"She was to call at Berkeley Square first of all," she said, "to collect some of her belongings and to take my best traveling carriage. But she will be on her way by now, Charles. It is too late. Poor Jessica must be left to her fate. Perhaps she will meet a gentleman in Yorkshire who will appreciate her real worth. She is still young, after all, and very pretty even when wearing those very plain clothes. And knowing Jessica, I would be willing to wager that she is already dressed in gray again."

"It is not too late!" the Earl of Rutherford said decisively. "I can overtake your carriage very soon, Grandmama. I shall persuade Jess that she is being foolish, never fear. And I shall bring her back with me. By tonight. It is I who will be going away, not her. She will remain in London and settle to the life she should be leading. She is going to have a happy life. I swear it."

"I think it quite likely if you can but persuade her," the dowager agreed. "But if you intend to ride in this raw weather, Charles, do be sure to dress warmly, m'boy."

She was not at all sure that her grandson had heard her maternal advice. He had already stridden from the room. But the Dowager Duchess of Middleburgh did not seem unduly perturbed. She smiled smugly at one ornate bedpost and snuggled lower into her pillows.


The day's journey had not been nearly the nightmare of the previous one, Jessica thought with some relief later that evening. It had been every bit as uncomfortable, however, if not more so. The day had been bitterly cold and the coach drafty. Indeed, snow had begun to fall before they stopped for the night at an inn on the Great North Road. The coach seemed particularly ill-sprung, the passengers all very large and all carrying particularly bulky bundles. And there seemed to be an unreasonable number of unwashed bodies riding as inside passengers.

These discomforts aside, however, Jessica had found that she was not abused as she had been on that previous journey. Indeed, her right-hand neighbor, a woman whose abnormally large and stiff bonnet brim threatened to take Jessica's eye out every time she turned her head, was a plump, motherly person, whose hand regularly reached into her food basket and who constantly insisted on sharing its contents with other passengers, especially Jessica. The latter could well have done without the offerings, proffered as they were from a somewhat grubby hand. But she found herself reluctant to reject such obvious good nature. She accepted and even managed to eat a meat pasty and a jam tart.

The day wore on and Jessica's spirits drooped proportionately. What sort of a life was ahead of her? she wondered. Would the dowager duchess's friend be able to find her a suitable situation? Would it be a difficult job? Challenging? Lonely? Unfortunately, she was in no position to choose. She must accept whatever was offered to her.

And it would surely be a deal worse than it had been the last time. The last time everything had been new to her. She had had nothing with which to compare her life with the Barries except life at home with Papa. And although she had always been happy at home, she had to admit that it had been a rather dull life of plodding routine. Life at the Barries' had not been so very different except that she had felt the absence of love.

Now she was aware of what her life could have offered. Not just the fine homes and clothes, the parties, the outings, and the suitors. But she knew what her particular life might have been. She might have been the Countess of Rutherford, the wife, the companion of the man she had grown to love. She might have made something of such a relationship even if his love did not nearly match her own. At least she would have had a chance to win his friendship, his esteem. The challenge would have been exhilarating. Now she would never see him again.

But she must not look back, Jessica told herself on that first evening, must not regret rashly made decisions. And she must not complain. Her first night on the road was to be reasonably pleasant, at least. She had actually been given a room of her own. Granted, it was a tiny box of a room under the sloping roof of the attic, in which it was necessary to edge one's way around the rather lumpy bed. The only other furniture was a cracked washstand and an equally cracked bowl and water jug. But at least she would have some privacy, and at least-and surprisingly-the sheets were clean. And there was a dining room in this inn separate from the taproom. She had been able to eat her dinner without fearing at every moment that she was going to be accosted

It was fairly early in the evening, far too early to go to bed, Jessica decided. But she would not venture from her room again. She took a book out of her valise and perched as comfortably as she could on the edge of the bed, huddled up inside her cloak. She would read until the candle burned out, anyway.


It turned out to be a very frustrating day for the Earl of Rutherford. When he left Hendon Park, he expected that finding Jessica would be the least of his problems.

It was what he would say to her when he did so that occupied his mind all the way back into London. This time he must be very sure that he said the right thing. The whole of her future happiness would depend upon it.

For that very reason, perhaps, he was not quite as nervous as he had been the day before when he had proposed to her. Then it had been his own happiness he was trying to secure. Now he had merely to convince her that she must return to London and her grandfather's care. He must assure her that in the public eye her reputation was quite unsullied and would remain so. Although the Barries could cause her some embarrassment if they chose to do so, really the only persons who could do her reputation any real harm were himself, his grandmother, and her grandfather. Surely it would not be difficult to convince her that none of those three persons would ever be malicious enough to begin a whisper of gossip about her.

