Wicked Nights With a Lover by Sophie Jordan

reach the inn,” he suggested, feeling suddenly weary, none of the triumph he expected to feel present at her near agreement. None of this had gone quite as he thought … not that he had thought much about how they might interact—about her at all. He certainly hadn’t considered that she might belong to another man. His hand curled unconsciously into a fist.
    “When will we stop?”
    “We had a late start. It’s nearly dark. We’ll stop just outside the city. Not too long.”
    Then everything would be better, he vowed, turning to gaze out the thin part in the curtains, watching the dark shapes fly past. It had to be. He couldn’t accept defeat. Not on this. Even though he couldn’t force some woman to wed him against her will, he would not give up until he persuaded her to agree.
    He imagined the evening ahead. They would exchange pleasantries and come to an accord over a fine meal, a cozy fire crackling and warming the air. He would entertain her in a civil manner, charm her, compliment her fine eyes … woo her so that she fell readily into his lap and married him with little fuss.
    There was no reason events shouldn’t unfold amicably between them. Sighing, he relaxed back against his seat, letting the merry vision fill his head. And almost believing it.
    As she gazed at the shadow of the man who abducted her, Marguerite could no longer deny the truth. No more lying or pretending to herself. It was there, staring back at her. Everything pointed to it. The signs were inescapable. As definite as the hard male body sitting across from her, reality stared her coldly in the face.
    Madame Foster was no fraud.
    Even as she confronted this bitter truth, Marguerite recalled something the woman had said in her cluttered parlor. Something that gave Marguerite hope and determination to push on, to thwart the scoundrel who sat across from her so confident in her surrender.
    No one’s fate is etched in stone. A moment’s decision can alter the course of fate.
    Marguerite would do that—she would alter her fate, do everything in her power to prevent the future Madame Foster had divined. She must. Whatever it took, she would not marry the arrogant brute with the mesmerizing voice. As long as that didn’t happen, she would be safe. That, above all else, must not come to pass. Let him think she took his offer under consideration. If he deemed her compliant, it would make him easier to escape.
    They sat in silence. She rocked with the carriage’s rolling motion, biting the edge of her thumb, gnawing it the way she used to do when she was a child. First at the bedside of her ailing mother, and then later, cold and hungry, often ill as she slept in a tiny cot on the second floor of Penwich School for Virtuous Girls.
    She felt that way again. Not ill, but cold, helpless, a fate not of her choosing pressing in around her, suffocating her in a tremendous dark fog.
    Not again, she vowed. Never again.
    She wasn’t a helpless child anymore but a woman full-grown, and she wouldn’t die without having fully lived.
    She couldn’t trust his promise for a temporary in-name-only marriage. Not for a moment. Too much depended on whether he spoke the truth—her very life. She wouldn’t put anything past a man who dared to abduct her. Let him think she surrendered, agreed to his ridiculous proposition. Then, when his guard was down, she’d leave him in the dust.
    She’d have everything she ever planned for herself. Adventure, passion, the experiences she’d never allowed herself.
    Life. Finally, life.

Chapter 9
    I ncredibly, Marguerite fell into a doze against the carriage wall. She napped fretfully, jostled awake from time to time when the carriage hit a rut. She would crack her eyes and assess the shadow across from her, a biting reminder that she was far from the safety of her bed at the Hotel Daventry. Far removed from a trip to Spain with Roger and the adventure of a lifetime she had promised herself.
    The memory of her