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“We’ll see how glad you are when you spend all day in the saddle,” he said with another look at the sky. “I’d bet five pounds it’s going to rain.”

She followed his gaze and frowned, little lines etching her otherwise smooth forehead. “Well, it isn’t as though the day could get any worse.”

Chapter Two

Jane allowed herself twenty seconds of pure, unadulterated triumph over the handsome man who’d just agreed to become her traveling companion. Then she slipped back into her usual governess mode: quiet bossiness disguised by a thin layer of deference.

“When do you propose we leave, sir?” she asked.

“As soon as you tell me where you think your Lady Margaret has gone with my horse.”

She was almost certain she knew. Jane had worked for the Earl of Rawson for a little more than ten years now. She’d practically grown up with Lady Margaret, as she’d been barely eighteen when she accepted her position, and she knew the young lady as well as she knew herself. She could anticipate her charge’s needs and guess what she was thinking. That’s why it was so surprising that she’d missed the signs that Lady Margaret was planning to slip off in the night. She almost had to admire the young woman’s caginess.

Almost.

“Lady Margaret will have left a note,” she declared.

“A note?”

She nodded. “I’m certain of it. She’s reckless, but she’s not cruel. She knows I’d worry about her.” Never mind that Jane also wanted to shake Lady Margaret until her teeth rattled for causing all of this bother.

“Where would this note be?” he asked.

“I was so wrapped up in her leaving that I didn’t even make a proper check of the room.” She nodded to the inn’s front door. “Come.”

“I should make arrangements for horses,” he said, taking a half step toward the stable.

“No,” she said a little sharper than was perhaps necessary. “I’m sorry, sir, but I don’t trust you not to ride off without me.”

He actually looked taken aback. “I would never do that. As a gentleman—”

“Whom I don’t know,” she said, hands on her hips.

He shook his head, sending a lock of hair spilling over his forehead again. “You trust me enough to travel with me, but you don’t trust me to saddle a pair of horses?”

“Precisely.”

It didn’t make any sense—and was possibly the most idiotic rationalization she’d ever made—but that was about the gist of it. Now that he’d dropped the riding crop and wasn’t yelling quite so brutishly, there was something in his manner that put her at ease. He had a way about him—respectful but also firm—as though he knew exactly where the lines were drawn between man and gentleman, and he wouldn’t cross them. But that didn’t mean he was without his faults, and she wasn’t willing to risk him changing his mind about their tenuous agreement.

Fortunately he threw his hands up and said, “I’m at your mercy. Lead the way, madam.”

She turned, her chest a little puffed up with her victory. This was a good sign. She’d find Lady Margaret, and soon, for the young lady couldn’t have gotten far even on as fearsome a horse as this man described. She’d swear her charge to secrecy and get them both to Holmesfield Hall as planned. And as soon as everything was settled, Jane would send out letters looking for a new position. She knew it was wrong to leave Lady Margaret when she was just eighteen and still wild, but she wasn’t going to put her survival in the hands of a foolhardy young lady. This wasn’t the first time she’d gone chasing after the girl—literally or figuratively—but it would be the last.

Jane led her companion through the inn’s dining room and had her foot on the first step when a thought struck her. She hadn’t remembered seeing a note anywhere in the room when she’d done a quick survey of it, and there was no reason for Lady Margaret to hide it, for her absence would already have caused panic. No, the note—if it existed—was somewhere else. Or with someone else.

“Wait,” Jane said, stopping so quickly that the man’s knee brushed the back of her skirts, sending a pesky little rush of heat surging through her. She tried her best to ignore it as she spun, ducked around him, and made straight for the door behind the dining room’s counter.

The industrious clatter of a working kitchen met her, but the noise slowed when the innkeeper’s wife spotted her. “Can I help you, madam?”

“I’m looking for Sally. It’s urgent I speak to her,” she said.

The woman looked from her to her new travel companion and back to her again. “What’s she gotten into this time?”

“She’s not in any sort of trouble,” Jane said as soothingly as she could.

The innkeeper’s wife gave a little grunt as she went back to kneading a large mound of dough. “And the queen’s going to waltz in and take a table for two tonight. Whatever she’s done or told you, you can believe she’s lying. That’s all that girl does.”

“Even so,” Jane said, not bothering to hide the plea in her voice.