A

Regency Collection

CHRISTINE MERRILL lives on a farm in Wisconsin, USA, with her husband, two sons and too many pets—all of whom would like her to get off the computer so they can check their e-mail. She has worked by turns in theatre costuming, where she was paid to play with period ballgowns, and as a librarian, where she spent the day surrounded by books. Writing historical romance combines her love of good stories and fancy dress with her ability to stare out of the window and make stuff up.

A

Regency Virgin’s Undoing

Lady Drusilla’s Road to Ruin

Paying the Virgin’s Price

Christine Merrill

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Table of Contents

Cover

About the Author

Title Page

Lady Drusilla’s Road to Ruin

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Paying the Virgin’s Price

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Epilogue

Read all about it…

Copyright

Lady Drusilla’s Road to Ruin

Christine Merrill

Chapter One

John Hendricks took a sip from his flask and leaned back into his corner of the northbound mail coach, stretching his legs in an effort to take up as much space as he could before another passenger encroached on his person. After the week he’d had, he was in no mood or condition to be packed cheek to jowl with strangers.

Mr Hendricks, if there is something else you have to say on your hopes for my future, know that I decided on the matter from the first moment I laid eyes on Adrian Longesley. Nothing said by another is likely to change me on the subject.

The words were still ringing in his ears, three days later. And with each repetition of them the heat of his embarrassment flared anew. The woman was married, for God’s sake, and above his station. She’d made her uninterest in him plain enough. If he’d suffered in silence, as he had for three years, he could have kept his job and his pride. Instead, he’d been so obvious in his infatuation that he’d forced her to speak the truth aloud.

He took another swig from the flask. If the blush on his cheeks was visible in the darkness, better to let the others think it was from drunkenness and not the shame of unrequited love.

Adrian had known all along, of course. And would have allowed him to continue as a part of the household, if he’d not made such an ass of himself. But once it was out in the open, there was nothing to do but give up his position and slink away from London.

John’s feelings for his old friend rose in a tangle of jealousy, pity and embarrassment at his own behaviour. Despite all that had happened, he liked and respected Adrian, and had enjoyed working for him. But what did it say of his own character that he’d even consider stealing the wife of a man who would need her support and unwavering love as the last of his vision faded?

And how foolish did it make him to think that Emily would leave a blind earl for an unacknowledged natural son? He might have been an equal to Lord Folbroke in looks and temperament, but he had no rank, no fortune. And though his sight was better than Adrian’s, he could hardly call it perfect.

John slipped the flask into his pocket and removed his spectacles to give them a vigorous wipe. There was not a woman alive who would leave her husband for a man whose only asset was marginally better vision.

He stared sullenly through the cleared lenses at the two people on the seat opposite as though daring them to comment about his earlier drinking. When he had bought the ticket, he’d had some hazy idea that travelling to Scotland would be like venturing into the wilderness. It would be a place to heal the soul and the nerves in quiet and solitude. He had not allowed for the fact that, to arrive at this hermit’s paradise, he would be crammed into a small enclosure with the very humanity he despised. They had been rattling about the interior of the conveyance like three beans in a bottle for hours already. He felt the impact of each bump and rut in his bones, his teeth and his aching brain. The swaying of the coach was made even worse by the gusting winds and the rain that hammered the sides and tried to creep in at the poorly sealed window on his right, wetting the sleeve of his coat when he tried to relax against the curtain.

He thought of the coaching schedule, forgotten in his pocket. It was over thirty hours to Edinburgh and he suspected that, with the wet roads and the gathering darkness, it would take even longer than normal. Not that it mattered to him. He was his own man now, with no schedule to keep.

He wished that the thought cheered him. Thank God that he was still half-drunk. When the last effects of the alcohol had gone from his system, they would be replaced by the panic of a man who had destroyed his old life.

Hung over was no way to start a new one. But when he’d gone to the Swan with Two Necks, trying to buy a ticket out of London, he had been several gins past the point of making that decision and would now have to live with the consequences.

‘Beastly weather we are having.’ The man across from him seemed to think that stating the obvious was a witty opening gambit.

John ignored him. He’d been forced to leave London because he had said far too much to his employer. That did not mean he wished to blurt every thought to strangers.

The woman that shared the coach with them seemed to have similar sentiments. At the sound of the man’s voice, her skirts rustled and she clutched the book of sermons she had been reading, bringing it closer to her face to catch the flickering light of the reading lamp in her corner.

John saw her give the slightest flinch as the other man turned his attention to her. ‘Travelling alone, miss?’

She looked up long enough to give the man next to her the frosty glare of someone who did not answer to those to whom she had not been properly introduced. Then she returned to her book.

But the man who addressed her was undeterred. ‘Because I would be happy to escort you to your destination.’ Although there was plenty of room in the body of the coach, he’d made a point of choosing the seat next to the young lady and tended to use each swerve and jostle as an excuse to crowd her. Now, he was definitely leering.

John had a moment’s concern that she might be naïve enough to accept the man’s offer out of hand. Then he dismissed it as none of his business.

Her skirts gave another rustle as she drew them tightly to her legs, as though trying to shrink herself enough to minimise contact with the stranger. But that would be near to impossible, for she was of an uncommon height. She did not seem to realise that the movement of the cloth over her legs outlined areas of her body that the man accosting her found most interesting.

As did John, come to that. They were long legs, to match the length of her body. If they matched the small amount of ankle he glimpsed beneath her skirts, they were well shaped. A pity the girl was so Friday-faced. If she’d smiled, she might have been quite pretty.

Though her expression hinted that she was travelling to a funeral, her clothing did not. Bright colours suited her fair skin and the deep blue of her gown made her brown eyes seem even darker. The fabric was expensive, but the cut was conservative, as though she renounced fashion when it impinged on movement or modesty. Her long, black hair was dressed severely away from her face and hidden under a poke bonnet.

If John had to guess, he’d have said spinster. Clearly, this was a girl with money, but no prospects. It was a very unusual combination, for the former often created the latter. But reading sermons in public hinted at a moral propriety that would make her unpleasant company, should she deign to open her mouth.

Her dark eyes caught his, just for a moment. In the dim light they seemed to glitter sharp and dark, like the eyes of a hawk.

Do something.

Had she spoken? Or had he just imagined the words, planted firmly in his brain? Surely, if they had come from her, there would have been some softness in them, some urgent courtesy in their appeal to a stranger for help. The command was an invention of his own drunken mind.

‘It is quite lonely,’ the other man announced, ‘to travel without a companion of some kind.’

A merchant, thought John, for he could not seem to resist speculating about the other passengers. And a prosperous one as well. The man could afford his extra weight, for the fabric of the vest stretched across the bulging stomach was a fine brocade. But his head seemed to be outgrowing his hair, which struggled to conceal an expanding forehead that the man now mopped in the early summer heat. He spoke again, addressing the girl, who had not responded to his earlier comment.

‘Is there someone waiting to join you at the next stop?’ He was eyeing her carefully to see if there was some small acknowledgement that she was not as alone as she appeared.

John looked as well and saw no such response. The mystery deepened.

Her eyes flicked to him again, and then away, sharp and quick as a knife cut.

Well?

Well, indeed. The only advantage of being a gentleman of leisure was that he did not have to be at the beck and call of anyone. Not even young ladies with large dark eyes and forbidding expressions. It was ungentlemanly of him, but so be it. If nothing else, the last few weeks should have taught him not to become embroiled in the schemes of beautiful women who, in the end, would offer nothing more than dismissive thanks as they rushed past him to the object of their desire.

Very deliberately, he yawned and closed his eyes, pretending to sleep. Then he opened them just enough so that he could continue to watch his companions.

There was a flash of lightning, followed close by a crack of thunder loud enough to make the other man jump in his seat. But the woman was unmoved and the cold white light threw the annoyance on her features into sudden sharp relief.

Do you mean to allow this?

When John did not respond, she turned to look at the man next to her. The merchant was impervious to whatever messages she was sending or he’d have turned to dust in his seat before speaking again. This time, he was louder, as though he thought she might not have heard him before. ‘I said, is there someone to greet you at your destination?’ John watched the flicker of truth on the face of the girl that admitted she had no one.

Their companion saw it as well. ‘I noticed, at the last stop, that you did not eat. If you lack funds, you needn’t fear. The Cap and Bells does a fine joint. I would be only too happy to share my portion with you. And perhaps a brandy and hot water, to keep away the chill.’

Then he’d offer to share his room as well, John had no doubt. The fine example of London citizenry across the coach from him was on the make for a bedmate. Without someone to aid her, the man would grow more predatory the farther they got from town.

John offered a silent plea to the sense of duty that pushed him to become involved in the business of others, begging it to lie still, just this one time.

Without warning, the girl announced, ‘I am not alone. I am travelling with my brother.’ And then she kicked John smartly in the ankle.

It was rather like a nightmare he’d once had, of being an actor forced on stage in a play that he had not learned. The girl opposite him seemed to think him obliged to rescue her, though she had no way of knowing whether his intentions were any more gentlemanly then their companion’s.

Very well, then. And be damned to his own sense of honour for participating in this farce. He gave a garumphing, snuffling cough, as someone awakening after a long sleep, opened his eyes with a start and shouted, ‘What is it? What? Have we arrived already?’ He looked straight into the eyes of the girl across from him, shocked at the feeling of sudden connection between them, as though she could manage to relay the whole of her situation with just a glance. Then he stared at the man beside them, as though just noticing him. ‘Is this man bothering you, dear heart?’

‘I most certainly am not,’ the other man replied. ‘And I doubt that you know any more of this girl than I do, for you have been travelling with us for some time and have said not a word to her.’

‘I did not feel the need to speak to someone I have known since birth,’ John said with some asperity.

‘And you—’ the man glared at the girl ‘—I’ll wager you do not even know this man’s name.’

Come on, he thought, in her general direction. Choose anything and I will answer to it.

‘It is John,’ she said.

He tried to contain his surprise, for she had chosen the single most common name in the world. There was something disappointing about the fact that it fit him so well. He glared at the insolent cit. ‘And if I were to give you leave, you would call her Miss Hendricks. But I do not. My dear?’ He held out a hand to her, and when she took it without hesitation, he pulled her across the body of the carriage into the seat beside him.

The carriage gave a sudden jolt and she landed half in his lap. The sudden contact was most pleasant, and, for a second, his thoughts were in no way filial. But not a hint of answering blush tinted her pale skin and she grabbed the strap beside the door and sorted herself into the seat between him and the opposite window without further assistance.

To hide his momentary confusion, he removed his spectacles and wiped the lenses on the corner of his handkerchief. When he replaced them, he could see that the woman next to him was bristling in outrage. But she was directing it at the other passenger, glaring in triumph across the coach at her adversary.

You are beautiful when you are angry. It was a foolish sentiment, even when true. Knowing the trouble that they could cause, what sane man wanted to make a woman angry? But in her case, there was a strength and energy in her that was accented by her indignation. John had a moment’s desire to reach out and touch her, running a hand lightly over her back as one might, when soothing the feathers of a flustered falcon.

‘My apologies,’ the man muttered, giving John a wary look. ‘If that was the way of it, you’d have best spoken sooner.’

‘Or you could have found your manners before speaking at all,’ John said back, annoyed at the cheek of the man and at himself for his foolish thoughts. Then he settled back into his seat, pretending to doze again.

Beside him, the woman removed a small watch from her reticule, and looked uneasily from it to the shadows of the landscape passing by their window. In the flashes of lightning, he saw violent movement, as though the trees and hedges were being whipped about by the wind. The swaying of the coach increased. Though it was barely midnight, it appeared that their journey was about to take an unfortunate turn.

Chapter Two

The rain had been falling steadily for hours, and Drusilla Rudney fought the desire to remove the coaching schedule from her reticule to try to catch a glimpse of the stops in the guttering lamplight. They had been forced on several occasions already to get out of the coach and walk in the pouring rain as the horses navigated difficult stretches of wet road. That last time, as they’d stumbled in the dark and the gale, she had managed to raise her head to look and she’d seen the difficulty the coachman had in controlling the frightened animals, who rolled their eyes behind their blinders, trying to watch the storm. But he had managed to calm them again and shouted to the passengers to hurry and take their seats so that they could start again. And now the three of them sat, damp and unhappy in their clothes, waiting for the next stop and hoping that there would be enough time for a hot drink.

Since the fat man who had bothered her could not manage to keep quiet, he had speculated briefly with the other man about the likelihood of a delay. But her pretend brother had said not a word to her since pulling her down to sit beside him.

She remembered the way the fat man beside her had pressed his leg against her skirts, and then imagined how much worse it might have got, had Mr Hendricks not intervened. She had never been this far from home without some kind of chaperon. And although she had known the risks to her reputation, she had not thought that they might involve actual harm to her person. Leaving in haste had been foolish. But common sense had been overcome by her fears for Priscilla. Even now, her sister might be experiencing similar dangers.

She did her best to disguise the involuntary shudder that had passed through her at the thought, hoping that the two men would think it a reaction to sitting in rain-dampened clothing. It would be unwise to reveal her fear in front of a man who had already showed himself willing to prey upon a vulnerable woman. She glared at the merchant across the coach.

She should consider herself lucky that all men were not like him. If they were forced to spend a few hours at the next coaching inn, she would try to pull Mr Hendricks aside and thank him for his aid. Maybe she could even explain some portion of her story, although there was nothing about him that made her think he wished to know her reasons for travelling alone. He had been rather slow to take an interest when she’d needed his help. But now that he had given it, she wished to know if she could call on him again.

She’d heard the slur in his speech when he’d bought his ticket. But his tone had been mild enough. And the spectacles he wore gave a scholarly cast to his features. She’d decided he was a man of letters, perhaps studying for holy orders. Although he was clearly lost to drink, there was something in his face and his mannerisms that made him seem kind and trustworthy. Thus, he would be easily manipulated, even by one as inexperienced with men as she. Of course, Priscilla would have had the man dancing like a puppet by now. But Dru had assumed that his sense of chivalry would bring him promptly to heel in defence of any lady. Instead, it had taken an actual, physical goad.

Of course, now that she could see him from close up, there was a touch of the disapproving schoolmaster about the set of his mouth. She wondered if he thought her fast for travelling alone. Not that he had any right to cast aspersions. When he had first entered the carriage, he had brought with him a cloud of gin and had fallen rather heavily into his seat as though his legs would be taking him no farther for quite some time. But he had been nipping regularly from his flask and had refilled it with brandy at the last stop.

She held the book of sermons before her, wondering if he was more in need of it than she. If he was a clergyman of some kind as she’d suspected, then he had best see to his own weaknesses before correcting others. He had fallen in with her lie quickly enough, when he could just as easily have defended her with the truth. A liar and a drunkard, then. But compared to the coarseness of the other man, he seemed quite harmless.

Yet when she’d almost fallen to the floor of the coach, his response had proved that his reflexes were excellent and his arm strong. He had sorted her back into the other seat as though she weighed nothing. And the thighs on which she’d accidently sat had been hard from riding.

It was a conundrum. She’d have expected him to forgo the saddle for a pony cart, as would befit someone of his nature. The physical prowess he seemed to possess was wasted on a man of letters. And there was something about his eyes, when he had removed his glasses in that moment when he’d cleaned them. The clarity of the colour in them was quite handsome. They were a strange, light brown that shimmered protean gold in the lamplight. They were the eyes of a man who had seen much, balked at little and feared nothing.

But the man of action she’d imagined, who would ride like a centaur and fight like a demon, was just a trick of the light. He was gone with the return of the spectacles, leaving a drunken cleric in the seat beside her.

At the next inn, the guard shouted for them to leave the vehicle. And they alighted, meaning to stretch their legs and twist the kinks from their backs, only to step down ankle deep into the puddles in the courtyard. The wings of the inn sheltered them from the worst of the wind, but gusts of it still tore at their clothes, making the short scurry to the front door a difficult trip. But her unwilling protector raised his topcoat over their heads to offer some shelter from the worst of it and shepherded her quickly into the public room. In the doorway behind them, the driver was deep in conversation with the innkeeper. When she glanced out of the window, the team was being unhitched from the coach and led away, but there were no replacements stamping eagerly on the flags, waiting to be harnessed.

‘What—?’ she said to the man who might be called Hendricks.

He held up a hand to silence her, clearly eavesdropping on the conversation of the guard with some other drivers who were gathered at a table by the bar. Then he turned to her. ‘It is too bad to go on. I might have known, for it has been growing worse by the hour. Our driver fears that there may be downed trees ahead of us, and does not want to come upon them in darkness. If the mail gets through at all, I am afraid it will be without us, at least until the morning. We will set out again, at first light, if the storm has abated.’

‘That cannot be,’ she said firmly, even though she recognised the futility of it.

He gave her a disgusted look. ‘Unless you have some arcane power that allows you to change the weather, you are stuck here, as we all are.’

Glancing around the room, she could see that the place was crowded even though the hour was late, for many other coaches on the road had used this town as safe haven. She scanned the faces for the only two she wished to find. But they were not there, probably farther up the road, clear of the storm and still travelling north. ‘Never mind a little rain. I must get to Gretna Green before—’ Then she shut her mouth again, not wanting to reveal too much of the truth.

He gave her an odd look and said, very clearly ‘Nonsense, Sister. You are going to Edinburgh.’ He glanced at the fat merchant who had bothered her, then gave her a significant look. ‘With me.’

