“Miss Lucas, I advise returning now to your traveling trunk and removing the valuables and any necessities before you continue on.”
“I will send someone back for it when I reach the posting house.” Her cloak was sodden, even her bonnet brim drooped, the errant chestnut curls that clung to her cheeks and throat making delicate dark swirls upon the cream of her skin.
He glanced down at the mongrel wagging its tail beside him and murmured, “She has no idea the danger this escapade offers her.” Then more loudly: “I must insist.”
She halted and turned to face him. She tilted her head. “You sound different sometimes. Just then, when you said that, you sounded . . .”
He waited.
Pale roses blossomed on her cheeks. “Like you did last night in the stable. And like you did that night at the ball for Lord and Lady Blackwood’s wedding, when you rescued me.”
Ah. Clearly she had an inclination toward the dramatic. He recalled the incident, of course: a frightened girl, a pack of rowdy lads no less disguised than he at the time, and some stern lecturing. Or perhaps only a stern word or two, but the lads had scattered readily enough. Rescue overstated the episode.
“Your valuables, if you will?” He gestured back toward her luggage.
“I wonder if that is what highwaymen say when accosting a lady on a road.”
“I doubt it.”
“Do you?”
“Miss Lucas.”
“My valuables.” She opened the trunk and repacked the bandbox efficiently. “Will we walk?” she asked as he attached the bandbox to Galahad’s saddle.
“Unless you have a magic carpet hidden in that trunk.”
“If I had a magic carpet I would be in Calais already.” Her eyes were troubled. But it was well after noon and the edge was pressing at his blood, his limbs unsteady again and his temper no better. So he left her to her ruminations and they walked in silence until the posting house came into view.
“This one is not very grand, is it? The inn in that village yesterday was so comfortable.”
“The taproom here is no less so.” Whiskey could be gotten within.
“Walking is invigorating, but truth be told I am simply . . .” Her gaze fluttered past his mouth. “ . . . famished.”
Drawing a slow breath, he scanned her bedraggled cloak and the muddy hem of her gown. She was an unusual girl, or perhaps despite her noble family merely a country girl accustomed to such walks. And with her cheeks flushed and brow damp from exertion, she was damnably pretty.
Inside the posting house, he went to the bar and ordered food for her, and whiskey. Across the rough-hewn taproom peopled with laborers, a single patron appeared out of place. A slim man, garbed all in brown and still wearing his rain-spattered hat, sat in the farthest corner with his back to the wall. Familiar. He’d seen this man on the road to recover Lady Priscilla.
Wyn paid for the bottle and glanced again. The man lowered his gaze.
“The Hereford and London Coach is to stop here shortly,” he said when he returned to the table.
“Perfect. Will there be time to eat first?”
He withheld a smile. “Miss Lucas, you must reconsider your program. Although it astounds me after last night, I think you cannot be fully aware of the dangers of the road.”
“Those are what you are here for, of course. As you were last night in that stable.” Her eyes flared with a joyful sort of intention. Then, for a moment, confused awareness shadowed them. Wyn could do nothing to ease her discomfort; his hands and lips still remembered her and he was again without speech. His friends would be astonished were they to witness him now, struck silent by a pair of blue eyes and the memory of a soft feminine body pressed to his.
The barman set a plate of food before her. Her eyes twinkled. “How did you know shepherd’s pie is my favorite, Mr. Yale?”
She swung so easily from thoughtful stillness to animated delight. Both attitudes made him want to haul her against him and caress considerably more than one round buttock. It was damned provoking.
“I did not,” he managed to reply. “But I feared ordering the roast, as you might be disappointed by comparison.”
“You are considerate. Or merely teasing. But you are not eating again.” She narrowed her eyes. “Do you only drink?”
“When I am escorting young ladies about the countryside against my will, yes.” Never, even when he was doing so voluntarily. But Diantha Lucas was not a Falcon Club assignment. She was apparently his own personal sort of torture.
She seemed to study him as she chewed. Finally she set down her fork and pushed the plate toward him. “Try some. It’s excellent.”
“Thank you. I will take your word for it.”
“You look at least a stone lighter than the last time I saw you.” She glanced at the bottle of brandy. “My father used to drink prodigiously. He rarely ate too.”
“Ah. Then you and I have something in common.” The words came without thought. More unprecedented behavior.
Her brows perked. “Your father too?”
“Prodigiously.”
“Mine died of a stomach ulcer.”
Pain tweaked Wyn’s belly. “I am sorry for your loss.”
“It was a dozen years ago. I was barely seven. I think my mother drove him to it.” The blue of her eyes seemed to intensify. “Will you please help me, Mr. Yale? Willingly?”
“No, Miss Lucas. I will not help you willingly. I wish you to return home and find a solution to reuniting with your mother that meets with the approval of your family.”
Her berry-pink mouth settled into its little thoughtful twist, supple and frankly delectable. Wyn spoke again because, confronted with that delectable mouth on a girl he had no business thinking such thoughts about, he deeply wished for another glass of whiskey. But he would not go that route again, not while she still possessed earlobes like silk, a neck like cream, and a derriere that begged to be handled. Temptation was best faced sober. He reached into his coat pocket for a cigar. “You must allow me to see you home.”
“I cannot. I must continue on my way.”
“Do you plan on doing so by subterfuge again?”
“Yes. I am quite certain that if you continue to press me on the matter, I will escape you again. But instead of stealing away in the middle of the night, which was inconvenient and won me a horrendous lecture from the innkeeper’s wife, I will probably declare to everyone here that you have abducted me from my home and are forcing me to elope with you. I would demand to see the constable.”
“Elope?” His hand stalled halfway to his mouth. “As in, abduct with nefarious designs.”
“Yes.”
He set down the cigar. “Miss Lucas, what actual knowledge do you have of such elopements?”
She tapped the fork tines against the plate. “Teresa has told me stories, you see.”
“I am beginning to.”
“In your black coat, boots, and hat you are an ideal candidate.”
“My heroic status slips swiftly, it seems.”
“Do you think so too?”
“I am clearly becoming the villain of this piece.”
“I suppose you are.”
“It would not bother me in the least.” One constable being rather quite like another. “But tangling with the law will win you a swift journey home.”
“Oh, I don’t think so. While everyone is busy castigating you and you are busy defending yourself, I will slip away.”
“However, now that I know that will be your plan, I will guard against it.”
“I will devise another. You cannot win, Mr. Yale. I am determined.” Her eyes glittered with a martial light, but perhaps too brittle. She was not a girl; her shapely figure and the clean lines of her lovely face made that perfectly clear. A bit too clear for the clear-headedness two drams of whiskey had now provided him. When the dimples appeared, they performed precisely the effect upon him that she intended—if, that was, she understood men. Which she probably did not, at least not to that extent, whatever Miss Finch-Freeworth had told her. On the other hand, the mother that had disappeared four years earlier was a madam, or so it seemed, although he was not quite certain the baroness’s daughter entirely understood what that entailed either.