The Secret Mistress

But I found I could not do it alone and so I took Miss Goddard into my confidence. She was both willing and eager to help implement my plan. But the first part did not work. Instead of going to rescue her from Lord Windrow when we were out walking yesterday, you insisted upon helping me get rid of the stone in my shoe instead, even though there was not really a stone in it at all. It was all a ruse. Miss Goddard said today that we needed more drastic action, and suggested this and the letter I left for you. And I did it, though I realize now I ought not to have, for there have been too many lies, and even apart from those I have been very unfair indeed to Lord Windrow, who has never treated either me or Miss Goddard with disrespect—well, except for that very first time. But no real harm was done then, was it? As soon as you pointed out his error to him, or almost as soon, he apologized—after you had insisted—and went on his way. And now I have caused him to get hurt. You hit him very hard. And it was all my fault. And nothing has worked as it ought, has it? Here you are talking to me instead of to Miss Goddard. Or, rather, here I am talking to you instead of sending you after her. Oh, why does nothing work?”

And when, during her lengthy, muddled speech, had he stepped closer to her— closer even than he had been to Lord Windrow?

“Perhaps,” he said softly, “because you have everything wrong, Angeline.”

No Lady before her name?

She swallowed and gazed into his very blue eyes. She had no choice, really. There was nowhere else to look unless she stepped back, and there was no way of doing that without tripping over her chair.

“Do I?” she said.

“It is not Eunice I love,” he said.

“Oh?”

She dared not hope. Oh, she dared not. Perhaps he only meant that he did not love anyone. Not in that way, anyway. Perhaps he had not changed. Perhaps he never would.

She sank her teeth into her lower lip.

“It is you I love,” he said.

Oh.

Ohhh!

It was precisely at that moment that they both heard the unmistakable clopping of horses’ hooves, and the rumbling of carriage wheels over the cobbles of the inn yard and out onto the street and along it until the sounds gradually faded into the distance.

I AM NOT at all sure,” Eunice said from within Lord Windrow’s carriage, “that we are doing the right thing. Indeed, I am rather sure we are doing the wrong thing. For I did not notice another carriage, did you? Edward must have ridden here, a complication I did not foresee.”

Lord Windrow, seated across one corner of the carriage, his foot braced on the seat opposite, his arms crossed over his chest, regarded her with amused eyes from beneath drooped eyelids.

“My dear Miss Goddard,” he said, “would a man about to race in pursuit of his lady love, whom he feared was being abducted by a black-hearted villain, stop to call out his carriage?”

“You knew, then,” she said, “even when we devised this scheme? But what are they to do now?”

“Ride together on the same horse,” he said. “A means of locomotion that is vastly romantic in theory, deucedly uncomfortable in practice. Hire a carriage. I daresay the Peacock has some rickety old thing that would serve the purpose. It would, however, and beyond all doubt, be deucedly uncomfortable in both theory and practice. Stay where they are until we return for them. That option has the potential for all sorts of comfort. They have at least three clear choices, then, as you can see.”

“We will return for them?” she said. “Soon?”

“Tomorrow morning,” he said, “after we have breakfasted at Norton and taken leave of my mother.”

“But what if there is no carriage for hire?” she asked, frowning.

“Then their choices will be reduced to two,” he said. “There will be less cause for dithering.”

She turned her head to gaze at him.

“You do not really believe they will remain at the Peacock, do you?” she asked. “Edward would be the perfect gentleman, of course, and I daresay there are enough rooms for the two of them. It did not look a crowded place, did it? But even so, Lady Angeline would be ruined. We did not even leave her my maid.”

He smiled lazily.

“I have distinct hopes for Heyward,” he said. “That punch he threw—in front of ladies—hurt like Hades. I can still feel it. I do believe he may not act the gentleman at all tonight. I would not wager upon it, however. He has never been known to set a foot wrong in all of human history to date, and now he has already done it once today. He will either decide that that is quite enough adventure for the next millennium or two, or he will discover in himself a taste for anarchy. One can only hope. As my favorite groom in all the world liked to remark with great wisdom and no originality whatsoever when I was a child, one may lead a horse to water, but one cannot make him drink. And as for your maid, you have need of her yourself. My mother would have a fit of the vapors if you were to arrive unchaperoned, and she would scold me for a month after regaining consciousness. Besides, it may not have escaped your attention that your maid is quite happy to ride up on the box with my coachman and that he is quite happy to have her there. It would have been cruel to them both to have left her behind at the Peacock.”

Eunice sighed.

“I never ought to have agreed to this perfectly mad scheme,” she said. “For Lady Angeline will be ruined whether she comes to Norton unchaperoned later today or returns to Hallings unchaperoned tonight or—heaven forbid—remains at the Peacock until our return tomorrow morning. And I will blame myself for the rest of my life. Whatever was I thinking?”

Lord Windrow reached out and took her hand in his.

“You were thinking of bringing your two friends together in a match made in heaven,” he said, “since they did not seem to possess the good sense to do it for themselves. I was thinking of a way to get you to myself again for a while.”

She looked down at their hands for a moment before curling her fingers about his and sighing again.

“I ought not to encourage you,” she said. “You are a rake.”

“Ah,” he said, “but even Lady Angeline Dudley admits that rakes may sometimes be reformed. It is certainly within the bounds of possibility that I may be one of their number. Not probability, perhaps—she did speak of it rather as if it resembled a Forlorn Hope, did she not? But definitely a possibility.”

“I am the daughter of a Cambridge don,” Eunice said apropos of nothing.

“I daresay,” he said, “he is fiendishly intelligent and bookish.”

“He is,” she agreed.

“Both of which traits he has passed on to you,” he said.

“Yes,” she agreed. “Though perhaps not the fiendishly part.”

He lifted her hand and set the back of it briefly against his lips.

“May intelligent, bookish ladies sometimes be reformed?” he asked her.