‘Not on this coach we are not,’ she answered. ‘If you notice, we are in Newport, headed for Manchester. If you wish to travel to Scotland on this route, a more logical destination would be Dumfries.’

The man next to her narrowed his eyes and pulled the coaching schedule out of his pocket, paging hurriedly through it. Then he cursed softly, turned and threw the thing out the door and into the rain, glaring at her, as though geography were somehow her fault. ‘Dumfries it is then.’

‘You do not care about your destination?’

‘There are many reasons to go to Scotland,’ he said cryptically. ‘And for some of them, one destination is as good as the next. But in my experience, there can be only one reason that a young lady would be rushing to such a rakehell destination as Gretna.’ He looked at her sharply, the schoolmaster expression returning. ‘And what kind of brother would I be, if I encouraged that?’

True enough. She knew from experience that when one’s sister had chosen to rush off for the border, one must do their best to put a stop to it. And to share as little of the story as possible with curious strangers. So she looked at the man beside her, doing her best at an expression of wide-eyed innocence. ‘Do we have family in Dumfries, Brother?’ she asked. ‘For suddenly I cannot seem to recall.’

He gave a snort of derision at her inept play-acting and said, ‘No family at all. That is why I chose it. But perhaps I am wrong. I did not know until today that I had a sister.’

‘And you took that well enough,’ she said, unwilling to offer further thanks, lest they be overheard. ‘In case anyone enquires, would it be too much trouble for you to have a sick aunt in Dumfries?’

‘I suppose not.’ He gestured to a table at the fireside. ‘As long as you do not mind sitting in comfort, while we have the chance, instead of hanging about in the doorway.’

When she hesitated, she noticed that behind his lenses, there was a twinkle in his eyes that might almost have been amusement. ‘It is marginally closer to Scotland on the other side of the room,’ he said, as though that would be enough to pacify her. After he had seated her, he procured a dinner for her, adding, in a perfectly reasonable voice, that there was no reason not to take nourishment while they had the chance.

There was one perfectly good reason, she thought to herself. The contents of her purse would not stand for many stops such as this. She thought of Priss, halfway to Gretna by now, and carrying her allowance for the month, because, as the note had said, she had greater need of it than you, Silly.

Without thinking, she sighed aloud and then came back to herself, relieved that her new, false sibling had gone back across the room to get himself a tankard of ale. Now that she could compare him to other men, she found him taller than she had estimated, but powerfully built. The timidity of his demeanour did not carry to his body when in motion, nor did the liquor he’d drunk seem to affect him. There was strength and surety in his gait, as though a change in circumstances did not bother him a bit. He navigated easily back to her through the crowded room without spilling a drop of his drink, then slid easily on to the chair on the other side of the small table they shared.

She looked at him apprehensively and wet her lips. And then she stared down into the plate that had been placed before her, as though she had not used his absence to make a detailed examination of his person. She really had no reason to be so curious. While she might tell herself that it was a natural wariness on her part, and an attempt to guard herself against possible dishonour, she was the one who had come on this journey alone and then sought the protection of this stranger, based on necessity and assumptions of good character.

She took the first bite of dinner though she had no appetite for it, and found it plain fare, but good. She vowed that she would finish it all, hungry or no, for who knew when she might eat again? As long as he showed no signs of troubling her as the other man had, she would allow Mr Hendricks to pay as well. If he complained, she would inform him that she had not requested to be fed and that it was sinful to waste the food.

But the man across the table from her was not eating, simply staring back at her, waiting. ‘Well?’ he said at last, arms folded in front of him. He was looking rather like a schoolmaster again, ready to administer punishment once a confession was gained. ‘Do not think you can sit with me, well out of earshot of our companion, and give nothing in return.’

She swallowed. ‘Thank you for coming to my aid, when we were in the coach.’

‘You left me little choice in the matter,’ he said with reproof, shifting his leg as though his ankle still pained him from the kick. ‘But even without your request for help, I could not very well sit silent and let the man accost you for the whole of the journey. It was an unpleasant enough ride.’ He glanced around him at the rain streaking the window of the inn. ‘And not likely to become more pleasant in the immediate future.’

That was good, for it sounded almost as though he would have helped her without her asking. That made him better than the other man in the carriage who would surely have pressed any advantage he had gained over her from her lie. ‘I am sorry that circumstances forced me to trouble you, Mr …’ And now she would see if he had given the correct name before.

‘Hendricks,’ he supplied. ‘Just as I said in the coach. And you guessed my given name correctly. While I do not overly object to the loan of mine, I suspect you have a surname of your own.’ He stared at her, waiting.

Should she tell him the truth? If the whole point of this journey was to avoid embarrassment to the family, it did no good to go trumpeting the story to near strangers.

‘Come now,’ he said, adjusting the fold of his arms. ‘Surely you can be more open with me. We are kin, after all.’ He leaned forwards on the table, so that their heads were close together and he could whisper the next words. ‘Or how else do we explain our proximity?’

The obvious reason, she supposed. On this route, anyone seeing a couple in a tête-à-tête would think them eloping for Scotland, just as Priscilla had done. She took a breath, wondering if she should she tell him of her father’s title, and then decided against it. ‘I am Lady Drusilla Rudney.’ Then, hoping there would be a way to gloss over the rest of it, she fluttered her eyelashes at him and attempted a smile. ‘But to my friends, I am Silly.’

And then, she waited for one of the obvious responses.

I expect you are.

Did they give you cause to be?

Apparently, Mr Hendricks had no sense of humour. ‘An unfortunate family nickname, I assume.’ And one he would not be using, judging by the pained look in his eye. ‘And given to you by the Duke of Benbridge, who is your uncle. No … your father.’

He’d read her as easily as the sermon book in her pocket. She must learn to be quicker or he’d have all the facts out of her, before long. ‘Actually, it was my sister who gave me the name. A difficulty in pronunciation, when we were children …’ Her explanation trailed off. It surprised her, for rarely did conversation with a stranger leave her at a loss for words.

‘Well then, Lady Drusilla, what brings you to be travelling alone? You can afford a maid, or some sort of companion. And to travel in the family carriage, instead of stuck in the mail coach with the likes of me.’

‘It is a matter of some delicacy and I do not wish to share the details.’

‘If you are going to Gretna, then you are clearly eloping, travelling alone so that your father does not discover you. Little else is needed to tell the tale, other than to ascertain the name of the man involved.’

‘I beg your pardon,’ she said sharply, insulted that he would think her so foolish. ‘I am not eloping. And how dare you think such a thing.’

‘Then, what are you doing?’ he shot back, just as quickly. The alcohol had not dulled his wits a bit, and the speed of his questioning left her with her mouth hanging open, ready to announce the truth to a room full of strangers.

She took a breath to regain her calm. ‘I wish to go to Gretna and stop an elopement,’ she whispered urgently. ‘And I do not want anyone to know. Once my end has been achieved, there must be no hint of gossip. Not a breath of scandal. No evidence that the trip was ever made.’

Mr Hendricks paused as though considering her story. Then he said, ‘You realise, of course, that the trip may be futile.’

‘And why would you think that?’ Other than that it was probably true. But it was better to appear obtuse in the face of probable defeat, than to be talked into giving up.

He tried again in a much gentler tone. ‘Should the couple involved be determined, they will not listen to you. And if they had much of a start on you, they are miles ahead already.’

‘Quite possibly,’ she agreed.

‘The honour of the girl in question is most assuredly breached.’

‘That does not matter in the least.’ After a day and a night with her lover, allowing the wedding to occur would be the logical solution. But if Priss disgraced herself by marrying Gervaise, she disgraced the family as well. And Dru would get the blame for it, for it had been her job to chaperon the girl and prevent such foolishness. Father would announce that, no matter how unlikely it might be that his awkward daughter Silly could find a man to haul her to Gretna, he was unwilling to risk a second embarrassment. There would be no Season, no suitors and no inevitable proposal. She would spend the rest of her life in penance for Priss’s mistake, on the unfashionable edge of society, with the wallflowers and the spinsters.

Was it so very selfish if, just this once, she ignored what was right for Priscilla and looked to her own future? ‘I will not let him marry her.’ If she had to, she would grab Priss from the very blacksmith’s stone and push Gervaise under a dray horse. But there would be no wedding. Dru narrowed her eyes and glared at Mr Hendricks.

He glared back at her, his patience for her wearing thin. ‘By travelling alone and in secret, you have compromised your reputation, and are just as likely to end in the soup as the couple you seek to stop.’

‘With the need for speed and secrecy, there was little else I could do.’ The Benbridge carriage was already tearing up the road between London and the Scottish border, and Priss had left her barely enough to buy a ticket on the mail coach, much less rent a post-chaise. But the scandal of it would work to her advantage in one way: in comparison with Priss’s elopement, a solo journey by her ape-leading older sister would hardly raise an eyebrow.

Mr Hendricks saw her dark expression and amended, ‘Perhaps you will be fortunate. The rain that traps us might trap them as well.’

This was hardly good news. Until now, she had been imagining her sister and Gervaise travelling night and day in a mad rush to reach their destination. But if they were held up in an inn somewhere, the chance for recognition and disgrace multiplied by a thousandfold. And in the time they spent alone together, unchaperoned …

She decided firmly that she would not think about the details of that at all. There was nothing she could do about the truth of that, especially if she was already too late. She gave her new brother a look that told him his opinions were unwelcome and said, ‘Knowing Mr Gervaise as I do, they are likely to dawdle, for he will not wish to spoil his tailoring in the rain.’

‘You do not know the man as well as you think if he has taken some other girl to Scotland.’ Mr Hendricks’s gaze was direct, and surprisingly clear, as though he were trying to impart some bit of important information. But what it might be was lost upon her.

‘It does not matter that I do not know his character. It only matters that I know his destination. He is going to Gretna. We had an understanding.’ She had paid him well enough to leave Priss alone. He had taken her money, then he had taken her sister as well. And she was not exactly sure how, but when she found him, she would make him suffer for tricking her and dishonouring the family. She glared at the man across the table. ‘The marriage must not occur.’

Mr Hendricks was watching her uneasily, as though he did not quite know what to make of such illogical stubbornness. In the end, he seemed to decide that the best response was none at all, and focused his attention upon his meal, offering no further words of advice or censure.

But watching his enthusiasm for the food, she could not contain a comment of her own. ‘After the amount you have been drinking, it is a wonder you can eat at all.’

He glanced up at her, and said, around another bite of meat, ‘If you are shocked by it, then you had best stick to your sermons, little sister. What you have seen me drink is nothing, compared to what I imbibed before.’

‘That is hardly a point of pride,’ she said with a sniff.

‘Nor is it any of your business,’ he added, taking a large drink of ale. He thought for a moment, and then said, ‘Although if it hadn’t been for my level of inebriation, I might be riding, right now, in the coach that I intended to take, and not have collapsed into the first one I found. With an excess of blue ruin, I have found my long-lost sister.’ He toasted her with his tankard. ‘Fate works in mysterious ways.’

‘Do you often drink so much that you cannot tell one route from another?’ For though he was somewhat rumpled now, when she looked closely at him, she doubted that the behaviour was habitual.

He stared down into his glass, as though wishing it would refill itself. ‘My life, of late, has taken an unusual turn.’ Then he looked at her, thoughtfully. ‘It involves a woman. Given the circumstances, an excessive amount of alcohol and impromptu coach travel made perfect sense.’

‘And is this woman in Edinburgh?’ she asked, remembering his original destination.

‘She is in London. My plan was to take a coach to Orkney.’

‘You cannot take a coach to an island,’ she said, as patiently as possible.

‘I planned to ride as far as John O’ Groats and then walk the rest of the way.’ The glint in his eyes was feverish, and a little mad. ‘The woman in question was married. And not interested in me.’ The sentences fell from his mouth, flat and heavy, like pig-iron bars.

For a moment, Drusilla considered offering her sympathy. Though he was inebriated, Mr Hendricks had come to her aid, and gone so far as to buy the food she was eating. But the recent changes in her own life had put her quite out of charity with young lovers, either star-crossed or triumphant. ‘If your goal is no more specific than that, you might just as well drown yourself by the Hebrides. Once we reach Scotland, they will be closer.’

‘Thank you for your kind words of advice, Sister.’ He gave her a strange, direct look, as though he were equally tired of the likes of her.

They would have fallen into silence again had not the innkeeper appeared at their table, followed close behind by the fat merchant, who was shifting eagerly from foot to foot as though he had heard some bit of gossip that he could not wait to share. ‘It has been decided that the coach will not continue until morning, if then,’ he said, with a satisfied smile.

‘I am aware of that,’ Mr Hendricks said. His eyes never left hers, as though he thought it possible to ignore the other man out of existence.

‘I assume you will be seeking accommodations?’ the innkeeper added.

‘Obviously.’

‘Then there is a small problem,’ the innkeeper responded. ‘There are three of you, and I have but two rooms left.’

From behind him, the merchant gave an inappropriate giggle, although why he found the prospect of further discomfort to be amusing, she could not imagine.

The innkeeper continued. ‘One of the rooms will go to the lady, of course. But you gentlemen must work out between you what is to be done with the remaining space. You can share the other bed, or draw lots for it. The loser can take his chances in the parlour, once the bar is closed. But you had best decide quickly, or I shall give the space to someone else. I suspect we will be seeing more like you with coaches stalled here, or turning back because of the rain.’

‘And I see that as no problem at all,’ the merchant responded before Hendricks could speak. ‘My companions are brother and sister. Since they are such close family, a single room will suffice for them and I will take the other.’ He shot her a leer, as though pleased to have caught her in her own trap, and waited for her to admit the truth.

‘That will be all right, I am sure,’ Mr Hendricks answered before she could so much as gather her breath. She wanted to argue that it would most certainly not be all right. She was the Duke of Benbridge’s daughter and had no intention of sharing a room with any stranger, much less a strange man.

But there was something calming about the tone of Mr Hendricks’s voice, like a hand resting on her shoulder.

It will be all right. Although why she was certain of that, she could not say.

In her silence, he continued as though he was accustomed to speaking for her, and it mattered not, one way or the other whether or not she was in his bed. ‘Drusilla shall have the mattress, of course. But if you could spare another blanket for me, I would be most grateful.’

The merchant looked vaguely disappointed, like a dog that had not managed to flush a bird. Then he turned his scrutiny on her, waiting for the weak link to break and the truth to come tumbling out of her.

She stared back at him, showing what she hoped was the correct amount of annoyance at having her plans changed by nature and an overfull inn, but without the outrage that she should be feeling.

Beside her, Mr Hendricks was haggling with the hosteller, who allowed that there might be enough bedding. But there would, of course, be an extra charge for it. Apparently it was at least twice the rate that Mr Hendricks found appropriate.

As the innkeeper argued about supply and demand and reminded her faux sibling that the same blanket could be let at triple the price to the next passenger who would be forced to sleep on the floor, the sounds of the room seemed to diminish. All Drusilla heard was the sound of imaginary coins clinking from her reticule into the hand of the innkeeper. She had taken all the loose money she could find when setting out after Priss, without picking the pockets of the servants or going to her father and explaining the predicament. There had been scant little available. She suspected Priss had seen to that, specifically to prevent her following.

When Dru had counted her funds, it had seemed enough to mount a rescue. There was enough for the ticket, her food and perhaps one stop along the way. But she had not allowed for tipping the guard, emergencies, or the exorbitant rates that she might find in places where travellers were at the mercy of innkeepers and would pay what the market might bear. At this rate, she would be penniless by tomorrow’s lunch. She would be forced to turn back and admit everything to Father, or to put herself at the mercy of strangers and hope for the best.

She glanced at Mr Hendricks, who was still arguing with the innkeeper. ‘I will do without the blanket. But for that price, I expect we will have space to continue this meal in our room. Give us the larger of the two, and send the bags up so that we might be comfortable. Drusilla?’ His tone was that of an older brother, used to controlling his family.

But the sound of her own name, said in that smooth male voice, and without any polite preamble or foolish nicknames, made her skin prickle. ‘Yes, John,’ she answered, ducking her head in submission and grabbing her plate to follow him.

Chapter Three

When the door of the room closed behind them, Mr Hendricks released a string of curses directed at no one in particular. And although she should have been shocked, Drusilla had to admit that they effectively described her own feelings on the latest turn of events. He turned to glare at her. ‘Do not think to complain about what has occurred, for it is completely your own fault. If you had not forced me to lie for you, you would have the room to yourself.’

‘And at the prices they are charging, I would not have been able to pay for it,’ she responded, just as cross.

‘You are a duke’s daughter. And you do not have enough blunt in your pocket to stay in an inn?’ He laughed. ‘Call the innkeeper back, mention your father’s name and not only will he extend you credit, he will turn out one of the other guests so that we may have two beds and a private sitting room, instead of this squalid hole he has given us.’

‘If I wished to bandy my father’s name in every inn between here and Gretna, I would be travelling escorted in a private carriage. And you would be sleeping on the floor of the taproom.’ She narrowed her eyes. ‘Where you belong.’

Her unwilling companion bowed in response. ‘Thank you so much for you kind opinion of me, Lady Drusilla. It is particularly welcome coming from one who cannot pay for her own bed.’

