Lovelace Wellesley was delighted with her name. Not her given name, mind, though she also thought Lovelace a particularly pleasing appellation. And so it should be, considering that the parents who had bestowed it on her were both actors. They knew full well how a name could capture the imagination of the paying customers, Irmengarde she could never have been. Or Agrippina.
But it was her surname that brought a blush of pure pleasure to her fair cheeks. Wellesley. She adored it. Especially since, until two years ago, it had been just plain Potter.
She had been Lovelace Potter of Professor Potter’s Peerless Players. But then an unfortunate series of circumstances, chief among them the accidental burning down of a boardinghouse by the current leading man in her father’s troupe, had necessitated their abrupt departure from the town of Basingstoke. Just to be on the safe side, her papa had prudently changed the name of his troupe to WELLESLEY’S WANDERING MINSTRELS. In honor of the Duke of Wellington, of course.
Lovelace squirmed restlessly on the cot in the stuffy prop wagon, heedless of the fact that she was supposed to be sleeping off a sick headache. She peeked out through the small window toward the prosperous-looking gray-gabled inn, where Papa, Mama, young Charles, and the other two members of the Minstrels were having their luncheon. The inn’s sign appeared freshly painted. The Iron Duke, it proclaimed in bold red letters above a crisply painted silhouette of a beak-nosed man in a cocked hat.
Lud, she thought crossly, these days everyone and his brother is fashioning himself after Wellington.
She returned to the handbill she had been admiring as she lay sprawled on the cot. It was a printed flyer announcing the troupe’s latest offering, Virtue Rewarded, or the Rake’s Redemption. In letters beneath the title ran a credit line, Based upon the poem of the same name by Lord Troy.
Lovelace sighed wistfully. She had a vague hope that England’s premier poet might attend the opening of the play in London. If rumors were to be credited, he was the most handsome man in the whole breadth of the land. And just to make sure that he would be compelled to attend the new production, she had insisted that her father include a drawing of Lovelace herself on the handbill. Her brother Charles was a dab hand with a charcoal stick, and she had to admit he had done her credit—even if he had made her nose appear ever-so-slightly skewed. She wished the portrait could have been hand-colored—it was difficult for a mere pencil sketch to convey the sheer luster of her dark gold hair or the shining clarity of her pansy brown eyes. But, all things considered, she judged it a telling likeness.
Feeling heartily bored but unwilling to enter the inn and be subjected to her parents’ anxious questions on their daughter’s—and featured performer’s—health, Lovelace slipped out the back door of the prop wagon. After skirting her family’s traveling coach, she headed for the lane that ran along the side of the inn.
As she ambled along, she admired the green pasture to her left and the waist-high tassels of ochre wheat that grew on her right. Lovelace knew that both those colors suited her admirably. A narrow stream trickled beside the lane, parallel to the split rail fence that enclosed the cow pasture. A little distance beyond her, on the far side of the fence, lay a wooded grove, shadowy and inviting.
She hopped nimbly across the stream and, without any thought that she might be trespassing, clamored over the fence, careful that the handbill she still carried did not become creased during her transit. She went along the inside of the fence until she reached the grove. The little brook, she saw, had also followed a similar yen to be among the trees—just after the wood began, the stream verged off from boundary duty and entered the cool, sun-dappled glade.
It was a delightful grove, carpeted with lacy fronds of fern and velvety moss. A fit setting for elfin revels in faerie cotillions. And for faerie princesses, she thought wistfully. She settled herself on a rock, letting the peaceful gurgling of the brook calm her tattered nerves.
And they were quite tattered, she vowed, as she fanned herself with the handbill. Rows with her parents were becoming all too frequent for her taste. And the one they’d had that morning had been a dilly. It wasn’t her fault that, in addition to being blessed with looks and talent, she drew young men to her like bees to a honey jar. She had no say in the matter. And she certainly had not encouraged that silly squire’s son back in Grantley to pursue her. Well, maybe just a tiny bit. She had no way of predicting he would tell his irritable father that he fully intended to wed his blond divinity.
