“Elope?” His hand stalled halfway to his mouth. “As in, abduct with nefarious designs.”
“Yes.”
He set down the cigar. “Miss Lucas, what actual knowledge do you have of such elopements?”
She tapped the fork tines against the plate. “Teresa has told me stories, you see.”
“I am beginning to.”
“In your black coat, boots, and hat you are an ideal candidate.”
“My heroic status slips swiftly, it seems.”
“Do you think so too?”
“I am clearly becoming the villain of this piece.”
“I suppose you are.”
“It would not bother me in the least.” One constable being rather quite like another. “But tangling with the law will win you a swift journey home.”
“Oh, I don’t think so. While everyone is busy castigating you and you are busy defending yourself, I will slip away.”
“However, now that I know that will be your plan, I will guard against it.”
“I will devise another. You cannot win, Mr. Yale. I am determined.” Her eyes glittered with a martial light, but perhaps too brittle. She was not a girl; her shapely figure and the clean lines of her lovely face made that perfectly clear. A bit too clear for the clear-headedness two drams of whiskey had now provided him. When the dimples appeared, they performed precisely the effect upon him that she intended—if, that was, she understood men. Which she probably did not, at least not to that extent, whatever Miss Finch-Freeworth had told her. On the other hand, the mother that had disappeared four years earlier was a madam, or so it seemed, although he was not quite certain the baroness’s daughter entirely understood what that entailed either.
She was an innocent, a naïve innocent with rather too much bottom, too little sense, and a great deal of willful intention. The impulse that had driven her to the stable the night before proved it. But the glitter in her very blue eyes now suggested that her need was quite sincere—that this was, in fact, not at all a game to her.
Outside, the sounds of a coach and six rumbled, and the barkeep called out, “Hereford to London Coach!” over the murmur of conversations.
“You refuse to be swayed?”
She nodded. “Oh, yes.”
“I cannot convince you otherwise? Perhaps to return home now and enlist the aid of your brother-in-law, the earl?”
“Certainly not. Alex despises my mother, and I could not ask that of my stepsister. Serena is a saint and loves everybody in the world except my mother.”
“Why is that?”
She tilted her head. “Do you know, Mr. Yale, I believe you are trying to distract me so that I will miss my coach.” She gathered her bonnet and stood up. “So I bid you good day and happy journey, although I do sincerely wish you were coming with me to aid me in my search and perform the duties of a hero. But, alas, that dream is not to be.” She cast him an oddly sad smile and went to the door.
He went after her.
He grasped her elbow to stay her and bent his head, and her scent of wild sunshine caressed him. “Miss Lucas, allow me to speak plainly,” he said quietly with only the slightest huskiness in his voice. “You ask me to play a role now when you will not do so yourself. You must admit that your determination and nerve do not resemble the qualities of a damsel in distress.”
She seemed to stiffen. She replied in barely a whisper.
“Mr. Yale, I am not foolish. I know that what I am doing is dangerous and will win me chastisement, perhaps ruination. But . . .” Her lush lower lip quivered, although it seemed she fought to control it. “But I
must
do this. When I was fifteen my mother left me without a glance good-bye and without explanation. My stepfather, brother, and sisters are reticent to speak of her. Though I wish to pretend she does not exist, and have endeavored to do so for four years, I find I cannot. And, you see, it hurts rather more than I can bear.” She lifted her gaze to him, sincere need in her lapis eyes. “It was an accident that you happened upon me. But now you must allow me to go and make my way of it, and forget you ever saw me. I give you leave to do so with good conscience.”
There was nothing for it. He could not do as she bid.
“I will not allow you to go alone.” He released her arm, for to touch her, he realized now, was a great mistake. “I will assist you.”
The transformation that came over her face hollowed out a space in his lungs. Her hand darted to his and clasped it, her blue eyes sparkling, wide, and despite all, trusting.
“You
are
a hero. And a gentleman.”
At present, Wyn knew he was neither. The old anger of vengeance fueled an impatience to be about his own mission that was all but heroic. And the heat of her touch through damp kidskin worked beneath his skin so that it required little imagination to strip the glove from those slender fingers and imagine feeling her. Once the glove went in his imagination, other feminine garments did as well. Quite swiftly. She was far too pretty, and he had been without a woman for far too long. He had not touched another’s skin in far too long. Except hers, too briefly.
