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It sounded like nonsense, and he wasn’t being put off that easily. Damn it, he wanted to know. “What things?”
She turned to look at him. He could see her making up her mind whether to tell him the truth or to lie, but when she finally spoke, he still wasn’t sure which option she’d chosen. “He—he is a very jealous man. I—I have someone else in London, another gentleman. That is who I am going to, you see. Lord Appleby will be very angry with me. He probably already knows about this other man, and that is why he has come to Devon. Now do you understand why I can’t see him, Coombe?”
“Another man, miss?” Gabriel didn’t believe her; he didn’t want to.
“Yes.”
“And is this one a lord?”
“No, he’s a duke,” she retorted. “I am making my way up through the peerage.”
He stared at her a moment more, then turned away, and Antoinette noticed a hint of disgust in the set of his shoulders. Was Coombe sitting in moral judgment upon her? She told herself it didn’t matter what a groom thought of her. As long as he did as she asked and helped her to escape, he could despise her all he wished. When the time came he’d have his reward, she’d make certain of that, and they’d go their separate ways with relief.
When the noise of the coach had faded completely, they remounted, and Coombe led her back onto the road. She noticed after that, he dropped the courtesy “miss.” She didn’t care; this was hardly the time for social niceties.
“We need to hurry,” Coombe said, kicking his horse into an urgent gallop. “Once His Lordship reaches the manor and finds us gone he’ll come after us. If you really don’t want him to catch you…?”
“I really don’t.”
They set off, Coombe in front and Antoinette following, trying her best not to think about Lord Appleby in hot pursuit. With luck they would reach Barnstaple and be long gone before Appleby discovered in which direction they’d traveled.
She pressed her hand to the letter inside her bodice and felt reassured. She was on her way to London, to save herself and Cecilia. All other considerations, even men who wore masks and made her body sing like an angel, must be forgotten.
Forever.
Chapter 23
Antoinette remembered little during the ride that followed, just the ever-present fear they would be caught. Now and again Coombe would glance behind him to make sure she was keeping pace but she always was. Soon they left the main road, following a maze of smaller lanes and paths until she was completely turned around. Sometimes it seemed to her that they were heading west rather than east. Once she questioned Coombe about that, and their present whereabouts, but he just shrugged and said that as far as he knew they were going in the right direction.
“Don’t you trust me?” he said.
Do I have a choice? Antoinette thought her dream, as far as he was concerned, hadn’t been as clear-cut as she’d pretended this morning. But there was no point in antagonizing her only friend by suggesting he was taking her in the wrong direction.
“Yes, of course I trust you, Coombe,” she said, forcing a smile. “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t.”
After a while she realized that the smell of salt on the wind had grown very strong. They must be closer to the coast than she’d thought. She drew in a deep breath, weary and yet determined not to ask Coombe to stop for her.
It was only when they came to a village that it occurred to her they’d been avoiding towns and villages up until this point. As they rode slowly down a steep cobbled street past cottages huddled on the hillside, Antoinette looked up and saw the sea. The screech of gulls filled her head and she blinked, taking in the harbor with its curved protective wall around the flotilla of moored boats, and beyond the green water, stretching as far as she could see.
“Coombe,” she said cautiously, shading her eyes against the glare. “This can’t be Barnstaple.”
“No, ’tis St. Nells,” he replied calmly, as if it was perfectly fine to have changed his plans without telling her. “I didn’t expect Lord Appleby to get here so fast. He’ll be after us now, and he’ll catch us on land. We’re going by water. Water’s the only way.”
What he said made sense so she smothered her doubts. “Do you know someone with a boat?” she asked anxiously, knowing even as she spoke that he wouldn’t be so foolish as to come all this way to the coast if he didn’t have a means of sailing away.
“Aye.” There was a note of amusement in his deep growl, and his mouth curled in the shadows of his upended jacket collar.
Again that sense of recognition came over her, stronger than ever, and with it a confusion of other emotions. But once again there was no time for it to make sense. Down at the harbor, boats, large and small, bobbed within the safety of the stone wall, and Coombe dismounted and helped Antoinette down. Her legs gave way as they touched the ground and she stumbled, clinging to him. He was big and strong, his hands firm about her waist, his shoulders broad beneath her grasping fingers.
As her nose pressed into the vee of his shirt it occurred to her that he didn’t smell so bad after all. It was the jacket that smelled, not the body beneath it. But a moment later he was grasping her hand and tugging her along behind him, toward a small tavern
facing the sea.
He turned to her. “Wait here.” He spoke as if it was an order and he was used to giving them.
Surprised, confused, she nodded without answering. He disappeared inside. Antoinette stood, aware of the smells of hot food and ale, mingling with those of the harbor. She was weary and she would have loved something to refresh her, not to mention a hot bath, but she didn’t want to risk lingering if it meant Appleby might catch them. For all she knew he could be on the outskirts of the village right at this very moment.
A short, bowlegged man appeared from the low doorway with Coombe following. Coombe handed him the horses’ reins, and a murmured conversation took place. At one point the man shook his head and laughed. Finally, with a glance at Antoinette, the stranger led the horses around the back of the tavern and Coombe rejoined her, carrying her carpetbag in one hand and his saddlebags in the other.