The result of that ardent and impetuous disclosure had been the eruption of the outraged squire onto the stage during the troupe’s final performance of Letitia, or the Governess Among the Banditti. The squire had all but wrung down the curtain.
It was really most unfair! Letitia was one of her favorite roles, and the landslide scene in the final act was quite taxing. It was hard enough to keep your mind on your lines, she reflected with a frown, without the distraction of your mother shrieking from the wings or watching your father—in full bandit regalia—bulldog a squirming, sputtering squire off the stage.
At least that unpleasant episode was behind her. It was on to London and the production of the new play. And her much-longed-for introduction to the illustrious Lord Troy.
The brook’s trilling sound had taken on an unusual undertone, and Lovelace halted her daydreaming to listen. The noise was low-pitched and staccato; like the voices of men engaged in a heated argument.
She left her rock and went whisper-soft through the trees toward the source of the sound. Sure enough, in a small clearing some forty feet beyond her, two men were locked in verbal combat, their muffled voices rising and falling in the cadence of discord.
She crept closer and then peeked around an oak trunk, noting their hostile posture for future reference—she intended to write a play herself one day, and made a point of gathering interesting scenes for her opus. The man facing away from her was tall and dark, she observed, and wore a boxy blue jacket. His hands were fisted at his sides. The other man was fair, of medium height, and wore a claret-colored riding coat beneath a caped greatcoat. As she watched, his face twisted into a scowl. He spat out a word Lovelace had never heard before, his anger palpable even from such a distance, and then he snarled out, “This is all I found, I tell you!”
The dark man responded in a low voice—Lovelace could not make out his words. The fair-haired man immediately launched himself at his companion and they began to fight in earnest, grappling hand to hand. Seconds later a knife appeared in the dark man’s hand and, under Lovelace’s disbelieving gaze, he plunged it into his adversary’s chest. A scarlet stain spread across the pristine whiteness of the victim’s shirt until it blended with the darker crimson of his coat.
Lovelace screamed then. A nice, carrying theatrical scream. If she’d had time for reflection, she would have realized it was not the most politic thing to do in that situation.
The tall man swung around, his gaze darting through the trees. He started at once in Lovelace’s direction, heedless of the man who now lay unmoving at his feet.
Lovelace spun and thrust herself back against the tree, tucking her skirts close around her. She waited, heart pounding, for what seemed like an aeon. It was quiet in the wood—either the man had gone away or he knew how to move with great stealth.
“Got you!” A hand reached out to grab her wrist.
She gasped and turned to him for only a second—had a brief glimpse of a tanned face and pale eyes—before she twisted violently, wrenching free from his hold, and pelted off toward the field. Lifting her skirts to free her legs, she ran as though the very hounds of hell pursued her. When she broke free of the wood, she ran close along the fence, gasping raggedly for breath with each stride.
In the distance she could see the slate gables of the inn drawing ever closer. What she didn’t see was the grass-covered rabbit hole that lay beside the fence. Her right foot slid into it up to the ankle and she went down, tumbling headlong over the grass.
She lay on her stomach, winded and unable to move, waiting breathlessly for the tall man to come up with her and stick his knife in her back. Her heart began to beat a rapid tattoo in her chest as she sensed something large moving over the grass toward her, its shadow blocking out the sun. She closed her eyes and scrunched up her face in dreadful anticipation.
A large, wet, raspy tongue slithered over the back of her neck.
“Aoow!” she wailed, sitting up and pushing the amorous heifer’s head away from her. “Go, bossy!” she cried, slapping at the sleek brown neck. The cow blinked at her several times and then moved slowly away to graze.
Lovelace shrank back as another shadow fell over her. This time it was a tall man, backlit by the sun, sitting on a rangy red horse.
“I saw you take a tumble,” he remarked evenly in a refined voice. “Never a good idea to run beside a fence. All sorts of creatures burrow along there.”
