Mad About The Baron (Matchmaking for Wallflowers Book 4)
Page 9
She pushed the hay into a corner and settled onto her makeshift bed.
Just a few days more.
And then she would see the baron, the true one, and all would be well.
The candlelight flickered, nearly extinguished, and she removed Bertrand’s letter from her satchel. She ran her fingers over the swooping swirls.
The familiar letters, the words long memorized, calmed her, and she reread the letter until the candle extinguished and she fell asleep.
Chapter Twelve
Voices murmured outside, and Veronique froze. Hay prickled her neck, and she lifted her torso.
It must be morning.
People were speaking, might be entering the barn, and—
Veronique had no desire to contemplate what might happen should they discover them. Likely breaking and entering was no more legal in Scotland than it was in the United States.
She glanced around her, trying to find a good hiding place amidst the thick shadows.
The voices continued to speak.
Goodness.
Veronique flung the blanket around her and clambered up the ladder. She crawled over the loft, as her heart pounded against her ribs and the coarse hay tore her arms.
Something sounded, and she recognized the rhythmic breathing of someone sleeping. She stilled.
The door slid open, and men tramped inside. Somebody fumbled near the entrance, and she drew in her breath. Likely they were looking for the light.
Perhaps it hadn’t been necessary to reread love letters last night.
“Can’t have ye moving the lantern,” one man grumbled.
She flinched.
“I didn’t move it,” the other person complained.
More rustling sounded.
Lord Worthing stirred beside her, and her breath quickened. Was he waking up? Would he…say anything?
She eased down beside him, as if the ratcheting of her heartbeat might disturb the people below.
The farmers continued to grumble.
Her heart sped; they would discover the horse. Counting was not an ability limited to mathematicians.
Lord Worthing yawned.
Fiddlesticks.
He was awake.
He stirred on his hay stack groggily, and she had a moment of sympathy for him. This wasn’t a good situation. No one should wake to it.
“That horse wasn’t there last night,” one of the farmers mulled. His voice boomed through the room, the placement of the barn’s rafters heightening its natural strength.
Lord Worthing stirred again and started to murmur.
Veronique didn’t think.
She placed her hand on his lips, trying not to note the softness of his mouth and the masculine roughness of his stubble.
He squirmed, and she ducked her face down.
The dim light from below illuminated the chiseled angles of his face, roughened with stubble.
His eyes widened and then relaxed, as if her presence might be a source of relaxation.
She pointed in the direction of the voices, and his face firmed.
“You don’t suppose there’s anyone here?” one farmer asked, and the light seemed to flicker toward them.
Lord Worthing’s jaw steadied, and he yanked her toward him.
She blinked.
She was lying on top of a…man.
She’d never done something so scandalous in her life.
Her face reddened, as she remembered that she had in fact done something more scandalous. They’d kissed. The experience had been so blissful, so utterly wonderful—and so forbidden.
She was engaged to someone else.
But thoughts of the baron’s letters failed to draw her attention away from the warm body beneath her.
The farmers continued to murmur, and Lord Worthing tightened his grip around her.
He didn’t need to do so.
Nothing would compel her to leave, not when strange men might discover them. She didn’t know what punishment they might receive.
Would they be scolded? Or hauled to the magistrate?
She refused to allow the latter to become a possibility and refrained from the inclination to squeal.
The baron’s eyes flickered with concern, and she relaxed against his broad chest, conscious of the outline of his muscles.
His arms shouldn’t feel so sturdy around her waist, and she railed against the absurd urge to trace them with her fingers.
She was an engaged woman. Soon she would marry a man she didn’t need to meet to know was wonderful.
The achingly narrow distance between Lord Worthing and herself seemed of far more interest than the men below.
His hands tapped against her, perhaps to comfort her against the uncertainty of the farmers discovering them, but the gesture only caused her heart to race more quickly.
It was too easy to remember his lips on hers, too easy to remember the joy she’d felt when they’d first met. She’d attempted to push away the unease she’d had ever since she planned to elope with Bertrand, but when she first met him in that chapel, when she believed him to be her fiancé, he’d shattered all her doubts.
She swallowed hard.
Lord Worthing remained a practical stranger, someone who accompanied her only out of a desire to avoid marriage with her. He’d stated the fact himself. He was not her husband-to-be.
He was not even a friend.
*
Being roused by a pretty woman was normally to be celebrated, but Miles despised the worry that seeped through Miss Daventry.
He did his best to reassure her, brushing his fingers against her back, even as the men sounded below.
The farmers directed their attention to grumbling about the weather, a no doubt endless endeavor in this rain subjected land.
Finally the door slammed shut, and the voices stopped.
We’re alone.
Miles shouldn’t desire to pull Veronique toward him. But when she pulled herself up, something like disappointment surged through him.
He shook his head.
It was good the men were gone.
