The girl bounced a curtsy, all coltish slenderness, the exact opposite of Diantha at that age. But exactly like her then in another manner: Elizabeth’s cheeks and brow were peppered with red spots. Each one seemed to radiate brighter as she blushed.
“I’m only Betsy, miss. And my cooking ain’t nearly so fine as the gentleman says.” She directed a starry-eyed glance at Mr. Yale.
“I am certain you must deserve the praise, Betsy.” Diantha had no doubt she’d directed precisely the same starry look at him last night. Because she was madly curious to see how he liked the flattery of awkward girls still in the schoolroom, she mustered the courage to glance at him. But he was not looking at Betsy, he was looking at her, and her gruesomely uncomfortable stomach did another flip-flop.
“My saints, Betsy,” Mrs. Bates said, setting down her cooking spoon and peering out the window. “You run out and close the gate before that goat escapes, and I’ll fetch the . . . eggs. Mrs. Dyer, I’ve set tea for you.” With a thoroughly transparent look at her daughter, she ushered Betsy out.
Mr. Yale moved toward a sturdy oaken sideboard against the wall that bore a set of cups and plates decorated with little pink flowers along the rims. “Can you tolerate food?”
“No.” She watched him pour from a jug into a cup and cross the room toward her. “But I will eat if you do.”
“While you slept away the day, I dined with our hosts.” He extended the cup. She accepted it and lifted it to her mouth.
“It seems we are to— Oh!” She spit the spirits back into the cup. “What do you think you’re doing giving me that? Do you want to see me cast up my accounts all over again?”
His brow lifted. “Not in the least.” He took her hand and urged it toward her mouth. “But you must trust me on this.”
“No.” She resisted. Her tongue was crimping at its base and her stomach turning over, and also his hand was quite firm and warm around hers. Resisting apparently meant that he would touch her, so she gladly resisted. Clearly she had learned nothing from the failure of her adventure into wicked waywardness the previous night.
He pushed back gently. Rather than spill the liquor on her gown, finally she set the rim to her mouth again.
“They call it taking a dose of the hair of the dog that bit you.” He stood close, looking down at her as she sipped. Her throat revolted, but she managed to swallow.
“An old superstition?” she managed between clenched teeth.
“It has a restorative effect.”
She released the empty cup back into his hand. “I cannot believe you do that all the time. What I mean to say is, it was . . . uncomfortable. No wonder you’ve decreased a stone since last I saw you.”
“I’ve not been sick since I was a boy.”
“You haven’t?”
“A man learns to hold his drink if he is wise.”
“Did you really eat dinner?”
“I did. Would you like to know the measures of portions and each item on the plate?”
She chuckled, and he smiled in return. Beneath the blanket of that smile she did not feel her rebellious stomach or smell her putrid sweat or even mind her somewhat weak knees.
“I am hungry. And as we are apparently to have those children after all, I probably should eat to maintain my health.”
He laughed. “Unusual young lady, indeed.”
“Well, it wasn’t my idea to assign to me an interesting condition.” Now the whole of her legs felt wobbly. She slipped around him and went to the table where a plate of biscuits sat beside a teapot. “I cannot imagine what Mrs. Polley was thinking to invent that.”
“No doubt she thought it would seem to our hosts a more appealing incapacity than drunkenness. Or disease. And I believe she hoped to impose a veneer of domestic responsibility upon her role in the thing.” A beat of silence. “And mine.”
Her fingers stalled on the teapot handle. “Yours?”
“With each cup of punch you took last evening, her glower at me deepened.”
“Whatever for?”
“I am under the impression that she feels I was responsible for your excess.”
“Well I know you were not.” She poured the tea and drank it and her hands barely even shook, which was remarkable since he was watching her and there were any number of things she and he both could say now that would be highly uncomfortable. For her, at least. “How did we come to be here, and where precisely is here?”
“Imprecisely, somewhere between Shrewsbury and Bishops Castle.”
“Bishops Castle? Isn’t that—?”
“West? Yes. I thought it best to avoid the main road, for both secrecy and safety’s sake.”
“I recall you saying something about driving far enough so that no one would recognize Sir Henry’s carriage and horses, so I suppose this family does not. They were very kind to take us in.” She chewed on a biscuit and took a second. “Oh!” She looked up. “Did you leave my necklace?”
Now his eyes twinkled. “You would have it no other way.”
“It was the honorable thing to do.”
