Page 82 of The Duchess Debt

In the corner behind her, Gabe lounged on a pile of grain sacks that had yet to be carried into the barn. His beaver hat was drawn down over his face, with his left arm tucked behind his head and his right dangling toward the ground as if he were napping, and his chest rose and fell in steady, even breaths.

Yet she knew he was fully awake when he mumbled from beneath his hat, “You’re going to wear a trench into the ground. Stop pacing and come sit by me.”

Wear a trench—ha! Yet she darted a glance at the ground where she’d been walking back and forth for the past half an hour.

She halted and dropped her arms to her sides in exasperation. “How can you be so calm about this?”

“Because there’s nothing else we can do but wait for the mail coach to arrive, and no sense fretting while we do.”

Shaking her head, she began to pace again. “But they might have disembarked at some other inn or crossroads along the route. We might have missed them.” She bit her thumbnail again. Goodness! She’d wear it down to the quick at this rate. “When the coach arrives, they might not even be on it.”

“They will be.”

“We should have ridden back along the roads and looked for it.”

Gabe had insisted they cut cross-country to the inn instead of sticking to the main coach route in order to arrive ahead of the vehicle, so they’d galloped across fields, jumped stone walls, and even forded two streams to arrive at the first stop in the mail route well before the coach, just as Gabe promised. But now, having nothing to do but wait gave her time to worry.

“And done what, exactly, when we found it?” he mumbled from beneath his hat.

“We would have stopped it.” The man could be so exasperating! “We would have flagged them down and—”

“And I would have become the first duke in English history to be shot for being a highwayman.”

She stopped, crossed her arms, and glared at him. “Not if we explain who we are and why we’ve stopped the coach.”

He lifted the corner of his hat to dart a glance at her with one eye. “You’ve never ridden on a mail coach, have you?”

“Well…no.”

“A mail coach has a royal order not to stop between scheduled stages for any reason.” The hat dropped back over his face. “Not even for dukes and highwaymen.”

“Not even for highwaymen?” she repeated, dumbfounded. “With guns?”

“Not even for those with guns.” As if realizing he would find no peace when she was this anxious, he sat up, placedhis hat properly on his head, and squinted up at her in the bright sunlight. “A royal mail coach willneverstop en route. No highwayman is foolish enough to jump in front of one, even with pistols drawn and shouting ‘Stand and deliver!’ The team will simply run him over, guns and all, and not even slow down.”

Her mouth fell open. “Truly?”

He gave a sharp nod. “Trust me, darling. If Nanny Potts is inside that coach, she’s as good as locked into a moving goal cell.”

She found little comfort in that, sighed out a long breath, and began to pace again. “It isn’t Nanny I’m worried about.”

Oh, poor Alice! The little girl must have been so confused. To be dressed up as boy and whisked out of the nursery in the dead of night, placed into a coach with a bunch of strangers—no, not confused but terrified, even with Nanny at her side. The woman had surely lied to her, told her the wedding that Alice had been looking forward to so eagerly had been moved to London and that she would have to travel there for it. A little girl wouldn’t know any differently. Undoubtedly, Nanny had turned the whole episode into a game, too, as if playing dress-up to convince her to dress like a boy, be addressed as George, and leave her doll behind.

Helena clenched her hands. Oh, that horrible woman! If Alice were hurt because of this, she would—

Gabe stepped in front of her, placed his hands on his shoulders to stop her, and leaned forward to place a kiss to her forehead. As if reading her mind, he said reassuringly, “She would never hurt Alice. Adam was right about that much at least.”

Then he held open his arms. Expelling a tense breath, Helena stepped forward into the comforting circle of his embrace and gave a jerking nod, willing herself to believe him.

Adam… She had been convinced when they left the inn that he would appear in very little time at all, given his riding skills and the quality of the horses Mr. Brown rented to travelers. But there had been no sign of him behind them all morning, and now… “What do you think is taking Adam so long? I thought he would be here by now.”

“He isn’t coming.” Gabe looked away from her questioning gaze and squinted into the sun. “He’s most likely taken Mr. Brown’s horse and is riding as hard as he can in the opposite direction.” He blinked. “He won’t stop until he reaches the coast.”

Nodding her agreement, Helena buried her face in Gabe’s chest. She grieved for him, for the loss of his brother in his life, but shamefully, a not-so-small part of her was glad Adam had left. She hoped he didn’t return to England for a very,verylong time.

But she also knew that Adam wasn’t to blame for canceling her wedding.

Pulling in a shuddering breath, she stepped out of Gabe’s arms and once more began to pace.