They could start going about their day.
Perfect.
She clambered from him, brushing the hay from her dress.
“We should go,” Veronique said finally.
“Yes.”
He raised his torso and stumbled from his makeshift bed. He hastened down the ladder, ignoring the twinges of pain that shot through him with his every move.
Veronique followed him out of the barn. “But the horse?”
He sighed. “The horse will have a new owner.”
“I wish your ankle were better.” Her eyes filled with worry. It was the sort of gaze that would be better directed at a child on the verge of drowning, and he shifted over the hay.
“Don’t worry about me. It’s as good as new,” he lied.
Golden light shone over long strips of clouds, turning the normally gray shade a vibrant lilac. Dabs of snow still sat on the fields, colored reflections amidst murky mud and frosted weeds.
He headed from the barn. He had been right. His ankle was better: just not, unfortunately, completely improved.
And then he saw it.
The Red Hart.
The very same inn he’d visited on his way to the castle.
The inn that would have significantly exceeded the hayloft in comfort and would have had a dearth of sudden morning stress.
“This way.” Miles strode toward it, even though the last time he’d been here, he’d been fleeing from three women.
“Splendid,” Veronique said.
Perhaps yesterday he might have thought it important to remind her that the inn’s accommodations would have exceeded that of the barn and that she should have allowed him to search for it, but now the only thing he desired was to bring her comfort.
“I’ll buy us breakfast and book us on the next mail coach.” He hesitated. “This is your last chance to return to your family.”
She shrugge
d. “They’ll be happy when they realize I was correct about my baron. Next time I see them, we will be married.”
Her stern expression shifted to one of almost wonder, and jealousy prickled through him.
Not that he was actually jealous.
Not that he cared that an engaged woman might desire to spend time with her fiancé.
Not that—
It would be fine.
London might not lie in his preferred direction, and his publisher would be upset when he returned without discovering the identity of Loretta Van Lochen, but he’d never minded the city.
He sighed. All those times he’d been in battlefields, refusing to flee when even some soldiers wielding weapons did, but now an assignment about a bloody penny dreadful author would thwart him.
Still. There was no way he could allow her to step onto the mail coach alone.
He would just deliver her to this Austrian baron and then feel proud he’d helped her find happiness and avoided a marriage with her himself.
Once he was in London, he could enjoy the start of the season. His brothers had been mad to suggest he settle down.
Love was ridiculous. Veronique’s devotion to her fiancé had caused nothing but trouble.
When he opened the creaking wooden door of The Red Hart, he half expected to see Miss Haskett and her two charges jump out at him, sketchbooks in hand.
Instead, a few grizzly Scottish locals relaxed in the inn. Evidently they’d aspired to consume as much of the ale and whiskey in the location as they could and were prepared to start as early to accomplish the task.
Miles strode toward the barmaid.
She recognized him at once, and her eyes flared as she saw Veronique, and she grinned. “Will you be wanting the private room this time?”
“That will not be necessary,” Miles said.
“I hope you’ll eat your meal this time,” the barmaid grumbled. “No good insulting Cook.”
The barmaid told him the price of the meal, and he reached to take out his purse.
Or at least, he intended to take out his purse.
Somehow it seemed to be missing.
He frowned.
And then his heartbeat quickened. He was in Scotland, without any money, with a woman to take care of and—
The barmaid’s face had a decidedly sullen expression on it.
Where on earth was his bloody purse?
He searched his person again. “I had it when I left…”
The barmaid lowered her eyebrows with the same solemnity of a General ordering his men to direct cannons at the enemy. “I already told the kitchen to prepare your food.”
“Let me get that.” Veronique dropped some coin on the counter. “Perhaps it is with your horse.”
The barmaid sniffed. “What sort of man loses his purse and his horse? It’s a wonder these English toffs ever managed to successfully invade us.”
Miles narrowed his eyes automatically. Insults were not occurrences he favored.
Veronique smiled. “Where should we sit?”
“Not upstairs,” Miles muttered, remembering his dreadful experience a few days ago.
The barmaid sniffed. “Naturally not. You require a lot of coin to hire a room here.” She glanced at Veronique. “Though pardon me, ma’am, but you do seem to have more than the requisite money.”
Veronique smiled. “A requirement when traveling with this man.”
The barmaid’s shoulders relaxed, and she nodded. “I can see that.”
Chapter Thirteen
Miles guided Veronique to a small wooden table in the corner. Long dark timbers stretched across the ceiling, seeming to split and buckle under the weight of the second story.
Veronique tilted her head upward, and her eyes seemed to sparkle. “How old.”
“Most people do not display the same degree of wonder at dilapidated dwellings.” Miles smiled.
“Pity.” Veronique placed her reticule on the table. “How much of life they must miss.”
Miles glanced at the faded velvet bag. “The barmaid was correct. You do have a remarkable abundance of coin there. I will of course repay you when we arrive.”
