He passed the second horse to the coachman and returned to her. “What is it?”
“I must go inside.”
“You shouldn’t be seen. You stay here.”
She pressed her lips into a thin line. “I have necessary requirements.”
He sighed. Of course she did.
“And I think perhaps I ought to find other clothes. The livery has become somewhat . . . obvious.”
She was right, of course. She looked like a footman who’d been dragged through the muck, shot, and left for dead. Which wasn’t an entirely incorrect assessment of her situation. And with her long brown hair coming out of her cap, she would be discovered in a heartbeat. And when her hunters arrived, a girl dressed as a bedraggled footman would certainly count as something unique enough to mention. He hadn’t a choice.
“You handle your needs. I shall get you a dress.”
He charmed the pub owner with a long-suffering sigh and a handful of coin, and returned to the carriage with a frock and food and a skin of hot water. Opening the door, he found her already returned, and tossed the first two items into the carriage before handing her the water. “For your tea.”
He did not give her a chance to thank him, instead closing the door before returning to help the coachman hitch new horses.
“We’ve two good stretches before we get to Longwood, sir,” said the coachman. “We’ll need another change of horses in the night.”
“And a new coachman. You’ll need to sleep,” King said, triple checking the leather harnesses.
“I can see you through until then.”
King nodded. “Good man, John.”
John smiled. “The night is the best time to ride the roads.”
King knew it keenly. He also knew it was the worst time to ride inside a carriage—the darkness closing in around him, reminding him of the past, which became more and more difficult to ignore as they drew closer to Cumbria.
He opened the door to the carriage with more force than he’d planned, and she squeaked from her seat, hands clutched to her chest. She was wearing the green dress, festooned in little frills of lace and ribbon. “I’m not ready for you, yet,” she said, the words nearly strangling her.
“Why not?”
“Because I am not,” she replied, as though it were a legitimate answer to his question.
He raised a brow and did not move.
“I require another five minutes,” she said, shooing him out of the carriage. With her foot.
It was the foot that tipped him to her concern. His gaze fell, lingering on the hands at her breast, white laces crisscrossing up the bodice of the dress. “Are you having trouble lacing yourself into it?” he asked.
She went crimson, and he had his answer. “Not at all!” she squeaked.
“You’re a terrible liar.”
She scowled at him. “I don’t typically have cause to lie, sir. It is rare that men ask me such . . . ungentlemanly questions.”
“Don’t you mean rapscallionesque?”
“That, as well. Yes.”
He smiled. “Do you require my assistance, my lady?”
“I most certainly do not,” she replied. “It’s simply that the previous owner of this particular garment was somewhat less . . .”
Close the door, he willed himself. Don’t let her finish that thought.
Sadly, his arms forgot how to work.
And then she finished the sentence and his brain did the same.
“. . . ample.”
Christ.
“You have five minutes,” he said, “and then we leave, laced or no.”
He closed the door and returned to the horses, checking the cinches again as he counted to three hundred. By thirty-six, he was imagining her ample breasts. At ninety-four, he was cursing himself for not having a good look at the breasts in question when he had Sophie in hand earlier in the day. By one hundred and seventy, he’d relived the events of earlier in the day, much to the twin emotions of pleasure and guilt. By two hundred twenty-five, he was cursing himself the worst kind of scoundrel, but, truthfully, she was the one who had brought up breasts.
You are the one who is acting like a boy in short pants.
No. Boys in short pants were much more appropriately behaved.
Two hundred ninety-nine.
Three hundred.
He opened the door and climbed in, working very hard not to look at her. She did not squeak, so he supposed that meant she’d finished the task at hand. He rapped on the roof, and the carriage took off.
They traveled in silence for long minutes—twenty or so—before she broke the silence. “Do you remember me?”
He looked at her then.
Mistake.
She was beautiful. The dress was shabby and too small for her, and he could see why she’d had trouble. It had to be laced as tightly as possible up her midline to cage her breasts, which spilled out of the top, as though they were desperate to be free.
Just as he was quite desperate to free them.
He dragged his gaze to meet her eyes. “I was not gone very long.”
She smiled at that, and he warmed at the sign of her entertainment. Good God. It felt like he was a boy in short pants, eager for her approval. “I did not mean from earlier today. I meant from earlier in our life.”
“Remember you from where?”
The smile faltered a touch. “We danced once. At a ball.”
His brows rose. “I would remember that.”
“It was a quadrille. At the Beaufetheringstone Ball.”
He shook his head. “You’re mistaken.”
She gave a little huff of laughter. “My lord, I believe that I would remember you more than you would remember me.”
She was doing it again. “Stop it.”
“Stop what?”
“Stop believing whatever everyone has said about you for all these years. There’s nothing about you that is unmemorable. The last week has been the most memorable of my life, for Chrissakes. Because of you. Stop imagining that you’re something you’re not.”
Her eyes went wide, and King immediately felt like an idiot.
“What does that mean?” she asked quietly.
He didn’t want to answer. He’d made enough of a fool of himself. So instead he said, “I’m simply saying that I should remember that we danced.” She went silent, and for a long moment, he thought she might be hurt that he didn’t remember. “I will remember you now.”
It was an understatement in the extreme.
And then she said, “May I still have my question?”
The question he’d promised her before they stopped. Before he’d almost kissed her. Before he’d noticed her breasts. Well. Before he’d noticed her breasts, today.
This evening.
“Yes.”
“You said you were going to your father to tell him something before he died.”
“I did.”
“When was the last time you saw him?”
The feel of the carriage returned, as did his awareness of the waning light. Darkness was coming, and with it, memory. And demons. And this woman was not going to let him ignore them. “Fifteen years ago.”
“How old were you?”
“Eighteen.”
“And why haven’t you ever come back?”