“As you wish. You may keep whatever you do not use, and I will give you the fee we agreed upon when you return. But haste is essential. And a mum lip. The letter I have given you mustn’t be read by anyone but the baron, or Lord or Lady Savege, and you mustn’t tell a soul of your purpose.”
“Yessir. I understand, sir.”
“Good man.” Wyn left him then, reassured by the look of careful responsibility crossed with sheer relief in the youth’s eyes. What he offered William as payment would be a windfall for the poor family. The lad would make good time to Glenhaven Hall, home of the Baron of Carlyle, Miss Lucas’s stepfather. If the baron could not be found, William was to continue on to nearby Savege Park, the home of her stepsister, the Countess of Savege. If Wyn did not hear back from the baron or Serena and Alex Savege within the sennight, he would send another messenger, this time to Kitty and Leam Blackwood in London. Sister to the earl of Savege, Kitty was family to Miss Lucas too. If she were in town, she would come in an instant.
If he wrote to Constance, she would come, of course. But Wyn did not wish to see Constance before he completed his task, nor really Leam either, the man he’d spent six years of his life with wandering around the empire, working for the crown in secret.
Constance and Leam were the closest he had to family, and Jin Seton and Colin Gray to a degree. Rather, had been. With Leam’s retirement from the club four years earlier, the group had changed. Their secret ring of fellowship had been broken.
But in truth, the change had begun before that for Wyn, more than a year before that, in a rainy London alleyway when he looked into the bloodless face of a scarred girl and saw his own death. When he began to lie to the people he cared for most in the world.
And now, again, a girl was trusting him. A girl who came to him of her own accord and begged him for help.
God help Diantha Lucas for seeing a hero where none stood. But some girls, he supposed, were blind that way.
Diantha didn’t so much mind having been touched intimately by a gentleman. She minded not having been kissed first.
Teresa said men kissed ladies before they took greater liberties, and Diantha had given that some thought. Once before their wedding she’d seen her stepsister, Viola, and her betrothed, Mr. Seton, kiss each other quite enthusiastically when they thought no one else was looking, and her toes had positively curled in her slippers. Since Viola had come away from it with a dazed smile, and Mr. Seton with a remarkably satisfied look, Diantha supposed kissing was something to be desired rather than dreaded.
Her parents had never kissed. Her stepfather, a kind but limp and distracted sort of man, had barely ever come out of his study while her mother lived at Glenhaven Hall. Her real father had always been foxed. Like Mr. Yale in the stable. Which was perhaps why he had not kissed her before putting his hand on her behind.
He had released her swiftly, no doubt because he had not enjoyed touching her like that. How could he have enjoyed it? Just the memory of it made her squirm in shame. If she were like most girls, like the other girls at the academy, slim and delicate, perhaps he might have enjoyed it. Perhaps he would not have stopped. Perhaps he would have kissed her.
The coach rumbled over the rolling Shropshire countryside, Mrs. Polley asleep beside her. She was very amiable, although not particularly pleasant toward Mr. Yale. That couldn’t be wondered at. Like kissing. Elegant London ladies probably kissed gentlemen left and right, which was no doubt why Mrs. Polley did not trust Mr. Yale, for he was most certainly an elegant London gentleman.
Lying in bed fitfully the night before, Diantha had imagined kissing him, and her whole body got hot, like when he’d held her in the dark. It was wrong of her to feel hot like that, she suspected, but she was after all the wayward, wicked daughter of a wayward, wicked woman.
She had always been wayward, from the time she was a little girl. Her mother had said so ceaselessly. In the shadow of her beautiful, sweet elder sister, Charity, Diantha had never been of any use to her mother because of her poor looks and waywardness.
The wickedness, however, was new.
She wanted to kiss Mr. Yale.
He rode behind the coach, drawing the brown horse along as before. The little dog was with him now, but this coachman was much kinder than yesterday’s and didn’t mind it sitting in the carriage. Diantha had nothing to complain about. But at the coach’s next stop, Mr. Yale’s drawn brow alarmed her.