Veronique shrugged. “Oh, you needn’t. I’m dragging you to London after all.”
“The trip will not be without expenses.”
She smiled at him.
“Clearly coin is no concern to you,” he said.
Veronique gave him that little mysterious smile of hers again. “You are right.”
He leaned back and nodded. Being correct was not a novel state for him. Still, something in the amusement of her gaze made uncertainty trickle through him, as if he was the only one who didn’t know a joke.
Miles liked learning all the jokes. Humor was something he excelled at.
Was it possible she thought that was not a lot of money?
Veronique’s father was wealthy, of the filthy American variety. Men who made their way to the West Indies tended to have one goal: the procurement of riches.
Still, most fathers didn’t give their daughters, no matter how wealthy they were, much pin money.
Money was something for stewards to handle. It was not something to give young women, even if they were of the foreign variety.
Most men possessed little confidence in women’s ability to do math, and they certainly had no confidence in a woman’s desire to do so.
Women didn’t require coin when they visited the haberdasher or tailor. Anyone with any sense, a trait Englishmen tended to possess, would allow them to purchase on their father’s line of credit.
Had Veronique stolen the money? Helped herself to her father’s purse?
He frowned. Somehow he struggled to imagine her doing so. But then she had escaped from the castle…
Miss Daventry tilted her head at him. He looked away. Something about the curve of her profile, something about her expression and the sense of confidence she had, made him wonder.
He was used to women who gave him flirtatious glances. Women, he supposed, came in two types: there were the confident ones, and then there was the shy variety, composed of new debutantes who giggled and whose skin pinkened whenever he entered the room, as if they were on a sunny beach coast, and he was the bloody sun.
It was the sort of thing that could make a man uncomfortable, and though he appreciated it, he never really took them seriously. After all, there was one thing he was certain of, and that was that there was no bloody way he was the blasted sun.
Veronique was neither of these types. She wasn’t overtly flirtatious, and yet she wasn’t intimidated by him.
The barmaid came with the food, and he concentrated on eating. Even stale bread could be damned appealing under the right circumstances.
“Were you able to get us space on the mail coach?” Veronique asked finally.
“I did. With reluctance.”
She laughed. “I’ve heard you complain about Scotland.”
“Well. Anyone with any sense would see that England is a far greater place to be, despite my brother’s incessant laudation of thick woodland.”
She smiled. “Then that’s why Lord Braunschweig waited to meet me. He was being more romantic.”
“Perhaps,” Miles said.
He didn’t want to argue with her. He wanted her to remain happy. “Tell me more about your childhood on Barbados.”
Veronique’s face clouded.
Instantly Miles regretted he’d made this the subject of his conversation. Anyone with any sense, which clearly did not include him, could see the topic made her uncomfortable.
She frowned. “I wonder what people will make of me here.”
He didn’t have to ask her what she was thinking about.
He knew.
He knew exactly.
He tilted his head. “You’re not the only person with your skin color.”
She laughed, but this time nothing about the sound was nice. “I know. I’ve seen them. At least they’re not called slaves here.”
He was ashamed he’d never given much thought to the people of Barbados, to the people of the West Indies, to the people in the New World. He’d been more focused on drawing attention to the cruelties on the continent and the threat of Bonaparte’s relentless search for power. He’d ignored that parts of the British Empire contained unspeakable cruelties, even as Britain boasted of a war to rescue the world from the empirical urges of its neighbor.
Miles was accustomed to having servants, and he knew it was not very easy for servants to change their positions. But they never had to deal with anything similar to what the people in the New World had to deal with.
Slavery wasn’t lauded in Britain. It certainly wasn’t defended here. Slavery was viewed as another sign of Britain’s superiority to the New World.
But then Britain did not have fields devoid of sufficient workers. The issue was very nearly the opposite. There were more than enough willing workers particularly. Once the war ended, the country had seemed swarmed with strong men. At first these men had been giddy at having defeated Bonaparte so successfully, though after a few weeks, and certainly after a few months, they looked distraught, distressed, disturbed.
No, they had land here, but the weather was not as fertile as in Barbados. The weather was often cold, very often rainy, and sometimes, like in 1816, in which England simply had no summer at all, even the most skilled wouldn’t have been able to force anything on this island to grow.
“What do you know about your family?” Miles asked.
She drew her hands from the table.
“You’re wondering just how much I’m one of them.” There was an accusatory note in her tone, and his cheeks warmed, even though they were not in a habit of spontaneous heating.
“You’re wondering,” she said, “if my family were servants in a house or if they were toiling in the fields.”
“I wasn’t.”
But maybe she was right. Maybe that was exactly he had been thinking.
“You’re wondering the exact shade of my parents’ skin,” she continued.
“I’ve met you father,” Miles said.