Though she was used to being the brunt of sarcasm at home, somehow it hurt more coming from Mr Hendricks. And she had brought it upon herself by taunting him.

But before she could apologise, he continued. ‘I suppose the next thing you will do is request that I loan you sufficient to cover your dinner, the room and tomorrow’s breakfast as well.’ When she did not correct him, he laughed bitterly. ‘Why am I not surprised at this? Is it not typical that a member of your class should be relying on me, yet again, to rescue them from their own folly at the expense of my own needs?’ He was gesticulating wildly now, pacing the little space available in their room. ‘Mr Hendricks, write my letters for me. Mr Hendricks, rent me a room. Mr Hendricks, lie to my wife. Not a word of this to my husband, Hendricks. As if I have no other goal in life than to run hither and yon, propping up the outlandish falsehoods of people too foolish to predict their outcome.’ He stopped suddenly, as though just noticing that he was speaking the words aloud. Then he dropped his hands to his sides and examined her closely. ‘You are not about to cry, are you?’

‘Certainly not.’ She reached up and touched her own cheek to make sure. She was not normally given to bouts of tears, but it would be most embarrassing to succumb without warning.

‘That is good,’ he said. ‘I am not normally so transparent in my feelings. But it has been a trying week. And as you pointed out earlier, I am somewhat the worse for drink and ranting about things that are no fault of yours.’

‘But you are right in your displeasure,’ she allowed. ‘It was unfair of me to request your help in a situation you had no part in creating.’

He sat down next to her suddenly. ‘I almost wish you were crying. I’d have been much more able to resist you had that been the case.’

Resist me? She had hardly brought the force of her personality to bear on the man, other than the kick on the ankle. And although she was often described by men as formidable, it was usually said in a tone of annoyance, or occasionally awe. Though it meant nearly the same, it felt much nicer to be irresistible.

He looked at her thoughtfully, pushing his spectacles up the bridge of his nose as though trying to get a clear view of the situation before speaking again. Then he said, ‘Leaving London with no chaperon and no money was very foolish of you. But since I was equally foolish to leave the city drunk and on the wrong coach, I have no right to upbraid you.’

Comparing the two situations, she could hardly call them equal. His was probably the worse. But he was the one with the fatter purse and she was in no position to make enemies. ‘Thank you,’ she said as mildly as possible.

He frowned for a moment, as though trying to remember something, then added, ‘Did I mention earlier that I am currently without a position?’

‘No, you did not.’ Although why it should matter, she had no idea.

‘Then, my lady, I see a solution to both our problems.’ His previous insolence evaporated in a single sentence. In its place was a natural deference, with no hint of the obsequious servility she’d seen in some servants. ‘I have some experience in dealing with situations rather like yours. Until several days ago, I was personal secretary to the Earl of Folbroke.’

That would explain it, then. He wasn’t a preacher or a teacher. He had been a confidential employee of a peer. ‘And under what circumstances did you leave this position?’ she asked, trying to decide where the conversation was likely to lead them.

‘Nothing that would prevent him from giving a positive reference, were he here now.’

Drusilla was glad he was not. The room was hardly big enough for the two of them, without adding former employers into the mix.

‘I have letters to that effect,’ Mr Hendricks said.

‘Which are?’

‘In London.’

‘I see.’

He removed his spectacles to polish them before continuing. ‘But that job gave me experience in dealing with the sort of delicate situations that sometimes occur in families such as yours.’

Utterly mad ones, you mean. The way he’d been raving before, she was sure that he had interesting stories to tell, were he the sort of man to share confidences about his employers. Which he was not.

‘Handling matters with discretion is a personal strong point of mine,’ he confirmed, as though reading her mind. ‘And if you could ensure me of repayment when we return to London, a bit more for my troubles, and perhaps a letter of reference?’

‘More than that. My father will write the letter himself. And he will see to it that you are generously rewarded at the end of the affair.’

Behind his glasses, Mr Hendricks’s amber eyes glittered. References from an earl were no small thing. But if he could win the favour of a duke, he would be seen as nearly invaluable by his next employer.

‘The Duke of Benbridge will be most grateful to hear that the matter was handled with discretion.’ After he got used to the idea, at any rate.

‘He will not mind that you are travelling alone?’ Hendricks asked, searching for a flaw in her story.

Her father would be livid when he learned that Priss had run, and even angrier to know that Dru had not caught her before she’d left the house. In comparison to that, travelling alone or hiring a stranger would be as nothing. ‘He will not be happy,’ she admitted. ‘But it is not as if I am the one eloping with Mr Gervaise. I am trying to prevent his elopement … with another.’ If it was possible, she would keep Priss out of the story a while longer. If Hendricks knew of her father, then it was possible he’d heard gossip of Benbridge’s wilful younger daughter and would realise that the girl might need to be dragged kicking and screaming back home. ‘Just a trip to Scotland and back. It will be very little trouble at all.’ At least Drusilla meant to be no trouble. Her sister was likely to be trouble enough for two people. ‘Once I find the couple, I will be able to handle the rest of it. But if you could clear the way for me, paying bills, handling luggage and protecting me from men such as our companion?’

‘And keep my mouth shut at the end of it?’ For a moment, the candid Mr Hendricks had returned and was grinning at her.

She returned a small, polite smile. ‘Precisely.’

‘Very well, then. I am at your disposal.’ He offered his hand to her. She accepted it and was given a manly shake. His palm was warm and dry against hers and the feeling of carefully contained power in his arm gave her a strange feeling in the pit of her stomach.

When he released her hand, he had an odd look on his face, as though he’d felt something as well. Perhaps it had to do with the quality of the cooking, for they had shared the same food.

And now they shared a room.

Her stomach gave the same little flip. It was probably nothing more than nerves. Because Mr Hendricks showed no signs of quitting the place and leaving her in privacy. To speed him on his way, she asked, ‘And this evening?’ She glanced around the room, and then significantly at the door. ‘Where do you intend to sleep?’

‘Right here, of course.’

‘You most certainly will not—’

He cut her off before she could object and the firmness returned to his voice. ‘There was nothing in the agreement we have made that would lead me to believe I must sleep in the stable.’

‘Nor was there anything about it that implied that I wish to share a room with you.’

‘The implication was tacit,’ he said. ‘If not, you could have announced in the tavern that our relationship was an illusion.’

‘I never expected things to progress as quickly as they did,’ she said. ‘Nor did I expect you to be stubborn on the point.’

‘I see,’ he said. ‘You think my wishing to sleep in a bed when one presents itself is a sign of stubbornness and not common sense.’

‘I expect you to behave as a gentleman,’ she said. ‘And as one who is in my employ.’

‘It is late. And it is not in my ability to aid you until the morning,’ he said. ‘My service to you will begin at first light. I expect, at that time, that I will need all my wits to keep ahead of you. And for that, I will need adequate sleep. If you were seeking a dogsbody who would lie in the hall just to ensure your modesty, then you must seek him elsewhere. In my last position, I was treated almost as a member of the family and well paid.’

‘And yet you left it,’ she pointed out and saw the tiny twitch of his eye at her reminder.

‘But even dead drunk, I had the sense to leave London with enough money for accommodations,’ he countered. ‘You did not. I have paid for this room and mean to stay in it.’ He smiled benevolently. ‘Since you are my employer, I will hardly deny you the space, if you wish to remain with me.’

Perfectly true and annoyingly rational. ‘Then it is I who must sleep in the stable,’ she said, doing her best to look pathetic and elicit his sympathy.

‘Or on the floor,’ he offered. ‘Although it does not look very comfortable. Or you can take your half of the mattress, if you will leave me in peace.’

‘If I leave you in peace?’ she said, outraged.

‘I have no intention of accosting you in the night, nor do I mean to tell anyone of the close quarters,’ he said. ‘I know my own nature and feel quite able to resist your charms.’

‘Thank you,’ she said, a little annoyed that at the first sign of conflict she had gone back to being her easily resistible self.

He glanced at her, as though speculating. ‘But I cannot vouch for your motives. In our first meeting, you were the aggressor. For all I know, you are the sort of woman who forces herself on to unwary travellers and robs them of their purses, or murders them in their beds.’

‘How dare you.’

Then she saw the twinkle in his eye. ‘I am properly convinced. Only a lady of the bluest blood can raise that level of outrage over so small a jest. Your honour is safe from me. And as for my honour?’ He shrugged. ‘I doubt you would know what to do with it, should you find it.’ He sat down on the edge of the bed and pulled off his boots, then stripped off his coat and waistcoat and loosened his cravat.

There was no reason that his words should hurt her, for they were true. They were not even an insult. No decent girl should have any idea how to approach a strange man in her bed. But she hated to be reminded of her ignorance and to feel that he was amusing himself with her naïveté. But it was late and she was tired, and could think of no alternative sleeping arrangements if he was unwilling to move. She stared at the bed, then at him. ‘If it is only for the few hours until dawn, I think I can manage to control myself.’

‘Unless you are driven wild by the appearance of a man’s bare feet,’ he said, not bothering a glance in her direction. ‘I will retain my shirt in deference to your modesty. But I mean to remove my socks and dry them by the fire.’

‘Is there any reason that I would be inflamed at the sight of them?’ she asked, suddenly rather curious. For other than in paintings, she could not remember ever seeing any male feet.

‘None that I know of. But if you wish, you may assure yourself that they are not cloven hooves.’ He pulled back the covers and she caught a glimpse of them as he rolled easily into his side of the bed. They were quite ordinary, although there was something distinctly masculine about the size.

But being able to travel with dry toes tomorrow would be rather pleasant. So she went to her side of the bed, with her back to him, and as discretely as possible removed her boots, undid her garters and rolled her own stockings down.

Then she glanced at the bed again, trying not to look at the body already in it. To lie down beside it would be more than a careless disregard for modesty. But she was very tired, and there might not be another chance to sleep in a bed, not even part of one, between here and the end of her journey. ‘I have, in the past, been forced to share a mattress with my sister. That did not upset my sleep.’ But Mr Hendricks seemed much larger than Priscilla. And he was occupying slightly more than half of the available space. She wondered, uneasily, how much room she was likely to need.

He rolled so that he could look at her again as she arranged her stockings next to his. His eyes flicked briefly to her feet, bare on the cold floor of the inn, and then just as quickly back to her face. He gave her a strange, tight smile. ‘But I am not really your brother.’ Then he removed his spectacles, folded them and placed them on a stool next to the bed. ‘We will manage the best we can.’ He rolled so that his back was to her again. ‘When you are ready to retire, please extinguish the candle.’

Once she was sure that his eyes were truly closed, Dru dropped the front of her gown and loosened the stays built into it to make sleeping a little easier. She feared that the shortness of breath she was experiencing was more the sign of rising panic. She was not even a day from home, but it was farther than she had ever travelled without escort. And on the very first night, she had fallen into what the map maker might label terra incognita, a place where the rules as she understood them did not apply. She was in bed with a strange man and both of them were barefoot. Although no governess had lectured her on this particular circumstance, she was sure that the forecast would have been dire.

She suspected that Priss would have managed the situation much better, for the girl had been so unwilling to follow the dictates of convention that she would not feel their absence.

But Dru missed them sorely. She must hope that the man she had hired to aid her was as honest and dependable as he managed to look, in some lights at least. Once he was rested and sober, and wearing his spectacles again, everything would be all right. She remembered the flash of gold in his eyes, after he’d removed his glasses, but just before he’d closed them. Strange, deep, unfathomable eyes. Eyes that had been places and seen things. And they had been looking at her.

‘Here there be dragons,’ she whispered, blew out the candle and lay down beside him.

From somewhere on the other side of the mattress, she heard a groan, and the muttered, ‘I will slay them in the morning.’ And then, there was nothing but silence.

Chapter Four

When she woke the next morning, she was stiff with discomfort and not all the pain she felt could be blamed on the stress of travelling. She had slept with her arms folded tightly across her chest, fearing that the least movement would rouse her companion.

But he had not seemed at all bothered by her presence. His even snoring was a demonstration of that. It had roused her several times during the night. Of course, he was quiet enough now that it was almost light and time to be getting up again. She grumbled to herself at the unfairness of it, tossing to lie on her other side.

He was silent because he was awake. Only inches from her nose he lay facing her, watching.

And why she had thought him a parson on the previous day she had no idea. So close like this, his eyes were reminiscent of some great cat. His body reminded her of that as well, for there was a stillness in it now that did not seem so much immobility, as the gathering of energy that came, right before the pounce.

And that attention was focused on her. Like a rabbit, she responded to it by freezing. Unable to turn away from him, she lay there, paralysed, waiting for the eventual assault, yet was unable to fear it. While she’d not thought further than the desperate effort to save her sister’s reputation, she’d put her own honour at stake. And that particular commodity was so shelf worn as to be practically useless. While it was foolish to put it at risk, she sometimes wondered if anyone even cared that she possessed it.

But in this moment, she was sure that Mr Hendricks had noticed, was giving the matter some thought and would divest her of it with efficiency and discretion, should she ask him to.

Then the man next to her sat up, yawned, stretched and reached for his glasses. He put them on; when he looked at her again, it was as if the great cat she feared was safely encased behind a thick, protective window. It watched her for a moment, then lost interest, retreating slowly back into its cage and out of sight, leaving the somewhat owlish parson she had noted on the previous day.

‘You slept well, I trust?’ he asked.

‘As well as can be expected,’ she admitted.

‘Very good.’ He swung his legs out of the bed and to the floor, reaching for his socks and boots. ‘I will leave you to prepare yourself for the day, and will be returning in …’ he reached for his watch and checked the time ‘… approximately fifteen minutes. Will that be sufficient?’

‘Certainly. I will go down to the common room for breakfast, so that you will know when the room is empty.’

He nodded, then left her.

In his place was a strange feeling, almost of bereavement. It was hardly appropriate. She had only just met the man and should be relieved that he was allowing her some privacy so that she could have a wash. And she had best get about it, for she was willing to wager that when he’d said fifteen minutes, he had meant exactly that and would be measuring it on a watch that was both properly maintained and more than usually accurate. He would be an efficient task master, well aware of the schedule and the need to adhere to it, if she wished to reach her goal.

She should be pleased. Had this not been exactly what she needed? But as she sat up and reached for her valise and prepared to refresh herself, she sighed.

Less than an hour later, they were side by side again in the carriage and travelling north. The man who had bothered her yesterday was there again today, watching her closely from the other seat. He eyed Mr Hendricks as well, as though looking for some resemblance between them or some sign that the night had been spent in more than sleep.

Mr Hendricks noticed it as well and gave the man a dark look. ‘I trust you slept well, sir.’

Drusilla smiled to herself as the man coloured from guilt.

‘I expect the day’s travel to be equally uncomfortable,’ he said, this time to Dru. ‘The driver was in the parlour when I took my breakfast; he has got word that the roads grow more difficult the farther north we travel. They may become impassable.’

‘I prefer not to invoke disaster by discussing it,’ she said uneasily.

Mr Hendricks shrugged. ‘It is better to be prepared against the eventuality of it. Then one can posit likely alternatives, should the worst occur and the coach fail us. Now, if you will forgive me, Sister, I mean to rest. It was a beastly night and I got little sleep.’ He glared at the man opposite them, making it clear who was to blame for his bad humour.

The merchant answered with a similar glare, as though to say, even if they were siblings, he did not care.

‘But if you need anything, my dear, do not hesitate to wake me.’ Although he said it mildly, there was an underlying tone of menace in the words. Yesterday’s troubles would not be repeated. If her harasser gave so much as a glance in her direction, he would pay dearly for it. Then Mr Hendricks closed his eyes and tipped his hat forwards to shield his face as he napped.

Drusilla reached for the book in her reticule and tried to hide the strange thrill that it gave her to be protected. When Priss was in attendance, Dru’s life was largely without such courtesies. If required to, the men who flocked around her sister might come to her aid, but it would be done as an afterthought, in an effort to curry favour with the daughter that actually interested them.

Of course, Mr Hendricks was doing so because she had agreed to pay him—and he was worth every penny. At each change of horses, he was up and out the door in one smooth movement, even if the coach was not fully stopped. It was strange to think of his movements as graceful, but there was a kind of economy to them that rivalled anything Mr Gervaise could demonstrate on the dance floor. And the sun glinting off his short blond hair was every bit as attractive as Gervaise’s dark handsomeness.

He would ignore the coachman’s cautions to ‘Have a care!’ and the shouts from the guard that there would be no time for passengers to alight, then go straight to the innkeeper. She could watch from the window as he described their quarry in succinct terms: a tall dark man, nattily dressed, travelling with a petite blonde in a black carriage with a crest upon the door. He would take in the innkeeper’s response, toss the man a coin for his troubles and be back in his seat before the horses were fully harnessed.

He was organised, efficient, left nothing to chance and seemed totally focused on her comfort. He would adjust curtains to make sure her seat was shaded from the sun, but not too gloomy to read. He got her food and refreshments almost before she could request them.

If she was the sort of woman prone to flights of fancy, she would come to enjoy it all a bit too much and imagine that it was anything other than a job to him.

A particularly vicious bump sent her sliding across the seat into him. Without waking, he reached out an arm to steady her.

To maintain their fictional relationship, she tried to take the sudden contact without flinching, but his hand on her arm was strangely unsettling. And for that, she had only herself to blame. She had been too much out of the society, if she could not even manage to accept a little help without reading things into it. Though it was hardly gentlemanly to touch a lady without permission, he could not very well let her slide off the seat.