No, his thoughts were not in the least gentlemanly now.
H
e drew his hand from hers. “Do you see the bar master behind me? He does not believe that you are my sister.”
“Whyever not?”
“His low character, no doubt.”
The dimples flashed. “That character leads him to wicked conclusions, you suspect?”
God
, what had he done to deserve this? But sins would be punished, after all.
“He was reluctant to serve a girl of your appearance who enters his establishment on foot without a maid or luggage. I was obliged to convince him that it would be in his best interests.”
Her lips twisted. “You crossed his palm with silver.”
“In a manner of speaking.” Threats worked too, and they were less expensive.
Her gaze darted about the taproom. “If I had a maid or companion, do you think he and others upon the road would draw such conclusions?”
He followed her attention to the corner where a woman slumped against the wall in sleep. She was over middle age and garbed in drab, a knit scarf wound about her neck. Miss Lucas’s brow creased in contemplation.
Wyn found himself smiling. “A plan is in the making, I imagine.”
She flashed him a quick grin. “She was on the coach. We had a lovely chat before the dog and I went onto the roof. She is going to Stafford, but I believe she has lost that opportunity.”
“And why do you believe this?”
“The schedule.” She pointed to the placard beside the door and chuckled, a light, rippling sound of simple pleasure. “Good heavens, and you say you have traveled?” Her eyes danced.
He swallowed over the dryness in his throat and glanced at the man in brown.
“Then on to your plan, madam.”
When they stood before the sleeping woman, Miss Lucas leaned down. “Ma’am? Do wake up. I believe you have missed your coach.”
The sleeper’s nose twitched and she opened protuberant eyes.
“I have? Well, dear me.” She shrugged off her slumber and straightened her muffler. “Hello, miss. I was terribly sorry that nasty coachman put you off. The little dog wasn’t so much of a trouble.”
“Oh, thank you. This is Mr. Yale. We have come over to assist you.”
“Have you, then? What a dear you are. Good day to you, sir.” She gave him a studying perusal, her smile fading.
“But what is your plan now?” Miss Lucas asked. “Will you take the next coach to Stafford? It comes by tomorrow.”
“Well, miss, they said if I weren’t there by today I’d lose the position.”
“Yet you seem untroubled about this,” Wyn said.
“I’m not, sir. Happens all the time. Can’t help myself. I drop off to sleep like that”—she snapped fingers as round as tea cakes—“and lose my positions left and right.”
“She was on her way to be hired companion to an elderly lady,” Miss Lucas explained. “But to allow so little time to travel seems very harsh. Will you await the next London coach?”
“I will, though I’ve barely a penny, seeing as how I’ve been out of a position for some time now, my last employer having something of a dark spirit and putting it about that I weren’t fit for a lady.”
Miss Lucas glanced at him and her eyes sparkled.
“Mrs. . . . ?”
“Polley, sir. Married Mr. Polley in ’ninety-two and lost him to Old Boney in ’thirteen.”
“Mrs. Polley, might you be inclined to assist us now, and earn your journey back to London?”
“I would as long as the work’s honest, sir.” She looked between them, guardedly now.
“My sister requires a chaperone upon our journey yet sadly lacks one. We were forced to leave our previous residence in haste and hadn’t time to plan. So you see we are in need of a lady such as yourself.”
Her eyes slitted like cut melons. “Now see here, sir, I’ve not been living in a hole in the ground these past fifty-five years and I’ve a strong suspicion the two of you aren’t related.”
Miss Lucas laughed. “Oh, not at all. What’s more, I am intended for Mr. H, a much less handsome gentleman who admires me immensely and will make a very good life for me. But I have a task I must accomplish before then—to rescue my mother from a Den of Iniquity—and I’ve set out on the road to do so. It was only by accident that I happened upon Mr. Yale, who is a particular friend of my family, and he has kindly agreed to assist me.”
Mrs. Polley’s demeanor did not alter. “Have you now, sir?”
“I thought it best, under the circumstances.”
“So you see he is not kidnapping me or encouraging me to elope with him across the border or any such nonsense.”
“No nonsense whatsoever,” he murmured with that slight smile that made Diantha’s belly dance.