“Someone was chasing me,” she said, holding back a sob. “With a knife.”
The man dismounted with a graceful motion and came forward to kneel beside her. His hair was dark and his face was tanned. His coloring was not unlike the murderer’s, she realized with a shock. But he was dressed more elegantly than the stranger in the woods, and his eyes were full of concern, though in a detached way.
“Sprained it, have you,” he said, as he touched his fingers to her swelling ankle, which was revealed beneath the twisted hem of her gown.
Lovelace looked down horrified. A sprain could take weeks to mend, and she had to be treading the boards in the new play in just over a fortnight. Tears began to course down her cheeks.
“Hey, none of that,” the man said. He looked beyond her across the field. “At least your pursuer seems to have cleared off. Not that I saw anyone chasing you, mind.”
Lovelace felt an overwhelming relief that the man with the knife had opted for caution rather than pursue her across an open meadow where anyone might see him. But she also recalled, with a sickening lurch of her stomach, that she had dropped her handbill as she ran from behind the oak tree. The man had seen her face, and now he knew her identity.
Oh Lord! she groaned to herself. If only Charles had made the portrait a bit less accurate. Given her a hooked nose, sunken cheeks, or beady little eyes. Anything that would have obscured the fact that Lovelace Wellesley, the pride of Wellesley’s Wandering Minstrels, was the same young woman who had seen foul murder done.
She was crying full out now in panic. It wasn’t fair! She had her whole life ahead of her.
Without so much as a by-your-leave, the stranger hoisted her into his arms and lifted her up onto the back of his tall horse. “Is there someone nearby who can look after you?” he inquired once he had settled her in the saddle.
“My family is at the Iron Duke,” she sobbed through her raised hands.
The man made no response, so she lifted her eyes. He was staring back at her, a look of perplexity on his lean face.
“Over there,” she said weakly, pointing in the direction of the inn. “Those gray gables.”
“Oh, there,” he said, as a wry smile of comprehension twisted his cheek. “It was called the Tattie and Snip until last month.” He began to lead his horse along the fence. “I don’t know what old Tolliver was thinking, to change the name. It’s been the Tattie and Snip since I was a lad.”
Looking down at her rescuer, Lovelace judged that to have been some time ago. There were strands of silvery gray scattered in the man’s dark brown hair—she could see them clearly from her vantage point in the saddle—though she had to admit the loose curls which tumbled over his brow were not without a certain charm. Percival Lancaster, the leading man in her father’s troupe, had to resort to heated tongs to cajole his hair into such fashionable disarray.
The man led the horse through a gate in the fence, and then over the brook into the narrow lane. Even before they reached the inn, Lovelace saw with a sinking heart that the troupe’s two vehicles were gone from the front yard. She began to cry even louder, for once not caring that tears positively blighted her creamy complexion.
The man stopped. “What the devil is it now?”
“They’re gone!” she wailed. “My family’s gone.”
He followed the line of her vision, saw the empty yard, and then looked up at her. “What sort of people are your parents, that they would hare off and leave their daughter behind?”
“Ac-tors,” she hiccupped raggedly, and then realized she hadn’t precisely answered his whole question. “I was supposed to be resting in the prop wagon,” she explained. “But I went for a walk instead. They clearly thought I was still napping in there and set off for London.”
The man rubbed the back of one hand across his chin. “Stay here,” he snapped. “I’ll go talk to Tolliver.”
Lovelace sat in the shadow of a tall beech tree, every so often casting fearful looks behind her. When at last the man came around the corner of the inn, his expression of distemper hadn’t lessened.
“They’re gone, sure enough. Your mother wanted to look in on you, but Tolliver heard your father say that you needed your rest. You’ll just have to wait here until they discover you are missing and come back for you.”
“But what of the man with the knife?” She whimpered. “This is the first place he will look for me.”
