Oh, honestly! All right, but what about food? And an inn? If she couldn’t escape, why couldn’t he let her out of the carpet? Anna bucked with all her strength again against his foot, and succeeded in dislodging it and rolling onto her stomach. But then he was suddenly on top of her, straddling her, squeezing his muscular legs tightly around her, and stifling what little breath was left in her after her monumental struggle.
“We’ll no’ have another round of scuffling and squabbling, do ye hear me, lass? I’m right tired, I am, and soaked through to me drawers, for ’tis raining like the end of all time. The fact is, Anna, ye are in a wee bit of a predicament, and the best ye might do for yerself is to act a lady and make the most of it, aye?”
A lady. A lady? After kidnapping her and putting her in this wretched carpet with his neckcloth in her mouth and something terribly stiff and scratchy around her wrists and ankles, he would think to lecture her on decorum? Fury renewed her strength to that of ten men, and she was suddenly kicking and squirming all at once, trying again to dislodge him, to get out of that ridiculous carpet and explain to him that yes, she did indeed understand she was quite kidnapped, but that the least he could do given his unconscionable crime was to untie her and feed her, for Chrissakes!
“Ach, did ye hear a word I said, then?” he exclaimed, and put his hands on her back, pressing down, holding her still. “Give me yer word ye’ll behave and I’ll free ye from the carpet. If I’ve yer word, wiggle yer bum a wee bit.”
She’d die before she’d wiggle anything for him, the rotten bounder.
He sighed, then abruptly lifted off of her. There was a bit of grunting and moving about, and suddenly she was shoved up on her side, and then rolled onto her belly again. She heard the coach door open, heard the rain falling, and suddenly the carpet was pulled free of her body.
Still on her belly, she screamed through the gag at him, but Grif ignored her and struggled to pull the carpet out of the interior. Then there was more bouncing around as he obviously put it on the back running board.
More important, she saw no evidence of an inn. She could see no evidence of anything. It was absolutely pitch-black outside the coach, and it seemed as if they were miles and miles from any sort of life.
No food! No lovely country inn where they might dine. No hot bath! Her fury pounded like a drum in her chest and ears.
Grif appeared in the doorway and climbed inside, closing the door behind him. He leaned over Anna, slipped his hands beneath her arms, and easily hoisted her up like a sack of grain, propping her up on the bench across from him. A thick strand of hair had fallen from her coif and was lying, annoyingly, over her eye. And her gown, her perfect rose day gown, felt oddly twisted about on her body. Worse, as she looked down at her shoes, she noticed one of them had a horrible gray stain that covered the toe. Her specially made shoes.
That was the last straw. He might have kidnapped her, but he didn’t have to be so intolerably crude about it. She slowly raised her gaze and glared daggers at Grif.
He smiled a bit impishly. “Kidnapping, it would seem, is no’ exactly tidy.”
“Not exactly tidy?” she screamed against her gag with such force that she actually levitated off the bench, and then fell back against the squabs.
Grif leaned forward, propped his hands on his knees. “That willna help, all the squiggling about,” he said, gesturing in what she assumed was a squiggly way. “There’s naugh’ that can be done for it now. It is what it is.”
Oh, how very profound, Anna thought, glaring at him still, and tried to twist around and show him her hands, hoping to make him understand she wanted to be untied.
“I know ye want me to untie ye now,” he said, surprising Anna. “But I must explain something to ye first, about the beastie.”
Oh no, not that bloody gargoyle! Was he blind? Could he not see how uncomfortable she was?
“The beastie, as I told ye, is worth a fortune. A fortune large enough that the thing has been stolen back and forth across the Scots border many times, and has been since the days of Culloden.”
Anna groaned to the ceiling of the coach. This was hardly the time to review the history of that blasted thing!
“I tell ye this, lass, so I might defend why I kidnapped ye. Our family is in rather dire financial straits, what with all the sheep…’Tis quite complicated, really, so we’ll just leave it at this—the beastie rightfully belongs to us, and we desperately need the money she’ll bring to save our home, Talla Dileas. But the beastie, ye see, she was in England when we needed her. So me brother, Liam, came to retrieve her last Season.”
Had he heard even a word she’d ever said? She knew this. She’d told him so and tried to kick him now with her bound feet for not listening to her.
“Aye, but he was distracted by a woman, he was. Perhaps ye know her, then…Ellie Farnsworth? And she has a wee lass, Natalie.”