As the coach disappeared over the horizon, the girl sagged against Ned. “Thank God you came along when you did, Mr. Galbraith. If he’d caught me again . . .” She was shivering uncontrollably. Cold or reaction. No doubt a bit of both.
He pulled a knife from his boot and cut through her bindings. “Who are y—”
“Sorry,” she gasped, and bent and retched, a thin stream of bile that just missed his boots.
When she finished he handed her his handkerchief. She wiped her mouth and handed it back. He received it gingerly, gave it a distasteful glance, then dropped it in the mud. “Let’s get you into the carriage.”
She took a few wobbly steps, then stumbled. “I’m sorry. The drug . . .” She reeled.
Ned scooped her into his arms and lifted her into the carriage. She was drenched right through. Her soaked clothing dampened his clothes. And she stank. Of dank mud and ditch water, of vomit and animal manure and God knew what else.
She slumped onto the seat and almost fell as the coach jerked into movement. She looked up wildly. “Where are we going?”
He’d been heading to Fountains Abbey, near Ripon, to a house party there. It wasn’t far, but he certainly wasn’t going to arrive at Fountains in the company of a damp and bedraggled damsel in distress. A sure route to scandal that would be.
No, he’d have to return her quickly and quietly to wherever she came from. “London?” he suggested, and she sighed in relief.
“Oh, thank goodness, yes, please. They’ll be so worried about me.”
He knocked on the roof, gave Walton their new destination, then turned back to the girl, intending to question her, but her shivering had worsened. And her stench was slowly filling the carriage. First things first. He had all the time in the world to ask her questions, but he was damned if he’d travel another mile with a half-frozen woman who stank like a midden.
“You can’t travel in those wet clothes,” he informed her. “You’ll catch your death.”
She looked down at the ruins of her dress, some light-colored thing partly revealed beneath the filthy cloak, and sighed. “I s-suppose so.” Her teeth were chattering.
He lifted a small valise from an overhead rack and pulled one of his shirts from it. “Take off everything that is wet, and then put this on.”
“Here? In the coach?” Beneath the mud and bruising a blush crept over her skin. She gave him a look in which innocence fought with awareness and strove for indignation. For a girl who’d just fought off an abductor, and who looked—and smelled—like she’d been dragged through a haystack and then rolled in a pigpen, it was almost seductive.
Which was ridiculous.
He said irritably, “Well, unless you expect me to stand outside in the rain while you change”—he gestured to the window to point out that rain was pelting down again—“yes, here in the coach.”
And before she could suggest that she would prefer him to get soaked while she stripped off her odiferous attire, he grabbed a fur-lined traveling rug. “Here, I’ll hold this up to protect your modesty. You can wear one of my shirts—I’m afraid I don’t have any gowns with me—and then wrap yourself in this. We’ll stop at the next town and get something more suitable for you.”
“Very well.” She unfastened her cloak and shrugged it off and handed it to him. He dropped it on the floor. And his mouth dried.
She was wearing a badly soiled evening gown, filthy now, but it was apparent to Ned that it had been both expensive and in the first stare of fashion. Wet, filmy layers of pinkish gauze clung to her like a second skin, almost transparent, outlining luscious curves. Her face and hands were muddy, but her breasts, enticingly displayed by the low-cut neckline, were creamy and lush.
With an effort he dragged his gaze to her face.
She gazed back at him, wide-eyed, her eyes as gray and liquid as a winter sea. Dark hair streamed down over her shoulders in dripping clumps, a mermaid come to call, wet, luscious and enticing. A pair of tight, berry-hard nipples thrust invitingly toward him.
He swallowed. It was just the cold. Nipples did that in the cold. But it took all his self-control to keep his gaze focused on her face.
“You’ll have to help me. It’s fastened down the back.”
He put the rug aside and moved to the seat beside her. She turned and lifted the wet mass of her hair so he could undo her gown. He stared for a long moment at her pale, vulnerable nape, then set himself to the task at hand.
The dress was cunningly constructed of a series of overlapping layers that, sodden, clung to his fingers. He was well experienced at helping women out of their clothes, but he was damned if he could see how to unfasten this blasted dress.
“The hooks are very small, I’m afraid. Can you find them?”
He fished around and found a row of tiny hooks. Of course they would be tiny. He swore silently as he fumbled with each minute and impossible fastening, then became aware of the soft creamy flesh he was revealing beneath. Cold, damp flesh, he reminded himself. She was still shivering. He all but ripped the last dozen hooks from the dress, then removed himself to the opposite seat and raised the rug in front of him to block out the sight of her.
Behind the fur barrier she wriggled and rustled and sighed.
It was damnably erotic.
“What should I do with my dress? It’s making the seat all wet and dirty.”
“Throw it on the floor.”
He heard a sigh. “It was a beautiful dress once,” a sad little voice said from the other side of the fur blanket. A dirty pink bundle plopped wetly onto the floor between them. He scraped