“There is no man with a knife,” the gentleman bit out, his patience clearly on the wane. “You must have banged your head when you fell, which has given you this addled notion that someone was chasing you. It’s most unlikely that a man with a knife would be lurking in my cow pasture waiting to do harm to young scamps like you.”
In spite of her tears, Lovelace drew herself up. As a reigning goddess of the boards, she had never, ever, been referred to as a scamp. “He was chasing me,” she uttered in her most acid tone, “because I witnessed a murder.”
The man below her rolled his eyes. “In my cow pasture?”
“In the woods,” she pronounced. “He was arguing with another man, and then he pulled out a knife and stuck it in the other fellow’s chest.”
“You’ve a lurid imagination, I’ll give you that.” He looked even less convinced than before.
“Take me there,” she ordered. “And I will show you where it happened.”
The stranger shrugged. “I suppose I can put off inspecting my cattle for another half hour, but if we don’t find anything, you’re coming right back to the Tattie and Snip.”
“You mean the Iron Duke,” she huffed, as he led his horse back up the lane.
* * *
Lady Jemima Vale held up her drawing of the lightning-struck tree that lay at the edge of the field and frowned deeply, setting a line of wrinkles across her smooth white brow. No matter how much she smudged the pencil marks or even erased them altogether, the sketch still looked more like a skeletal hand reaching up from the ground than a towering, majestic oak. In frustration she turned her sketchbook completely upside down. Now it was a skeletal hand reaching down from the sky.
She sighed. It was a trial to be so absolutely lacking in artistic ability. Especially coming from the family she had been born into. No, that wasn’t fair. Some people were blessed with creative talent, and others possessed more practical gifts. At least that was what she told herself when she was feeling blue-deviled. Which was an all-too-frequent occurrence lately.
She closed her sketchbook, folded her canvas stool, and looked about for a more inviting subject. She had already sketched the inn where she was staying, and the wheat field on her left offered little inspiration. As she cut across the field, brushing back the waist-high, tasseled grass, she caught sight of the rider leading a packhorse beside the small wood that lay in the distance. A picturesque subject to be sure—the bearded peddler with his loose blue coat and wide-brimmed felt hat, his pack of goods slewed over a second horse and bound with rope. But, Jemima reasoned, even the best artists found horses a tricky subject, and anyway, the man would be out of sight by the time she reached the lane.
Perhaps she would find something worth sketching in the wood, she thought, as she came out onto the narrow track. A collection of trees might prove less taxing than a single one. She climbed nimbly over the rail fence—an easy feat for a tall, long-limbed woman—and wandered along a chuckling brook, searching for a good vantage point. She had just settled her stool in a small clearing, which offered a pleasant view of quaking aspens, when someone called out, “Hullo there!”
She swiveled on her stool. A man was standing at the edge of the woods, some distance behind her.
In the general way of things, she was quite stouthearted, but there was something about the man’s tall silhouette that made her heart lurch.
“Nitwit!” she chided herself. Is this what happens when you near your thirtieth year? she wondered crossly. Did all the missish behavior you detested in others come rising up in your own character at that time? It certainly seemed to be the case.
“Excuse me,” the man called out. “But have you seen anyone in the woods?”
Jemima got up from her stool. “I’ve only just gotten here,” she called back. There was a chestnut horse standing behind the man with a young woman clinging to its saddle. She said something to him and pointed to Jemima’s right. He then tethered the horse to a branch and came toward Jemima, brushing back the foliage with his riding crop. The closer he came, the more she had to resist the urge to run off.
Not that he looked particularly ominous. He was tall and dressed like your garden-variety country squire, in the fawn buckskins, narrow top boots, and long-tailed riding coat of the sporting gentleman. His cravat was carelessly knotted about his throat. He was hatless, and his breeze-tossed hair had settled into wayward curls over his brow. She imagined the face of such a man would be hearty, open, and a bit vacant around the eyes.
As he came closer she realized she was wrong on all counts. Lord, this man wasn’t your garden-variety anything!