Yet this felt like somewhat more. Almost as if he had been her brother, or a very close friend, and cared what happened to her, even without opening his eyes.

Because you employ him, said a voice in her head that was as cold and rational as her father would have been. It is in his best interest to keep you intact, if he wishes the favour of the Duke of Benbridge.

But more than that, his touch had been innocent, yet strangely familiar. Sure of itself. And sure of her. It had made her want to reach out and clasp his hand in thanks.

She took a firmer grip on the binding of her book, to make sure that the temptation was not acted upon.

It appeared, as they travelled, that Mr Hendricks would be proven right about the difficulties that lay before them. The carriage had been slowing for the better part of the morning, and Mr Hendricks had removed his watch from his pocket on several occasions, glancing at the time, comparing it to the schedule and making little tutting noises of disapproval. When she raised a questioning eyebrow, he said, ‘The recent rains have spoiled the roads. I doubt we will be able to go much farther today.’

‘Oh dear.’ There was little more to be said, other than to voice her disappointment. It was not as if arguing with Mr Hendricks would change the quality of the road, after all.

Half an hour later, the coach gave a final lurch and ground to a stop in the mud. The drivers called to the passengers to exit and for any men strong enough to assist in pushing.

As Mr Hendricks shrugged out of his coat and rolled up his sleeves, Drusilla looked in dismay at the puddle in front of the door. As she started down the steps, her companion held up a hand to stay her. ‘Allow me.’ Then he hopped lightly to the ground, and held out his arms to her.

‘You cannot mean to carry me,’ she said, taking a half-step back.

‘Why not?’

‘I am too heavy for you.’

He gave her an odd look. ‘I hardly think it will be a problem. Now hurry. My feet are getting wet.’

Gingerly, she sat on the edge and lowered herself towards him. Then he took her in his arms, turned and walked a little way up the hill to a dry place. He proved himself right, for he carried her easily. His body was warm against hers; suddenly and unreasonably, she regretted that she had not lain closer to him in the night. It felt delightful to have his arms about her and she allowed her own arms to creep about his neck, pretending it was only to aid in balance and had nothing to do with the desire to touch him.

Too soon he arrived at the safe place and set her down on the ground. ‘Wait for me here, Sister.’

Was the last word a reminder of her role? she wondered. As he laboured behind the coach, she could not manage to think of him thus. His broad shoulders strained, outlining themselves against the linen of his shirt. She could see muscle, bone and sinew in the strength of his arms and his legs as well, his lower anatomy well defined by the tightness of his mud-splattered trousers.

It made her feel strange, rather like she had first thing in the morning, when he had been staring at her. She put a hand to her forehead, wondering if she had taken ill, and then let it fall to her side in defeat. It was getting harder and harder to pretend that her reactions to Mr Hendricks were related to heat or indigestion. It excited her to have his attention, if she fluttered at every glance and touch.

Perhaps her sister’s foolishness was contagious. She was normally far too sensible to be looking at a man and thinking the things she was. More importantly, she should not be looking at this particular man. She had hired him, for heaven’s sake. He was her inferior. Not a suitor. Not a lover. Not even a friend. It was no different than Priscilla and her dancing master.

Except in one thing. Mr Hendricks had shown no interest in seducing her. Last night, with the candour brought on by too much alcohol, he had admitted that his heart was already bruised. He had been eager to withdraw from civilisation, particularly the company of women. If he had even the slightest idea what was going on in her head, he would depart from her at the first opportunity, leaving her to face this calamity alone.

As if to punish her for her lapse, the horses gave a tug and the body of the coach overbalanced still further. And then, with a horrible splintering, the mired wheel gave way. She covered her eyes with her hands, wishing she could reject the reality of the destroyed transport and the attractiveness of her companion. It was all ruined, as was her Priss.

And she could not help but think that it was all her fault. If she had behaved with more foresight while they were still in London, been more strict … Or perhaps less so … If she had been a better example, or listened with more compassion to her sister’s problems … then Priss would not have run away. And she would not be sitting beside a broken coach, staring at a man’s shoulders and thinking nonsense.

She felt the shadow of him cross her face, before he spoke. ‘Well, then. That’s done for.’

‘It’s over.’ Because it was. She could not walk to Scotland. By the time they could find another carriage, the couple would be even farther ahead of them. She might as well adjust to the idea of Mr Gervaise for a brother-in-law, and a father so angry that she would never see polite society again, lest she follow the path of her younger sister and humiliate him.

He gave a short laugh. ‘Then you will be glad that I am here. For while the coach is done, the journey is hardly over. If you wish to continue, that is.’

‘Continue? Of course.’ Her eyes flew to the coach. ‘Can they get us a post-chaise?’

‘They’ll do it for two passengers, but not for three.’

‘There are only two of us,’ she said.

Mr Hendricks cocked his head in the direction of their companion who was leaning against the broken axle. ‘After the way we have treated him, it is unlikely that he will yield his place to us. And do not think for a moment that you will change partners as though you were waltzing at Almack’s and go on with him instead,’ Hendricks said firmly. ‘I hesitate to think what might happen to you if he gets you alone.’

A variety of responses occurred to her. She should have told him that she was not that foolish, that he had no right to talk to her in that tone. Instead, she announced, ‘I have never been waltzing at Almack’s, and, if I had, I certainly would not leave you in the middle of a dance.’ It was true. She had procured the vouchers with Priss in mind. She had not needed Father to tell her that the girl would not show to best advantage if both of them were on the floor. But it made her look like a looby to announce the fact now. It was bad enough to be thought foolish, but worse to be seen as exactly what she was: a wallflower spinster, too busy watching over the virtue of others to get the benefit of a Season.

Mr Hendricks was staring at her as though she has sprouted feathers. ‘Go and speak to the driver. See what else can be done,’ she commanded in her most aristocratic tone. ‘I wish to be in Scotland before tomorrow, Hendricks. There is no time to waste.’ He did not need to be told his job. She hated people who solved their problems by tongue-lashing the nearest servant, but at least it made him turn from her so she could no longer see his look of pity.

He came back a short time later, holding out a hand to her as though there was nothing strange between them. ‘The coachman tells me that southbound drivers claim it is this bad and worse for quite some way. Not fit for coach or wagon even if we could get one. But two horses, keeping to dry ground and travelling cross country, will have more success. I’ve bribed the driver to give us the wheelers and let us go on alone.’

‘You want us to continue on horseback?’ As though that was not obvious, without her chattering like a parrot at the poor man.

He answered with a nod; if he thought her dull witted, he was kind enough to ignore it. He produced a compass from his pocket, glancing up at the sun for confirmation. ‘We will travel north and hope for drier roads when we reach Lancashire.’ Then, as though remembering that it was not he who led, said, ‘Does this meet with your approval, my lady?’

She blinked, wondering if she would have managed to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat in such a handy way had she not found him. ‘I think I am most fortunate to have taken you on, Mr Hendricks.’

‘Thank you, Lady Drusilla.’

Chapter Five

Thank you, Lady Drusilla. As you please, my lady. Even as John walked back to help unhitch the horses from the coach, the voice in his head mocked him. In taking this trip, hadn’t he been planning to get out from under the thumbs of attractive and unattainable women? He’d only just got clear of Emily. And now, this.

When he’d realised that there was no space at the inn, he should have offered to pig up with the cit instead of carrying the farce any further. But he’d been drunk and querulous and the man annoyed him more than the girl.

Of course, it had been fortunate that he’d got time alone with Lady Drusilla Rudney and found a way to make himself invaluable. The Duke of Benbridge was terribly high in the instep; a letter of thanks from him would be a welcome addition to his references. But there would be no glowing recommendations if he was caught playing chamber games with the duke’s lovely daughter.

Only moments after he’d accepted her offer of employment, he’d got a look at those shapely calves bared as the stockings came off and begun to regret the whole plan. When he’d managed to sleep, he’d dreamt of her. And he’d woken with a morning’s desire, hurrying from the room before she could notice and enquire.

He had avoided her at breakfast, drinking strong black coffee to dull the after-effects of the gin and keeping busy with the plans for their departure. Then he had taken his place beside her to prevent the other man from encroaching upon her space. The carriage rocked her against his body in a way that would have been pleasant had not his role as her brother prevented any enjoyment. To curb the effect her nearness had on his nerves and body, he’d been forced to close his eyes and sink into the headache still plaguing him.

It disgusted him that his resolve to forswear all women and live in solitude had not even lasted as long as his inebriation. But he could hardly be blamed; the cit in the carriage had been panting after her as well and he had not been forced to share a bed with her. Lady Drusilla was a damned attractive woman, but seemed unaware of the effect she had on the men around her, wandering about alone and putting her virtue at risk. Any feelings John had for her were not a symptom of fickleness. They were proof that he was male.

But when she’d said she had an ‘understanding’ with the gentleman they were chasing, his first thought had been, At least you are not yet married. As if that would matter. Even if she was unattached, she was a duke’s daughter and he was the bastard of who knew who.

Of course, she had said her Gervaise was a plain mister and not the Marquis of Gretna Green. It seemed that if the lady’s heart was engaged, a title was not required. And John knew himself to be a better man in one respect. No matter what the circumstances of his birth, at least he was not the sort who made promises to one lady and ran for the border with another.

He had half a mind to thrash sense into this Gervaise fellow for running off on her. Though Lady Dru’s tongue was sharp, she deserved better. That John would find himself rushing her north and into the arms of such a lacklustre lover was an even sharper irony. It was too like the part he’d played in the reconciliation of Emily and her husband.

He’d told himself often enough that his own parentage was not a reflection of his worth as a man. But when given a chance to test the theory, society always proved the opposite. And if Lady Dru was eager enough for her Mr Gervaise to set off cross country without a feather to fly on, hoping to win him back, then she would not be interested in some itinerant gentleman she met in the coach, even if that man was unwise enough to take a fancy to her.

Which he did not mean to do. John thought of a certain amiable widow who lived near the Folbroke country estate. It had been some months since his last visit to her. The extended period of celibacy must be addling his brain. Though he never seemed to be the target of it, the haze of feminine lust around his recent employers had raised something in him that was nothing more than envy disguised as infatuation and a desire to take care of natural and unmet needs.

When the carriage had got stuck, as he’d known it would, it had been almost a relief to exercise some of demons from his brain with pushing on the thing. Of course, to do it he had taken his employer in his arms and taken her to high ground, which had only made things worse. She was curvy under the simple gown she wore. And she had clung to his neck as though she’d enjoyed it, her red lips parted in surprise at how easily he’d carried her. He’d set her down quickly, out of the mud, before she could notice her lapse and his impropriety. If she spotted it, she would scold him for it, putting up barriers of rank and bad temper that were not the least bit threatening, once one knew her.

Strangely, he felt he did know her. Perhaps he was reading too much into the intent way she looked at him, or how easy it had been to talk to her on the previous evening, when they had been alone and no one could hear.

Then there had been that moment of awkwardness she’d displayed earlier, when she’d said she had not danced at Almack’s. She must have meant that she had no permission to waltz and that she would not have been so rude as to slight any partner. For a moment, it had almost sounded as though she was woefully inexperienced in the arts of society and had some personal reason not to give him up when he’d held her.

He shook his head. He was dreaming again. If he was fortunate, at the end of the journey he would find a Scottish widow sympathetic to his plight, and he would regain his equilibrium.

As he led the horses back to Lady Dru, he put on his most proper and deferential air, getting clear in his own mind the distance between them and the relationship they must have: respectful courtesy on his part and complete indifference on hers.

She looked dubiously at the horses, which were probably not the fine bloods to which she was accustomed.

‘You have experience enough to ride, do you not?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ she answered, although her tone did not make her sound the least bit sure. ‘But I did not pack a habit.’

He almost sighed in relief to hear the sort of clothes-obsessed response he’d expected from a smart young lady of the ton, foolish and easily dismissed. ‘There is no place to change into it, even if you had it.’ He gave her an encouraging smile. ‘In any case, there will not be room enough to take much luggage. You will have to make do with a single bag; the rest will travel north to meet you when you reach your destination.’

‘I do not have more than that now,’ she said, glaring at him again. ‘I left in rather a hurry and am not such a great ninny that I wasted what time I had in packing band boxes.’

Damn. ‘Of course, my lady.’

Then she whispered more urgently, ‘But, Mr Hendricks, there is a problem. This saddle is … wrong.’

‘You are referring to the lack of a side saddle?’ he asked. ‘Coach horses are not generally equipped for a lady’s Sunday ride. These are accustomed to having a postillion, so at least we will not have to worry about being thrown into the dirt. But I cannot promise more than that.’

Such an enormous beast would frighten a normal woman to tears, but his employer was staring at the horse with a raised chin and a dark look. Then she stared back at the saddle with apprehension. ‘But what am I to do?’

There, at last, he saw the frightened girl under the iron façade. Perhaps this trip was not as easy as she made it out to be. He tried to hide his smile at the well-bred delicacy that thought spreading her legs was more risky than breaking her neck on a coach horse. ‘You must weigh your desire for further rapid progress against the need to retain your modesty in the wilds of the country, where no one will see you.’ He hoped she would take the more sensible choice, but knew that she would not.

‘I cannot ride astride,’ she said, finally, ‘but I must continue north.’

‘Then you can balance on your hip as best you can with no pommel to hold on to. Or we can use one horse for the luggage and you may ride with me.’ It would be faster than walking the horses so that she did not slip from the saddle, but it would mean that he would have to hold her close as they travelled, which would be awkward in ways she could not possibly imagine.

She stared back at him, brow smooth, eyes cool, chin raised and lips narrowed. ‘It cannot be helped, I suppose.’ The expression put him firmly in his place, assuring him that the ride would not be a pleasant one for either of them.

And yet … He thought for a moment that he saw a fluttering in the pulse of her neck and a nervous swallow. And the faintest of pink flushes to her cheek. Then it was gone.

He cursed his wayward imagination and mounted the larger of the two horses, then offered her a hand up. To assure her, he said, ‘Let us go a short way and see how we manage. You need have no concern for your safety, for I am an excellent horseman.’

‘I know you will not let me fall,’ she said. Her confidence in his abilities would have pleased him had it not been delivered in a testy voice, as though she’d just as soon be dropped upon her head than share his saddle. But she sat before him comfortably enough, posture good, and an arm about his waist with a grip that was firm and not the least bit missish.

It took only a few miles for him to begin wishing she’d taken the other choice. It was nice to ride with her—far too nice. She fit easily into the space before him, her soft hip pressed into his thigh as though it belonged there. As he spurred the horse, wisps of her fine black hair escaped from her bonnet and whipped in the breeze, teasing the skin of his cheeks. It was a tickling sweetness, bringing with it a whiff of cologne that made him want to lean forwards and bury his face in the side of her throat. He had to work to stifle the urge to loosen the bonnet and free the rest of it to let it stream in the wind.

He wished he was in a position to make conversation with her, for it might have helped to pass the time and occupy his mind in anything other than the scent of her hair.

‘Who are you?’ The words came from her suddenly, with no preamble. And then she stopped herself, probably shocked at sounding ridiculous, nonsensical and, worst of all, rude.

But she was unaware of what a blessed relief it was to him.

‘I am John Hendricks, as I have already told you. I worked for the Earl of Folbroke as a personal secretary.’

She relaxed a little as though she’d been bracing for some sort of harsh retort. It made him wonder at the sort of conversation she was accustomed to, if a simple question was not met with a polite answer.

‘But I think that is not what you are asking me,’ he said. ‘I would be happy to answer you in detail, if you would clarify your meaning.’

‘How did you come to be who you are? Who are your people? Where did you come from?’ And again he felt her tense, as though she were expecting ridicule. It made him want to reach out and offer physical comfort of some kind—a touch on the shoulder, a word in her ear urging her to relax in his company. Or, worse yet, to ask similar questions of her. He must remember that conversation between them, given his position and hers, was a one-sided affair at best. A desire to know his personal history did not demonstrate a desire to share hers.

He answered carefully, giving just the information required. ‘I was born in London, though I spent very little time there. My mother died when I was quite young; there is not much I can tell you of her, other than that she was beautiful. But that is what all children say of their mothers and so it hardly signifies.’

And that had been enough to loosen her tongue and relax her rigid posture. ‘I suppose you are right, Mr Hendricks. I would say the same of my departed mother. Beautiful and happy.’

‘Mine was sad.’ He reflected for a moment, surprised that her questions had raised a fresh feeling of loss for something that had happened so long ago. ‘I was sent away to school when she died. To Eton and then to Cambridge. There was never any question of how it would be paid for. But around the time of the death of Duke of Summersly, I received a nice settlement. I think that tells us both all we need to know about the identity of my father.’

‘A bastard son of a duke?’ Again she had blurted the words in a way that was the height of bad manners. He could almost hear her mouth snap shut.

‘Of him, or some member of that family. While he did not acknowledge me in life, I cannot really complain about the way I was treated.’ At least, he had no right to. ‘I was a natural student and quite happy at all the schools I attended. I cannot say the same of my fellows. I took great pleasure in besting them when I could, at lessons or at games. It proved …’ and then he remembered his audience and shut his own mouth.