“It is a shame, really, that upon this quest you cannot yourself play the role of the hero.”
“I don’t have to. You are playing it. And . . .” She fiddled with a biscuit, crumbling it between the tips of her fingers. “I am grateful to you for being honorable.” She was also mortified. And keenly disappointed.
Fortunately, he understood her meaning.
“We shall call it even then, shall we?” He said it quietly, but he sounded perfectly undisturbed.
Then, because she feared that her cheeks were red, she flipped a hand in the air and said with mock insouciance, “Anyway, you must play the role of the hero because we are heading south, and Scotland is north, of course.”
“Scotland?”
“Where villains take innocent damsels when eloping.”
“Ah. Of course.” He moved away from her, returning to the sideboard and pouring another cup of spirits. “I suspect your Mr. H would have something to say to you haring off to Scotland to marry another man.”
She nodded.
“Why do you call your intended by an initial only?”
“Because his name is far too silly to say aloud.”
He allowed a moment’s silence.
She released a thick breath. “Hinkle Highbottom. It’s true: his parents should have been drawn and quartered to name him that. But . . .” She sealed her lips.
“I fear I pry, but I cannot withhold my curiosity. But . . . ?”
“But . . . it rather suits him. Not that he isn’t perfectly amiable. It is only that he is . . .” She turned away from him and went to the stove because she suspected that if she looked at him she would cast him another of Betsy’s starry-eyed looks. “He is a good man and I am sure I shall be very happy with him.”
“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 Shro
pshire 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.
She’d spent the previous evening on a wooden chair far from the hearth, embroidering an apron. Brow creased and luscious lower lip caught between her teeth, she plied the needle with quivering fingers—still suffering from her excess of the night before, he’d no doubt. But she had not complained. Instead, when she finished the work she presented it to the farmer’s eldest daughter with a smile. Then she sewed lace to the edges of Mrs. Bates’s nightcap.
“Took that lace from one of her own dresses,” Mrs. Polley had muttered to him as she removed his empty glass from the table. He’d taken only cider, and this morning the tremors were worse because of that discipline. “Wants to give these good people something of true value, just like herself.” Her bulbous eyes had narrowed. “An angel who doesn’t think anything of herself, my mistress. She deserves to be treated right.”
Wyn agreed wholeheartedly. He’d kept that notion in the front of his mind the night of Sir Henry’s fete as she pressed her curves to him and the whiskey in his blood told him to pull her closer yet.
True value. Though perhaps not an angel, not with her delight in teasing and her determination to succeed on her mission. And her seeking hands and
perfect breasts.
Better than an angel.
The dog stared at him from ebony buttons in a curious face.
“Yes, I am aware that a man with intent to murder a duke has no business putting his hands on any woman.” He attached the traces, drew the horses one after another to the pole and affixed the coupling reins.
A shadow crossed the square of pale light from the yard. Her knew her shadow. He knew the contour of her neck, and the dimples that flashed in her cheeks, and how her eyes rolled back when she laughed at him. He could describe the shape of each of her fingers and shades of golden brown in her hair, and the precise locations of the tiny scars on her pert nose. These were the sorts of details he had trained himself at an early age to notice and served him well as an agent of the Falcon Club. He was not slipping, it seemed. And knowing her in this manner provided him a decadent sort of agonizing satisfaction.
She came toward him. “Good day, sir.”
“Good day, ma’am. How do you do this morning?”
She laid her hand on a horse’s neck and stroked, her ungloved fingers slender and comfortable upon the animal. “Considerably better. Fully recovered, in fact.” She wore a plain blue gown cinched with a ribbon beneath her breasts. The night before as he lay in the straw alone he’d spent time imagining those breasts stripped of garments. He had imagined touching her. He had told himself it provided distraction from the pull of the bottle Bates offered him earlier, which he’d declined. No more whiskey while in the company of Diantha Lucas. He didn’t trust himself.
Now her breasts were before him, albeit clothed. Still, reality proved greater than imagination. “I am glad for you, then.” He turned from her to recheck the reins.
“It’s true, I will not be experimenting with spirits again. Will we leave soon?”
“Momentarily.”
She glanced toward the stable door. “The Bateses are wonderfully kind people. It is a marvel we were so fortunate to happen upon them.” She hovered at his shoulder on the balls of her feet. “Betsy is their eldest, you know. A year older than Tom. She entered the harvest fair baking competition this year with her own entry and won. She is very proud of that accomplishment.”
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