Judith made no complaint. She had chosen to continue her journey even though she had heard the warning and might have waited for a later coach. She had no suggestions to make either. And she had no injuries. She was merely miserable and looked about her for something to take her mind off the fact that they were all stranded in the middle of nowhere and about to be rained upon. She began to tend those in distress, even though most of the hurts were more imaginary than real. It was something she could do with both confidence and a measure of skill since she had often accompanied her mother on visits to the sick. She bandaged cuts and bruises, using whatever materials came to hand. She listened to each individual account of the mishap over and over, murmuring soothing words while she found seats for the unsteady and fanned the faint. Within minutes she had removed her bonnet, which was getting in her way, and tossed it into the still-overturned carriage. Her hair was coming down, but she did not stop to try to restore it to order. Most people, she found, really did behave rather badly in a crisis, though this one was nowhere near as disastrous as it might have been.

But her spirits were as low as anyone’s. This, she thought, was the very last straw. Life could get no drearier than this. She had touched the very bottom. In a sense perhaps that was even a consoling thought. There was surely no farther down to go. There was only up—or an eternal continuation of the same.

“How do you keep so cheerful, dearie?” the woman who had occupied one and a half seats asked her.

Judith smiled at her. “I am alive,” she said. “And so are you. What is there not to be cheerful about?”

“I could think of one or two things,” the woman said.

But their attention was diverted by a shout from one of the outside passengers, who was pointing off into the distance from which they had come just a few minutes before. A rider was approaching, a single man on horseback. Several of the passengers began hailing him, though he was still too far off to hear them.

They were as excited as if a superhuman savior were dashing to their rescue. What they thought one man could do to improve their plight Judith could not imagine. Doubtless they would not either if questioned.

She turned her attention to one of the unfortunate soggy gentlemen, who was dabbing at a bloody scrape on his cheek with a muddy handkerchief and wincing. Perhaps, she thought and stopped herself only just in time from chuckling aloud, the approaching stranger was the tall, dark, noble, laughing highwayman of her daydream. Or perhaps he was a real highwayman coming to rob them, like sitting ducks, of their valuables. Perhaps there was farther down to go after all.

Although he was making a lengthy journey, Lord Rannulf Bedwyn was on horseback—he avoided carriage travel whenever possible. His baggage coach, together with his valet, was trundling along somewhere behind him. His valet, being a cautious, timid soul, had probably decided to stop at the inn an hour or so back when warned of rain by an innkeeper intent on drumming up business.

There must have been a cloudburst in this part of the country not long ago. Even now it looked as if the clouds were just catching their breath before releasing another load on the land beneath. The road had become gradually wetter and muddier until now it was like a glistening quagmire of churned mudflats. He could turn back, he supposed. But it was against his nature to turn tail and flee any challenge, human or otherwise. He must stop at the next inn he came across, though. He might be careless of any danger to himself, but he must be considerate of his horse.

He was in no particular hurry to arrive at Grandmaison Park. His grandmother had summoned him there, as she sometimes did, and he was humoring her as he usually did. He was fond of her even apart from the fact that several years ago she had made him the heir to her unentailed property and fortune though he had two older brothers as well as one younger—plus his two sisters, of course. The reason for his lack of haste was that, yet again, his grandmother had announced that she had found him a suitable bride. It always took a combination of tact and humor and firmness to disabuse her of the notion that she could order his personal life for him. He had no intention of getting married anytime soon. He was only eight and twenty years old. And if and when he did marry, then he would jolly well choose his own bride.

He would not be the first in his family to take on a leg shackle, though. Aidan, his elder brother, had succumbed and married abruptly and secretly a mere few weeks ago in order to fulfill a debt of honor to the lady’s brother, his fellow officer in the Peninsula. By some strange miracle the hasty marriage of convenience seemed already to have developed into a love match. Rannulf had met Eve, Lady Aidan, for the first time just two days ago. He had ridden from their house this morning, in fact. Aidan had sold his commission and was settling into the life of a country gentleman with his wife and her two foster children, the besotted idiot. But Rannulf had liked his new sister-in-law.

Actually it was a relief to know that it was a love match. The Bedwyns had a collective reputation for wildness and arrogance and even coldness. But they also had a tradition among themselves of remaining scrupulously faithful to their spouses once they did marry.

Rannulf could not imagine loving one woman for the rest of his life. The thought of remaining faithful for a lifetime was distinctly depressing. He just hoped his grandmother had not said anything about the projected match to the woman concerned. She had done that once and he had had the devil of a time convincing the woman, without appearing to do so, of course, that she really did not want to marry him.

His thoughts were diverted suddenly by the appearance of a black dot ahead of him denser than the prevailing mud and hedgerows. At first he thought it was a building, but as he rode a little closer he realized that it was actually a collection of people and a large, stationary coach. An overturned coach, he soon realized, with a broken axle. The horses were out on the road as well as a few of the people. Most, though, were huddled on the grassy verge above the wreck of the coach, keeping their feet out of the worst of the mud. Many were shouting, waving, and gesticulating in his direction as if they expected him to dismount, set his shoulder to the ruined vehicle, heave it to the road again, magically repairing the axle in the process, and hand them all inside once more before riding off into the proverbial sunset.

