What A Scoundrel Wants by Carrie Lofty Read Free Book Online Page B

his, lingering over a final kiss.
    Then she set about mixing the wolfsbane.

    Dawn in the woods was a repulsive enough prospect without awakening alone to a useless fire. Will shivered, bare from the waist up except for the bandage covering his aching shoulder. Cool dew invaded every fold of his breeches. Fog hovered over the land, shrouding every tree and shrub in pale gray. Hoping the pathetic little misfit of a fire would banish his chill, he nettled it with a damp twig. The embers merely spit and waned.
    His senses felt submerged in water or stuffed with flax. Soft and hazy. And his head—his head pounded with an unnatural lightheadedness and pain. A thousand grinning witches danced a wild pattern in his skull, but he blamed a particular witch.
    Meg.
    Flashing memories of the previous night piled one over the other, dreamlike: Meg straddling his eager body, illuminated by deep amber flames and haloed by rivers of dark hair. She had behaved like the lowest strumpet. He had pricked her like a rutting animal. But the wonder of their encounter retained power enough to light his body anew. Pure fire. They had produced heat enough to scorch the leaves from every branch in the forest.
    But where was she?
    He looked around and groaned, a clench of nausea swirling through his gut. His head swam in thick mists. He felt no particular signs of fever, not as he had suffered the day before. Pain like gripping talons lodged in his shoulder, but the injury lay modestly beneath its linen dressing, a strip from Meg’s kirtle. No blood stained the saffron-colored fabric.
    But something was amiss. His mind and body were in dispute, neither willing to cooperate. A worrying numbness crept down his injured arm. He clenched his fingers and urged them to function. The best he managed was a halfhearted fist. Had the lye treatment done an even greater damage?
    Dread burst to life. The lye had been excruciating, a pain greater than any wound he ever suffered. Only stubborn pride kept him from crying and begging like a child for mercy.
    He exhaled slowly, quelling the nausea and focusing on the cold emptiness of the shelter. The scattered patches of loam and rock beneath the outcropping revealed no other human presence. Meg was gone, as were her alms-bag and walking stick. Birds and chipper forest pests split the air with their morning songs, but Will was on his own.
    Shrugging into his banded mail proved both difficult and tedious, arms shaking from the cold and the residual shock of his injury. The numbness did not relent. No number of deep breaths assuaged the pulse of anxiety.
    And Meg of Keyworth did little to make the fundamental task of breathing any easier. Memory of her little cries of pleasure taunted him. Signs of her bewildering arrogance had disappeared as their passion intensified. Her mysterious smile slipped away, leaving behind a woman in the throes of bliss. He enjoyed knowing he could affect her that way, even if her depravity suggested he was not alone in having pleasured her.
    Perhaps the earl’s son, as she had implied to Hendon? No, he refused to pay her any more mind than was necessary.
    But maybe “refused” was unrealistic. He endeavored. Hoped. Yes, he hoped to pay her no more mind. The encounter had been too memorable and the woman too strange to ignore completely. She was fickle, unstable, and certainly no ideal of decent womanhood, certainly nothing like Marian.
    That name lanced through his foggy thoughts.
    Marian was in danger. And no matter how much he wanted to forget about Meg, their tryst, and everything about the day before, he remained a wanted man. Sheriff Finch and his thug Carlisle would not relent in whatever scheme they planned. The roadside ambush was no mishap, nor was it likely to stand as the last of their violence. The haze of his bizarre awakening had briefly erased Will’s resolve: He would take Meg to Nottingham.
    He just had to find her. Again.
    Overcast and gray, the sky provided no relief to