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‘It was too hot, I don’t need to hide now and I am your groom. You are eccentric and have an Indian one.’
‘Give me strength! I am not so eccentric as to have a female Indian groom.’
‘People see what they expect to see.’ She glanced downwards. ‘It is a tight coat.’
Lucian told himself that he was not going to study the effect on her curves and kept his gaze fixedly between his horses’ heads. ‘How are you going to explain your absence from Sandbay?’
‘I do not have to explain. Maude will tell Dot to open the shop, or close it if it is inconvenient for her. I am, after all, the daughter of a marquess. People expect me to do exactly what I want. The fact that I do not normally choose to flaunt my rank, or to put people out because of it, does not mean I can’t if I have to.’
It was easy to forget that this stubborn, independent, infuriating woman was of the same rank as his sister and that, however unconventional her upbringing had been, she was Lady Sara, part of his world. What would he have thought of her if he had met her in a crowded ballroom or at a fashionable concert? Beautiful, desirable, intelligent…
The pair jibbed and Lucian yanked his attention back to what he was doing. They were still not on the turnpike road and he dared not risk a cracked axle or a broken wheel.
‘The road book is in my valise, if you can reach it. I need to plan ahead for changes and to make certain we do not miss our road.’
‘I know it well as far as Dorchester.’ Sara turned on the seat, knelt up and leaned precariously over the back.
‘Take care!’ Lucian jammed the reins into his whip hand, brought his left down to grab what he intended to be the waistband of her trousers and found himself cupping a deliciously rounded buttock. He let go and Sara squirmed back on to the seat, pink-cheeked and clutching Cary’s Great Roads.
‘I apologise, I was trying to—’
‘You have a case of pistols in your bag,’ she stated, ignoring his inadvertent fondling. ‘Tell me you are not going to call Gregory out.’
‘I am not setting out on a journey that could last for days without weapons.’
‘That is not what I asked. Lucian, this has gone too far, you are going to have to let them marry. It is obvious from what I saw of his injuries that Gregory could not possibly have returned to her, whether it was an accident or he was set-upon. And she loves him, she has carried his child.’
He knew it and he knew, too, why admitting the inevitable was so difficult. If Marguerite married Gregory Farnsworth now, then all his opposition, their elopement, her miscarriage and misery—and presumably whatever had ruined Gregory’s face—had been for nothing. If he had handled things differently from the beginning, then he would have spared his sister all that grief.
Which meant that he had failed in his most basic duty, to protect his family. At home there was a Long Gallery, filled with portraits, the earliest dating back to the reign of Henry VII. His father and grandfather had walked the line of them regularly with him, telling the stories, the history. Men of honour, all of them, building the fortunes of the family until they were placed in his hands to safeguard. It was not Marguerite who had lost her honour, it was he who had lost his. And he was damned if he was going to admit any of that to this woman who held male honour so cheaply.
‘Killing Farnsworth is not going to help matters now, I agree.’ But he could still beat the living daylights out of the man, he thought grimly. And Lady Sara was not going to stop that.
*
Travel with the Marquess of Cannock was rapid, uncomfortable, occasionally alarming but exceedingly efficient, Sara discovered. Ostlers ran to fetch horses when he stopped for a change and their choices were quality animals. Landlords bustled out with ale and offers of the house specials and stopped to listen sympathetically to the tale of his ward who had run off with an unsuitable chit of a girl and who needed to be rescued for his own good.
‘He isn’t quite clear in his thinking since his accident,’ Lucian would explain, neatly building Gregory’s injuries into the narrative. ‘He was easily imposed upon by the little hussy.’
They picked up the trail in Charminster, just north of Dorchester, where the eloping couple had made their first change of horses at four o’clock, then again at Yeovil.
Sara had decided she was his lordship’s valet, which meant she could keep her distance from the ostlers and grooms and, as she had predicted, it was her clothing that attracted the attention, not the feminine face beneath the turban.
*
It was almost four in the afternoon when they reached Bristol and saw the spire of St Mary Redcliffe church. Lucian reined in his tired pair in the yard of the Greyhound and climbed down.
‘How are we going to search?’ Sara joined him and looked around. ‘I have no idea how many posting inns there are in the city.’
‘We are not. We are going to eat something, because that packet of bacon sandwiches was a long time ago. And while we eat, the urchins of the city will search for us.’ He snapped his fingers at a hopeful-looking lad hanging around waiting for the chance to carry bags for a tip. ‘You see this?’ He held up two crowns and the boy’s eyes widened.
‘Cor, two troopers? Yes, guv’nor, I sees ’em.’
‘They’re yours if you and your mates can find out about a post-chaise that came through Bristol earlier today. It had a yellow body, four horses, two postilions. There were two passengers, a young lady and a man with a badly scarred face and an eyepatch. I want to know when they set out again, what road they took and if the carriage or number of horses has changed. Got that? I need the information within two hours. If you can do it in one, there’s another bull’s eye for you.’
‘Cove with a shutter on his ogle and a bloss in a yellow bounder with four tits. I got it, guv’nor.’ He took to his heels, whistling a shrill note, and a handful of urchins appeared as he ran out of the gate.
‘Two hours?’