Though he wore his clothing with a loose, easy grace, the coat had not been cut by any hand less sure than Weston’s and the gleaming boots had probably set him back a pony at least. And his eyes, rather than appearing empty, looked, as they appraised her, to be sharp as a hawk’s. And they were a distinctive shade of pale gray, like snow clouds just before a storm. Those eyes, set deep in a face that was harsh and unfashionably tanned, gave the stranger an unsettling aura of menace. She shivered slightly and again had the urge to flee.
He came to a halt a few feet from her, crossed his arms over his chest, and leaned against a convenient tree trunk.
“See anything you like?” he asked in a lazy voice, clearly amused by her overt scrutiny.
“I’ll let you know if I do,” she retorted with a flash of her own eyes. Her foolish compulsion to bolt had made her snappish.
His face broke into a surprised smile—as though he approved her show of spirit—and Jemima felt her knees start to buckle. She hadn’t accounted him a handsome man; he was too rugged-looking for true masculine beauty. But that smile did wonders for all the harsh planes of his lean face.
“I just thought you’d like to know,” he remarked evenly, “that you are trespassing on my land. I’m not sure what the penalty is for such a crime—” His eyes danced over her with studied insolence. “But I wager I can think of something.”
Jemima took a tiny step back. Was he being purposely rude or was this just his normal manner with strangers?
She was about to make a scathing reply as to what he could do with his infernal “penalty,” when he added in a less baiting tone. “You might not want to hang about, actually. My young companion back there claims she saw murder done in this grove. And within the past half hour.”
Jemima looked beyond the tall man to the blond girl on the horse. Even from that distance she could hear the sound of staccato sobbing.
She said softly. “Well, then, no wonder she’s weeping.”
The man hitched his shoulders. “She cries at the least provocation.”
“Oh? And have you been provoking her?” Jemima asked, turning her gaze back to him.
“Not any more than I usually provoke unfledged misses.” There was testy anger in his tone now. “I believe it is the crime she witnessed that has turned her into a watering pot.”
Jemima sniffed audibly as she went past him through the trees, to where the horse had been tethered. The girl who waited there was fashionably, if a bit garishly, dressed in a pink muslin gown heavily sprigged with pansies and violets, which featured a large posy of silk flowers at the bodice and bands of ruched, violet ribbon along the hem. She gazed down at Jemima with limpid brown eyes.
“Are you feeling any better?” Jemima asked.
“Nooo!” the girl wailed. “I have seen foul murder done and have wrenched my ankle in a rabbit hole.”
“There, there,” Jemima clucked, not sure how one consoled a witness to foul murder. “I’m sure everything will get sorted out.”
“I have to be Virtue,” the blond keened. “I cannot be Virtue hobbling about on a stick.”
As Jemima turned to the tall man who had come up behind her, her bewilderment at the young woman’s cryptic lament was written all over her face.
“She’s an actress,” he whispered, bending close to her ear. “Lovelace Wellesley. Part of a troupe of players. You know, the sort who travel about the provinces butchering the classics.”
The man had carried the folding stool and her sketchbook from the wood. He set the stool down and, before she could stop him, he proceeded to open the sketchbook, riffling quickly through the pages.
“These are dreadful,” he pronounced with a squint. He raised the book and tipped it slightly. “Is that a mountain top or a lump of pudding?”
She snatched the book from him with an unladylike snarl. “I see,” she uttered, “that you are both theater critic and art critic.”
He gave an infuriatingly unconcerned shrug and raised his gaze to her. “I know what I like…” He let his voice drift. “And I know when I’m looking at something that pleases me.”
Jemima had the disconcerting feeling he was speaking about neither art nor the theater.
“Thank you for fetching my things,” she said briskly as she bent to pick up her stool. “I will take care not to trespass again.”
She was about to take herself off, when Miss Wellesley cried out, “Oh, please, ma’am, don’t go. My family has left me here, and I have no one to turn to.”
