“Diversion?” he managed.

“We must hide in plain sight.” Her eyes danced, her berry lips curving into a smile of delight that Wyn wanted to taste. “There will be hundreds of people there, and if your . . . friend is not here now”—her gaze darted to the street—“he will not know you have gone off in another direction. We can hire a carriage and take another route. Don’t you see? It is perfect.”

“No.” He did not see the perfection of her plan, but he was beginning to see the perfect idiocy of his own desires.

“Yes.”

He turned to her companion. “Mrs. Polley, I suspect you disapprove of this proposed program.”

“Well, I don’t see how it might not be the trick. If your nasty fellow might give this sweet lady grief, well then you’ve got to find a solution. And I don’t see how my mistress’s plan here is any worse than what you might come up with.”

“If you do not board that coach and a carriage cannot be hired, Miss Lucas, we will be well stranded here when my ‘friend’ arrives.”

She scanned his face. “You do not believe he will arrive here. Not here. You think he has gone ahead to accost you by surprise somewhere down the highway.”

She was remarkable. So he laughed.

Her lips curved into a smile, like the breeze in spring. She was fresh and clear and direct, except of course with this entire escapade to find her mother. But her eyes twinkled up at him, satisfaction and excitement making the lapis glimmer in the inconstant rays of sun, and he could not deny her. Rule #1: If a lady is kind of heart, generous and virtuous, a gentleman should acquiesce to her every request; he should deny her nothing. That, and, if a carriage could in fact be gotten here, her plan actually sounded better than anything he’d yet devised.

Her gaze shifted over his shoulder. “There! We mayn’t have to hire a carriage after all.” She hailed a vehicle crawling along at a snail’s pace, an ancient barouche as long as it was cavernous within, with a wizened coachman in a faded coat and pulled by a pair of horses as old as their driver. Tucked inside were two ladies wrapped in gauze at least a half century out of date, with hats and parasols from another era.

Miss Lucas hurried to it. Wyn could not hear her words, only her voice, clean and bright as always. The ladies responded to her with smiles. A frail hand gloved in old lace stretched out and took the girl’s. Then another lifted, waving him and Mrs. Polley toward the carriage.

That was the moment Wyn first suspected that finally—after many more than nine girls—he had met his match.

Chapter 6

“I told the Miss Blevinses that we are newlyweds.”

“I gathered that.”

“Well, I couldn’t very well tell them we are an old married couple. I’m barely nineteen.”

“You might have been a child bride.”

She chuckled. Errant rays of sunshine played in the strands of chestnut hair escaping her bonnet and in her blue eyes, and for a moment she did appear quite young. Nearly guileless, he had believed.

Now he knew better.

“But of course we have no children, and I was not really prepared to invent them on the spot.” She picked morsels of meat from the platter on the table and deposited them alternately with the dog at her feet and between her tempting lips. “Although I suppose I could have if pressed, but they might not have believed it. We are not well enough known to each other to do the sorts of things that old married couples do, like—”

“Finish each other’s sentences?”

Her dimples flashed, propelling Wyn’s hand back to the punch bowl ladle. Sir Henry’s butler mixed a potent, but palatable, concoction.

It wouldn’t have mattered if he served white gin straight from the barrel. After sitting for two hours on chairs decorating the lawn, sipping tea while she invented story after story of charming childhood escapades—both hers and his—with which she regaled the Miss Blevinses, Sir Henry, and a half dozen other septuagenarians who hadn’t seen a London drawing room since George II and therefore had no idea that the newly wedded Mr. and Mrs. Dyer were a complete sham—Wyn had nearly stood and declared his intention to annul her instantly. Instead he begged their host and the kind ladies who had conveyed them hither to excuse them while he and his bride strolled through the gardens.

He’d taken her directly to the refreshments.

About the lawn sloping to the sheep fields below, children played ball and tennis, their parents—farmers, villagers, and a smattering of exceedingly modest gentry—enjoying the produce of the harvest. All were happy with the break in the rain and Sir Henry’s annual generosity. A fiddle buzzed a tune, and two dozen or so lads and lasses danced upon the turf, laughter mingling with shy glances—the awkward flirtations of youths and the innocent coquetry of maidens.

Wyn had no remembrances of a time like that in his life. He’d gone from boy to man in months. Weeks. He did not regret it; he had seen the world in all its marvels. Still, he turned away from the scene now and swallowed the contents of his glass.

Miss Lucas’s gaze lingered on the dancers. “I don’t think Mrs. Polley approves of the story I have invented.”

“I suspect, rather, that she does not approve of the husband you have chosen.”

“But you are a perfectly unexceptionable gentleman.”

“A gentleman who has agreed to escort you across England without benefit of a proper chaperone, family, or actual marriage license, recent or otherwise.”

“Hm. But otherwise she is an ideal companion. Except for that abrupt sleeping habit, of course.” She glanced across the lawn to where Mrs. Polley was sprawled upon a divan in the shade of a draping willow. Her brow creased. “I hope she is not ill.”

“I have seen it before.” In the East Indies years ago. “The body simply closes down, as though in sleep although it is not. She cannot control it, but it does not harm her.”

Miss Lucas looked at him with her seeking eyes and took the side of her lower lip between her teeth. This time Wyn did not look away.

Finally she said, “Do you think we have lost . . . your friend?”

“For a time. But he will persist.”

“You displeased him that dreadfully?”

“Rather his employer, a powerful man. We must find a carriage to convey us south by an alternate route. With haste.”

