“I’ll walk.” She set about wringing the excess water from her skirt. “I can just imagine Frances’s ire if she thinks I landed shrieking at your feet and forced you to come to my aid.”

“No one forces me to do anything.”

“They don’t need to. You do it to yourself.” She huffed a sigh, exasperated. “Piers, I’m not accomplished. My dowry is small. My connections are fathoms beneath yours. You’ve never needed to treat me like a respectable lady. Look around you. No one else does.”

“You,” he said, taking her by the shoulders, “will be a lady. My lady. I will treat you with the respect that title deserves. As will Miss Frances Parkhurst, her friends, the entirety of the ton, the Royal Court, and anyone else who wishes to avoid my extreme displeasure.”

By the hint of barely concealed violence in his voice, Charlotte wondered if his “extreme displeasure” involved sharp edges or blunt objects.

“Why?” She searched his face. “And don’t answer me with that nonsense about wanting and desire. At the moment, I must look about as desirable as pile of wet rags.”

He glanced down at her body and raised a brow. “You’d be surprised.”

She gave him a damp, ineffective thump in the shin and tried to wriggle away.

His grip tightened on her arms.

“Let me go,” she insisted, almost shouting.

His reply was every bit as angry. “I can’t.”

She looked up at him, breathing hard.

“I can’t let you go, Charlotte. I couldn’t that first night in the library. I most assuredly as hell won’t let you walk away from me now.”

His hands framed her face. Not tenderly, but with impatient force. She couldn’t have turned away if she’d wanted to.

He searched her face with a penetrating gaze. “It wasn’t enough for you to invade my thoughts, was it? Oh, no. You had to get under my skin, as well. Sometimes I think you’ve found a way into my blood.”

The dark note of anger in his voice intrigued and aroused her. His gloved thumbs pressed against her cheeks.

“And now you have the temerity to demand I let you go. It’s too late for that, darling. It’s done.” He released her face. “And I’m done discussing it.”

Without another word, he plucked her off her feet—heavy, waterlogged velvet and all—and lifted her up on his horse. Then he mounted behind her, lashed one arm around her waist, and spurred his mount into a canter, carrying her off into the countryside. As if they were characters in some demented fairy tale.

The Prince and the Sea Monster.

Chapter Fourteen

Charlotte clung to him, resigned.

She had no warmth left in her body to fight it, no wits remaining to find a path out.

If Piers Brandon, the Marquess of Granville, in all his proud, decisive, muscular handsomeness, had made up his mind to be her champion . . . ?

Very well, then.

It would take a stronger woman than Charlotte to refuse.

She fell against him, sinking into the romance of the moment. It hit her all at once, the effort she’d expended resisting this sensation all along. Like a swimmer who’d spent hours thrashing against the current, only to surrender from fatigue.

She was, in every sense, swept away.

He held her in a tight, possessive embrace against his chest as they set a course for the woods. His presence behind her was so strong, so warm, so safe.

And he smelled like a dream. The kind of dream that left a woman short of breath and damp between the thighs. Woodsy, spicy, entirely masculine.

She closed her eyes and pressed her cheek to his waistcoat, breathing him in.

He slowed as they entered the woods, guiding the horse to a secluded, sunny clearing.

There, they paused.

Piers dismounted, then took her by the waist and helped her down.

“Why are we stopping?”

“I want to see for myself that you’re well and unharmed. I can’t do this once we’ve returned to the manor.”

He settled her on a freshly hewn tree stump. First, he divested himself of his coat and riding gloves, hanging them over a convenient branch. Then, working in brisk, businesslike motions, he unbuttoned the jacket of her riding habit before easing the sleeves down her arms. She shivered a little, hugging herself. Her white, thin chemisette was painted to her torso with river water and nearly translucent.

If Piers noticed, his gaze didn’t linger. Having laid her jacket in a sunny patch of grass, he went on one knee before her. He took her right foot and propped it on his knee. After wrestling with the wet knots of her bootlaces for a few moments, he reached into his own boot for a knife and sliced them clean down the middle. Then he slipped the boot from her foot and set it beside the stump before reaching under her petticoats to untie her garter and peel the wet, clinging stocking from her leg. His hand passed from her ankle to her thigh, not groping or caressing—merely making an assessment. He satisfied himself that her toes still wiggled, and her ankle still bent in all the proper directions, and confirmed that she didn’t yelp in pain when he pressed there, or there, or there . . . or there.

Then he set her foot gently in the grass, propped her left boot on his right knee, and began the same process anew.

As she watched him from her perch on the stump, Charlotte warmed inside. The afternoon sun had begun to dry her hair and revive her spirits. She didn’t feel so monstrous anymore.

As Piers swept his touch from her ankle to her thigh, she bit her lip.

“Did that hurt?” he asked, looking grave.

“No. It only took me by surprise.”

She looked at the ground, where he’d set her boot directly to the side of its mate and even folded her stockings into neat, matching bundles. So orderly. So very Piers. The same habit that would have irritated her a week ago now landed in an altogether different way. It struck her as endearing. Sweet.

Possibly the best thing anyone had ever done for her.

Good heavens. From the fount of tenderness welling in her heart, one would think those two bedraggled stockings had been baskets of flowers, or ropes of diamonds. They were lumps of useless, itchy wool. Not even her best pair. And yet, as she stared at them . . . She wanted to cry.

What was wrong with her? Something must be. The possibilities unspooled in her mind, each worse than the last.

She was nearing her monthly courses.

She’d incurred an injury to her skull.