‘That it is not always one’s parentage that proves one’s abilities,’ she finished for him, unbothered by the idea. Of course, she had no reason to feel threatened by it. She was a symbol of the rank he’d been denied; nothing he could say would change her status in society. ‘And when you were finished with your education?’ she prompted.

‘I used the money I was given to buy a commission and did quite handsomely for myself as a soldier. I was aide-de-camp to the Earl of Folbroke. We were friends as well as comrades. When he returned home, I followed and took a position in his household.’

‘And you might have been equals …’

‘Or perhaps his superior,’ he added calmly, ‘had I been born on the right side of the blanket.’ He waited for her chilly response and the inevitable withdrawal. Their circumstances were unusual and some curiosity was natural. But a well-bred young lady would not stoop to befriend a by-blow.

Instead, she continued as though she found nothing particularly unusual about his past. ‘I enjoyed my schooling as well. There is a great comfort to be found in books.’

And why did you need comforting, I wonder? The woman was a curiosity.

‘But in such places as I was sent, most of the time is spent ensuring that young ladies are properly prepared to take their roles as wives and mothers, and are assets to the households of their intended husbands.’

Which made them sound little better than servants. Perhaps they had more in common then he’d thought.

She sighed. ‘When Mother died, it was agreed, amongst us, that it would be for the best that I come home from school and see to things.’

Liar. Her father had commanded it, he was sure. He risked a question. ‘And what sorts of things needed seeing to?’

‘Once we were out of mourning, my younger sister, Priscilla, was ready to make her come out. And it has been decided that I must be her guard, until she finds a husband. The stronger must protect the weaker, after all.’

‘And you are the stronger,’ he said, softly.

Her eyes narrowed. ‘I am. In mind and in body. I am older and wiser, as well. And with no mother to advise or protect her, someone must care for Priscilla.’ There had been the faintest, most fleeting hint of a something on her face as she had said it, as though she remembered a time not so long ago when she had not thought that way at all. But her father had called her home. And like an obedient daughter, she had come and done exactly as she was told, putting all of her own dreams aside for the good of her sister. More than her mother had died on that day, John was sure of it, but Lady Dru had convinced herself otherwise.

Out of the blue, she added, ‘Priscilla is the prettier of the two of us, and with the extra attention she receives from so many gentlemen, there is an increased risk.’

‘Prettier than you?’

For a moment, her frown faded into a look of surprise, softening her features into a dark attractiveness that quickened his pulse. ‘Of course. She is of a more appropriate height, delicate of frame, fair of hair, pale of skin.’

And that explained why she would run to Scotland after a man who no longer wanted her. If she thought this Mr Gervaise was her only opportunity, if their understanding was that he would wait until she felt free to marry, she would be loathe to let him go.

It pained him to see such hesitance in one who was normally so sure of herself. Would it do any harm to give her some assurance on her looks? For it was clear that no one else, not even the errant Gervaise, had done so. ‘There is nothing inappropriate about your height,’ he said. ‘It suits you. And your frame suits your height. In my experience, delicacy is as likely to go hand in hand with sickness as it is with beauty. A lack of frailty on your part is hardly an imperfection.’

She was blinking at him again, as though she could not quite understand what it was that he meant. But it had brought a faint flush to her pale cheeks that made her all the more attractive, so he dared and went on, ‘Your colouring might not be the same as your sister’s, but it is most fetching. I am sure the two of you, when side by side, are an attractive counterpoint to each other.’ Now he was wishing he had a hand free to adjust his spectacles so that he might get a better look at her face before continuing. ‘That is only my opinion, of course. But there is nothing unusual about my tastes and assessment of feminine beauty. There are men who prefer the fair sex to be fair. And there are an equal number that enjoy raven hair and large dark eyes.’ At the moment, he fell too much in the latter category to say more.

In fact, he had said too much already. He checked his watch. They were making good time, now that they could leave the roads as needed. He gave his passenger a brief warning and took the horses up a steep embankment, in an effort to find higher ground for them.

And since he’d put his hand on her waist to steady her, it had seemed only natural to leave it there and enjoy the warmth of her ribs. It was a shame that she did not see beauty when she looked into the mirror, for he found nothing wrong with her. Perhaps she was tall for a woman, but there was nothing in the least masculine about the rest of her. He spread his fingers to span as much of her as he could, easing her body back against him.

She responded by nestling closer. She relaxed against him, almost as if it required conscious effort to depend on the strength of another.

And he wanted to be her strength. In the years he had worked for Folbroke and doted on the man’s wife, she had never once shown an interest in his past. They had been friends, of course, but not particularly close.

But in less than a day together, Lady Drusilla Rudney had ferreted out the truth of his birth and forged a connection between them. This trip was not the only time she’d felt alone. He could see it in her guarded eyes, in the way she held herself, carefully self-contained at all times, and the way she was leaning into him, unguarded and fragile.

Because of that fragility, he was a danger to her. Though his mind might want to reach out and comfort, his body felt the flesh-and-blood woman beside him and wanted a much more earthy connection. The movement of the horse shifted her against him and he had idle thoughts of stretching his fingers upwards to graze the bottoms of her breasts. And each change in gait raised a fresh fantasy as she rocked against him. Walking brought to mind a languid afternoon of love making. A canter made him think of a quick coupling and fear of discovery. And as he nudged them to a full gallop, he thought of a night of wild, uncontrolled, vigorous …

‘Mr Hendricks!’

Chapter Six

He pulled on the reins, bringing the horse up short, suddenly afraid that she had guessed the contents of his mind or felt his obvious physical response. ‘My lady?’

He glanced around him, checking his surroundings, his watch and his compass, and comparing the results to the last mile marker he had seen to pretend that their progress had been the only thing on his mind.

‘Could we stop to rest? I think—’

‘An excellent idea.’ He practically leapt from the horse, helping her down and stepping quickly away from her. ‘The stand of trees over there looks quite inviting.’ He waited for the rebuke that must be coming. There should be shock and outrage, or at least some sign that she feared to be near him.

Instead, she was biting her lip as though unsure what to say or do next. Then she gave a hesitant nod and half-muttered, ‘Perhaps that is it. I need to rest.’

He let out a sigh of relief. She did not seem to be worrying about him at all. ‘Was the ride tiring for you?’ He offered her an arm to help her over the uneven ground as they walked the horses towards a stream by the grove.

She gave an uneasy laugh. ‘I fear I do not make the best passenger. I could not seem to sit still.’ There was a gruffness about her words, as though they were more denial than total innocence. But the look in her eyes was confusion, and perhaps embarrassment. It seemed he was not the only one affected by their nearness.

‘It did not bother me overly,’ he said, for it hardly seemed fair to call such pleasant sensations an annoyance.

‘All the same, I do not think I wish to ride that way any longer. Is there no other way?’ She was looking at him, vulnerable and desperate, trusting that he would understand and help her. And though he wanted nothing more than to tumble her in the grass, or sweep her into his arms and back into the saddle, he knew that he would not.

He stared at her, wondering if he dared suggest what he was thinking. ‘There is a way that we can make better progress, if you are willing to take certain risks.’

‘Anything,’ she said eagerly, then looked at him, trying to appraise his plan and regain some of her old composure. ‘Well, nearly anything. What do you suggest, Mr Hendricks?’

He went to the other horse and pulled down his bag, removing the clothing he had stashed there. He held them out to her. ‘Leather riding breeches, Lady Drusilla. And I have a spare shirt as well. If you were dressed in a less feminine way, you could ride astride with more comfort.’

‘Men’s clothing?’ she said, clearly appalled. ‘You expect me to wear breeches?’

‘From a distance, you would be mistaken for a boy. It would lessen the risk of someone recognising you as the Duke of Benbridge’s daughter.’

‘But it is very improper. I do not think I could …’

‘They will fit,’ he assured her. ‘While you appear to be …’ He cleared his throat, trying not to comment on the shape of her, which was as far from a man’s as he could imagine. ‘Well, at least we are of a similar height and, in most ways, I am larger than you. If we can cobble together a disguise out of spare clothing from my pack, it would do quite well for you.’

She touched the clothes gently and he noticed how fine her hand looked, lying against the leather. ‘Would it add so much to the speed of our progress?’

‘You will find that men’s clothing is much less restrictive for trips like this. We will be able to move more quickly and will stop before returning to populated areas, to allow you to change into something more appropriate to your gender.’

‘And no one would ever know?’ she asked hopefully.

‘I will certainly tell no one,’ he said. ‘It is much better, is it not, that Lady Drusilla not be seen travelling alone with a strange man?’

She gave a little shiver at the thought. He did not know whether to be angry or flattered by it, for at least it proved that she recognised him as a threat and not some neutered tool. ‘That is probably true. If the story of this trip gets out, I have already done great harm to my reputation. Can the addition of breeches make it worse?’

He smiled encouragingly. ‘Very well, then. Take these and step behind the trees to change. If you run into difficulties …’ He thought of her half-dressed body and realised that there was not a damned thing he dared to do for her. ‘Make a brave attempt.’

He waited where he was as she took the proffered clothing and concealed herself. To prevent temptation, he turned his back on the scene as well, so that he would not catch even a glimpse of bare skin through the sparse leaves.

Or, worse yet, he might catch himself straining to see something. Though he had managed to keep his eyes respectfully averted for most of last night, after the ride they’d just shared, his will was not so strong.

He heard her return a short time later and turned to find her standing with hands spread before her, in a gesture that sought approval. ‘Is this all right?’

‘Yes,’ he responded, trying to modulate his own voice and looking hurriedly away. ‘Yes. That will be quite satisfactory.’

Dear God.

When he’d made the suggestion, he had not given two thoughts to it. They were his own clothes, after all. He had seen them before.

But never like this. The shirt was full, and covered her to the throat, obscuring the curves underneath it with billows of fabric. But it was far too thin. The dark peaks of her breasts were displayed plain for anyone who wished to look. The tender budding tips jutted against the cloth. And his eyes strained to see, like dogs at the end of a lead. He forced them back to her face, and stripped off his topcoat and handed it to her. ‘Perhaps this will help.’

It did not. Not really. Her legs still protruded from the tails of the coat and the shapeliness of her calves was not obscured through the heavy stockings. The leather of the breeches pulled tight against her thighs and her nicely rounded bottom. The buff colour looked almost like bare skin. And it all seemed to settle into that final crease at the top of her legs, drawing his gaze to a place that he should never look, but that he very much wanted to admire. They were alone, far from interruption, and only a few buttons separated him from paradise.

He turned away from her, busying himself with the harnessing of the horses, trying not to notice the increasing tightness in his own trousers, then pulled his glasses off, folded them and tucked them into the pocket of his coat.

‘Mr Hendricks,’ she said, ‘will you not need those to see what you are doing?’

‘Resting my eyes for a moment,’ he assured her. ‘It has been a long day, has it not?’ He turned back to the horse and raised the stirrups as though this were the only thing on his mind. ‘You must manage in your own boots, I’m afraid. Even if I had spares to offer, mine would fall off your feet.’

Such dainty little feet.

He rummaged in his pack for a soft hat. ‘Here. Put this over your hair.’

She smiled at him in approval and pulled it into place. ‘It is a relief to know that you do not expect me to cut it. There are some things I would not do in the name of disguise.’

‘No. Never.’ He hoped that his sigh had not been too obvious to her. But he’d have as soon asked her to cut off her arm as lose that glorious dark hair. He imagined it, down, smooth and thick in his hands. Then he did his best to imagine anything else. For a moment, he tried to think of Emily, who had occupied so much of his thoughts only two days ago. Her hair had been shorter and blond. It was strange how quickly a thing that had seemed so important to him, had faded so quickly from memory.

The same would likely be true of Lady Drusilla, once he was out of her sphere of influence. It must be, or it would drive him mad. When he glanced back at her, looking into her eyes this time, he could see that she would not. Or almost see, at any rate. For the blurring of his vision without the spectacles made her face soft, more childlike, her eyes large and bewildered, and her mouth rounded into a soft red bow. This was how she would look when he made love to her.

Which he would never do, he reminded himself. He had no right to even think such things about her. The list of reasons against it was almost too long to count.

‘It is time we were going again,’ he said, staring up at the sun. ‘I do not mean to stop until dark. Then we will return to the main road, find an inn and enquire about your friend.’

He went to her and offered her a leg up into the saddle of the big horse. For a moment, her foot rested in the cradle of his hands, and his face was far too near to her leg. He felt light headed with the desire to press his lips against the place he could reach. Then it was over and she was mounted, the horse dancing until she took control of the reins.

He looked up critically. ‘You are sure that you will be all right with this?’

She straightened, stiffened and seemed to grow braver with each passing moment, though her eyes widened at the feel of the horse between her legs. ‘It will be fine, because it must be so. And you are right. I can tell already that it is easier to ride when one can control the beast under one and not perch on it like a decoration.’ She glared down at him, eyebrows and chin raised. ‘And if you ever tell anyone I said that, I shall sack you immediately.’

‘Yes, my lady,’ he responded, with a small bow, dropping with difficulty back into the role of servant.

He rearranged the luggage and mounted his own horse. Then he pointed her in the right direction and allowed her to set the pace, for he did not wish to push her beyond her capacities.

He watched her ride. For someone with little experience, she had a good seat and showed no signs of fearing the animal he had given her. That was fortunate; he had no wish to end the day tearing across the open country after a runaway stallion, trying to save her from a fall. She chose a gait that was not too arduous on horse or rider, but still gained them time over the unreliable coach. It was hard not to admire her almost masculine single-mindedness in pursuit of a goal.

From his position behind her, he could admire her body as well. Now that the coat hid her form, there was really nothing to see. But his imagination was good, as was his memory. At some point, they would have to stop. And he would sleep in the stable before sharing another bed with her, lest he forget himself again.

Chapter Seven

Mr Hendricks pulled up beside her, and signalled her to slow her horse to a walk. ‘We shall be stopping soon,’ he said, checking his watch against the position of the sun. ‘While it might be possible to travel farther, we must change horses to keep this pace. We could take a room—’ he corrected himself ‘—rooms. And get some dinner.’

‘Or we can hire fresh mounts and continue for a few more hours,’ she said.

‘You are not tired?’

‘Not if there is a chance that we are gaining on them.’ They’d had no information since the stop this morning. And she must hope that the speed they were moving had closed the distance.

‘And you are comfortable as you are attired?’ He looked doubtfully at her borrowed costume.

‘I am accustomed to it,’ she said, not wishing to commit herself. It was strangely freeing to go without skirts, as long as she did not think of how it must look. She could bend low over the horse’s neck and gallop if she wished, unencumbered by petticoats, not worrying about the set of her hat or the attractive arrangement of the garments. And while she felt the stretching of unused muscles, it was not so much painful as troubling. There was a guilty pleasure in it that would not be repeated. And she wished to prolong that a few more hours, if she could.

‘Very well, then. We will stop at the next inn, and I will check for your wayward carriage and hire us some new steeds. You …’ He looked her up and down before speaking again. ‘You had best remain in the courtyard. Keep your coat buttoned and your hat pulled low. Speak to no one and do not wander off.’ He looked at her again as though he expected to see something he had not noticed before. ‘I am sorry to say it, my lady, but you do not make a very convincing man.’

And then he laughed, a kind of choking snort as though his proper demeanour had failed him.

‘Is there something amusing that I am not aware of?’ she said in a voice that should have frozen him to silence.

He was still chuckling slightly. ‘You seemed most unhappy with a statement that, in any other context, would have been good news. Just now, you were glaring into the air as though you had wished to hear you wore it better. I found the juxtaposition funny.’

‘I do not like to be reminded that I am unable to perform a role to the satisfaction of others.’ She’d had enough of that at home to last a lifetime.

‘It is no fault of yours, I assure you,’ he said. ‘Perhaps a less attractive woman might have managed it.’ He laughed again.

‘Please do not joke with me about my appearance,’ she snapped. ‘If you thought that I was angling for a compliment, I assure you, that was not the case.

‘I am not laughing at your appearance,’ he said in the same mild patient tone he’d used to coax her into wearing his clothes, but stifling a smile. ‘Only at the way you frowned again upon being told that you were attractive.’

‘Because it is nonsense,’ she said. ‘Fine words meant to flatter me into a better humour.’

‘Give me more credit than that, Lady Drusilla. I have not been in your employ for long, but I am smart enough to realise that it would take more than flattery to put you in a good humour.’ Before she could reprimand him, he shot her another sidelong glance, then turned his attention to the road. ‘This is what comes from reading sermons,’ he muttered. ‘You think too much. If I wished to flatter you, I would have mentioned your pleasant features and your beautiful dark hair. Both comments would have been true. But they would have nothing to do with your inability to disguise such an obviously female body in masculine clothing with any degree of success. And now, if you tell me that the Lord has given it to you, and you deserve no credit for it, then I will take that little book of sermons from your pocket and throw it into the next stream.’

To put an end to the conversation, he gave his beast a gentle kick in the sides and was off at such a pace that she had to struggle to follow him.

He needn’t have bothered. Any retorts she had for him had flown quite out of her head. Left in their place was a swirl of words: attractive, pleasant, beautiful and, best of all, obviously female. Somewhere in the midst of it, he had commented on her bad humour. But she was hardly bothered by a comment on something which was seen as a universal truth by those close to her.

