She turned and drew her companion into the inn. Owen’s dark gaze shifted to the stable, curious yet aware. Wyn almost smiled, but now was not the time to enjoy having returned to his native land, to appreciate the quick, savvy mind of another Welshman.
“Owen, did you see a large man saddle a roan in that stable earlier, perhaps an hour ago?”
“Yessir.”
“Where is that man now?”
He shrugged. “Haven’t seen him since.”
Eads had remained very close; his horse had been saddled in its stall when Wyn went to prepare Galahad and the filly. The Highlander would not be far now, ready to follow when they departed. But his momentary absence was sheer good luck.
He took Galahad’s lead. “Go fetch that horse. Tell the ostler that the gentleman named Eads intends to drive my carriage today. Then meet me below the crossing.” He pointed down the main street.
“Yes, sir.” With a light step the boy went toward the stable. Ramses followed for a pace, then returned to Wyn.
“It seems we are to amplify our party by two,” he murmured to the dog.
Ramses’ black eyes peered up at him.
“You are thinking what I am thinking, of course. The more people she has to protect her from me, the better.”
She’d thought he was trying to teach her a lesson. And perhaps at the moment he had been. Perhaps he was trying to stop himself from dishonoring her.
But he would prove no further threat to Miss Lucas. He had set aside the bottle once before. It hadn’t been particularly easy, but then he didn’t have particular reason for it then, he merely wished to prove to himself that he could stop. Pride: the sin his father and brothers had accused him of so often.
He had exemplary reason now.
He could not frighten her into returning home voluntarily; her spirit of adventure and confidence were far too strong. But now he would use the serendipitous appearance of the Misses Blevinses to finally bring her to the place he’d told her stepfather to retrieve her—a place where the locals would not reveal their presence to any lawmen who might happen to catch up with them. Upon the road the rain would also be his ally, as well as her care for the people in her company. She would agree to stop for a time if it meant their comfort, long enough to allow Carlyle to arrive. If not the baron, then Kitty Blackwood. Kitty and Leam must be in London now, and the note he’d posted an hour earlier would ride the Mail to town swiftly, and Kitty would come.
In the meantime, he would regain control. The girl with the wide lapis eyes deserved it.
Sometimes behind the silvery gray she saw the eyes of a bird, intense and predatory. Or perhaps merely very, very hungry. Perhaps not the eyes of a predator but of a creature that wished to eat but who would not allow himself to kill. Behind the silver hid the famished eyes of a scavenger.
Mr. Eads had called him a raven. The Raven.
But his eyes only looked like that in the morning, before he began drinking spirits. He never drank them in the morning, although it seemed that at noon he gave himself leave.
Not today. Perhaps he did not trust himself. Perhaps he did not trust her. And well he should not. She had proven herself untrustworthy.
But as the morning slipped into afternoon and the rain became a steady drone, his eyes took on the hungry look again. Still, his boots trod the puddle-strewn road in steady strides. For hours he had walked thus, not sharing her mount even once. She was sore from riding awkwardly on a man’s saddle, but he must be exhausted. Yet his stride did not falter, his hand firm on the lead of the big horse he had stolen from the inn’s stable when they left Sir Henry’s carriage behind.
“Mrs. Polley is asleep again.” She glanced over her shoulder at Galahad bearing her companion and the luggage like a mule. Owen walked beside Lady Priscilla.
Mr. Yale did not respond.
“She does not believe we must travel quite this far west to escape the Miss Blevinses’ notice,” she tried again.
Still he did not speak, his gaze on the narrow road flanked by rock walls stretching endlessly ahead into the haze of rain. To either side, hills rose steeply in glorious hues of emerald and evergreen, copses of trees cresting the heights and sheep speckling the fields oblivious to the rain in their thin, late summer coats, all of it now veiled in silvery gray.
“I suppose she has less concern than we since she knows nothing of the threat Mr. Eads poses.”
No reply.
She had been talking to herself like this all day. And staring at him, his broad shoulders covered by his black overcoat, the damp curl of his hair about his collar. She had touched him there. She still couldn’t quite believe it. But she had the memory of sensation within her gloves now, and everywhere else in her body. And, of course, there was his altered mien, not in the least uncivil, only subdued.
He regretted having kissed her, touched her, and he did not remember it. She—brazen, wanton daughter of a wayward, wicked mother—remembered every moment. And she could not stop thinking about it.
“Are you familiar with this part of Wales?”
“I heard many stories of it in my childhood.” He did not sound exhausted, or piqued, or unhappy. He sounded . . . normal.
She released a tiny breath. “What sorts of stories?”
“In Knighton, the town we left this morning, there is a clock tower at the top of the main street. Did you notice it?”
“Yes.” She hadn’t. She’d noticed only the regret on his handsome features and the flicker of relief when she refused his offer of marriage.
“If a man of Knighton wishes to divorce his wife, he may bring her to that clock tower in the center of town and sell her to whomever will take her.”
She laughed. “That is positively barbaric!”
“Isn’t it?”
“Of course you would never do that.”
“Of course not.” A pause. “Only if she were very troublesome.” For the first time since the Bates’s stable, his voice seemed to smile.
Happiness caught at her, simple and warm. She swiped rain off the tip of her nose. “Then it is a good thing we are not to marry after all, because I daresay you would be selling me at the clock tower within days.”
He did not immediately respond. Then: “I daresay.”
She swallowed over the sudden thickness in her throat. “Are we lost, Mr. Yale?”
“Not precisely, Miss Lucas.”
He had called her Diantha the night before. And for a moment, in that moment, he had truly frightened her.
“Slightly lost?”
“Possibly.” Another silence, washed by the steady stream of rain about them and punctuated by Mrs. Polley’s snores.
“Probably lost?”
“Yes.”
“What shall we do about it, then?”
He glanced up and she realized that she missed his eyes when he did not look at her. She drank in the profile of his jaw and the contours of his mouth. Droplets of rain fell from his hat brim onto his coat.
“Mrs. Polley is sodden to the bone,” she continued, because speaking was considerably easier than contemplating his mouth and wishing for things she could not have, “and I think Owen is sleeping as he walks.”
“It will be best to find a place to hide for a bit.”
“To ‘hide’?” He did not strike her as the sort of man who hid. From anything.
“To take shelter.”
The rain fell heavily now, silencing all but itself. But he also did not seem the sort to shy from bad weather.
“Oh,” she said. “For my safety from Mr. Eads.”
Back to no reply again.
“But you said he agreed to allow you to assist me on my quest because of a tragedy having to do with his sister and a brothel.”
“That was before you rode out of town on his horse.”
Her hands jerked on the reins and the big roan snorted.