The girl sounded truly desolated. Jemima bit her lip. It would be hours yet before her brother returned to the inn—sometimes in the aftermath of boxing matches, the revelry could go on all night, especially for those lucky souls who had backed the winner. She had nothing to occupy her time, save defaming more of the local landscape with her pencil. And what was more, she had never been remotely involved in a murder, even as a bystander.
“All right,” she said, reaching up to pat the girl’s hand. “I’ll stay for a bit, if you like.”
“Thank you,” the girl responded in a wavery voice. “You are very kind.”
* * *
Bryce was striding about in the woods, looking for the particular clearing the chit had described, and grumbling all the while that he had far better things to do with his time than track down nonexistent murderers for teary-eyed, playacting damsels.
This was what came of things, he mused irritably, when you abandoned the sordid pleasures of London for the more bucolic pleasures of the countryside. His father owed him for this. He could be sitting in White’s this very minute, sharing luncheon with his intimates, or better yet, getting intimate with his latest paramour and sharing…well, best not meander in that direction. He was a long way from the sultry embraces of Tatiana Stanhope. A very long way.
Not that the peppery brunette he’d just met didn’t have possibilities. She was definitely to his taste—tall, long-limbed, and nicely rounded. A bit long in the tooth, perhaps, but he himself was well past his thirtieth year, and he knew that age rarely decreased appetite. At least in men. He wondered, as he scoured the landscape for any signs of a struggle, if the lady in question was ripe for a small intrigue. He’d never seen her before in the neighborhood; she was probably staying at the inn, which greatly increased her allure. Birds of passage always made the best meal—so to speak. And as was his habit, Bryce was not seeking entanglement, only entertainment.
He stood uptight and stretched, relieved that he could go back to his less troublesome duties now. There hadn’t been any sign of two combatants, let alone a bloodied body.
He made his way back to the two women. Miss Wellesley had finally controlled her tears; she sat silently on his horse, her fingers knotted in its mane.
“Nothing,” he uttered with a shake of his head. “I looked in every clearing. I think I’d better take you back to the inn now, Miss Wellesley—the landlord’s wife can see to your ankle.”
The girl nodded weakly.
He turned to ask the brown-haired woman where she was staying, and the words stuck in his throat.
She gazed back at him with a puzzled frown. “Sir?”
He reached out and gingerly drew the stool from under her arm, and then with his free hand he lifted a fold of her skirt. She looked down and gasped. Small reddish-brown smears marred the prim muslin surface. He turned the stool over. Sure enough a reddish residue still clung to two of the feet.
“I’ll be damned!” he muttered.
“You see! I didn’t imagine it,” Lovelace crowed. “I am not at all the sort of person who makes things up.”
“Are you all right?” Bryce was leaning toward the tall woman, whose face had gone a little green. He dropped the stool and swiftly took hold of her arms.
“Yes,” she said, holding the back of her hand against her mouth as she closed her eyes briefly. “Yes, it was just a shock. I’m…far too old for such missish behavior.” She didn’t see the amused glance he leveled at her as she made a visible effort to compose herself.
She took a deep breath. “I… I gather I was sitting on the very spot where the murder took place.”
Bryce released her arms and stepped back, seeing that she was no longer in any danger of swooning. “It would seem to be the case.”
He quickly returned to the clearing where the budding artist had placed her stool and found a dark, damp-looking stain on the matted grass. He rubbed at it with his fingers; they came away streaked with a ruddy smear.
Damn! This was just what he needed to make his day. He had a dozen cows ill with milk fever, half his tenant fanners laid low with the influenza, and his housekeeper had reported only that morning that there were death-watch beetles in the wainscotting. But this infernal problem certainly topped them all.
He’d have to alert Sir Walter, the local magistrate, straight off. And once the news spread, he’d have half the district trooping through his cow pasture to visit the spot. A gruesome murder was sure to invite a great many curiosity seekers, especially in this quiet district. He’d be lucky if his entire herd of Holsteins wasn’t off its feed by the end of the week.
