whom her mother had intended to wed her beautiful sister, Charity. Or some such thing. No one had ever told her anything in those days because she was too young and susceptible, they said, which meant that she was likely to get into scrapes if given rein. Now everybody was gone, so there was no one to tell her anything even though she had turned nineteen, with one exception: Teresa, whose stories were scandalously titillating and who had devised the plan for her current mission, which mustn’t be thwarted even by a minor mishap like losing her traveling companion to a farm lad with large muscles in his arms. Annie had especially liked those muscles. She’d mentioned them before abandoning her, by way of justification it seemed.
Diantha hadn’t any opinion of men’s arms or muscles, but now she saw her plan’s fatal flaw. She required a man. But not just any man. She needed a man of courage and honor who would assist her without question.
She needed a hero.
Diantha’s stepsister, Serena, had often read to her stories of knights saving damsels in distress, and the Baron of Carlyle, her stepfather and a scholar, had assured her that these stories were not entirely fictional, rather based in historical fact. Heroes did exist. Now her mission was simply too perilous to undertake with only female assistance. A hero must be found.
In retrospect it all seemed quite obvious. Of course the plan Teresa devised had not included securing the assistance of a man. Teresa had never met a real hero. Her father barely ever looked at his women, and her brothers were most certainly not heroic; a fortnight ago all three of them had taken one look at Diantha and their eyes had gone positively feral. Since none of them had ever noticed her during her visits to Brennon Manor before, they could not be considered heroic.
Heroes cared for more than appearance. They cared about the heart.
The young mother shifted a bony hip, nudging Diantha’s against the portly gentleman to her left. Intent upon his journal, he seemed not to notice. She gave him a quick glance and released a little breath of disappointment.
Too old. A hero ready to defend a lady from the likes of highwaymen must be in the prime of his manhood. Otherwise he might not be able to wield a sword or pistol with sufficient vigor if necessary. This man had gray whiskers.
The carriage jolted. The baby bawled. The mother sobbed quietly.
“May I hold her? My sister is grown now and I miss cradling a babe in my arms.” In truth, Faith had been a fidgety infant. But Diantha suspected God would forgive the fib. “Then you might have a nap before we come to the next stop.”
“Oh, miss, I couldn’t—”
“Of course you could. I will keep her quite safe while you rest.” She tucked her arms around the infant and drew it close. Her traveling bag propped upon her lap made an excellent cushion, and she had more bosom than the babe’s mother against which it could cuddle. The mother tucked the blanket around it.
“Thank you, miss. You’re an angel.”
“Not at all.” That was the plain truth, of course.
She rocked the infant, liking its warm, heavy weight, and shifted her gaze across to the passenger whose knees nearly knocked with hers.
Not a man. Not more than thirteen and, by the look of his blackened fingertips and sallow complexion, a mine worker.
His cheeks flushed with two perfectly round red spots. He tugged on his cap. “Mum.”
She smiled, and the flush spread down his rather dirty neck.
He would not do, of course. Boys could not be trusted with noble missions, even boys who went into holes in the earth every day to dig up metals for everyone else and so should be accounted heroes of a sort, if the world were quite fair about it.
That left only the man sleeping in the corner, the passenger who at the last stop had taken Annie’s spot inside the coach.
The hem of his black topcoat dripped rain onto the floor around his shining black boots. His arms were crossed over his chest and a fine black silk hat dipped low over his brow. He was not a small man, rather tall and broad-shouldered, but seemed to fill the space he inhabited without undue discommodity to his fellow passengers. She could see only his hands, ungloved, and the lower half of his face.
Large, long-fingered, elegant hands, and a firm, clean-shaven jaw and nicely shaped mouth.
She blinked.
She slouched, dipped her head a bit, and peered beneath his hat brim.
Her breath caught.
She sat straight up. Beneath the soft weight of the crying swaddle, her heart pattered. She drew a steadying breath. Then another. She stole a second glance at him, longer this time.
Then she knew. In her deepest heart her final niggling doubts scattered and she knew she was meant to find her mother.
Her plan would not only work in theory. She had wished for a gentleman to assist her on her mission, and God or Providence or whoever it was that granted wishes to hopeful damsels was providing her with such a man. For if anyone could fill the role of a hero, she was certain it was this gentleman.
He was, after all, already hers.
A girl was staring at him.
It did not surprise Wyn, accustomed enough as he was to this sort of attention and not typically disturbed by it. But he’d had rather too much of it of late, although the females at the orgy he’d just left hadn’t particularly resembled the girl in the coach’s facing seat who now peered at him from the bluest set of wide eyes he had ever seen. Very, very blue eyes with big irises, like polished lapis lazuli, surrounded by long, dark lashes and surmounted by arched brows. Familiar eyes.
Unfamiliar girl, though. Even if he weren’t half under the wagon he would remember this taking thing if he had encountered her before. The tilt of her delicate jaw, purse of her berry lips, and rampant rich chestnut curls peeking out from her bonnet were too pretty to forget. And, drunk or sober, Wyn never forgot anything, even girls who were not pretty like this one. Or men. Or villages. Or tree stumps. Or anything else. It was what made him so good at his work for the past ten years.
Her brows arched higher. “Are you finally awake, then?” she said, and he remembered her. Voices he also never forgot, especially not this voice, fresh and clear. “I thought you would never wake up,” she continued without apparently requiring a response. “You know, I barely recognized you. You look absolutely terrible.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” he managed, without slurring of course. He would not mention that the lack of recognition had been mutual because she would certainly guess the reason for it. Rule #4: Never bruise a lady’s feelings. A girl didn’t make the sort of transformation in appearance that Miss Lucas had over the course of two years without a great deal of effort and the generous hand of Nature combined, and without being perfectly aware of the transformation herself.
Miss Lucas was not a doxy like the girls he’d gladly left behind yesterday. She was a gently bred female, the young stepsister of a lady he liked quite a lot who was married to a man who had helped him through the worst night of his life.
He rubbed thumb and forefinger into the corners of his eyes at the bridge of his nose, and looked anew.
A gently bred female . . . with a babe in her arms.
He glanced to either side of her. Neither the man to her left nor the woman to her right could remotely be considered husband or maid to this stepdaughter of a baron and sister to a baronet, never mind Wyn’s slightly foggy vision. He craned his neck to his left. Neither of his seatmates suited either.
“I am traveling alone,” she supplied helpfully. “Annie abandoned me for a strapping farm lad at the last stop. He was quite handsome, really, so I don’t blame her. But she might have stayed until I found a replacement.” She leaned forward and whispered, “I am not comfortable traveling alone, you see.” She glanced meaningfully to the burly tradesman sharing his seat then sat back again. “But now that you are here, I am no longer alone.” She smiled and a pair of dents formed in the soft cream of her cheeks.
Wyn blinked, momentarily clearing the fog. He recalled those dimples of the girl he’d met at the estate of the Earl of Savege in Devon. He did not, however, recall being unable to look away from them. But the previous posting house had only stocked gin, and the fruit of the juniper tended to muddle his senses.
