Why did her brothers always have to turn up and ruin it all? Didn’t they have anything better to do?
At long last, Jason sent the others ahead, then halted until she drew even with him. “I cannot believe you did that,” he said.
“It was raining.” She was seething inside, but somehow she managed to sound calm. “All I did was come in from the rain.”
“That’s not the way it looked,” he said as though that were the end of the discussion.
She stared at his determined profile. A highwayman…her brother was letting—no, making—her wed a highwayman. Even if Jason was convinced the man had ruined her, the fact that he’d as good as pledged her to an outlaw was beyond belief.
Her stare turned to a glare that drew his gaze. He blinked. “What were you thinking, riding out alone?”
Ignoring that, she drew breath. “I cannot believe you expect me to marry a highwayman. You, who wouldn’t let Lord Harrison near me because he was only a baron!”
For a moment, Jason just looked at her. Then his lips quirked into a smile before he threw back his head and laughed.
Incredulous, Kendra watched, wishing the rain pouring into his mouth would drown him.
“You—you—you don’t know who he is, do you?” he choked out.
“Trick Caldwell. Patrick Iain Caldwell,” Kendra returned through clenched teeth. “Do you think you would have found me in a man’s bedchamber—never mind that nothing happened there—if I didn’t so much as know his name?”
Jason only laughed harder. “Patrick Iain Caldwell What?”
“What? What do you mean, what? That’s not his name?” Kendra bit the inside of her cheek. “I should have guessed he’d lie to me,” she muttered, more to herself than her brother. “He’s a cursed highwayman, after all.”
“You don’t know who he is.” Apparently failing to notice her unladylike language, Jason actually snorted. “You really don’t know who he is.” With another shout of laughter, he dug in his heels and raced up to meet their brothers.
Kendra could hear their loud guffaws through the distance and the driving rain.
She rode behind them for another few minutes, listening to their whoops of laughter, hoping they’d expire from lack of air. A buzzard circled lazily overhead. Not exactly Ares’s bird, the vulture, but close enough. A fury was rising in her that would do Ares, the God of War, proud.
At last she couldn’t stand it. She raced up to meet her brothers, nosing Pandora between Jason’s and Ford’s mounts.
“He’s titled, isn’t he?” she demanded. “Or you wouldn’t even be jesting about this marriage. Who is he?”
Ford looked at her, his blue eyes all innocence. “Who?”
“The man you just betrothed me to! What’s his name, blast it?”
“Oh, you mean Trick? Trick Caldwell?”
“All right. Enough is enough.” She glared at them one by one. “I did nothing wrong. No matter what you think it looked like, we were washing a wine stain from my skirt. There’s no reason for me to marry him.”
Her brothers stared at her and then at one another over her head. Individually they nodded.
Then Jason spoke for them all. “Did you choose another of your suitors to marry, then?”
“That again? I don’t believe this. None of my suitors are at all suitable, and I won’t marry any of them. You’re finished ordering me around.”
“You’re right about that,” he said. “I’m finished. It’s time you wed, and Trick’s as good a man as any.”
“But he’s a highwayman,” she wailed.
“Not anymore,” Jason snapped. The brothers closed ranks, and nothing else was said for the rest of the ride home.
SEVEN
TRICK PACED around the cottage for a good fifteen minutes, huffing in disbelief, wondering how a simple errand to save his props from the rain had ended in such disaster.
When pacing failed to resolve anything, he rode home to Amberley House to dismiss the rest of his houseguests.
Compton, his butler, met him at the door. “Good afternoon, your grace.”
“Is it?” Trick handed him his drenched cloak. “What happened while I was gone?”
Compton frowned, one of his habitual expressions. “Lords Cainewood, Greystone, and Lakefield have taken their leave. A messenger arrived with word that their sister had disappeared. They went off to find you, to enlist your help—”
“They succeeded.”
And turned his life upside down in the process.
Leaving the butler mid-sentence, Trick stalked into his card room. “My apologies, gentlemen, but the party’s over.”
Peevishly, he waved a hand in a hopeless attempt to clear the smoky air. The four remaining guests, all aristocrats from neighboring estates, had apparently passed the time by smoking Trick’s small hoard of expensive Virginia cheroots, which were literally worth their weight in silver.
He coughed and waved some more. “It seems I’m soon to be wed, and I’m in no mood for cards. Besides which, the Chase brothers won’t be returning, so we haven’t enough for two tables—”
“Wed? As in married?” David Fielding interrupted in a puff of tobacco, blinking his brown eyes, which always looked a little crossed. “You cannot be serious.”
“Aye, as in married.” Trick smiled mournfully. “And I assure you, I’ve never been more serious in my life.”
The only one without a cheroot between his teeth, John Garrick heaved his paunchy form from his chair. “Amberley, I…I don’t know what to say.”
Garrick, speechless. Imagine that. The pompous fellow usually never shut up, especially once he got started on one of his tirades against gambling, drinking, smoking, or whatever vice he’d decided to condemn this month (shockingly, he never chose overeating). Trick was all in favor of purging men’s failings, but he’d as soon leave sermonizing in the hands of the clergy and judgment in the hands of God, for neither sat well in the greasy hands of a smug hypocrite.
Garrick showed no signs of his usual smugness now. “I…I just