And he had laughed, not exactly at her, but in her direction, as though her temper amused more than it upset him. The negatives he’d thrown into the last interchange were like salt in a pudding, serving to emphasise the sweetness and bring out the subtle flavours of the rest.

And he had threatened to throw her sermon book into the river. Taken as a whole, she could not decide if she wanted to stammer a blushing thank you, or ring a peal over him. But the last statement could not be allowed to stand.

She spurred her horse to draw even with him. ‘I would not care if you did throw the sermons in a stream,’ she said, a little breathless from the ride. ‘It is not as if they are my exclusive reading.’

‘You brought other books with you?’

‘Not on this journey, no.’

His features had returned to mild-mannered passivity, as though he had collected enough evidence for a decision, but saw no reason to comment on it.

‘Perhaps it was because I thought that the couple I was searching for needed a reminder of their duty.’

‘So you sought to give a sermon and not to read one?’ It was an innocent observation. But it made her feel horribly priggish, not at all like the beautiful hoyden of a moment ago.

‘We cannot always have what we want,’ she said firmly. ‘Where would the world be if everyone went haring off after their desires, eloping to Scotland on the least provocation?’

‘Where indeed?’

‘It would be chaos,’ she said, sounding depressingly like the voice of her father.

‘And you are sure you wish to stop this particular elopement,’ he said carefully. ‘If we are lucky, we might catch up with your friends tonight. Or perhaps tomorrow. But sometimes, when people are in love and intent upon their goal, they cannot be turned from it. If you stop them now, they will find another way.’

‘If they run again, I will chase them again,’ she said, feeling as stiff and flat as her sermon book. ‘I do not mean to give them any choice in the matter. This marriage cannot take place. It simply cannot.’ She was already near to on the shelf. With a scandal in the family, her own reputation would be in tatters. Her father would be livid at Priscilla and in no mood to launch the other daughter: the one who had failed to protect his favourite.

The man beside her sighed. ‘Very well, then. If you are resolute, I load my pistols and prepare myself for the inevitable.’

‘The inevitable?’

‘To haul the loving couple back across the border by force, if necessary.’

‘You would do that?’

‘If you wished me to.’

And now she was the one smiling at incongruity. He had replaced his spectacles since their last stop and the sun glinted off his lenses, causing him to squint slightly. He hardly looked the type to resort to physical violence. ‘If you will remember our conversation last evening, I requested discretion.’

‘The sound of a single shot will not carry all the way to London,’ he replied. ‘And from what I understand of females, a wound in a non-vital spot is often deemed quite romantic.’

‘It is not my goal to make Mr Gervaise even more attractive to the opposite gender.’

‘Perhaps not, then.’ He thought again. ‘Maybe I should punch him. A broken nose will solve the problem of his good looks quite nicely, I am sure.’

The idea did have appeal. As did dragging Priscilla back to London by the hair. But it would only make her run away again. And the last thing she needed to risk was engendering sympathy for the villain who had taken her away. ‘No, as I said, discretion is the watchword.’ She glanced at him again. ‘But thank you for the offer.’

He ducked his head. ‘At your service, Lady Drusilla.’

Of course. That was all it had been. She had employed him to solve the problem and he had offered suggestions. The protectiveness that she was sure she’d heard were imaginings on her part. Nothing more than that.

She sighed. For a moment, it had felt quite nice to think that there was a man on the planet who could be moved to brutal overreaction in defence of her.

They kept the pace until they arrived at the next inn, and Mr Hendricks left her standing by a wall in the courtyard, out of the way of departing coaches, as he went to see about the horses and make enquiries about recent guests. While she waited, she did as he’d suggested and buttoned the coat, pulling his hat low over her eyes and thrusting her hands into her pockets in a way that she hoped looked insolent and unwelcoming.

But she could tell from the looks she got from the stable hands that they saw easily through her disguise. She shrank back into Mr Hendricks’s overcoat, vowing that whatever might happen between here and Scotland, she would not be out of his sight for another moment. He had been right. There was no way that she would be taken for a male. She did not want to think about what the clothes might be exposing to view. Even hidden in the coat, she was exposing so much of her legs that she might as well be standing naked in the courtyard.

But despite her fears, the boys’ attitudes were not so much menacing as amused. She could hear the muttered conversation between them, as they came for the horses and brought out the fresh pair. One was guessing it was an elopement. The other disagreed. The gentleman seemed more interested in who had gone before than who might come from behind. It must be some sort of bet or a strange prank.

The first insisted that the man was too old to be just down from Oxford. And the woman was too fine to be the sort of woman who would don breeches for the amusement of the lads. Only love made people act as cork-brained as this. It was an elopement for sure. He’d bet a penny on it.

Drusilla tried not to smile. There was some comfort in knowing that though she did not look like a boy, neither did everyone mistake her for a whore. But the idea that she might be thought the one eloping?

What a wonderful thought that was. For a moment, she imagined herself as being that sort of girl. Just once, she wished to be the one racing for the border with a laughing lover as the hue and cry was raised after her. And chaperons all over London would shake their heads and murmur to their charges about the bad end one was likely to come to, if one behaved like the notorious Silly Rudney.

Mr Hendricks was in the doorway, haggling back and forth with the innkeeper, struggling to pull coins from his pockets and muttering to himself. Then he walked back to her through the busy coach yard, dipping his head low to speak in confidence to her. ‘Are you still carrying your reticule?’

She nodded.

‘Please give it to me.’

She produced the blue silk bag from the pocket of her man’s coat and was certain she heard laughter from the boys who had been watching her. It became even louder as they saw Mr Hendricks rooting through the contents for the sad collection of coins remaining there, swearing at the little money in his hand. Then he thrust the purse back to her and stalked away.

One stable boy passed a penny to the other, agreeing that only a man in love could be brought so low, and Dru cringed in embarrassment for her companion. And the boys glanced in the direction of the doorway to the inn, then looked hurriedly away.

There was a young lady, standing alone beside a stack of bandboxes, waving a handkerchief in the hopes of receiving aid. The burden was light and would have been no trouble for boys strong enough to handle cart horses. But when Dru got a better look at the identity of the girl, she disappeared into Mr Hendricks’s coat, sympathising with the sudden deafness of the stable hands.

Priss’s friend, Charlotte Deveral, was not someone she might wish to meet under the best circumstances. The girl was too young and pretty to be a harridan, but it was only a matter of time. If her disposition was as Dru remembered, she was most likely in a temper over nothing. And she would take it out on a tardy servant, or any lad who left a smudge on a package while trying to earn a penny or two.

‘Boy!’ Char’s voice was sharp and ugly. ‘Boy!’ And then she muttered an aside to her paid companion. But it was a theatrical sotto voce, meant to embarrass the targets of her wrath. ‘These country clods are all either deaf or stupid. One must shout to make them understand. I say! Boy!’

For a moment, Dru was reminded of her own tone as she ordered Mr Hendricks about. Did it sound like that to him? she wondered. She felt suddenly ashamed of herself and more than a little embarrassed for Char, who was making a spectacle of herself with all the shouting and flapping of linen.

‘Boy, I am talking to you.’

And it was then that it occurred to Dru that there was no one else near and that Char was addressing her. ‘Eh?’ She managed a deep masculine grunt, and thrust her hands even deeper into her pockets, as though she did not care a bit for what some London piece might think of her.

‘Help me with these packages. My coachman is nowhere to be found.’ And another aside, loud enough so the stable boys might hear, ‘And the rest of the staff here are useless.’

Dru touched the brim of her hat in what she hoped was a respectfully masculine way, managing to pull it even lower over her face as she did so. Then she sauntered towards Charlotte.

She heard one of the stable boys snicker.

But Charlotte noticed nothing unusual about the ‘boy’ she’d called to aid her, looking right through Dru and refusing to recognise someone she had seen dozens of times before. Of course, a lad in an inn yard was so far beneath her that he might as well have been an ant upon the ground. What reason would she have to assume he was no lad at all? And he was not nearly as important as the bandboxes, to which Char gave her full attention. ‘Help me place my packages in the carriage.’

‘Miss,’ Dru said with false respect, bowing low to take them from the ground at Char’s feet.

‘The correct form of address is my lady.’

The devil it was. The Deveral family was gentle enough, but there was not a title in it. And though Charlotte had her hopes, she would be settling for a plain Mister at the end of the season. But Dru could not exactly announce a fact that she should be in total ignorance of. ‘My lady,’ she corrected herself and bowed deeper.

And heard another snicker from the boys behind her.

She went around to the back of the carriage and clambered into the basket, securing the packages with the rest of the luggage and, quite by accident, placing Char’s bonnet where it might be crushed at the next stretch of rough road. Then she helped Char and her chaperon into their seats as the groom who should be doing the job appeared from the taproom, too late to be of help to anyone.

As Drusilla closed the door and withdrew, Char gave an insolent toss of her head and said, ‘For your trouble.’ And then she pulled a coin from her purse and made as if to hand it out of the window. But she realised at the last moment that she had no wish to touch a filthy stranger and dropped it in the direction of Dru’s hand.

Before she could snatch it from the air, the shilling hit the cobbles and rolled into the muck.

Dru stared down at it in disgust. Under normal circumstances, she would not have noticed the loss of it. But things were far from normal and she was still far from Scotland. She stooped and grabbed, trying to ignore the dirt clinging to her fingers. To add insult to injury, the Deveral carriage had started on its way. Before she could step clear, the wheels and hooves sent up a fine spray of mud that struck her cheek.

To make her humiliation complete, Mr Hendricks appeared with two fresh horses, just in time for a view of the tableau: Lady Drusilla Rudney, muck spattered and scrambling for coins, to the great amusement of ladies and stable boys alike. She could expect no more fine words about her obvious feminine beauty now that he’d seen her debased, dismissed as something less than human by a woman of her own kind. Even worse, she had disobeyed him by talking to Char at all. She waited for a stern lecture on speaking to strangers and the need for secrecy. Or, worse yet, laughter.

Instead, he said nothing, offering her his handkerchief to wipe off the mud. Then he spoke as though he had seen nothing unusual. ‘The news is both good and bad, I’m afraid. The couple you seek were here just this morning.’

She hurriedly wiped her face, clinging to this one small success. ‘How many hours ago?’

‘Four, perhaps. Maybe less. They stayed for luncheon, before starting out again. They seemed in no hurry, wherever it was they were going.’

‘So we are gaining on them.’ Dru smiled in satisfaction. ‘They were a day ahead when I started off. If they continue to dawdle, then we are likely to catch them before they reach the border.’

‘If that is still what you wish,’ Hendricks replied. ‘We are at the end of our funds, I am afraid.’

‘I thought you had ample money to help me,’ she said, feeling even worse than before. If she’d taken the man’s last groat to catch her sister, she could hardly fault him if they failed.

‘I thought I had sufficient funds as well,’ he said. ‘But now that I have brought us to the middle of nowhere, I find that my purse is still in my pocket, but its contents are gone.’ His brows knit and the darkness of his expression was truly fearsome. She braced herself, ready to bear the brunt of the inevitable tirade.

Instead, he turned it inwards upon himself. ‘I have only myself to blame for our circumstances. Like a fool, I left my coat behind in the mail coach, as I helped to push. And that grudge-bearing, bacon-fed cit went through my pockets and helped himself to it. Now I am reduced to picking through a lady’s reticule and letting you grovel for pennies in a coach yard.’ He looked to her again, obviously pained by the confession. ‘I am sorry, Lady Drusilla. I have failed you.’

She felt a rush of sympathy. After all he had done to get her this far, she was amazed that he would think so harshly of himself. ‘You most certainly have not failed me,’ she said. ‘We have simply hit another difficulty and must take the time to examine our options. What do you suggest?’

‘As I see it, we have two alternatives. We return to the place we left and find the man responsible.’

‘And what good would that do us? He would likely deny that he had taken anything.’

‘At first, perhaps. But all the same, I would give him a thrashing that would shake the coins from his pockets.’ His cold smile and the glint in his eye said that the experience would be the most emotionally satisfying option and the one he favoured.

‘Mr Hendricks!’ Drusilla said sharply. ‘Attend, please. To return to find the thief would put my goal quite out of reach. If I have come this far, I do not wish to turn back without some satisfaction. Is there no other way to get to Scotland?’

Now, he was staring at her in silence, as though she were a piece in the puzzle that he could not quite seem to make fit. He did not immediately answer and she repeated, ‘Mr Hendricks?’

‘I am thinking,’ he said, a little too sharply for a servant, and then corrected his tone before responding. ‘There is another way, if you are dead set on continuing. We will press northwards as we have been doing and ride this change of horses to the end. We will be forced to sleep rough. We will take the shilling in your hand to buy some bread and cheese for our supper. But after that, we will have to beg or steal what we need for sustenance.’ He looked heartily sorry that he could not do better. ‘I fear it is not what you are accustomed to. But the only other alternative I can offer is to admit defeat and appeal to your father for help.’

‘And that is precisely what I will not do.’ She stood straight again, remembering that she was the daughter of a duke and not some slouching farm boy. Then she wiped the muddy coin and handed it back to Hendricks along with his handkerchief. ‘Take this and buy us some dinner, so that we might set off again.’ She glanced up the road at the dust of the retreating carriage, focusing all her anger and frustration on it, longing for revenge. And then an idea occurred to her. ‘And if you hurry I think there is a way that we might solve all our problems, given a little darkness and a little luck.’

Chapter Eight

‘This is mad, you know.’ Mr Hendricks spoke in the same soft voice he used on those times when he managed to remember that she employed him.

‘You have told me that on several occasions already.’

‘I did not think one more would make a difference,’ he said, with a sigh. ‘But if there was even the smallest chance, then I had to try. When I suggested we steal to survive, this was not at all what I was intending. I meant that we would take only what was necessary. A loaf from a farmer’s window sill, perhaps.’

‘Which would leave the poor family there with nothing to eat,’ she said. ‘Does it not diminish the hurt to all concerned if we steal from someone who lives a life of excess?’

‘Perhaps that is true, in theory. But you are not discussing some distant and romantic utopia. You are asking me to rob a coach on a modern highway. I believe, my lady, that you have confused me with some idealised combination of Robin Hood and Dick Turpin.’

‘Just as you have confused me with a character in a Drury Lane comedy,’ she snapped back, ‘and persuaded me to traipse halfway across England in your cast-off clothing.’ His tone annoyed her, for it was no longer mild subservience. There was a distinct air of derision. And it was just another example of the way those around her had no trouble leading her into jeopardy with their outrageous plans, then resisting when she offered an equally outrageous plan of her own.

‘If you mean to rob every farm between here and Scotland, we will never reach our destination. Rather than stealing one loaf at a time, we could take a single purse from someone who can afford a closed carriage and have more than enough gold to finish the trip. In the eyes of the Lord, the latter is far worse.’

‘It is to be my misfortune that you were reading the story of the widow’s mite,’ he said. ‘I should have taken that book from you when I had a chance.’

‘If you had, my opinion now would be the same,’ she snapped back. ‘I have no desire to spend a week sleeping in barns and munching on stolen bread and green apples.’ Although, were she honest, the prospect of being forced to sleep in the wilderness, huddled against Mr Hendricks for warmth, had a certain appeal to her.

‘I am sorry, my lady, if all that I can offer you is not to your liking.’ There was a surprising bitterness in the way he said her title, as though it were caught in his teeth.

‘And I am sorry if you do not like the position you have been engaged to perform.’ She gave him her cruellest smile and let the words be an equally bitter reminder for him, as well as herself, that her present condition was nothing more than a colossal inconvenience.

‘Begging your pardon, my lady.’ He offered a false bow and tugged his forelock. ‘I will not forget my place again.’

The soft blond hair falling in his eye gave her the sudden and inappropriate impulse to smooth it back with her fingers. She ignored it and said, ‘Your apology is accepted. Now, about the matter of the coach robbery …’

‘Which I cannot in any way condone.’

She huffed in disgust. ‘Your weak resolve had been duly noted. And I dismiss it. The occupants of the vehicle we will be stopping are unworthy of your sympathy. Char Deveral is a pampered, foolish girl of carefully cultivated prettiness, who would leave a full purse on the ground rather than soil her hands picking it out of the mud.’

Or a coin from a coach yard. The incident still stung, even now that her hands were clean. She had made Mr Hendricks ride the next miles hard and well off the road, until her anger had abated. But at least she was sure they had passed the carriage and could lie in wait for it.

And now, even if she did not get to Priscilla in time, she would have her revenge for that muddy coin and for a host of other small tricks and social slights delivered over the years by Char and her friends. She smiled at the prospect. ‘I know her type well. They are always talking behind their hands at those not of their set, laughing at their own empty jokes, and despite all the warnings of those who know better, running off with men who are little better than servants, heedless of what it might to their reputations, leaving the more rational members of their family to rescue them from their own foolishness, causing no end of misery …’

Now she had gone totally off her track and could tell by the look in his eye that he thought her even madder than before. He broke into her tirade. ‘It is not the character of your potential victims that concerns me, Lady Drusilla. Or their tendency to fraternise with men who are beneath them. It is the result of our likely capture.’

She waved away his objections. ‘If we are caught, then I shall tell everyone who I am and that you are my servant, forced into the actions by my misguided desire for adventure.’

He held his hand heavenwards as though to summon the angels to witness what he was forced to endure. ‘And I suppose, when they ignore you, and I am hanged for highway robbery, it will be a consolation to know that it was not really my fault.’