“You are unhappy with me for forcing you to do this,” she said, walking beside him as he led his horses to a water trough. The rain had diminished and sunlight poked through unruly clouds.
“I am unhappy, but rather with myself for not foreseeing the sort of trouble we now have.”
She drew in a tiny breath of relief. “We have trouble?”
“Miss Lucas,” he said quietly, “in my life I have occasionally inconvenienced people in a manner which has left them eager to inconvenience me in return.”
“Inconvenienced?”
“Displeased.”
“But what—”
“I’m afraid I am unable to expand upon the whats and wherefores. Unfortunately, however, I am now being followed by a man who has ill intentions toward me. This, as you might imagine, could prove a hindrance to our progress.”
She studied his profile. “You are concerned for my safety and Mrs. Polley’s. Not for your own.”
He said nothing. Her safety, of course, was the reason he now stood here beside her.
“Where are you taking this horse, Mr. Yale?” She stroked the animal’s neck.
Mr. Yale turned to her, that slight smile pulling at the corner of his mouth that she wanted to kiss.
“You are an unusual young lady, Miss Lucas.”
“Merely curious.”
“She belongs to the Duke of Yarmouth, whose heir, Marquess McFee, lost her in a game of cards to a gentleman of uncertain honor from whom I have recently retrieved her. It is my task now to return her to her rightful owner.”
The horse’s coat was warm beneath her glove. “Is that what you hope to do with me in the end, imagining I will tire of my mission?”
“You are not a horse, obviously. But if you have an owner of whom I am ignorant, I wish you will inform me so that I might not be accused of theft.”
“You often do not answer my questions.”
“Don’t I?”
She darted her gaze up. He was no longer smiling, rather intense, and the change made her belly tighten most deliciously. “How do you propose to avoid this man who is pursuing you?”
“I haven’t an idea of it yet. But I will not allow you to come to harm because of my enemies.”
“You have enemies? Oh, but I suppose everyone does.”
His silver eyes glimmered. “Not everyone, it seems. You befriend each person you encounter. You are in fact an unusual young lady, Miss Lucas.”
“And a London gentleman acting as horse courier to a duke and being followed by a man with a bad purpose while assisting a runaway lady to find her mother—what sort of man is that, Mr. Yale? A common run-of-the-mill sort?”
He offered her his slight grin then nodded toward the door of the pub. “We’ve a quarter hour until the coach departs again.”
“I asked Mrs. Polley to purchase a cold lunch. Will you eat today, sir?”
“Will you cease pestering me about food, madam?”
“Probably not.”
“Just so.”
Wyn watched her move toward the door where the dog sat. As she approached it, the little mongrel’s tail whipped back and forth. She paused and looked back.
“It likes you,” she said.
“Rather, it likes you.” As everyone did. Her smile, her sparkling eyes, and her warmth conveyed affection to every passenger aboard the coach, the coachman, even the surly posting house master at their previous stop. And aside from his desire to have his hands on her again, Wyn liked her too. He would not allow this new danger to threaten her. The man in brown that he’d seen tw
ice now was a curiosity. If the man appeared again, he would discover his purpose.
But today’s threat was a much greater concern. An old acquaintance, Duncan Eads, had appeared earlier on the road behind the coach. He had maintained his distance, but he was not a man to be discounted. Months back Wyn had caused him trouble, stealing a girl out from under the nose of Eads’s employer, a man named Myles who owned a quarter of London’s underworld. Drunk as an emperor at the time—a rather long episode of that—Wyn had made Eads look like a fool and angered Myles.
Eads had no doubt been sent here to finally make him pay. Wyn was of a mind to tell him to get in line.
“We should give it a name.” She bent to stroke the dog’s brow, pulling the fabric of her cloak tight around her behind. Wyn held his breath, entirely unable to remove his gaze from that generous curve of femininity that he’d briefly had in his hand.
“As you wish.”
She offered him a quick smile and went into the pub.
