“Splendid,” the duke said, as though this was something he did every day.
Lettyharrumphed.
“The best place to catch a cab in this neighborhood is over that way, a few blocks,” the duke said amiably, guiding her down the street. He was considerably taller than she, but he modulated his strides to match hers, so he wasn’t tugging her along. His arm was very warm where it was laced in hers.
“How would you know?” she asked irritably. She’d tried politely extricating herself. She’d tried walking away. Maybe downright rudeness would work. “Don’t you have your own fancy carriage to squire you about?”
Instead of looking annoyed, the duke looked intrigued by her attitude. Drat.
“I do,” he said. “But, as you noted, I was not always a duke. Before I inherited, I did not keep my own carriage.”
“What a wretched inconvenience,” she said dryly. “I simply could not get by withoutthreecarriages at my beck and call.”
This time, he grinned. It was a nice grin.
What was the world coming to, she thought crossly, that you could not even count on annoying men to look properly villainous? This one looked as though he were having a delightful afternoon stroll with a friend, the wretch.
“One perseveres,” he said with a great deal of put-upon bravery, pressing his hand to his heart. Despite herself, Letitia felt her lips twitch. “Truth be told, it wasn’t worth the expense when I was the marquess. But now—lest this be the thing holding you back—rest assured that I am well-funded, indeed.”
He paused meaningfully. “Well-funded enough, that is,” he continued, “to offer quite a sizeable wage to a governess who found herself able to get through the defenses of a certain little girl.”
Letitia would have liked to say that honesty was what made her pause. Or even the flash of uncertainty in his eye when he spoke about Iris and her defenses.
It wasn’t. It was the money.
A sizeable wagewasn’t an amount that she could calculate. But there was no world in which the wage at the Bassetts could be calledsizeable. Which meant that the duke was offeringmore.
And with more, she could…
But no. She shook herself, pulling her arm free from his to raise it, hailing the hackney that was rumbling up the road.
“Thank you,” she said as the carriage came to a stop in front of her. “But no. Good day, Your Grace.”
Best to keep things short. That way, he could not twist her words around. Besides, she didn’t like the look in his eye as she pulled the carriage door shut. It wasn’t the look of a man who planned to give up.
And the thing that made her the most nervous about that was that it did not frighten her nearly as much as it ought to have done.
* * *
Ezra followed her.
This was probably the point where his behavior shifted from questionable to outright nefarious, but he could not resist. He was already hailing another cab before he even questioned his decision, then offering the driver about five times the usual fare for a trip if he discreetly followed the hack in front of them.
The driver, grinning at the handful of coins he’d been presented with, didn’t seem overly troubled by things likemoralsordecorum, so Ezra decided that he wouldn’t be, either.
He considered Miss Knightley as the carriage moved from the smooth cobblestones of Mayfair into the rutted, jolting streets of less fashionable neighborhoods.
“She is intriguing,” he muttered to himself, his fingers tapping a meandering rhythm against his knee as he thought.
She had hesitated when he had offered her more money, but it had not been enough to change her mind. That was interesting in itself. He knew that governesses didn’t make much, as the included room and board of their positions was considered an added incentive to the role. So it wasn’t inherently strange that she should want more money.
It could just be pure avarice,he told himself. More money was more money, and that wasn’t a bad thing to have. But he didn’tthinkso, and Ezra had long since learned the merits of trusting his instincts.
“What do you need moneyfor, you curious little thing?” he asked the dark air of the carriage. They were moving close enough to the docks now that he could smell the stink of the Thames. This was no place for a young woman alone, not even temporarily while she sought a new position. Why had she not gone to one of the respectable boarding houses?
It had to be about the money. Did she have debts? She had spent the past year or more living in the country with Xander and Helen. What debts could she possibly have? Somehow, she didn’t strike him as a gambler.
He was still weighing the possibilities when the carriage in front of him came to a stop. Ezra’s driver had the good sense to idle a little way away, so that Miss Knightley didn’t note her pursuer. Unfortunately, this meant that Ezra had a poor vantage as hewatched Miss Knightley go up to the door of a ramshackle little building that looked as though it had needed a new roof half a decade ago.
