“I need the lady out here and in there without further ado,” an impatient, impertinent voice said from behind him. The coachman, presumably, wearing soiled linen beneath an ill-fitting stained coat, and a greasy-looking hat upon greasy-looking hair.
The Marquess of Dorchester turned and looked the man over, his eyes moving from oily head to scuffed, mud-caked boots and back again. “Indeed?” he said.
The coachman had frozen in place, and Marcel had the satisfaction of seeing fear in his eyes as he snatched off his hat and held it to his chest with both hands. “If you please, Your Honor,” he said. “I need to get the lady where she’s going and get myself back to Bath for more business tomorrow. It’s my livelihood. Your Honor, sir,” he added.
“The lady will come when the lady is ready,” Marcel informed him. “Until then you will wait, whether it be five minutes or five hours. When she does come, you will convey us to the nearest town. I have been told it is eight miles distant. There the lady and I will remove to a different carriage. We will refrain from insisting upon a return of the unused portion of the fare the lady paid you in advance and upon demanding compensation for the extra expense she has incurred as a result of your negligence in leaving Bath with a defective vehicle. I may, if you conduct yourself with professional decorum from this moment on, pay you a small bonus before you spring your horses in the direction of Bath and further business. I trust I have made myself clear.”
The man bobbed his head and tugged at his greasy forelock and could not seem to find his tongue.
“I thought so too,” his lordship murmured, and strolled back inside the inn to give instructions that his bag be loaded onto the hired carriage and that someone be sent up to carry down Miss Kingsley’s bags. He hoped his nose would survive the eight-mile journey ahead, not to mention his spine and every other bone in his body. He would wager there was not an operational spring in that vehicle, and English roads were unkind to those who did not ride in well-sprung conveyances.
She had said yes. She might not repeat it when the time came to change carriages, of course, but he would take the risk and give her the choice. It had never been his way to drag women about by the hair just to cater to his lusts. But, however it was, she would complete her journey in a carriage that offered both cleanliness and comfort and under the protection of a competent, deferential driver. If she chose to return home alone, he would also send a maid with her. Her family had obviously not insisted. He would.
He was both surprised and gratified that she had said yes. It was a long time since he had had an extended affair with any woman. He had never run away in order to enjoy one. He had never taken a woman to the Devonshire cottage. He had not spent much time there himself. It had belonged to a childless great-aunt, upon whose lap he had apparently climbed unbidden when he was three. She had adored him ever after and left him everything when she died. It was indeed a remote location, a fact that had not endeared the place to him until now. Had he not been inherently lazy about such matters, he would doubtless have sold the property long ago. But now he was glad he had not done so. He rather fancied the idea of escaping there with a lover he thought might hold his interest for a week or two at the very least. It would be up to him, of course, to make sure that he held her interest for as long as she held his.
They were on their way less than half an hour later, seated side by side on the appallingly hard seat, as much space between them as she could possibly contrive by clinging to the fraying strap beside her head.
“Has the coachman agreed to take us all the way to Devonshire?” she asked.
“Heaven forbid. I believe I might end up with a permanent case of the shakes if I were to allow any such thing,” he said. “You must be made of stern stuff to have come all the way from Bath in this, Viola. We will find something better to hire as soon as we possibly can. If you put too much trust in that strap, you know, it may let you down and snap and catapult you across the seat to collide with me.”
“This all feels very . . . strange,” she said by way of explanation.
Yes, it did. Even for him it felt strange.
She did not relinquish her hold of the strap. Or relax the tension in her body. Or attempt to make any further conversation. He rather suspected that in another hour or so they were going to be going their separate ways, she in one carriage to her home, he in another to his.
Except that last night she had left her door unlocked.
They stopped at a reputable-looking posting inn in a bustling country town. He settled Viola in a private parlor under the care of a bowing, smiling innkeeper and a bobbing, smiling, spotlessly clad serving girl before dismissing the Bath coachman with a generous bonus he had done nothing to earn. Soon after that, he joined her for a cup of coffee. She was looking rather pale and grim.
“There is a carriage here for hire,” he said. “It is plain, but it is also clean and looks serviceable. It even has a few springs. There are also horses of decent quality for a stage or two. I suspect there are more and better elsewhere in town. You must tell me your wish, Viola. Shall I hire two carriages and send you home in one of them? Or shall it be one carriage to take us to Devonshire?”
She set her cup down, watching what she was doing. “All morning,” she said, “ever since breakfast, I have been trying to think of a way to tell you that I have changed my mind.”
“Ah,” he said, and he leaned back in his chair.
She raised her eyes to his. “It is not in my nature,” she said, “to reach out for what I want.”
“Then we are quite incompatible,” he told her. “It is not in my nature to do anything else. What do you see in your future, Viola? What will your life be like?”
“Safe,” she said. “Respectable. I have friends and neighbors at Hinsford. I have my daughters and son-in-law and grandchildren. Perhaps there will be more. Abigail will surely marry in time. And perhaps Harry—”
“Your son?” he said when she stopped abruptly.
“Perhaps he will survive the wars,” she said. “Perhaps he will come home and marry and— But I must not say perhaps. He will come home.”
“And will you marry again?” he asked.
“Oh, goodness, no,” she said. “Though the word again does not apply, does it? Another marriage, even a real one this time, is the very last thing I want. Besides, who would have me?”
In the name of respectability she was going to live a very lonely rest of her life, then? But it had probably always been like that. Lonely and dreary. It often seemed to be a woman’s lot in life to endure. Simply that. He was very glad he was not a woman.
He did not break the silence that stretched between them while she held her cup in both hands but did not drink from it.
“I wish,” she said once, but did not continue.
“I wish,” she said a minute or so later, “I could be selfish like you.” She looked up at him and flushed. “I beg your pardon. I was thinking aloud.”
Still he said nothing. She looked back down into her cup.
“I would want to come back.” She set the cup down in its saucer and looked up at him again. “I would not want to run away forever. But it would not be forever, would it? We would tire of each other after a while. You said so yourself. A week, perhaps? Two?”
Some women believed in permanence, in happily-ever-after and all that nonsense. He had believed in it himself once upon a time, and look where that had got him. He always made clear to any woman with whom he was embarking upon a liaison that it would not be forever or even for very long. It was not cruelty. It would be cruel to promise forever and not be able to deliver more than a few weeks.