Charmed by…Charles’ betrothed.
Did those clouds look closer? They had to be, and there was a particular nip in the air that hadn’t been there when they set out that morning.
“Is anything the matter?” she said.
Reggie whipped his gaze to meet hers. “The matter? No, nothing’s wrong.”
“You seemed to be whispering something before you groaned.”
“I groaned?” he said.
She grinned and shrugged.
Now he was muttering to himself. She couldn’t know his plans. Plans that once Charles saw her again, saw that she wasn’t as he’d described, he would change his mind, and all would be well.
Even now she was intriguing, although the increasing mist was quickly flattening the curls in her hair, and the bite to the afternoon air cast her nose red, with her cheeks growing rosier, and her lips were a shade of blue that shouldn’t be enticing but somehow was.
She was a woman with a kind heart, who on a moment’s noticed dropped everything so she could tend to her recovering betrothed.
Who, with perseverance, packed faster than any woman he’d ever known, and traveled light. Their delay, from what he could tell, was solely so she could tend to the animals and instruct the servants.
He had done what he could, but she had been a whirlwind around him.
And this woman’s family’s estate was adjacent to Charles’? He was mad to even think of giving such a treasure away. Why, if he saw her lips, he’d probably want to warm them up with his own, just like…
What was wrong with him? Reggie had never acted this way with any woman before, let alone the woman who was betrothed to a friend who had saved his life.
He shouldn’t be thinking of kissing her lips to test how cold they were against his own, and how he would warm them.
“You groaned again,” she confirmed.
“I’m concerned with the weather,” he blurted.
She looked behind her. “It’s not too cold yet, and the sun is still high. I can travel more, if you’re concerned about me.”
She would want to reach England, because that was where Charles was. And she was right: Reggie was concerned for her, though he shouldn’t be. It was disconcerting how quickly he’d fallen in awe of her. She was for Charles, not for him, and talking of his concern for her wouldn’t help those dangerous thoughts.
“You pack well for a woman,” he offered as another change of subject. A foolish one, but then, his mind hadn’t been working properly since he met her yesterday.
Was it only yesterday?
“I pack well for anyone,” she said. This time there was a bit of a bite to her tone. One he rightly deserved.
“You’re just…swift, is all I meant.”
She turned away a bit. “When you don’t have much, there’s no need to drag it out.”
Why would that be? The estate looked a bit rough in places, but the livestock were well tended, and Charles had often talked of its profitability. In fact, that was mostly what he talked about—the loss of income to his own estate if the arranged marriage didn’t go through.
Reggie, after hearing countless times of the ogre Charles was to marry, had heartily agreed no dowry, nor profitability to his estate, would be worth it.
And maybe it was that notion that kept niggling at his conscience. Maybe Charles wouldn’t have written the letter to call off the arranged marriage if Reggie hadn’t, over several months, agreed with him. Charles never had anything nice to say about her, and certainly had never been faithful to her, nor to the arrangement.
It wasn’t until Reggie started agreeing with him that Charles called it off. It could have been coincidence, but Reggie wondered.
“Was that not your home?” he asked.
“I was born—”