‘Nonsense,’ she insisted. ‘My father has bought justice to a halt for my sister more often than you can imagine. If this time the felonious prank perpetrated was the fault of Silly Rudney instead of his darling Priss, he will be annoyed with me, but will not hesitate. While the world has heard of no such actions on my part, a single mistake of mine can hardly compare to the sum total of the rest of my family.’

Mr Hendricks swore aloud, not caring that she heard the words, and said, in a more moderate tone, ‘The upper classes are all quite mad. For a time I had hoped that you were proving to be otherwise. But you are blessed with a stubbornness that is well outside the bounds of sanity and a single-mindedness that could wear reason down to a nub.’

So, she had lost the good opinion of the man who sat beside her. ‘At least I am consistent, Mr Hendricks.’

‘You are that, my lady.’

Then she tried something that had not occurred to her before and dipped her head slightly, doing her best at a shy smile, as her sister would have done when trying to charm a man. She looked up at him through her long dark lashes. ‘I am sorry to have been such a bother. You have done your best to keep me safe and I have much to be grateful for. If you can help me in this one last thing, I will see to it that you are properly rewarded for the inconvenience of it.’

He laughed. ‘So it has come to this, has it? You mean to use your wiles on me, now that all else has failed?’ There was a strange pause before his response, as he stared boldly back at her in challenge. ‘And how might you reward me, if I risk my neck for you?’ His voice was not mild at all, but hoarse, deep and strangely thick. She could feel the answering thickness in her blood as her pulse slowed.

She swallowed, wondering what she had meant to tell him. Some part of her mind was sure that her sister would have offered a single kiss as though it had some material value, but she doubted the currency of her inexperienced lips was of comparable worth. Nor could she inform him that, should they manage to find Priscilla, she could procure that kiss for him from her sister.

Then a thought occurred to her. She could tell him to take what he liked for a reward. Then he would kiss her. And though it would seem like a forfeit, only she would know that she had been rewarded twice.

But now that she needed it most, her nerve failed her. ‘My father will pay you double whatever you intended to receive from this escapade. What else could I possibly mean?’

He shook his head in amazement. ‘I cannot imagine. Double the pay it is, then. And enough money to replace what was stolen from me?’

‘Of course.’

‘Then for you, I shall turn highwayman, my Lady Dru.’

His anger with her must have dissipated, for the way he’d shortened her name had none of the frustrated affection that she felt when someone called her Silly. This made her feel odd. She tingled, almost as though he had reached out and touched her cheek to show her that they were friends again, and she needn’t worry.

He stared down the road. The sun was near to dipping behind the horizon; with each moment, it became more difficult to make out details of their surroundings. But from just behind the last hill she could hear the sound of horses, and the jingling of harnesses growing louder as they drew near.

Mr Hendricks removed his spectacles and tucked them into the pocket of his coat.

‘Do you not need them to see what you are about to do?’ she asked.

He shook his head. ‘Sometimes it is better not to see. It will be easier to do something as foolish as we are doing tonight without a clear view of it.’ Then he reached behind him to the bag that was strapped to the back of his saddle and removed a pair of pistols and two black neckcloths. He tossed a cloth to her, and then carefully handed her one of the guns. ‘Pull the cravat up and over your face,’ he cautioned. ‘Stay well out of the way, up on this hill with the setting sun to your back. You will seem much more intimidating if they do not have a clear view of you. And keep the pistol pointed up and over the heads of the drivers.’

‘It is not loaded.’ She said, trying not to sound relieved, for he had not troubled with ball and powder for her gun as he had with his own.

‘But they do not need to know that and I do not mean you to shoot. Just hold it as if it is properly ready. They will have no idea, unless you do something that might cause them to fire at you and do not respond.’ Then he looked at her seriously. ‘And if they do, if there is any trouble at all, then you will turn and ride away, do you understand?’

‘But that will leave you here alone.’ At last, she saw the truth of the risk she had forced him to take. The empty gun trembled in her hand.

His face was dark, as threatening as one would expect from someone desperate enough to rob a coach. But it was with concern for her, not anger. ‘If there is gunplay, it is no place for a lady to be, much less a lady disguised that might be treated with as little care as one might treat another man. If there is a problem, you will leave me to my fate.’

‘I am your employer and I ordered you to this.’ If he was hurt, it would be her fault. The thought almost choked her with anxiety.

‘You have not answered me,’ he said firmly. ‘I brook no discussion of this, nor will I waste time listening to any suggestions you might give me. Swear that you will do as I say, or I will not proceed. And hurry, for there is not much time.’ Without his glasses, there was no mildness in him at all. And the way he was staring at her made her feel small, easily managed.

It made her wish that there would be cause for him to look at her like that again. Perhaps in a situation where she had not put his life in jeopardy. For if he did, she would respond to any command he might give. She stifled a sigh and said, ‘As you wish.’

‘Very good. The coach is almost here and we have no more time to argue.’ He pointed to a spot well up the hill from the road. ‘Wait for me there. The height will appear to give you a good shooting position and will make retaliation difficult. You will be perfectly safe, as long as you do what I say.’

He pulled his own dark scarf over his face, and she masked herself as well. There was nothing attractive about highway robbery. Or, at least, there should not have been. But the way he sat atop his horse, and the sight of him with nothing but those strange amber eyes visible above the scarf, was quite dashing.

It was incongruous with the look of quiet competence that she had come to expect when seeing Mr Hendricks. The man before her now was the very devil on horseback. His thighs were muscular, the dark coat stretched over broad shoulders and a shock of blond hair crept out from beneath the low brim of his hat. And, once again, her body tingled in the unexpected way it had when she had first sat upon the horse with him. He had been so strong, when he’d helped her easily in and out of the saddle. Now she wondered how those strong hands would feel if they lingered on her body.

They waited in silence, as the carriage approached. Suddenly, it was too late to lay a hand on his arm, or call out a warning to stay him. He was thundering down the road into the path of it, causing the driver to pull up and the horses to shy.

‘Stand and deliver!’ Mr Hendricks’s voice echoed off the surrounding hills, and his horse reared as he fired a single shot into the air. But he kept his seat as though there were nothing in it, waving the driver and groom to the ground with his pistol.

And she would do everything she could to help him, even if it meant doing nothing at all. She kept her horse still and the pistol steady, held high so that the coachmen below her could see it.

They got down from their seats and made no effort to defend the family they served. Having met the inhabitants of the carriage, Dru could guess why. There was little to recommend Char that would give one the desire to risk life and limb.

Mr Hendricks was down from his horse in a trice, waving the coachmen to the side of the road and directing them to lie upon their bellies and out of the way, gesturing up at her to show them it would go harsh with them should they try anything. When he was sure that they would do as directed, he strode up to the carriage and opened the door.

Charlotte gave a ladylike shriek from inside. ‘My jewels!’

Hendricks gave a slight bow and a tip of his hat, then said in a plummy voice, ‘I would not, for all the world, threaten your lovely person, nor steal the baubles from your beautiful throat.’ Under his mask, she was sure he was smiling. ‘I seek the money in your purse and mean to take only as much as I need.’ He held open the door, then held out his hand for her reticule.

And the foolish girl leaned so far forwards, trying to get a good look at the man in the road, that she tumbled out into his arms.

From Dru’s position, it was the most contrived thing she had ever seen in her life. Char’s shameless behaviour very nearly made her forget the two men she was supposed to be watching. But when she looked back at them, they showed no signs of rising and seemed more interested in a flask they were passing back and forth between them, than in regaining the pistols resting on the seat of the carriage.

Mr Hendricks caught Charlotte easily before she hit the ground. Then he said, in a voice deeper than usual, ‘You needn’t fear, my lady. Your person and your jewels are perfectly safe. Though indeed, now that I see you, they are hardly necessary to enhance your beauty.’

Dru’s eyes narrowed. For while she had no wish to see Mr Hendricks shoot Char, Priss’s friend was doing it much too brown. The girl reached to open the reticule, pretended to fumble, dropping her purse in the dust of the road. Then she began to sag.

Hendricks rescued the money and tightened his grip on the girl fainting in his arms. Dru could remember how nice those arms felt when they had been around her body. But he’d never had cause to hold her as tightly as this. And he never would, if the only way to accomplish it was to fake a swoon.

Charlotte gave a weak laugh. ‘I fear I am close to overcome.’ She put her hands upon his bicep, so she could feel the muscle there. ‘You are very strong.’ She tipped her head back in an obvious invitation. ‘And I am quite defenceless.’

‘Are you, now?’ She could tell, even from this distance, that Hendricks was responding favourably to the shameless play-acting. And it irked her to see the trick she’d tried on him played better by one who had no responsibilities to prevent her from feigning helplessness when it suited her.

In the carriage, Char’s chaperon gave a warning tutting noise, but did little more than fan herself and watch eagerly. In Dru’s opinion, the woman did far too little to put a stop to her charge’s behaviour, even when there was not a pistol drawn.

Hendricks had pulled the coin purse from inside the bag and was feeling the weight of it in his hand. ‘This will do nicely, I think. I will not take from your companion. If she has any money, she will need it more than you.’ He glanced over his shoulder, gauged the distance and tossed the purse expertly up to Dru, who loosed the strings and counted the substantial curl of notes inside.

‘If there is anything else you want sir, you are welcome to it. As long as you spare my life and my necklace.’

She’d said nothing of her innocence, Dru noted. And now Char was batting her eyelashes as though she had cinders in her eyes.

Mr Hendricks gave a little laugh and reached to undo the bottom of his mask. ‘Then you shall sacrifice a kiss, my dear, and I will go on my way.’ And then he put his lips upon hers. It was hard for Dru to see past the edge of the mask and the red haze forming in her own eyes. But it appeared that he had opened her mouth. His mouth was open as well. There was much movement and what looked like mutual chewing.

The coachmen were nudging each other and chuckling where they lay on the ground. The rate of the chaperon’s fan increased, as though she was about to overheat in the closed carriage.

Now Char was making little noises in the back of her throat that sounded suspiciously like moans of pleasure. Her body trembled and her hands clutched urgently at Mr Hendricks’s coat, as though she wished to crawl inside it with him.

And Dru felt sick, wishing that she could call the last few moments back and beg bread from farm wives as he’d first suggested. Her petty desire to take revenge on Charlotte might have gained them the money needed to finish the trip, but it had earned Charlotte a conquest.

And Char had got her kiss. If she had only chosen the right words a few moments ago, she would be the one bent over Mr Hendricks’s arm. It would be her mouth he’d opened. And she would be the one shuddering in ecstasy and hanging from his lapels.

Instead, she had offered him money.

Dru stared down at the purse. Then she pocketed the bills, which were more than enough to get them to Scotland and back, and let the little bag drop again to the ground. She gave her horse a little kick that caused him to shift uneasily and stamp the thing into the mud at his feet.

When she looked back to the road again, Mr Hendricks was setting Char back upon her feet to more ineffectual noises from the companion. Dru could see the look of dazed happiness on the face of her sister’s friend.

She felt the strange, hot feeling again, in her cheeks and lower. Her throat felt flushed; the fabric of her shirt seemed to chafe at her breasts. And in the tight confining cases of leather there was a spot between her legs that seemed to pulse and burn and make her want to leap from the horse and rip the breeches from her body.

Now Mr Hendricks had secured his mask again and was helping Charlotte back into the coach. Then he ran to his horse, springing easily into the seat as though invigorated by the robbery. He tipped his hat again. ‘Thank you, my lady.’ And then, another tip of the hat for the chaperon. ‘Apologies, ma’am.’

The casual courtesy annoyed her almost as much as the kiss had. How many times had she experienced that polite, dismissive attention from an attractive man, only to have him turn back to Priss?

‘And now, I must be going.’ Mr Hendricks looked back to the coachmen. ‘See to your mistress, gentlemen. And if you are smart, you’ll take your time about it.’ Then he spurred his horse up the hill towards her, and they were off, into the open country, far away from the road.

They rode for some time without stopping; she ripped off her mask when he did and followed him without question. But her mind was seething and her body still in turmoil. If there was such a thing as a chaperon’s corner for highwaymen, she had been left there tonight, holding an empty gun instead of her knitting. As usual, the real excitement was occurring close enough to be seen. And, as usual, no one had wanted her participation.

Mr Hendricks pulled up suddenly in the shelter of a copse of trees. Then he reached into his pocket and retrieved his glasses, looking through them and polishing the lenses. Without her having to ask, he supplied, ‘I stayed not far from here, while growing up. There is no reason to ride blind. But it was pleasant to learn that I still know the roads well enough for pranks such as this.’ He adjusted the spectacles and gave her a dark look. ‘Not that I mean to pull any more of them.’ Then he held out his hand for the money and counted it.

‘And no more robberies should be necessary. This is enough that we might hire a carriage for the remainder of the journey. Once we reach Lancaster you may put on skirts again and travel properly, as a lady.’

As though that would matter to him, for she doubted he thought any more of her than he had of the unfortunate young lady fanning herself in Char’s carriage. ‘I do not have to put on skirts again, if it is more convenient to proceed as we have been.’

‘I should think you’d be happy for the chance to ride in comfort. We can resume a normal rate of travel, rather than tearing across country, higgledy-piggledy.’ He looked off in the direction of the northern horizon. ‘Although we will keep it up for some time yet. There is a short cut I know that will bring us out on the road far away from the carriage we have just visited and closer to the one you seek.’ He glanced back at her, taking in her unusual costume. ‘The night is clear and I do not expect pursuit. We shall stay as we are and sleep under the stars. But tomorrow, it would be better that you were a woman again and I take back my hat and coat.’

‘If I were a woman?’ This was even worse than being ignored. It seemed she had lost her gender altogether, with a simple change of clothes.

‘If you were dressed as one,’ he corrected. ‘Of course, I know you are a woman.’ He laughed in a funny, awkward way that did not match his earlier self-assurance.

‘Do you really?’ Suddenly it was very important that he say it aloud.

‘And my employer as well,’ he added quickly. And this was worse than neutering her. She might as well have been another species. But to choose now, of all times, to remind her of the distance between them was particularly cruel. ‘If I am so far above you,’ she snapped, ‘then I am surprised that you think yourself entitled to choose my attire.’

A difference in their stations had not mattered a bit when he had been kissing Char. And the fact that she employed him did not mean that she was without feeling. She had a good mind to show him … to prove to him … to make him see …

Something. It was as if there was a word on the tip of her tongue that she could not quite remember. But she was sure that, whatever she meant to say, it was a uniquely female thing that everyone had learned but she. And if she’d asked Char or Priss what it was, they’d have looked knowingly one to another and then laughed at her.

She was tired of sitting in the corner while others danced, and even more tired of watching others being kissed in the moonlight. And beyond everything else, she was tired of Mr John Hendricks looking through her and holding another woman in his arms.

He was looking at her, aghast, and she wondered if some portion of her thoughts could be read on her face. Then he said in a mild, servile voice, ‘I only meant that if any are searching for two daring highwaymen, they will not recognise them in us, should you choose to don a dress.’

It was so perfectly rational, and had so little to do with her femininity or his awareness of it, that she felt a complete fool. So she pulled herself together, gathered what little respect she had left, and answered just as reasonably, ‘You are probably right. It is time to put this foolishness aside and behave properly.’

But her heart said something far different. Before the night was over, she would teach the man beside her that she would not be overlooked.

Chapter Nine

For their evening resting place, John chose a field that was at least a mile from the highway and every bit as remote as he could have hoped. There were trees for shelter, a nearby stream and not even a house in the distance. And there was a haystack with a single, rather uninterested cow munching upon it. He jumped down from his horse, feeling well satisfied with the night’s doings.

Although it had been the height of foolishness to take to highway robbery, it had been strangely exhilarating. Rather like being back in the army where every moment might mean one’s death. He had acquitted himself well and survived the incident with an intact skin and a purse in his pocket.

And Lady Drusilla was safe as well. And a living example of why men should not take foolish risks for the glory of it. There were far better ways to expend energy waiting at home in England for those lucky men who could win them.

Not that he was the man for the lovely Drusilla. But the little fool in the carriage would have tumbled for him, easy enough, had he coaxed her. Kissing her had done nothing to ease his desire for dark eyes and luscious red lips. But it was an assurance that he was not the eunuch that his position required him to be. ‘We will stop here,’ he said.

‘And sleep in a haystack?’

‘You will find it a more comfortable bed than the ground is likely to be,’ he assured her. His employer was out of sorts with him again and had been behaving more curiously than usual since the robbery. He had assumed that she would have some reaction to her participation in the robbery. But he had assumed that it would be fear, or perhaps excitement. He had not been prepared for annoyance.

Although it took some experience to gather what behaviour was unusual for the Lady Drusilla. The girl was a genuine eccentric. She rode like a man when the situation required it, miles at a time and without complaint. Where another woman might have held even an unloaded pistol with shaking hand, she’d played her part like a veteran of the road. And she’d snatched the booty from the air as he’d tossed it to her as though they were true partners and the action was old hand.

But now her silence had a prickly quality to it. And it seemed to stem not from the hay in front of them, but his earlier suggestion that she would be able to hire a post-chaise and travel in skirts like a normal lady of the ton, sleeping in inns and ordering him about in front of the coachman. After the day’s easy camaraderie, the change in her grated on his nerves. ‘Well?’ he asked.