She must return to London, to the society where she belonged. The thought of her returning to the sort of life she had led when he first saw her filled the Earl of Rutherford with dread. Women ordering her around, treating her like dirt beneath their feet. Children treating her with as much insolence as they knew their parents wopld let them get away with. Men eyeing her with lust, scheming how to coax her into their beds. She would be fortunate indeed if she found her way into a house where she would be treated with the proper respect. And even then it would be no life for Jess. His beautiful Jess.

Perhaps she had not heard or had not believed his assurances of the night before that he was going away, that he would trouble her no more. Perhaps it was her fear of him as much as anything that was driving her away. He must repeat his assurances to her. He must convince her that he meant what he had said. She must know that she could return to London and begin her social life again without the constant fear that she would meet him at every turn. She must feel entirely free to encourage other suitors and choose an eligible husband from among them.

Rutherford felt physically sick at the thought, but he resolutely put his feelings from him. He had renounced Jess the previous day. He must train himself now always to think of her as quite beyond his reach. It must be her happiness, and only hers, that occupied him for the rest of this day's business. As soon as he found her, he would take her back to Hendon Park, or to Berkeley Square if she preferred, and then leave, never to see her again.

He decided not to stop in London. His grandmother had assured him that Jess would already have set out on her journey north even before he left Hendon Park. It would be an utter waste of time to go to Berkeley Square on the slim chance that she would still be there. After all, if she was bent on running away from her grandfather, she was not likely to spend a few hours relaxing at his grandmother's house.

He would save time, he decided, by taking immediately to the northern road. His grandmother's crested carriage was easily recognizable. He would overtake it within the hour, if he were lucky, or certainly not too much longer than that. He would be able to bring Jess back before the middle of the afternoon.

It was only as one hour turned into two that Lord Rutherford regretted not returning home for his curricle. It would have been a slightly more comfortable mode of travel. He had not realized that the carriage could have had such a start on him. Jess must have made almost no stop at all at Berkeley Square. It made sense, he supposed when he thought about it. He would wager that she would not take with her any of the finery that his grandmother had provided her with. Packing her belongings would not have taken her long.

As the afternoon wore on, he became downright uneasy. Could the carriage have possibly come this far? Was there any chance that he had passed it? But no, that was impossible. It was equally impossible that it could have taken a different route. Lord Rutherford began to come to the unwelcome conclusion that the carriage must still have been in London when he passed the city by and that it was somewhere on the road behind him.

But did he dare take a gamble and turn back? If by some chance she was still ahead of him and he went back now, he would never catch up to her.

He rode onward for another five miles before deciding that he must turn back. As it was, it seemed unlikely that he would get back to London that night. And the weather was turning bitterly cold. He had been trying to ignore it all afternoon, but his hands were numb even inside his gloves, and the heavy capes of his greatcoat were failing to keep out the cold. Stray flakes of snow were beginning to drift down from a leaden sky.

Lord Rutherford did not afterward know what inspired thought led him to consider that perhaps his grandmother's carriage was not on the road at all. Was it certain that that was how Jess was traveling? His grandmother had said so, of course. She had offered the carriage. But was it really certain that Jess would have accepted? Was it not far more consistent with her stubborn character and with her determination to return to her former life, for her to have decided to travel by. the stagecoach? He had passed several since leaving London. She could have been on any one of them!

And so he made his way back, uneasy about his decision to do so, cold, worried about his tired horse, and determined to examine every stagecoach he passed to make sure that she was not on any of them. Soon, of course, most of them would stop for the night. He must look carefully at each inn to see if a stagecoach stood in its yard.

He hailed two stagecoaches on the road without success before spotting the one in an inn yard. Snow was falling. It was almost dark. He felt hopeless. He had lost her. Somehow he had missed her, and he would never see her again. He would never be able to explain to her that she was making an unnecessary sacrifice of her life.

He asked for her by name, slipping the innkeeper a large coin as he did so. It was amazing to be told that yes, she was upstairs in the attic room. After the long journey of the day and all its worries and uncertainties, it seemed almost too easy to find that she was here, at the very first inn he checked.

There was no spare room at the inn. Rutherford placed another coin in the innkeeper's hand and began to climb the stairs to the attic.

16

Jessica stiffened when the knock sounded on her door. She might have known that her good fortune was too good to be true. She was going to have to share her room after all. The bed was certainly large enough to accommodate more than one person.

"Yes?" she called out hesitantly, wishing that she could pretend to be deaf.

There was no answer for a moment. Then her blood ran cold.

"Jess?" a familiar voice said.

Jessica leapt to her feet. Her book slid with a thud to the floor and her cloak slipped from her shoulders. "Who is it?" she called foolishly. There was only one person in the world it could possibly be. "What do you want?"

"May I talk to you for a minute?" the Earl of Rutherford asked.

"What about?" she said. "What do you want? I have nothing to say to you."

"Jess." He was speaking quietly through the thin door. "Will you please open the door? I have something of great importance that I must say to you. I give you my word of honor as a gentleman that I will not touch you."