“Not only that, but he was insisting to me only a moment ago that I must have a chaperone, and here you are stranded and without a position. It seems serendipitous.”
Mrs. Polley did not now take her eyes off Mr. Yale. “Well I don’t know fancy words, miss, but it does seem like a pot of good fortune that we’ve come across each other.” She gave Diantha a careful look. “And you say this gentleman here is known to your kin?”
“Quite well known.”
Mrs. Polley seemed to chew on the inside of her cheek.
Diantha couldn’t wait. “Then we are all for Bristol together?”
Mrs. Polley shifted her attention to her. “Den of Iniquity, you say?”
“You needn’t remain in Miss Lucas’s service once we reach our destination if you do not wish to be associated with it, ma’am.”
Mrs. Polley stood, her double chin quite firm when brought to the height of perhaps four and a half feet. “I’ll remain as long as I see fit, sir, which will be as long as you’re trailing miss about the countryside here. She is a fine girl, this one.” She patted Diantha’s arm. “And I’ll not have any fellow who claims he’s friendly taking advantage of her. I’ll stay until I’m certain I’m needed no longer.”
“Excellent. Thank you, ma’am.” He bowed.
Diantha grinned. She cast him another quick glance as Mrs. Polley gathered her belongings, but he was looking at her with very sober eyes now. Her stomach did somersaults. When he looked at her like this, serious and still, it was again borne in upon her that she knew very little of him, and the notion came to her that the moment on the road when he’d looked dangerous might in fact have revealed the real man, the rest only a facade.
T
he traveling trunk was retrieved from the road and Mrs. Polley’s luggage gathered, and Wyn saw the ladies into the next southerly bound coach. But before departing he had a private conversation with a quiet lad delivering sacks of grain to the stable—a tall youth whose clothing hung on his frame and who stared at the bone the mongrel was chewing with the eyes of starvation.
With grim satisfaction, Wyn approached him. He’d been at this work for a decade. He knew well how to pick his man.
A coin and very few words later, the lad was nodding in assent.
“I’ll do it gladly, sir. Pa went off to fight the Frenchies and never came back, and me and Ma have been trying to keep my five brothers in shoes and porridge, without much luck. I’ll take this to her”—he gestured with his palm gripped around the coin—“and start off to Devonshire right away. Little Joe’s nearly as big as me now. He’ll take care of the others while I’m gone.”
“The contents of that pouch should be sufficient to hire a horse and pay for room and board along the road, William.”
“Don’t need but a stack of hay to sleep in, sir.”
“As you wish. You may keep whatever you do not use, and I will give you the fee we agreed upon when you return. But haste is essential. And a mum lip. The letter I have given you mustn’t be read by anyone but the baron, or Lord or Lady Savege, and you mustn’t tell a soul of your purpose.”
“Yessir. I understand, sir.”
“Good man.” Wyn left him then, reassured by the look of careful responsibility crossed with sheer relief in the youth’s eyes. What he offered William as payment would be a windfall for the poor family. The lad would make good time to Glenhaven Hall, home of the Baron of Carlyle, Miss Lucas’s stepfather. If the baron could not be found, William was to continue on to nearby Savege Park, the home of her stepsister, the Countess of Savege. If Wyn did not hear back from the baron or Serena and Alex Savege within the sennight, he would send another messenger, this time to Kitty and Leam Blackwood in London. Sister to the earl of Savege, Kitty was family to Miss Lucas too. If she were in town, she would come in an instant.
If he wrote to Constance, she would come, of course. But Wyn did not wish to see Constance before he completed his task, nor really Leam either, the man he’d spent six years of his life with wandering around the empire, working for the crown in secret.
Constance and Leam were the closest he had to family, and Jin Seton and Colin Gray to a degree. Rather, had been. With Leam’s retirement from the club four years earlier, the group had changed. Their secret ring of fellowship had been broken.
But in truth, the change had begun before that for Wyn, more than a year before that, in a rainy London alleyway when he looked into the bloodless face of a scarred girl and saw his own death. When he began to lie to the people he cared for most in the world.
And now, again, a girl was trusting him. A girl who came to him of her own accord and begged him for help.
God help Diantha Lucas for seeing a hero where none stood. But some girls, he supposed, were blind that way.
D
iantha didn’t so much mind having been touched intimately by a gentleman. She minded not having been kissed first.
