Page 8 of One Night with a Rake

“What you don’t have, milady, is sense.”

The maid outpaced them, knees and elbows pumping, and fled past, yelling for someone named Reuben.

“But you don’t understand—” Georgette began.

“No, you obviously don’t understand the peril you’re in.” Behind her, an older woman in a blue dressing gown a decade out of fashion appeared in the doorway and shook her fist at them. Nate figured she must be the proprietress. Then the madam and half a dozen of her girls came barreling after them.

“Now pick up your skirts and fly, Georgette,” Nate ordered. “Or I’ll carry you over my shoulder like a piglet on its way to market.”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “You wouldn’t dare.”

Four

I must have a sign on my forehead that reads “Please cart me away in the most undignified manner possible,” Georgette thought crossly.

The cobbles blurred as she bumped along. Twice in the last quarter hour, Georgette had found herself in this same ridiculous position, arms dangling, head down, bum to the sky. Only this time, she could scarcely draw a breath since her chest thumped Nathaniel’s back with each pounding stride.

Her bonnet ribbons came loose, and the cunning little capote flew free. She tried to catch it, but the long strips of satin slipped through her fingertips. The delicate lacy confection landed in the rivulet of yellowish slime, settling to float like a little boy’s paper boat on the Thames.

At least my slippers are safe this time.

Sounds of pursuit echoed through the narrow canyon of leaning structures, and intellectually, Georgette admitted Nathaniel was right about the need for haste.

But blast the man, he was not right about the way he manhandled her. And she’d tell him so.

As soon as she managed more than half a gulp of air.

“Quick, my lady,” Mercy shrieked from somewhere ahead of them.

As if I’m in control of how fast I go.

They burst out of dingy Lackaday Lane into the brighter sunlight of the wider street. Nathaniel shoved her through the open door of her carriage with no gentleness at all and clambered in after her.

“Close the door, Reuben!” Mercy ordered from the seat she’d taken next to the driver.

The coach door slammed so hard, its hinges rattled.

“Drive,” Mercy commanded in her best cockney screech, and the horses leaped into a jolting canter as the mob from Madam Bouchard’s spilled into the street after them. Georgette wondered if there had been enough time for Reuben Darling to leap onto his customary place at the back of the carriage or if he’d been engulfed by the sea of ragged silks.

Her heart hammered and she dragged in a sweet lungful of the lavender-scented air inside her father’s carriage. She had been in danger. Only now did Georgette allow herself to realize how much.

“That’s a very capable lady’s maid you’ve got there,” Nathaniel said as he sprawled on the opposite squab. By rights, he ought to have been as out of breath as Georgette, but instead the infuriating man merely spread his arms across the tufted back of his seat and cocked a brow at her. “You should listen to her more often.”

“And you should have listened to me. Do you realize that now I shall have to go back?”

“For God’s sake, why?”

“Because we didn’t even have a chance to speak to Mercy’s friend before we were set upon by the bully.”

“Who’s Mercy?”

“My maid. The one with whom you’re so impressed.” Georgette let her gaze flick around the small interior, not trusting herself to look directly at Nathaniel.

She’d often imagined what it would be like to be alone with a man in an enclosed coach. In her mind’s eye, the imaginary fellow would spout sonnets and gaze at her admiringly. At the end of the idyllic ride, perhaps he’d ask for one of her gloves as a memento.

Perfectly correct. Perfectly honorable.

She sighed. Like all her romantic fantasies, the one about being alone with a man in a coach always left her with a satisfying rosy glow in her chest.