wagon. For whatever reason, he was granting her more time out of doors. Even if it was to be spent in his stilted company. She would take her delights where she found them. Perhaps that’s what nearly dying did to a soul—made you appreciate the small pleasures.

As he pushed them through a small opening in a shallow stone wall, she tilted her face up to the sun, letting its warm rays brush over her skin. Even before she’d been forced into bed, the weather had been dismal. This sunlight was a refreshing change.

He steered the cart beneath a tree.

“This looks a fine spot,” she murmured, admiring the spray of delicate buds dotting the ground. “It will be spring soon and all this will be in bloom.”

He took one of the blankets from the cart and spread it out on the grass.

“You’ve come prepared,” she added, wondering how long she would have to carry the conversation alone.

He slid her a look beneath his lashes as he spread out the final corners. “You need to eat.”

She propped an elbow on the edge of the cart, her lips quirking. “Don’t fret, Mr. Crawford. I wasn’t accusing you of being thoughtful. I would not dream of making such a suggestion.”

He sent her a derisive look but didn’t respond as he reached for the food and carafe and settled them on the blanket.

“I mean I realize you’re thoughtful and generous enough to save my life, of course,” she hastily explained. “I would never be so remiss to forget such a fact, but you’re just not . . .” Her voice faded as she stared at his stoic profile rather helplessly. “You’re not the garrulous sort, are you? Certainly no—” Her voice cut off into a squeak as he leaned over the cart and slid his arms beneath her.

He carefully lifted her from the cart, bearing her with ease. His body was all lean lines against her, his chest a hard wall. Her gaze crawled back up to his face. She blinked in consternation at his ever aloof expression.

“Who can talk with you around?” he murmured.

She gasped as he set her down in the middle of the blanket, then arranged her skirts over her legs. She wore no shoe on the broken leg. A thick woolen stocking covered the foot, peeking out from beneath her hem.

“Are you saying I don’t give you the opportunity to speak?” She lifted her chin and crossed her arms. “Very well. I shall leave it to you to carry on the conversation. I will follow your lead, Mr. Crawford.”

Without comment, he unwrapped a meat pie and handed it to her. She watched as he did the same for himself. He took a large bite, indifferent that she watched him. Indifferent to the stretch of silence.

She took a nibbling bite, the quiet hovering between them. Even the sounds of the fair were too distant to hear anymore. She glanced from him to her meat pastie several times, waiting, expecting for him to say something. Nothing profound. Simply . . . something. She accepted the lemonade when he offered it, savoring the cool tartness on her tongue.