He also had no idea of what to do with the blond-haired tear factory. Returning her to the Tattie and Snip was out of the question now. He had a fair idea of what he’d like to do with the tall brunette, but that also was not an option, at least for the moment.
Bryce wiped the traces of blood from his hand with his handkerchief and then tied it on a branch beside the clearing to mark the spot for Sir Walter.
He was still scowling when he returned to the edge of the wood. “There is a deal of blood there,” he pronounced. “But no corpse.”
“There has to be a corpse,” Lovelace insisted softly.
“Maybe not,” Bryce said slowly. “Maybe the second man was only wounded and went off on his own.”
“Oh, no! I saw the knife go in. It was a mortal wound, I am sure of it.”
He looked up at the girl. “Well, I can’t take you back to the inn now. It is the first place the murderer would look for you. Your parents picked the devil of a time to run off, Miss Wellesley.” He gave an exasperated sigh. “I’d best take you to my house for the time being. My housekeeper can see to your ankle.” As he spoke, he unhitched his horse’s reins from the tree branch.
“Is yours a bachelor household, sir?” the tall woman inquired in a no-nonsense voice.
“Last time I checked,” Bryce said with a chuckle. “But I rarely make a habit of deflowering children.”
“I am not a child,” Lovelace protested. “I turn seventeen this October. And have been playing young ladies on the stage any time these past three years.”
“I think she’d do better at the inn,” the woman insisted. “Surely she can’t come to any harm in such a public place.”
He worried at his lip. This whole thing had blown up into a ripping old farce.
“It’s not a good idea,” he said. “Miss Wellesley told me she had the misfortune to drop a playbill with her picture and her name on it, practically under the ruffian’s nose. She’s safer with me, whatever you may think, Miss—”
“Vale,” she said coolly. “Lady Jemima Vale. And you are—”
In response he drew a card from his waistcoat pocket and handed it to her with a brief nod of his head. Her eyes darkened and her mouth tightened into a knot as she read the words.
“Let me see.” Lovelace reached down and twitched the card from Jemima’s hand. “Beecham Bryce,” she read aloud.
“At your service,” he murmured.
“I believe I’ve heard that name before,’ the girl mused. She fluttered her eyelids coquettishly as she returned the card to his hand. “Are you someone famous, Mr. Bryce?”
Before he could answer, Lady Jemima said sharply. “Oh, he’s famous all right. Or perhaps infamous is a more fitting word—he’s possibly the greatest libertine in the country.”
Bryce bowed graciously as he tucked the card in his pocket.
“You give me too much credit, ma’am. Perhaps in the south of England.”
Jemima put up her chin. “That’s settled it—she is coming with me to the inn.”
“No,” the girl cried out. “I want to go with him. He’ll protect me.” She leaned down from the saddle and said to Lady Jemima, “Can you protect me?”
Jemima crossed her arms, glaring at Bryce as she muttered, “I doubt anyone could protect you from the likes of him.”
Bryce thought it was time to end the melodrama. “There is an obvious solution,” he said smoothly. “If you, Lady Jemima, would also avail yourself of my hospitality, then Miss Wellesley will be properly chaperoned. And as a lady of advanced years”—he paused to let his words sink in—“you will surely be beyond any adverse gossip.”
Lady Jemima appeared to be speechless.
“There, now,” he said with a patently false smile. “Hasn’t that settled things nicely. I’ll get you squared away in my house and then ride back to alert the innkeeper that he is only to reveal this young lady’s whereabouts to her parents.”
He took up the reins of his horse and headed across the cow pasture with Lovelace in tow. Lady Jemima hung back for several minutes, as if weighing her options, and then came after them at a fast clip. Bryce waited at the edge of the meadow, watching her graceful, long-limbed progress over the grass. It did wonderful things to his imagination.
Perhaps his enforced sojourn in the country wasn’t going to be so dull after all.