“No one will hear you.”
She stared at him in shock, and even he could not believe what he was saying.
“Are you threatening me?” she asked.
He shook his head. “No. I’m saving you.” And then, before he had the opportunity to reconsider his actions, he grabbed her around her middle, threw her over his shoulder, and ran from the room.
Twenty-four
In which Our Hero leaves Our Heroine in an awkward position.
“You are tying me to a water closet?”
“Sorry,” he said, tying two scarves into such expert knots that she almost worried that he had done this before. “I couldn’t very well leave you in your room. That’s the first place anyone would look.” He tightened the knots, then tested them for strength. “It was the first place I looked.”
“But a water closet!”
“On the third floor,” he added helpfully. “It will take hours before anyone finds you here.”
Lucy clenched her jaw, desperately trying to contain the fury that was rising within her.
He had lashed her hands together. Behind her back.
Good Lord, she had not known it was possible to be so angry with another person.
It wasn’t just an emotional reaction—her entire body had erupted with it. She felt hot and prickly, and even though she knew it would do no good, she jerked her arms against the piping of the water closet, grinding her teeth and letting out a frustrated grunt when it did nothing but produce a dull clang.
“Please don’t struggle,” he said, dropping a kiss on the top of her head. “It is only going to leave you tired and sore.” He looked up, examining the structure of the water closet. “Or you’ll break the pipe, and surely that cannot be a hygienic prospect.”
“Gregory, you have to let me go.”
He crouched so that his face was on a level with hers. “I cannot,” he said. “Not while there is still a chance for us to be together.”
“Please,” she pleaded, “this is madness. You must return me. I will be ruined.”
“I will marry you,” he said.
“I’m already married!”
“Not quite,” he said with a wolfish smile.
“I said my vows!”
“But you did not consummate them. You can still get an annulment.”
“That is not the point!” she cried out, struggling fruitlessly as he stood and walked to the door. “You don’t understand the situation, and you are selfishly putting your own needs and happiness above those of others.”
At that, he stopped. His hand was on the doorknob, but he stopped, and when he turned around, the look in his eyes nearly broke her heart.
“You’re happy?” he asked. Softly, and with such love that she wanted to cry.
“No,” she whispered, “but—”
“I’ve never seen a bride who looked so sad.”
She closed her eyes, deflated. It was an echo of what Hermione had said, and she knew it was true. And even then, as she looked up at him, her shoulders aching, she could not escape the beatings of her own heart.
She loved him.