“I’ll take you back to your father and then follow the main road from your estate to mine. I won’t be turned about for long.”
Eliza tensed, her laughter dying away. She couldn’t let him anywhere near Penfold Hill. One look at the manor and the stranger would know their straits and just how dire they were. What if he demanded to see the duke? “You cannot take me home.”
“Give me one excellent reason why not.”
She thought about it for a moment. Eliza wondered if the stranger had the whole day free for the list of excellent reasons she had for altering his course. For keeping him away from her home. She’d promised to keep her brothers and sisters safe, to withhold their secrets from the outside world. She’d made a good many promises in the previous months but had begun to lose faith in her ability to be who they needed her to be. One excuse came readily to hand. “I’ll be compromised. You’ll have to marry me.”
He didn’t even lose a step or gasp or any of the things Eliza thought he might do in reaction. Perhaps drop her. “Do you come with a very large dowry?”
Instead it was she who gasped. “That is none of your business.”
He grinned, his facial hair rising around his lips. “If you didn’t want to risk your reputation why are you out here alone? Where is your maid or footman?”
“Simply that. I thought I would be alone. Rather, I wanted to be alone,” she amended quickly.
“Doing what though?” He stared down at her with suspicion. “Were you spying on the house? On me?”
“We aren’t anywhere near the house and why would I need to spy? Are you hiding something?”
He shook his head, his gaze shuttered as he looked forward and kept walking.
“If you must know, I was selecting a Christmas tree for my brothers and sisters.”
This time he did stop; his grip relaxed a fraction. “You were going to steal a tree? That’s your story?”
“It’s not a story. The previous estate owner has been letting me pick out a tree every November since I was six. I only take a small one. You never would have missed it.”
“But you were going to steal it?”
Eliza didn’t like the narrowed-eyed gaze he trained upon her. She almost groaned. If he reported her to the magistrate for this, even something so minor, Sir Percy would come to speak with her father and she would not be able to turn him away. He was the law.
She lowered her own gaze and didn’t have to try to create moisture beneath her lids. She actually thought she was going to cry, such was her sudden and paralysing fear.
“No, no, no,” he said, his grip once again tightening about her. “Please don’t cry, I don’t mind at all. Take as many Christmas trees as you like. Take one for each room in your house if you want.”
Drawing a deep and dramatic—if a tad overdone—breath, Eliza’s voice wobbled just the right way as she said, “My father will be so angry if you take me home. There’s no telling what he’ll do to me.”
“Is he a violent man?”
She shook her head quickly. That wasn’t what she had been trying to convey. “He is very traditional and it would break his heart if I was to be involved in another scandal.”
“Another scandal?”
Blast it all, why had she said that? The shock of being shot at must have caused her brain to turn to soup. Or perhaps it was the lack of oxygen from being held so tight. Whatever it was, she had to order her thoughts before her mouth gave her away. “It’s a very long tale but please, can’t we return to your home? I’ll rest for a few moments with a cold compress and then I can walk back. Or I could borrow one of your horses? I’ll return it tomorrow?”
The suspicion returned to his gaze. “Would that not further ruin your reputation?”
“Not if no one sees. If it is only you and I who know, surely it cannot do any harm. Please?”
“What if my servants talk?” he asked in a quiet voice, as though he considered doing her bidding.
Eliza relaxed somewhat as hope flickered that he would bend to her will in this. “Do you not trust the men and women in your house?”
“With my life. But there are only men. No women. Not the place for a lady.”
“That is rather odd,” she commented, but not wanting to push him she also said, “It will be only for a few moments, an hour at most, and then I will be on my way.”
What would the stranger make of her even stranger request? It was a desperate and risky situation. What if Darius decided once they were behind closed doors to hurt her? No witnesses. No recriminations. Her siblings would never know where she had disappeared to. No gently bred miss would ask to be carried in the arms of a man she didn’t know to his home filled with more men she didn’t know. God, what was she doing?
You’re keeping them alive.
Eliza would do whatever she had to do. Just two more months and they would be safe. She hoped…
Chapter Two
It was hard to fathom why a young lady would be out in the snow on her own to pick a tree to decorate. Where was her groom or at least a gardener? Did she think to cut it down and drag it out on her own? Perhaps she knew of her father’s debts and spied on him for the duke? “Damn,” he muttered under his breath. Sending a lamb to do his despicable bidding. It was a very duke thing to do. Letting someone else take the risks.
“I’m sorry, did you say something?” the object of his thoughts asked from where she perched on his worn settee.
Her father probably assumed no harm would come to her because she was a
