Ivy raised her pistol as she heard the sound of running feet. Timothy had arrived.
“You three take the left, you four right. Tonks and Brown have two more at the front.” Ivy pitched her voice as gruff as she could as she barked out the orders. She then nodded to Timothy.
“They’re in place and awaiting your command, sir.” Her footman had grasped the situation.
“Stop or I’ll shoot him!” the female inside shrieked.
“I think not. In fact, it is not I who will be shot, madam, but you,” Rory said.
“I’ll make you pay for this, and the Redferns,” the woman yelled.
The sound of movement inside had Ivy rushing through the door and into something hard. Rory’s back.
“Oomph.” He staggered forward several paces before stopping.
A woman turned in the doorway, her eyes meeting Ivy’s. Her beauty was the first thing Ivy noticed. The golden curls, and icy blue eyes—and then she was gone, escaping through the door. “Hurry, we must stop her!” Ivy started in her direction. She got no further than a few feet before a hand grabbing her jacket hauled her backward.
“Where the hell are you going?” Rory yelled.
“After her.”
“No, you are not! We, are leaving.” He gripped her arm and marched her back out the door.
“B-but they hurt my brother!”
“And there are at least fifty of them in this building, whereas there are three of us!”
He forced her down the side of the building at a run.
“You should have stayed with your brother in the carriage! What possessed you to run into that brothel like bloody Boudicca with an army at your back?” He pulled her along beside him.
“I c-came to your aid.” Ivy was struggling to keep up. Thankfully the carriage was close now. “You were alone—”
“No, really, I had no idea.” His words were laced with sarcasm as he stopped, allowing Ivy her first real look at him. His face was set in stone. Teeth gritted, he was in a towering rage.
“There is no need for that tone.” Ivy pulled her arm free.
“There is every need.” He spat out the words. “You are reckless and far too headstrong. God’s blood, have you any idea what could happen to a woman in such a place?” Anger turned his eyes almost black.
“I was not at risk, and am not one of those poor women who are forced to work in there.” She would not be intimidated.
“But what if she’d captured you?”
“Who?”
“Madam Layla, the woman you saw. What do you think would have happened then?” The words were fired at her.
“I would have been locked in a room and money demanded for my return?”
“Lord save me from innocents.” Rory wrenched open the carriage door. Lifting her, he then threw her inside. “We leave at once, Timothy, and take the boy up beside you. He is no longer safe here.”
Ivy scrambled onto the seat next to her brother. Jackson had his eyes closed and rested his head against the seat behind him. She touched his face. It was warmer now.
“Jackson.”
An eyelid rose. “Ivy,” he sighed, and she felt the tears begin to flow. “S-sorry.”
“It’s all right now, brother.” She tucked the blanket securely around his trembling body and then leaned into him, her big brother whom she had loved since the day she was old enough to realize how special he was. “You’re safe now.”
The eyes closed again, and she felt him heave a huge sigh. In seconds, he slept.
Ivy had never avoided what needed to be dealt with, and right now there was an angry man seated across from her. Sitting upright again, she looked at him.
He appeared vastly differed from the man who had taken tea with her aunt earlier. Tension was coiled in his body. Anger was there in the bunching of his jaw muscles.
“I came as you were alone, Rory.”
“Timothy would have come back. You had no notion of what it was you were walking into. And please put that pistol away.” She’d dropped it on the seat beside her when she entered. “I have no wish for you to shoot me.”
“Why would I shoot you?”
“A weapon in the wrong hands is a dangerous thing.”
“I assure you I know how to fire it and am proficient. And I cannot put it away.”
“Why?” He was still testy, the word fired at her.
“It goes in the holster I had made that is strapped around my thigh.”
Something changed in that moment. Suddenly there was another kind of tension that sizzled and snapped in the air. In seconds, she was in his arms.
“You, miss, are reckless.”
She couldn’t have marshalled a coherent sentence if she tried, but as his mouth was now pressed to hers, there was no need to speak… no need at all.
Chapter Eleven
Rory knew he’d made a mistake the minute his lips touched Ivy’s. She felt like heaven in his arms. Emotion still gripped him from his encounter in Le Plaisir, and when combined with his need for this woman, he could not resist. Visions of laying her on the seat and stripping away her clothes to expose the soft skin and lush curves beneath had his body hard with need. She was innocent. He should not be ravishing her, and yet seemed unable to stop. Where one kiss stopped, another started, and Ivy was right there with him. Her fingers dug into his shoulders as if to hold him closer. He couldn’t get enough of her. Parting her jacket, he slid a hand inside. A soft moan stopped him.
Jackson.
He wrenched his mouth from hers, his eyes shooting to Ivy’s brother. He still slept. Releasing her, he watched her fall back to her seat. Her eyes were dazed, lips red from his kisses.
“I’m sorry, that was inexcusable and should not have happened at any time, let alone with you brother in the carriage.” Rory didn’t want to look at her again. His body was hard, and suddenly Miss Arantxa Redfern was his every fantasy.
“I understand.”
“What?” He was a grown man, of course he could look at her. He could control himself, for God’s sake.
“I understand that you were in the grip of strong emotions and needed an outlet. I—ah, I sometimes am the same.”
She was giving him an escape route, and coward that he was, Rory took it.
“Yes, well, perhaps you are right. But getting back to what you did.”
“There is no further need to discuss that, as we are all safe here in the carriage.” She started fussing with her jacket, rebuttoning the ones he’d undone. Watching her neat, efficient movements did nothing to ease the hardness in his body. He wanted those hands on him.
“It was reckless,” Rory said, but his words were no longer thick with anger. What he actually felt in that moment was bewildered. He wanted Ivy desperately.
He’d ravaged her in a carriage with her brother sitting just a few feet away, for pity’s sake. Rory didn’t do things like that, and definitely not with an innocent.
“And I reiterate, we are safe, Mr. Haddon.” How could she appear composed when he was anything but? Had their kiss not affected her as it had him? Had she shared kisses before? The thought was not a pleasant one. He watched Ivy tuck the blanket around Jackson, and noticed her fingers trembled. Cad that he was, he was pleased to see that her composure was a façade.