To Wed A Rebel Read Free Page B

“Steady now, I’ve got you.”
    And he did, for she could not have let go if she tried.
    Speechless, Ruth allowed herself to be guided onto the bank, where Albert – sopping wet – was berating the nearest servant he could find for his “brush with death” and stealing away any attention or concern that might have been offered her way. And although Ruth was coasting away from the crowds, beyond sight and prying eyes, she wanted it. To escape Albert – her future – and Lottie and the awkward conversations with people who did not even care to remember her name.
    A stone bench squatted nearby and Ruth was steered towards it. She groped for the cold surface. There was no one to stare here, no quips to reach her, a chance to gather herself. It was almost like solitude, were it not for the man who lingered beside her – an afterthought.
    “I – I don’t understand these people,” she stuttered, after taking a deep breath, fighting to find her calm. “They all stood and watched. I heard them laughing.”
    Mocking ghouls, monstrous smiles, masked intentions.
    “No one even tried to help until you – you – I – I, you’re – forgive me, I haven’t even thanked you,” she forced out, dragging her eyes up to meet the stranger and losing any other words she might have offered.
    This man was not like Albert. Where her future husband was circular, puffy and flappable, this man was the exact opposite: broad shoulders, hard features, dark eyes and tanned skin. There was nothing ridiculous or comical about him at all. No faults, no failings, no foppish tendencies.
    She had not known men could look like that, like the ones from her books. The legends about knights and brave warriors had been fiction, a lie, non-existent, with crumbling illustrations in old yellow tomes. No one real, no one in existence had ever stirred the deeper, darker places in her core. Yet the figure who stood before her was very much flesh and blood.
    A warmth curled in Ruth’s stomach. She felt a blush rise up her neck, and once she knew she was blushing, she blushed further.
    “No thanks are necessary.” The way he stood, shadowed by the fading sun, made it hard for her to see his face. “You were far from danger; the creature was harmless.”
    His clothes were dark and heavy with canal water. They clung to him and invited her gaze.
    He spoke again, disrupting her thoughts – and she was glad for it – for that chance to find her composure. “You have the same expression you wore when confronted with the snake,” he said, his low laugh only adding to the warmth in her cheeks. “Surely I am not that frightening?”
    Lips parted, she shook her head and averted her gaze.
Frightening?
No, yes, a little, but in all the right ways.
    She needed to speak. It was her turn; it was only polite. Ruth was bad at this. She’d had no practice. She didn’t know what to say. “You have ruined your clothes,” she told him, hating how meek she sounded.
    “I can get new ones.”
    Another silence, further words needed, a space to fill. “We’ve rather ruined the party for you, haven’t we?”
    “There’ll be others.”
    “You shouldn’t have done it. We would have managed, and – and what if you catch a cold?”
    “It will have been worth it,” he remarked, with a curve to his mouth that made her glad she was a small distance from him, for she wanted to lean into it. “Though I had thought you’d be more grateful.”
    “Oh,” she grew pinker still. “Of course, I am entirely—”
    “Forgive me, it was a poor attempt at humour and like I said, you were in no danger.”
    “But you did keep Lottie from knocking the boat over and I cannot swim.”
    “The canal isn’t deep.”
    “Then you saved us from humiliation at least,” she told him, before clamming up entirely, realising she was almost
bickering
with him, when she had never argued with anyone in her life. And he was – this man, he was – well, quite unlike any other she had