She frowned at him in the moonlight, the pucker of her mouth deeper than usual. He tried not to be flustered by it. But he could hardly look elsewhere because of what he had come to term in his mind ‘the issue of the breeches’. While it was difficult to look at her face and not think of kissing her, it was even more difficult to deal with the thoughts that arose when he looked anywhere else.

‘What do you mean by that?’ she demanded.

‘You are cross with me, though I have done just as you asked. I wish to know the reason for it. I can hardly remedy the problem if you do not state clearly what it is.’

‘There is nothing,’ she said, removing her hat and giving an imperious toss of her head meant to put him in his place.

‘There damn well is,’ he snapped back, looking at the cascade of shining black hair and forgetting his place yet again. After what they had just been through together, it irked him that she felt the need to play high and mighty.

‘It is nothing important,’ she corrected.

‘If it is important to you, then it is important to me as well. Now tell me what is bothering you.’

She bit her lip in the way that she had when she feared she was revealing a weakness, as though she were accustomed to having any such used against her. ‘I am tired, is all. And my muscles are sore from too much riding.’

‘You have not been eating or sleeping properly and you are stiff from exertion. And not accustomed to riding astride.’ She did look tired, swaying a little as she dropped to the ground beside her horse. It made him want to take her in his arms to soothe her, stroking her hair as one might a sleepy child.

Then she squirmed. ‘I think I am not accustomed to these breeches.’

Nor was he accustomed to seeing her in them. And his thoughts changed instantly from innocence to hunger. ‘I trust that they are not too uncomfortable.’

‘It is not that.’ She shifted again, but made no effort to explain.

‘All the more reason you should return to your own clothing tomorrow,’ he prodded. ‘If mine is so disturbing, I should think you’d be happy to be rid of it.’

And that was badly phrased. It made him imagine her without any clothes at all. He stepped closer until she was so close that he had no choice but to look into her eyes. If she released his gaze, he’d not have been able to take his eyes from the place where her legs met, imagining the hot wetness of it, wanting to touch, to smell, to taste.

It was absolutely the last thing he should be thinking. And nothing like the chaste devotion he’d felt for Emily Folbroke. This was an all-consuming lust.

And Dru was looking back at him with eyes fixed and yet unfocused, the pupils large in the thin dark irises. But the firm set of her lips had a slight curve to it, as though she was daring him to reveal his feelings.

And he wondered—could it be that the tight clothing was arousing her? Perhaps she had learned more from her wayward lover than she’d let on. While it was flattering to imagine that she wanted him, it was far more likely that what she was experiencing was little more than a passing urge.

If so, there was no real harm in indulging it. A slight bruising of his pride, perhaps, when she cast him off in the morning. But it was better than feeling unmanned and invisible as he rode at her side.

As an experiment, he smiled at her in a way intended to charm.

In response, she bit her lip again, as though plumping it before a kiss.

And so he gave her permission to reveal herself. ‘We have not really been speaking of doffing a disguise, have we?’

‘We have not.’ The words were half-statement, half-question, as though she was aware of what they did not mean, but was unsure of what they did.

He took a step closer. ‘Or whether my clothing is an ill fit. Which it is not, if you were wondering.’

‘It is not uncomfortable. But it is very improper.’ She’d said it with a half-smile, as though telling him a secret.

‘The impropriety is probably what makes it so damned fetching.’ He waited for the firm snap of her disapproval at his impertinence and a return to the cold and aloof woman who had been ordering him around Britain.

Instead, there was only a slight gasp and the whispered words, ‘You have been admiring me?’

‘Any sane man would. And I could recommend something that might ease your distress, if you are feeling unsettled. Do you wish me to be of assistance?’

‘In what way?’ Perhaps she was not as experienced as he suspected. There was no trace of guile in the question, or any sense that she was trying to shift the responsibility for what was about to happen.

Which was why he ought to turn away, and do nothing at all. If she was unaware of the truth, it was not his job to change that fact.

But he could not help himself. After the adventures they’d had together, he was as restless as she was. There might never be a night when she was less of a lady, and he more of a rogue. The distance between them had shrunk until it hardly seemed to matter. For better or worse, he would take advantage of the opportunity and touch the woman who had been driving him mad, almost from the first. He put a hand on her shoulder.

And she did not pull away.

So he said in a voice that was low and full of seduction, ‘Sometimes, after a long ride, it helps to massage the stiff muscles, to return the natural ebb and flow of the blood.’

‘I see,’ she said, though clearly she did not, for she added, ‘Like currying the horses.’

‘Yes. Rather.’ He was thrown momentarily off his stride.

‘And you would do that for me.’

He regained his balance and lowered his voice again. ‘If you wished.’ Again, he waited for the outraged dismissal.

And again it did not come. Instead, she said, very softly, ‘Perhaps you could demonstrate.’

So he stepped behind her, letting his fingers caress her shoulders as he moved, and eased the heavy coat from her body. He began, very innocently, by rubbing her neck and shoulders, stroking his hands down her back. She wore nothing beneath the shirt, having discarded her stays with her dress. It allowed him to enjoy the delicious feel of firm, smooth flesh under the linen, and the way the knots in her muscles seemed to melt at his touch.

It would be wrong of him to do more than this. And it was not as if he could pretend there was mutual seduction in play. Despite her forward nature, Lady Drusilla was considerably more innocent than the girl in the carriage had been. But he told himself that he was performing a service. She was tense and tired, and would sleep better after his ministrations.

She swayed against him; he heard her sigh and imagined her lips parted for a kiss.

So he put his arms around her waist and laid his cheek against her hair. No point in pretending that he was soothing her aching back. He was holding her for his own enjoyment, his lips resting an inch from the skin of her throat.

She did not move or tense, but stayed comfortably in his grip. And then, suddenly, she spoke, blunt and alert. ‘Why did you kiss Charlotte?’

He started, but did not release her. It had not occurred to him that she had seen the kiss. But she could not have missed it. He just had not thought it would bother her.

And this sounded almost like jealousy. It was really quite flattering and a very good sign that further action on his part would be welcomed. So he pretended for a moment that he had room in his head for thoughts about the silly chit in the carriage they’d robbed. ‘I knew she would be much less likely to send the law after us if I left her in a good humour. And she seemed to wish me to kiss her, did she not? When a woman makes such an effort to fall all over a man, it is cruel not to oblige her with a kiss.’

‘So you knew she was shamming her faint?’

‘Of course.’ But what are you are fishing for, in asking me these questions? Dru was naïve, of course. But surprisingly savvy, when she had a need to be. There must be a purpose to this. And her movements against his body seemed almost an invitation. If she wanted to be aroused by a detailed description of the event, he was happy to oblige her.

‘The kiss was pleasant for me as well,’ he admitted. Then he could not resist goading her. ‘Your friend is a very pretty girl, is she not?’

‘I suppose.’ He could feel Dru’s shoulders tighten, as though he had struck her. ‘And she is not my friend,’ she added. Then she lifted her head again, rubbing her hair against his cheek as a cat might rub against its owner. ‘I expect she will tell everyone who will listen that she was forced into submission by a wicked stranger, while revelling in the details of the experience.’

He felt his body tighten in response to her words and wondered how much of the discomfort she was feeling had to do with the sight of that kiss, and the hunger it had raised in her. ‘Well, I expect that a well-bred young girl would find it an unusual and exciting thing to be kissed by a highwayman.’

Dru made a sound of displeasure and he imagined the bow of her lips, moist and waiting for him. ‘She is not so young, come to that. She has been out for two years, already. Nor do I find her particularly well-bred. She really is the most appalling gossip.’

‘And not too innocent,’ he supplied, slipping his hands around her waist. ‘It was quite clear to me, as I kissed her, that she knew exactly what to do with herself, from previous experience.’

‘What do you mean?’ she asked.

So she wanted the details, did she? He smiled and obliged her, shifting his lips so they touched her ear. ‘She pressed close against me as I held her, to make sure that I could feel her breasts against my own body. She opened her mouth at the first touch of my lips, and took my tongue into it as though she could not get enough of me.’

Under his hands, he could feel the slight hitch in her breath as she listened. It had nothing to do with hisses of disapproval, and everything to do with salacious curiosity.

‘But she is a blonde. And fair-haired women are not to my taste.’ And he stroked up over her ribs and took her breasts in his hands.

She started. ‘That is not the area which was affected by riding.’

He stilled, but did not remove them. ‘One cannot treat one area of the body without seeing to the others, any more than one grooms just one leg of a horse.’ It was a most unromantic analogy, but she was not a particularly romantic female.

Her shoulders pressed into his chest and then relaxed. ‘I suppose that makes sense.’

‘You will find it quite satisfying, I promise.’

‘Well, then,’ she said again, ‘carry on with your story.’

‘Of course, Lady Drusilla.’ He stopped to wet his lips, allowing the tip of his tongue to accidentally stroke the shell of her ear and felt her hips settle against his in reward. She could feel him now, he was sure, for she was pressing herself against the growing desire he had for her. But she did not pull away from him, so he continued their game. ‘I meant to be gentle with her. Just a light touch of the lips and then I would be gone. But when a woman is willing, it is hard to resist.’

And the woman in his arms was giving her evidence of that, right enough. Her hands reached behind her to steady herself and gripped his thighs, sending another surge of desire through him.

‘So I held her firmly and thrust my tongue deep into her mouth over and over, until she was quite weak with it.’

And it had felt nothing like this. Drusilla was heavy in his hands, warm and round, and he thanked God to his very soul for the wonder of her, massaging gently, and then more vigorously until the nipples stood out hard against his palms. He pinched them easily between his fingers and felt her gasp in pleasure at his touch.

‘Oh.’ The word was little better than a moan, as she writhed against his body, and a cue that he must stop before things got out of hand.

‘Are you feeling better?’ he asked.

‘Somewhat.’ Her head was lolling back, now, against his shoulder. ‘But I do not wish you to stop, just yet.’ She turned enough so he could see her eyes half-closed in the moonlight and her lips relaxed and parted. ‘It was very wrong of Char to behave in that way,’ she said, pursing her lips and wetting them with her tongue.

He threw caution to the winds. ‘Perhaps you had best show me how a proper girl ought to react,’ he offered.

‘I do not know—if that is wise …’ she said, slowly and deliberately, as though she had over-imbibed and were trying to remember why it was that she should not agree. But even as she said it, she turned in his arms and lifted her face for a kiss.

‘For the purposes of edification, if nothing else,’ he whispered, and gathered her close to him, one hand around her waist, the other sinking his fingers into her hair. It was heavy, as he’d imagined it to be, still smelling faintly of soap, even after three days on the road. Her lips, when he touched them, were perfect. As soft and full as her breasts and with that same pucker to them.

If he stopped to look at them, they might seem to be set in disapproval. But on closer inspection, they were open slightly, ready and waiting, as the other girl’s had been. More hopeful than demanding, his Drusilla wanted a kiss as much as he longed to give her one.

And so he did, brushing her lips with his, and then licking deep into her mouth, settling there, as though he had a right to possess her. In response, her hands came up to touch his shoulders and she brought her body close to his, brushing her breasts against his chest as though she was not sure that she was doing it correctly.

He struggled to hold himself still, to allow her to grow used to the feeling of his mouth on hers. And to enjoy the feel of her kissing him back: the gentle touch of her tongue on his and the soft movements of her lips as they parted with his, to touch the line of his jaw.

When they reached his ear, she whispered, ‘You make me feel most unusual, Mr Hendricks.’

He could feel, in her sweet and uneven breaths against his hair, that she desired him, just as he did her. ‘The way you feel is the most natural thing in the world and nothing to be concerned about.’

‘The fact that something is natural does not mean there is no cause for concern,’ she said.

‘Very logical of you, Lady Drusilla,’ he answered and laughed to himself that she would even try to think at a moment like this. But it was very her, and very appealing, and it only made him want to touch her all the more. ‘Does it frighten you?’

He had found his question aright if he wanted to urge more passion from her—he ought to know by now that there was nothing that frightened this woman. At least nothing that she might admit to. ‘Certainly not. I only wonder if it is a wise course of action.’

‘Probably not,’ he admitted.

‘But it is …’ she wet her lips and touched them to his earlobe ‘… quite pleasant. And I suppose, as long as we are still standing and not lying down together …’

‘Which we will not,’ he assured her.

‘And we are both fully dressed …’

‘Which we will remain,’ he added, swearing to himself that it was true and realising that she must understand very little of what he could accomplish without breaking either of her restrictions.

‘Then it cannot be so very bad.’ She then smiled against his skin.

‘That is good. For I am not ready to let you go.’ He kissed her again, dragging his lips along the curve of her jaw, to her throat and shoulder, and back up again, until his lips were resting beside her ear and he could whisper back to her, ‘May I touch you again?’

‘Please do.’

Then he let his hands go where they wished, exploring every inch of her that he could reach. Firm breasts. Tiny waist. Flat belly. He let his thumb sink into the dent that was her navel and imagined joining with her. Round bottom. Soft lush thighs. He pushed his hand between them and imagined those thighs wrapped around his waist. Then he cupped her womanhood, pressing his palm upwards, squeezing it possessively, feeling the heat of her in his hand and envisioning how she would look if he undid the drop of his breeches. ‘Does this do anything to ease your suffering?’ For it was increasing his, sure enough.

He waited for her to struggle free of his grasp, but instead her hands reached out to grasp his biceps to steady herself and she pushed back against his palm, groaning at the increased sensation. ‘That is the spot, exactly,’ she said, clearly amazed that he had guessed. And then added, ‘Perhaps, a little less gently.’

‘Very well, Lady Drusilla.’ He looked into her eyes and smiled, then allowed himself the freedom to stroke more vigorously, imagining the flesh heating and growing damp at his touch. She closed her eyes. But her lashes still fluttered, as though she could not control them, and her neck arched ever so slightly as she caught her lower lip in her teeth. ‘More?’ he asked, leaning close and letting his breath caress her skin.

But she was quite beyond speech at this point, lost in the beginnings of a wordless response to his touch. She gave the barest nod of encouragement. In a few more strokes of his hand, her lips were trembling, open, moist and perfect. And so he kissed her roughly, pulling her body to meet his, safely separated by their clothing as he thrust himself against her and imagined being inside her, surrounded by her, consumed.

Her tongue came to life, darting against his in frenzy as her hands tightened on his arms. He was desperately hard and more than half-wishing that he had not started a game that could not end in his own satisfaction, but equally happy to have his supposed employer gasping into his mouth and pressing her sex eagerly against his as though she could not get enough of him. And he felt the moment that she lost the last of her control and came for him, breaking the kiss in a desperate bid for air as her back arched and her body went limp, swooning in his arms.

He held her like that for a moment, almost lifeless. And he brushed the hair from her eyes and thought, I did this to you. And it was the first time. ‘Dru,’ he said softly, loving the sound of the word.

She took a great, smiling, shuddering breath.

Then she realised how she had behaved and was shaking off the near-swoon and pushing away from him, brushing hands down to straighten the skirts that she was not wearing, trying to pull together the injured dignity of Lady Drusilla Rudney and pretend that she was still in charge. ‘What was that?’ The words were said with a stern frown as though her own physical response to his touch was somehow a trick that had been played upon her.

He gave her a benign smile. ‘That was a perfectly normal, physical reaction.’

‘To your kiss?’

‘I suspect it had more to do with the way the breeches were fitting, and my—’ he glanced down and then quickly back up at her outraged face ‘—ministrations in that area. You will find you feel much more relaxed, now that the moment has passed. And you can just as easily perform the actions yourself, should you feel the need again.’

‘Certainly not.’

‘Or I will continue to help you, if you wish.’ He smiled, thinking that it was unlikely anyone would give him a reference should they find out what had happened and deciding that he did not care one whit who her father was, or what it might do to his career. He would not take back a moment of what had gone on between them.

‘You know that is not what I meant at all,’ she snapped. ‘I would prefer not to feel this way. Certainly not ever again.’

The thought that she would not want to experience unbridled response was disheartening. But by the look in her angry eyes, Lady Drusilla had no real complaints with the way he performed his duties. There was a softness in them that she was trying very hard to hide from him.

‘I feel unsettled. Even, after … the improper thing you just did to me.’ Then she added in a whisper, ‘It is as if I have forgotten to finish a task. And I do not know, for the life of me, what it is.’

If he was not careful, he would have those breeches off her and lay her down in the grass right now to help her remember. He was a careless fool and this had been a mistake. A horrible lapse of judgement. It was the first step on a journey that he would never be allowed to take.

He caught her warm brown eyes with his gaze and held them. ‘I am afraid you are quite as finished as I can allow you to be, Lady Dru. Pleasurable though it would be, I do not dare show you the rest. I apologise for my behaviour,’ he said, taking the burden of the indiscretion upon himself. ‘It will not happen again and we need never speak of it. We will treat it as if it never occurred, if you wish.’

He was backing away from her now and it felt as if he were backing away from the act itself. Do not make me go.

‘Thank you,’ she said, her voice brittle.

‘I had best see to the horses. And you … can take this to prepare a bed.’ He tossed her a blanket from his pack. ‘You will find the hay is quite comfortable. And I will just … The horses …’ And he turned from her, stumbling towards the horses and wading into the icy cold stream.

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