“I have no intention of—” she began. Unyielding fingers encircled her upper arm. “Unhand me this instant! How dare you—?”
“That’s it, Miss Burke,” he said softly, leaning in. Humor glimmered in his dark eyes, though it had not entirely chased away their haunted look. “Now you’re getting into the spirit of the thing. Slap me across the face if you’d like. I assure you, it’s the only invitation you’ll ever get.”
“Why, you devil—!” This was all an act. But to what possible end? Though her fingers itched to make good on his offer, she hesitated.
A wicked smile lifted one corner of his mouth. “Unless you’d rather kiss me, instead?”
A bolt of heat passed through her, devastating as a lightning strike. Then rain began pelting from the leaden sky. One thick drop struck her cheek; another dodged the lens of her spectacles to strike her eye, making her blink furiously. Unless she was willing to brave the coming storm aboard the roof of the stage… She clutched her writing desk tighter with one arm, lifted her skirts with her free hand, and stepped into Gabriel’s coach unassisted.
As he settled into the opposite seat, the coach jerked into motion. Laughter rumbled in his chest, though she could not help but notice that it did not reach his eyes. “Well, at least we’ve done them the kindness of leaving them with something to talk about while they wait.” He gestured toward a window filled with curious faces. “Shall I figure in their tales as the cruel brother come to drag his sister home, do you suppose? Or as the aggrieved husband whose headstrong bride ran away in the night?”
“I could not say.” She understood then that his high-handedness had indeed been a deliberate act, intended to spare her reputation. Bad enough to be a youngish woman, traveling alone; far worse if she seemed to be the sort who leaped into the carriage of the first gentleman who happened along. She squared her writing desk on her lap. “I have very little familiarity with spinning those sorts of stories.”
For answer, he laughed again.
“I was not running away,” she said when they had traveled some way in silence. “I was on my way back to Ireland. I received an urgent letter from my sister and must get home as soon as possible. You should know I have no intention of going back to London.”
“That’s as well, since we’re headed in the opposite direction.”
She glanced out the window to find that the city was indeed receding, the landscape becoming more rural. If he wasn’t returning her to Trenton House, then where was he taking her?
Another quarter mile passed with his hazel eyes fixed on her, something almost feverish in their depths. The air of the carriage felt charged, heavy—the weight of the coming storm, perhaps. She fought the impulse to squirm beneath his stare. “I’m bound for Stoke Abbey,” he said at last, answering her unspoken question. Then he settled his gaze on the passing scenery, though the carriage windows were blurred with rain. As she studied his profile, she saw that fatigue, or perhaps worry, had etched grooves about his mouth and eyes. “My family estate.”
Was it her fancy, or did he name his destination with reluctance? He must have left in a hurry, to be traveling without even a servant. Some pressing matter of business must have called him home. Still, who set out on such a journey all alo—? Well, who else would set out on such a journey all alone?
“It lies in Shropshire,” he added, “along the border with Wales.”
“Why, that cannot be far from Holyhead,” she said, naming the Welsh port from which the packet sailed for Dublin.
“Less than a day’s journey, I’d say.”
Just when she was in need of the means of traveling northward, she had crossed paths with Gabriel, who happened to be headed that way. Surely not a coincidence… But if it were not, then she must confront the fact that Felicity had sent him. And if he had called at Trenton House that morning, had he at last made the offer for which the entire family had been waiting with bated breath? What had been her cousin’s reply?
Fear of the answers kept those questions in check.
“What luck!” she managed to exclaim instead.
“Luck?” The force of that one wry word as it left his lips propelled him forward, closer to her. “How very…Irish of you.”
She pressed her spine against the upholstered cushion of the seat back, putting as much distance between them as possible. “I thought gamblers were great believers in luck.”
“A successful gambler deals in probabilities, Miss Burke. Mathematics,” he declared, “not luck.”
Ah, yes. Gabriel, the mathematician. Certainly, the man’s gifts included the ability to divide a woman from her honor and multiply her troubles in the bargain. Well, she could not boast of any particular skill with probabilities, but she knew luck when she saw it. Both good and bad. “I could not think of accompanying you,” she murmured, more to herself than to him. The impropriety of traveling by herself paled in comparison to the scandal of traveling unchaperoned with Lord Ash. All alone, trapped in a carriage for days? People would assume they had succumbed to temptation—and when she remembered what she and Gabriel had done just last night, she feared people would be right.
He turned back to face her, and one brow arced. “Perhaps I ought to have left you to the vagaries of the public stage, then.” The half smile that turned up his lips did very little to ease the hard lines into which his expression had fallen.
A few miles farther up the road, the driver steered the coach into the yard of a posting inn to change horses. A servant came to the carriage door, carrying a tray laden with meat pies and