Teresa said men kissed ladies before they took greater liberties, and Diantha had given that some thought. Once before their wedding she’d seen her stepsister, Viola, and her betrothed, Mr. Seton, kiss each other quite enthusiastically when they thought no one else was looking, and her toes had positively curled in her slippers. Since Viola had come away from it with a dazed smile, and Mr. Seton with a remarkably satisfied look, Diantha supposed kissing was something to be desired rather than dreaded.
Her parents had never kissed. Her stepfather, a kind but limp and distracted sort of man, had barely ever come out of his study while her mother lived at Glenhaven Hall. Her real father had always been foxed. Like Mr. Yale in the stable. Which was perhaps why he had not kissed her before putting his hand on her behind.
He had released her swiftly, no doubt because he had not enjoyed touching her like that. How could he have enjoyed it? Just the memory of it made her squirm in shame. If she were like most girls, like the other girls at the academy, slim and delicate, perhaps he might have enjoyed it. Perhaps he would not have stopped. Perhaps he would have kissed her.
The coach rumbled over the rolling Shropshire countryside, Mrs. Polley asleep beside her. She was very amiable, although not particularly pleasant toward Mr. Yale. That couldn’t be wondered at. Like kissing. Elegant London ladies probably kissed gentlemen left and right, which was no doubt why Mrs. Polley did not trust Mr. Yale, for he was most certainly an elegant London gentleman.
Lying in bed fitfully the night before, Diantha had imagined kissing him, and her whole body got hot, like when he’d held her in the dark. It was wrong of her to feel hot like that, she suspected, but she was after all the wayward, wicked daughter of a wayward, wicked woman.
She had always been wayward, from the time she was a little girl. Her mother had said so ceaselessly. In the shadow of her beautiful, sweet elder sister, Charity, Diantha had never been of any use to her mother because of her poor looks and waywardness.
The wickedness, however, was new.
She wanted to kiss Mr. Yale.
He rode behind the coach, drawing the brown horse along as before. The little dog was with him now, but this coachman was much kinder than yesterday’s and didn’t mind it sitting in the carriage. Diantha had nothing to complain about. But at the coach’s next stop, Mr. Yale’s drawn brow alarmed her.
“You are unhappy with me for forcing you to do this,” she said, walking beside him as he led his horses to a water trough. The rain had diminished and sunlight poked through unruly clouds.
“I am unhappy, but rather with myself for not foreseeing the sort of trouble we now have.”
She drew in a tiny breath of relief. “We have trouble?”
“Miss Lucas,” he said quietly, “in my life I have occasionally inconvenienced people in a manner which has left them eager to inconvenience me in return.”
“Inconvenienced?”
“Displeased.”
“But what—”
“I’m afraid I am unable to expand upon the whats and wherefores. Unfortunately, however, I am now being followed by a man who has ill intentions toward me. This, as you might imagine, could prove a hindrance to our progress.”
She studied his profile. “You are concerned for my safety and Mrs. Polley’s. Not for your own.”
He said nothing. Her safety, of course, was the reason he now stood here beside her.
“Where are you taking this horse, Mr. Yale?” She stroked the animal’s neck.
Mr. Yale turned to her, that slight smile pulling at the corner of his mouth that she wanted to kiss.
“You are an unusual young lady, Miss Lucas.”
“Merely curious.”
“She belongs to the Duke of Yarmouth, whose heir, Marquess McFee, lost her in a game of cards to a gentleman of uncertain honor from whom I have recently retrieved her. It is my task now to return her to her rightful owner.”
The horse’s coat was warm beneath her glove. “Is that what you hope to do with me in the end, imagining I will tire of my mission?”
“You are not a horse, obviously. But if you have an owner of whom I am ignorant, I wish you will inform me so that I might not be accused of theft.”
“You often do not answer my questions.”
“Don’t I?”
She darted her gaze up. He was no longer smiling, rather intense, and the change made her belly tighten most deliciously. “How do you propose to avoid this man who is pursuing you?”
“I haven’t an idea of it yet. But I will not allow you to come to harm because of my enemies.”
“You have enemies? Oh, but I suppose everyone does.”
His silver eyes glimmered. “Not everyone, it seems. You befriend each person you encounter. You are in fact an unusual young lady, Miss Lucas.”