It would be churlish, of course, to ride on by without stopping merely because he could not offer any practical assistance. He drew rein when he was close to the group and grinned when almost everyone tried to talk to him at once. He held up a staying hand and asked if anyone had been seriously hurt. No one, it seemed, had been.

“The best I can do for you all, then,” he said when the hubbub had subsided again, “is ride on with all the speed I can muster and send help back from the nearest village or town.”

“There is a market town no more than three miles ahead, sir,” the coachman told him, pointing off along the road. A particularly inept coachman, Rannulf judged, to have so completely lost control of his coach on a muddy road and not to have thought of sending a postilion on one of the horses to fetch assistance.

But then the man showed distinct signs of having been keeping himself fortified against the damp and the chill with the contents of the flask that was clearly visible inside a gaping pocket of his greatcoat.

One of the passengers—a woman—had not joined the others in greeting him. She was bent over a muddy gentleman seated on a wooden crate, pressing some sort of makeshift bandage to his cheek. He took it from her even as Rannulf watched, and the woman straightened up and turned to look at him.

She was young and tall. She was wearing a green cloak, slightly damp, even muddied at the hem. It fell open down the front to reveal a light muslin dress and a bosom that immediately increased Rannulf’s body heat by at least a couple of degrees. She was bareheaded. Her hair was disheveled and half down over her shoulders. It was a glorious shade of bright red-gold such as he had never before seen on a human head. The face beneath it was oval and flushed and bright-eyed—the eyes were green, he believed—and quite startlingly lovely. She returned his stare with apparent disdain. What did she expect him to do? Vault down into the mud and play hero?

He grinned lazily and spoke without looking away from her.

“I could, I suppose,” he said, “take one person up with me. One lady? Ma’am? How about you?”

The other women passengers were having their say about his offer and his choice, but Rannulf ignored them. The redheaded beauty looked back at him, and he fully expected from the scorn on her face that she would reject his offer. He was certain of it when one of her fellow passengers, a thin, reedy, sharp-nosed individual who might have been a clerical gentleman, gave his opinion, uninvited.

“Strumpet!” he said.

“ ‘ere,” one of the other women said—a large, buxom woman with apple-red cheeks and a redder nose,

“you watch ’o you are calling a strumpet, my man. Don’t think I ‘aven’t noticed the way you been eyeing ’er for the past ‘alf a day ’cos I ‘ave, you old lecher, squirming around in your seat so you could feel ’er up surreptitious like. And you with a prayer book in your ‘ands and all. You should be ashamed of yerself. You go with ’im, dearie. I would if ‘e arsked me, which ’e wouldn’t do on account of the fact I would dent ‘is ’orse in the middle.”

The redhead smiled at Rannulf then, an expression that grew slowly even as the color deepened in her cheeks.

“It would be my pleasure, sir,” she said in a voice that was warm and husky and crawled up his spine like a velvet-gloved hand.

He rode over to the side of the road, toward her.

He was nothing like the highwayman of her daydream. He was neither lithe nor dark nor handsome nor masked, and though he smiled, there was something mocking rather than carefree in the expression.

This man was solid. Not fat by any means, but... solid. His hair beneath his hat was fair. It looked wavy and it was certainly overlong for fashion. His face was dark-complexioned, dark-browed, and big-nosed. His eyes were blue. He was not at all handsome. But there was something about him.

Something compelling. Something undeniably attractive—though that did not seem quite a powerful enough word.

Something slightly wicked.

Those were the first thoughts that flashed through Judith’s head when she looked up at him. And of course he was no highwayman but merely a fellow traveler offering to ride on for assistance and to take someone with him.

Her.

Her second thought was one of shock, indignation, outrage. How dared he! Who did he think she was that he expected she would agree to mount a horse with a stranger and ride off alone with him? She was the daughter of the Reverend Jeremiah Law, whose expectations of strict propriety and morality from his flock were exceeded only by what he expected of his own daughters—especially her.

Her third thought was that within a very short distance—the coachman had said three miles—there was a town and the comfort of an inn, and that perhaps both could be reached before the rain came tumbling down. If she availed herself of the stranger’s offer, that was.

And then she remembered her daydream again, the foolish, lovely fantasy of a dashing highwayman who had been about to carry her off on some unknown, glorious adventure, freeing her of all obligation to her family and her past, freeing her from Aunt Effingham and the dreary life of drudgery awaiting her at Harewood. A dream that had been shattered when the coach overturned.

She had a chance now to experience a real adventure, even if it was just a tiny little one. For three miles and perhaps as long as an hour she could ride up before this attractive stranger. She could do something as scandalously improper as leaving the safety and propriety of numbers to be alone with a gentleman.

Her papa would shut her into her room with bread and water and her Bible for a week if he ever heard of it, and Aunt Effingham might well decide that even a month was not long enough. But who would ever know? What harm could possibly come to her?

And then the bony man called her a strumpet.