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“Please do not trouble yourself on my account,” Lady Sabrina said. “I’m sure he was just a common cutpurse.”
When Tommy shot him a look, Graeme gave a slight shake of the head.
“As you wish,” he said to her. “Tommy, could you run ahead and fetch a hackney? I’m taking the lady to the captain’s house. She and Lady Vivien are friends.”
“Really? ’Cause ladies ain’t usually hanging around the park by themselves, ’specially not this time of day,” the boy replied with his usual and fatal candor.
When Lady Sabrina bristled, Graeme cuffed him on the shoulder. “No cheek from you, lad.”
Tommy let out a dramatic sigh. “I didn’t mean no offense, miss. My name’s Tommy, by the way. Pleased to meet you.”
“And I’m happy to meet you. My name is . . .”
When she hesitated, Graeme finished for her. “Lady Sabrina Bell.”
She flashed him a startled look “How did you know that?”
Graeme led her toward Knightsbridge, as Tommy jogged ahead. “I think you’ll discover I know quite a lot, my lady.”
Her silence suggested she wasn’t best pleased with his answer.
Chapter Two
Sabrina rarely set a foot wrong when it came to dealing with gentlemen, but she’d made a capital blunder with the blasted marquess. Now she had to hope that Mr. Kendrick could shield her from the consequences of her error.
“Serves you right,” she muttered to herself. She’d ignored her instincts when it came to this morning’s assignation.
She couldn’t be blamed for falling afoul of a cutpurse, though. And who in his right mind would shove a person into the Serpentine?
Kendrick peered down at her. “What was that?”
Even when sitting he loomed over her, and also quite squished her into the panels of the hackney coach. Scottish people did seem to run on the brawny side, perhaps an effect of the clean Highland air.
“Nothing of any note, sir.”
She shifted, but there wasn’t an inch between them from their shoulders to their knees. And given how damp they both were, and how Kendrick’s wet buckskins clung to his muscled thighs and to . . . well, the rest of him, Sabrina couldn’t help feeling unnerved.
Dratthe blasted marquess. It was most disappointing that his lordship had proved so unreliable.
Then again, men generally disappointed her.
“We’re both dripping wet, which is no fun,” Kendrick said. “I had to pay the coachman half a guinea before he let us into this confounded thing.”
“I’m happy to pay for the coach, sir.”
He flashed her a ridiculously charming grin, one that no doubt had susceptible ladies swooning on a regular basis. Thank goodness she was impervious to such masculine charms.
Mostly.
“Och, don’t fash yourself, my lady. I’m good for it.”
He had an interesting voice, a rough sort of purr laced with a brogue. His eyes were an arresting shade of forest green, and his forceful jaw paired with a firm mouth that seemed more inclined to scowl than smile.
When he did manage to smile, it made one’s heart skip a beat, which Sabrina foundquiteannoying.
As for the rest of him, his wet hair appeared to be a dark red, and his lean cheeks sported bristle. He seemed an odd combination of rough and refined, and it was the rough part that had initially panicked her.
That he was both kind and a gentleman was not in doubt. What sort of gentleman was he, though? Sabrina had a finely honed sense of social distinctions. Not that she judged one’s character by such a standard, but it did help in deciding how to respond to people in various situations.