He walked his horses to a grassy spot and loosened their leads to allow them to graze. The village’s high street was peculiarly active; farmers’ wagons laden with children and other adults, a cart, then a carriage of modest quality all passed by within minutes, and a number of people on foot. Eads did not appear, but Wyn suspected he would see him again when the time was least convenient. Perhaps on the road ahead. Eads might now be going around a long route while the coach was halted here, planning an ambush.
The coachman ambled from the pub, tipped his cap to Wyn, and the other passengers followed. Miss Lucas burst out the door.
“Mr. Yale, I have heard the most wonderful news.” Her cheeks were flushed with life. She lowered her voice and pulled Mrs. Polley along. “Today the local squire has opened up his estate to all the surrounding countryside. Apparently this squire, Sir Henry, is quite well-to-do and he likes to throw enormous parties.” She glanced about the street with an expectant air.
“I must be glad for Sir Henry and his guests.” It explained the traffic. “But I am not entirely certain what his magnanimity has to do with you.”
“Oh, not so much me, or only incidentally, but rather you. And the man following you.”
He glanced at Mrs. Polley. Her lips were a line. He returned his regard to the girl whose blue eyes shone with excitement.
“Miss Lucas, may I suggest that you reboard the—”
“No. Don’t you see? This is the ideal diversion.” She grasped his arm, effectively grounding him in total, tongue-tied silence. He’d not forgotten the shape of her body or the heat of her touch from the night before, though he had spent the morning’s ride trying to. Ten years as a secret agent of the crown, yet when confronted with Miss Diantha Lucas, he was, it seemed, all youthful lust all over again. She had a fine figure. Not merely fine. She had perfect breasts, round and high and modestly concealed by her traveling gown, which did not however discourage him from imagining them naked.
“Diversion?” he managed.
“We must hide in plain sight.” Her eyes danced, her berry lips curving into a smile of delight that Wyn wanted to taste. “There will be hundreds of people there, and if your . . . friend is not here now”—her gaze darted to the street—“he will not know you have gone off in another direction. We can hire a carriage and take another route. Don’t you see? It is perfect.”
“No.” He did not see the perfection of her plan, but he was beginning to see the perfect idiocy of his own desires.
“Yes.”
He turned to her companion. “Mrs. Polley, I suspect you disapprove of this proposed program.”
“Well, I don’t see how it might not be the trick. If your nasty fellow might give this sweet lady grief, well then you’ve got to find a solution. And I don’t see how my mistress’s plan here is any worse than what you might come up with.”
“If you do not board that coach and a carriage cannot be hired, Miss Lucas, we will be well stranded here when my ‘friend’ arrives.”
She scanned his face. “You do not believe he will arrive here. Not here. You think he has gone ahead to accost you by surprise somewhere down the highway.”
She was remarkable. So he laughed.
Her lips curved into a smile, like the breeze in spring. She was fresh and clear and direct, except of course with this entire escapade to find her mother. But her eyes twinkled up at him, satisfaction and excitement making the lapis glimmer in the inconstant rays of sun, and he could not deny her. Rule #1: If a lady is kind of heart, generous and virtuous, a gentleman should acquiesce to her every request; he should deny her nothing. That, and, if a carriage could in fact be gotten here, her plan actually sounded better than anything he’d yet devised.
Her gaze shifted over his shoulder. “There! We mayn’t have to hire a carriage after all.” She hailed a vehicle crawling along at a snail’s pace, an ancient barouche as long as it was cavernous within, with a wizened coachman in a faded coat and pulled by a pair of horses as old as their driver. Tucked inside were two ladies wrapped in gauze at least a half century out of date, with hats and parasols from another era.
Miss Lucas hurried to it. Wyn could not hear her words, only her voice, clean and bright as always. The ladies responded to her with smiles. A frail hand gloved in old lace stretched out and took the girl’s. Then another lifted, waving him and Mrs. Polley toward the carriage.
That was the moment Wyn first suspected that finally—after many more than nine girls—he had met his match.
