Chloe urged the horses faster.
And to think she’d bragged to her siblings that the next time she saw Faircliffe, she’d givehimthe cut direct. Instead she was carting him across town like a gin-crazed hackney driver.
They were out of Mayfair, at least; that was something. But they had to get off the road before someone noticed the House of Lords’ prized orator hanging his head out of the front window like a puppy, with some nondescript chit at the reins.
“I demand you stop this coach at once!” the duke thundered.
She made a sharp left into a narrow alley. One of the inns her family used as a safe harbor was a few miles from there. The proprietress was paid well not to ask questions. Chloe could jump from the carriage and slip through the kitchen and out through the laundry door before the duke scrambled out of the coach.
Not that a duke wouldscramble. At least, not a dignified nob like Faircliffe. He moved with stiff, austere precision—a godlike statue come to life. He was as clever as Apollo, as forbidden as Bacchus, as dangerous as Ares.
No matter where she glimpsed him, he managed to look utterly majestic and extremely uncomfortable in his own skin at the same time—as though a great prophecy had been bestowed upon him and he did not relish what the future had in store.
But today Chloe held the reins. She alone determined her path.
The rapid beating of her heart was due to the surprise of finding him behind her, not from his closeness or the way she could feel the energy radiating from his body along her spine and the back of her neck. He was a problem, and she would deal with it.
“I am warning you,” Faircliffe began, “you haven’t just stolen my coach; you’ve made off with my entire person! Do you know what happens to… Wait a minute.” His words were slow and increasingly certain. “This isn’t a proper theft at all, is it? I see your game. You don’t wish to kidnap me. You wish tocompromiseme. You’re a common social climber hoping to obtain an advantageous marriage by nefarious means!”
His smug certainty at his own hilariously inaccurate conclusion made Chloe wish Tiglet were still in the basket so she could toss him back at Faircliffe.
In Parliament, the duke seemed accustomed to being the cleverest person in the room. This gave him the obnoxious tendency to assume others could not keep up with him. But in this case, his arrogance was a boon. If he wished to believe her some silly debutante scheming to land a duke “by any means necessary,” so be it.
“H-how did you figure me out?” she stammered, injecting a measure of mortification into her voice.
Now that she’d stolen her painting and replaced it with a forgery, she couldn’t let him suspect she was fleeing the scene. Absconding with an eligible bachelor was a far better alibi.
He snorted. “The only reason any respectable young lady would orchestrate a private encounter with a lord is to force him to the altar. What else could this be?”
What else, indeed! Chloe steered the horses down another back alley. She was more grateful than ever that she hadn’t been born to aristocracy, if their marriage mart was this cutthroat.
“Well?” His velveteen voice was right behind her. “Aren’t you going to tell me your name?”
“I’m…”Jane Brown.
But she didn’t need that alias anymore. That washerpainting in the basket beside her, which would have been returned ages ago if the almighty Duke of Faircliffe had deigned to answer her family’s entreaties or acknowledge them when they attempted to seek an audience.
Now that she never again needed to humiliate herself by throwing herself into his path only to be brushed aside, she didn’t care if he knew her real name. Better yet, shewantedhim to know it. Despite his best efforts to avoid them, he was stuck in a carriage with a Wynchester.Ha! Take that, Your Grace!
She did not bother to hide her smirk. “I’m Chloe Wynchester.”
The sharp inhalation of absolute horror squeaking from Faircliffe’s throat should have been amusing. Instead, it was insult and injury. She clutched the reins and concentrated on getting to the Puss & Goose coaching inn as quickly as possible. Once she rid herself of the duke, she and His High-and-Mightiness need never cross paths again.
“ChloeWynchester,” he whispered, as if by not giving his full voice to her name perhaps it wouldn’t be true. His moan grated. “Why couldn’t it at least have been Miss Honoria?”
Oh, difficult to say. Perhaps because Baron Vanderbean’s alleged daughter Honoria was another lie.
To provide the wards he considered family a lasting connection to the beau monde, the baron had created a fictional heir and heiress who existed only on paper. No one peered too closely at wealthy lords from far-off nations. The house and most of the fortune now belonged to “Horace Wynchester,” an eccentric recluse like his father, who preferred to conduct all business via the post. Every single one of the siblings could pen the new baron’s “signature” perfectly.
One of many secrets she would never share with the Duke of Faircliffe.
“My apologies for not being mybettersister,” Chloe snapped.
A mortified pause. “I’m sorry. I did not mean—”
“Youdidmean,” she said bitterly.
And for that, Faircliffedeservedto be betrothed to a figment of the ton’s collective imagination. After all, His Grace didn’t give two buttons about whatpersonhe married. All that mattered was good blood, a fine dowry, superior social connections.
