Page 17 of The Lost Duke of Wyndham

He remembered her. He remembered the way she moved, the way she felt pressed up against him. He remembered the soft breath of the air between their bodies when she’d moved away.

He’d liked her. He didn’t often get the chance to like or dislike the people he waylaid, but he’d been thinking to himself that there was something rather appealing about the flash of intelligence in her eyes when the old lady had shoved her at him, giving him permission to hold a gun to her head.

He’d not approved of that. But he’d appreciated it all the same, because touching her, holding her—it had been an unexpected pleasure. And when the old lady returned with the miniature, his only thought had been that it was a pity he didn’t have time to kiss her properly.

Jack held himself quietly as he watched her move in the drive, glancing over her shoulder, then leaning forward to say something to the other girls. One of the blondes linked arms with her and led her off to the side. They were friends, he realized with surprise, and he wondered if the girl—his girl, as he was now thinking of her—was something more than a companion. A poor relation, maybe? She was certainly not a daughter of the house, but it seemed she was not quite a servant.

She adjusted the straps of her bonnet, and then she (What was her name? He wanted to know her name) pointed to something in the distance. Jack found himself glancing the same way, but there were too many trees framing the drive for him to see whatever had captured her interest.

And then she turned.

Faced him.

Saw him.

She did not cry out, nor did she flinch, but he knew that she saw him in the way she…

In the way she simply was, he supposed, because he could not see her face from such a distance. But he knew.

His skin began to prickle with awareness, and it occurred to him that she’d recognized him, too. It was preposterous, because he was all the way down the drive, and not wearing his highwayman’s garb, but he knew that she knew she was staring at the man who had kissed her.

The moment—it could only have lasted seconds—stretched into eternity. And then somewhere behind him a bird cawed, snapping him from his trance, and one thought pounded through his head.

Time to go.

He never stayed in one spot for long, but here—this place—it was surely the most dangerous of all.

He gave it one last look. Not of longing; he did not long for this. And as for the girl from the carriage—he fought down something strange and acrid, burning in his throat—he would not long for her, either.

Some things were simply untenable.

“Who was that man?”

Grace heard Elizabeth speak, but she pretended not to. They were sitting in the Willoughbys’ comfortable carriage, but their happy threesome now numbered four.

The dowager had, upon rising from her bed, taken one look at Amelia’s sun-kissed cheeks (Grace did think that she and Thomas had taken quite a long walk together, all things considered), and gone into a barely intelligible tirade about the proper decorum of a future duchess. It was not every day one heard a speech containing dynasty, procreation, and sunspots—all in one sentence.

But the dowager had managed it, and now they were all miserable, Amelia most of all. The dowager had got it into her head that she needed to speak with Lady Crowland—most probably about the supposed blemishes on Amelia’s skin—and so she invited herself along for the ride, giving instructions to the Wyndham stables to ready a carriage and send it after them for the return journey.

Grace had come along, too. Because, quite frankly, she didn’t have any choice.

“Grace?” It was Elizabeth again.

Grace sucked in her lips and positively glued her eyes to a spot on the seat cushion just to the left of the dowager’s head.

“Who was it?” Elizabeth persisted.

“No one,” Grace said quickly. “Are we ready to depart?” She looked out the window, pretending to wonder why they were delayed on the drive. Any moment now they would leave for Burges Park, where the Willoughbys lived. She had been dreading the journey, short though it was.

And then she’d seen him.

The highwayman. Whose name wasn’t Cavendish.

But once was.

He had left before the dowager emerged from the castle, turning his mount in a display of horsemanship so expert that even she, who was no equestrienne, recognized his skill.

But he had seen her. And he had recognized her. She was certain of it.

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