“Well, I—”

“Be quiet, minx. I am thinking.”

“Planning.” She dropped a slice of cheese into the mutt’s mouth. “Yes, I need quiet when I am inventing a plan too.”

“Then now would be a good time to do so. For instance, you might invent a contingency plan for what to do with your companion should we be obliged to beat a swift retreat from this gathering if Eads appears.”

“His name is Mr. Eads? Who is he?”

“A Highland Scot, and as strong as a Dover dockworker.”

“Large, I guess. Mrs. Polley is too heavy for me to carry. But certainly you could do it.”

He cocked a brow.

She nodded. “You could throw her over your shoulder like a true villain would, and carry her off while I run after, begging you to have mercy on her, like a real damsel in distress.”

He bowed. “Your ingratitude is entirely becoming, Miss Lucas.”

She burst out laughing. He offered her a mild glower.

She clamped her berry lips shut. But she seemed to bounce on the balls of her feet, as though the effort of remaining still proved too much, and her dimpled cheeks were lightly stained with pink. Wyn couldn’t think with her so near. The punch had stilled the shaking in his veins, and now a comfortable, familiar languor stole through him, sheering the edge off his anxiety.

The Scot would search the highway north first. They must be careful. But for today, Wyn had nothing to fear. Except himself. She was still standing too close, and the liquor in his blood hummed.

“What would you say, Miss Lucas, if I told you that to pursue your mission we will be obliged to purloin a conveyance from one of these families enjoying Sir Henry’s hospitality?”

“Purloin?” She moved closer, which had not been entirely his wish. Not entirely. “Do you mean to steal a carriage?”

He turned again to the punch bowl, as much to move away from her as to pour more into his cup.

“Have . . .” Her gaze flickered from the bowl to his face. “Have you done such a thing before?”

“When necessary.” He leaned back against the table. “Is it now necessary, Miss Lucas? I am yours to command.”

“Mrs. Dyer.” Her lips slipped into a partial purse. “You should call me Mrs. Dyer in this company. In case someone hears you.”

“You are a minx.”

“I probably am. And you drink too much.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Why do you drink so much? Is the flavor so appealing to you?”

“Rather, it steadies my nerves.” Ah. It would be the truth. It always required several glasses for him to mouth partial truths, after all. Her wide blue eyes apparently took him the remainder of the way to complete truth.

No lies with Diantha Lucas, except one. If she knew he meant to take her home, she would seek to escape him again. With Eads on his trail, and perhaps the man in brown, he could not risk further delays.

“Well, I am excessively nervous at the present,” she said, squaring her graceful shoulders, “so perhaps I shall have some too.”

“You do not appear excessively nervous.”

“I am an excellent dissembler. Really, Mr. Dyer, that should be clear to you by now.” She reached for a cup and lifted it to her lips. She sniffed and her nose wrinkled—her pert nose that sported two minute, round scars, so small they were not visible unless a man studied her quite closely, as he could not prevent himself from doing now. There were others across her brow and cheeks as well, tiny imperfections that rendered the grace of her features more touchable.

She was damnably touchable.

The musicians struck up a country dance. Her eyes, pools of azure in the glowing light of late afternoon, sought his over the rim of her cup. “Will it taste horrid?”

“You must judge for yourself.”

“My stepfather and sister Charity say I should not drink spirits. I haven’t before, you know. Not even wine.” She glanced down into the cup then back up at him. “You are not going to tell me not to drink it?”

“That would be singularly hypocritical of me, I believe.”

She sipped. She blinked, rapidly. Then she sipped again. She lowered the cup.

“It is not horrid.”

He shook his head.

“It has not calmed my nerves yet.”

“It requires several minutes.”

She raised the cup again.

“It’s warm,” she said this time, her eyes widening. “Rather, hot.” She placed her gloved hand over her throat then slid it down between her breasts. Her lashes flickered, and Wyn thought he saw something in them from earlier, when he’d taken her hand to assist her down from the coach: primal awareness.

Selfish fool that he was, he did not now for her sake play the hypocrite and remove the cup from her grasp. For he wished to see more of that glimmer in her eyes, more of that awareness directed at him. He wished to be, for the first time in years—rather, ever—thoroughly irresponsible with a girl. With a lady. This lady.

He wished what he wished every time he reached for a bottle of brandy, a glass of whiskey, a pint of ale. He wished to forget.

Diantha could not feel her lips. She could, however, see Mr. Yale’s, despite the dark night and dim lamplight. She could not in fact manage to take her eyes off his mouth. His intriguing mouth. His mouth that looked so absolutely delicious.

De. Lish. Os. Mouth.

But it was too far away now. His mouth. And the rest of him. Far too far away. He had gone to the other side of the drive. She recalled him telling her quite firmly that she must under no circumstances follow him. And she had not. She was very good and remained precisely where he left her leaning up against the back of Sir Henry’s carriage house at the edge of a row of mightily tall black trees.

But she wanted to follow him. She wanted to be wherever he was. She wanted . . . Oh, she wanted . . .

She opened her eyes, uncrossing them. He was standing before her. The lamplight rimmed about him.

“You look like you are wearing a crown.” She squinted. “Are you a prince, Mr. Yale?”

“Yes. From now on you may address me as Your Royal Highness.”

She placed her palm upon his chest. “I thought so. I thought perhaps you were a prince. But then you are far above my station. I am merely a baronet’s sister. Not sufficiently grand to dance with you.”