“What will he think of this mission of yours?”
She took up the long wooden spoon and stirred the stew. Sometimes she helped with simple tasks when Cook was entertaining Faith with biscuits or bread making. In the midst of this wild adventure, it felt familiar. Like this man. Despite the moments she had of pure awareness that he was not entirely safe, somehow he made her escapade to find her mother seem sane.
“He won’t know about this,” she replied. “No one will. Except you. And Mrs. Polley, of course. Will we leave here now?”
“We have escaped Eads’s notice for the time. It is already late in the day. I drove through the night and—despite my heroic status—require rest before taking to the road anew. Tomorrow will be soon enough.”
“Tomorrow?” Her heart skipped. “But . . .” It did several little jigs about her chest. She lowered her voice and darted a glance at the window. “They believe we are married.”
The slightest crease appeared in one lean cheek. Crossing his arms, he propped a broad shoulder against the sideboard. “If you recall, it was your idea.”
“To pretend to the Miss Blevinses and Sir Henry. Not the entire Shropshire countryside.” Mr. and Mrs. Bates would expect them to share a bedchamber. Diantha believed that she had the courage of a true heroine in her heart. But this she could not face, not with the pieces of her memories from the night before skittering around in her head. In short: she did not trust herself, even sober. The more she looked at him the more she wanted to feel again that alarming excitement she’d felt when he touched her in the stable.
There was a light in his eyes again that she did not perfectly understand, a bit fierce and not at all familiar.
“You are trying to make me feel uncomfortable,” she mumbled.
“Now, why would I do that?”
“Because you think me disobedient and misguided. And immodest.”
He came to her. She released the spoon to meet him head on. Inside she quaked, but she would not allow him to see that, not after everything she had allowed him to see the night before.
“I think you are all that is admirable, minx,” he said when he stood close. “But you were nearer to the mark before.”
Her breaths came fast and she could not resist looking at his mouth. “Nearer to the mark?”
“In believing that I possess sufficient honor not to take advantage of a lady in desperate straits.”
She wanted to reach out and touch his waistcoat again to see if she had not imagined the hard muscle beneath it. “I believe that.”
“Then, pray, pay me the compliment of knowing that I have your best interests at heart. And, Miss Lucas”—he held her gaze steadily—“I assure you that those best interests do not include me.”
Her heart rose in her throat. She nearly choked on it.
“Of course,” she managed fairly credibly. “You will sleep on the floor, then?”
The corner of his mouth quirked up. “I will sleep in the hayloft. For the benefit of our hosts we shall put it off to your illness and need for the comfort of a female companion who understands such matters. Mrs. Polley will share your quarters.” His voice caressed. He mustn’t know it or he would never speak to her in such a manner. It made her entire body hum.
The door opened and Mrs. Bates and Betsy found them like that, standing close together, as though they were truly a newly wedded couple expecting a happy event. Not, rather, that she was a wayward, wicked girl who wanted quite fervidly to kiss a man to whom she was not betrothed, and he had just told her quite clearly that she may not.
But she was a practical-thinking person, not the dreamer her stepsister Serena had always been, nor a meek lamb like her sister Charity. So she asked their hostess if she could assist in preparing supper, and as she moved about the room she tried not to notice that—despite his words—he watched her without ceasing.
Chapter 8
“He’s a beauty, sir.” The farm boy stroked Galahad’s nose.
“Are you fond of horses, Tom?” Wyn affixed the leading line to the inside carriage horse and drew the trace through its ring. Sir Henry’s cattle were not in the first flush of youth, but they were far from hacks, and they’d managed the narrow track he had taken southwest handily enough in the moonless night. Wyn regretted the theft. But the necklace would compensate the old squire for the loss until he returned to London and could send money. His funds were slim, but sufficient. Then he would retrieve Miss Lucas’s jewelry and restore it to her.
Rather, he would ask Leam or Jinan to do so. Neither would deny him, for by then he would be in no position to do anything of his own volition.
In the meantime he hoped she would not regret the loss of her jewels. But she didn’t seem the sort to regret, rather to seize what she wanted without hesitation, as she had tried to seize him.
“These here are the finest I’ve seen.” Thomas hefted a forkful of hay. “Is that one the lady’s saddle horse?”
“No. This one was bred to be a hunter and she belongs to a duke.” As Miss Lucas belonged to her father and eventually to Mr. Highbottom. It was a damn good thing her father had already arranged a match for her. With her ripe lips and eyes full of a desire as heated as it was innocent, she wouldn’t last a season in town with her maidenhood intact. She would offer that sparkling smile and those questing hands to the next man she naïvely trusted, and that man certainly would not refuse her. What fool other than he would?
The boy’s eyes rounded. “Well, that’s a fine thing, you knowing a duke.”
“I know him only by hearsay.” By the report of a girl with red, puckered scars across her cheeks and brow.
“What’s he like, then?”
“He lives alone in an impregnable fortress.”
The lad whistled through his teeth. “A castle?”
“A castle he never leaves and into which he never allows a soul. The duke is a recluse.” A recluse who prized his lost filly beyond telling, but who had insisted to the Falcon Club’s director that he would not pay for her return unless he first saw her, and that the man who retrieved her bring her directly to him. Into his fortress.
“They do say some of them great lords is nicked in the head.”
Wyn settled the pads and collar about the nearside horse’s breast. “Not only the great lords.”
“The lady seems to be feeling better this morning.” Tom split a smile. “My mother and Betsy are crowing to have a real lady helping with the chores.”
“I don’t believe she minds it. She is an unusual lady.” A country girl, reared on the stark coast of Devonshire by a recluse stepfather and an unkind mother. A girl who, when she drank to excess, became as affectionate as a kitten and as lusty as an opera singer.
The eldest Bates daughter appeared in the stable doorway. “Tom, Papa wants you at the cote.”
“I’ll be up soon.”
Her glance flickered to Wyn then back to her brother. “He wants you now.”
The lad set the pitchfork against the wall and tugged at his cap. “I’d best see to those sheep, sir.” He cast Galahad another appreciative look then left. Betsy gave Wyn a shy smile and followed. Trailing behind them, the dog turned at the door, trotted on its three good legs back to the carriage, and leapt up onto the box. Wyn shook his head.
“Ramses,” he said, slipping the bit into a horse’s mouth. “A royal name for a scrap of a mongrel.” It watched as he ran the breaching strap along the offside horse’s flank and buckled it. “You do know that you are not my dog.”
It peered back at him with its black eyes set in a mat of brown and gray fur, just as it had when he climbed into the loft the night before.
“I suspect you do not in fact know that.” He moved around to affix the straps on the other horse. “But you see, Ramses, I cannot have a dog at this time.” As he could not have a girl with lapis eyes and a beautiful smile and the most damnably persistent hands he’d ever had the torturous pleasure of being obliged to remove from his body.