Chapter 6
“I told the Miss Blevinses that we are newlyweds.”
“I gathered that.”
“Well, I couldn’t very well tell them we are an old married couple. I’m barely nineteen.”
“You might have been a child bride.”
She chuckled. Errant rays of sunshine played in the strands of chestnut hair escaping her bonnet and in her blue eyes, and for a moment she did appear quite young. Nearly guileless, he had believed.
Now he knew better.
“But of course we have no children, and I was not really prepared to invent them on the spot.” She picked morsels of meat from the platter on the table and deposited them alternately with the dog at her feet and between her tempting lips. “Although I suppose I could have if pressed, but they might not have believed it. We are not well enough known to each other to do the sorts of things that old married couples do, like—”
“Finish each other’s sentences?”
Her dimples flashed, propelling Wyn’s hand back to the punch bowl ladle. Sir Henry’s butler mixed a potent, but palatable, concoction.
It wouldn’t have mattered if he served white gin straight from the barrel. After sitting for two hours on chairs decorating the lawn, sipping tea while she invented story after story of charming childhood escapades—both hers and his—with which she regaled the Miss Blevinses, Sir Henry, and a half dozen other septuagenarians who hadn’t seen a London drawing room since George II and therefore had no idea that the newly wedded Mr. and Mrs. Dyer were a complete sham—Wyn had nearly stood and declared his intention to annul her instantly. Instead he begged their host and the kind ladies who had conveyed them hither to excuse them while he and his bride strolled through the gardens.
He’d taken her directly to the refreshments.
About the lawn sloping to the sheep fields below, children played ball and tennis, their parents—farmers, villagers, and a smattering of exceedingly modest gentry—enjoying the produce of the harvest. All were happy with the break in the rain and Sir Henry’s annual generosity. A fiddle buzzed a tune, and two dozen or so lads and lasses danced upon the turf, laughter mingling with shy glances—the awkward flirtations of youths and the innocent coquetry of maidens.
Wyn had no remembrances of a time like that in his life. He’d gone from boy to man in months. Weeks. He did not regret it; he had seen the world in all its marvels. Still, he turned away from the scene now and swallowed the contents of his glass.
Miss Lucas’s gaze ling
ered on the dancers. “I don’t think Mrs. Polley approves of the story I have invented.”
“I suspect, rather, that she does not approve of the husband you have chosen.”
“But you are a perfectly unexceptionable gentleman.”
“A gentleman who has agreed to escort you across England without benefit of a proper chaperone, family, or actual marriage license, recent or otherwise.”
“Hm. But otherwise she is an ideal companion. Except for that abrupt sleeping habit, of course.” She glanced across the lawn to where Mrs. Polley was sprawled upon a divan in the shade of a draping willow. Her brow creased. “I hope she is not ill.”
“I have seen it before.” In the East Indies years ago. “The body simply closes down, as though in sleep although it is not. She cannot control it, but it does not harm her.”
Miss Lucas looked at him with her seeking eyes and took the side of her lower lip between her teeth. This time Wyn did not look away.
Finally she said, “Do you think we have lost . . . your friend?”
“For a time. But he will persist.”
“You displeased him that dreadfully?”
“Rather his employer, a powerful man. We must find a carriage to convey us south by an alternate route. With haste.”
“Well, I—”
“Be quiet, minx. I am thinking.”
“Planning.” She dropped a slice of cheese into the mutt’s mouth. “Yes, I need quiet when I am inventing a plan too.”
“Then now would be a good time to do so. For instance, you might invent a contingency plan for what to do with your companion should we be obliged to beat a swift retreat from this gathering if Eads appears.”
“His name is Mr. Eads? Who is he?”
“A Highland Scot, and as strong as a Dover dockworker.”
“Large, I guess. Mrs. Polley is too heavy for me to carry. But certainly you could do it.”
He cocked a brow.
She nodded. “You could throw her over your shoulder like a true villain would, and carry her off while I run after, begging you to have mercy on her, like a real damsel in distress.”
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