She rolled her eyes. “Obviously I read the schedule at the posting inn too. I only said that to—”
“To see my reaction.” A slight grin slipped across his mouth.
Who knew a gentleman’s mouth could be so very . . . intriguing? Or that looking at it could make her feel hungry, though it was only an hour since she had eaten the snack the innkeeper’s wife packed in the wee hours while trying to convince her not to leave without him. Diantha had never noticed any gentleman’s mouth before. Noticing Mr. Yale’s now also seemed silly.
But for a moment the night before, his mouth had touched her ear, his breath hot upon her neck, and she hadn’t felt in the least bit silly. She had felt hot, and not just on her neck. All over. Merely recalling it now made her hot again.
“I said it to stall for time,” she uttered. “I am still deciding what to do. I saw a farm a mile or so back. I am considering walking there and asking for help but I haven’t perfectly worked out my plan yet.”
“Ah.” He looked very grave amidst the light rain that was quite like the color of his eyes. “Then let me not disturb your ponderings. Good day, ma’am.” He bowed from the saddle and with an elegant tip of his black hat, started off.
She couldn’t help smiling. For a man so usually elegant he was a remarkable tease. “You will not leave me here.”
He did not turn around. “Are you so certain of that?”
“Entirely.”
The dog loped after the horses. After a dozen yards it paused and looked back at her. Diantha’s breaths shortened, a thread of panic twining up her spine.
“Mr. Yale, you may as well cease this teasing,” she called. “I can see right through it.”
He slowed his horse and looked around. “It devastates me that we must part company continuing to misunderstand one another, Miss Lucas.” He bowed again. “But good day to you, and I wish you good fortune at the farm.” He clucked to the horses and they moved off again.
She gripped her damp gloves together and wiggled her toes in her soggy boots.
“I had a plan,” she shouted. “And I brought with me sufficient funds. I did not go off half-cocked on this mission. I had a plan.”
He seemed to be too distant to hear her. She ground her teeth and muttered, “True gentleman, my mother’s virtue.” She threw back her shoulders. “All right, I apologize!” Then not quite so loudly, because frankly she could not bear the humiliation of it: “Please come back.”
The black horse halted, and the other too. Mr. Yale drew them around and returned. Several yards away he dismounted, left the horses standing in the road and walked to her, the dog trailing at his heels. His attention was entirely upon her as though she were the only thing in the world, his usual manner, which of course she had liked very much until now.
He halted quite close, tall and dark and wide-shouldered, his black topcoat swirling about his taut thighs and fine boots, and very much like a man she might be afraid to encounter upon a deserted road in the rain if she did not already know him. But in fact she did not know him, not well, and mostly through her stepsisters. And the night before, when he touched her although he should not have, her knees had buckled. But for his strong hands holding her between the wall and his chest, she would have collapsed.
“Your plan was nonsensical.” His eyes glittered. She could not believe it was anger. A true gentleman, like both her fathers, held his temper from ladies. But the spark in Mr. Yale’s eyes now looked like anger. And a true gentleman did not stroke a lady’s behind in a dark stable.
Her breaths stuttered. “My plan was not nonsensical.”
His stare did not waver.
“All right,” she admitted. “It was. Somewhat. But only insofar as it took a bit longer for you to appear on that coach than I imagined.”
His brow dipped. “I beg your pardon?”
“I said, my plan was only nonsensical in that it took a bit longer for you to—”
“For me to appear. Yes. You hadn’t any idea I would be on that coach yesterday.”
She wiggled her brows. “ ‘Are you so certain of that?’ ”
“Mimicry does not suit you, minx. And, yes, I am quite certain, by the simple fact that I hadn’t any idea.”
“Really? How inconvenient for you. I always have a plan for everything.”
“I am coming to see that.”
“How is it that you came to be on this road without planning it?”
“I was at a house party and the entertainments wore thi—” He halted abruptly. “Naturally, that is immaterial. You did not know I would take that coach.”
“No. I did not know you would, that is true. But I hoped to find a hero to help me. And then you appeared and you have quite the air of a hero about you, Mr. Yale. I have always thought so.”
“I suppose I ought to be flattered by your words and no doubt sent to my knees by those dimples that have conveniently appeared at this moment—”
“I thought so until last night, that is.”
His handsome features went still. “Miss Lucas,” he said in an altered tone, “pray allow me to beg your pardon for—”
“You needn’t speak of it. Men will do foolish things when they have been drinking excessively, after all.” She did not want to hear him apologize for touching her. Somehow it felt wrong, especially since she wasn’t without blame, seeking refuge in a stable due to her own reckless misjudgment. “And I meant, of course, that I thought you seemed heroic until you told me you would not assist me.”
His broad shoulders seemed to release their rigidity. “She giveth, and again taketh away. Is this un- complimenting a habit of yours?”
“My dimples are perfectly sincere.”
“I haven’t the slightest doubt of it. I also haven’t the slightest doubt that you are a remarkably troublesome young lady.”
She blinked slowly, dark lashes fanning over lapis eyes. Then she turned about and walked to her traveling trunk. Without pretension she settled upon the trunk and folded her hands atop her lap.
“You’ve just sat in a puddle.”
She turned her face away, confronting him with her lovely profile. “A mundane care.” But the corner of her lips quivered not now from laughter.
Wyn’s anger evaporated. Silence commenced, during which the only sounds were the snufflings of the horses that had sunk their noses in the grass at the side of the road, the soft whimpers of the mutt at his knee, and the increasingly steady rain. Each moment she less and less resembled the spoiled runaways he’d dealt with before. She was determination crossed with sincerity and an innocent sort of wisdom. And, before, he’d never looked upon a girl’s face and wished to do her bidding. Rather, only once, and at that time he had felt that girl’s anger too.
But Miss Lucas was not angry. She was merely seeking her past down a rainy road.
He wanted to see her dimples again. The need for it came upon him quite powerfully.
“Do you even have an umbrella?”
Her gaze remained averted. “That, admittedly, is one detail I failed to plan.”
“Did you also fail to inquire of the coachman that left you off where exactly the next stop is?”
“I did.” She twisted her lips. “Our disembarkation was rather hasty, in point of fact.”
“I daresay.”
Finally she cast him a glance. “Do you know where the next stop is?”
“I do. It is but a quarter mile up the highway.”
Her face brightened. “You have taken this road before, then?”
“A few times.” He knew this road and the roads to the west and south as well as he knew his name, and sometimes better. Leaving Gwynedd at age fifteen, he had not strayed too far afield at first, not for three years, until he finally made it to Cambridge. The highways and one-track paths, hills, and farms of the Welsh borderlands and western Shropshire all the way to his great-aunt’s estate were more home to him than his father’s house had ever been.
