Page 16 of Black and Silver

As he chewed, Minnie finished her tale. “Lord Owen had followed me to London. I cannot be certain if he has been following us since we set out or if he merely believes himself to be thwarted and is returning home to Wales, and that our convergence today is coincidence.”

“Let’s hope it’s the latter,” Lawrence said, smiling as he picked up his mug of ale.

“Either way,” Minnie sighed, picking a flake of pastry from her pie, “I cannot let him or anyone else who might inform my parents and ruin my life see me.”

“Of course not,” Lord Lawrence agreed. “And it is a lucky thing that we are about to veer off the road to Wales so that we might divert to the no longer Lady Wimpole’s estate.”

Minnie sat straight again and smiled. “I’d nearly forgotten our secondary errand,” she said. “Are we very close to formerly styled as Lady Wimpole?”

Lord Lawrence hummed and shrugged. “A day or two south of here ought to get us there. Either way, you have no need to fear being discovered and bundled off to Wales.” He reached across and placed a hand on her thigh as it rested at an odd angle while she sat on the wall. “I will protect you from evil, Lady Minerva.”

Minnie’s heart swelled in her chest, and she feared that she looked like a soppy fool as she returned Lord Lawrence’s look. She’d never had a protector like Lord Lawrence before, and of all things, she quite liked it. He made her feel safe and valued, neither of which were emotions she was at all used to.

“And I will protect you, my lord,” she said, resting a hand on his arm when he withdrew his touch. “I will protect you from whatever trouble we might encounter in retrieving your statuefrom a lady whom I gather you were once romantically involved with?”

Lord Lawrence cleared his throat. “Er, yes, I was. A very long time ago.”

Minnie couldn’t imagine why any woman would throw Lord Lawrence over, which was partially why she suspected he would need protecting of one sort or another.

“We shall be a team of two, then,” she said, smiling. “Come what may.”

“Hear, hear,” Lord Lawrence said, then downed the last of his ale.

Minnie smiled. She had a feeling that the excitement of their journey had only just begun.

Chapter Six

Lawrence figured there was an even chance that Lady Minerva was either telling the truth or making the entire outlandish story of leaving an unwanted fiancé at the altar and escaping with the help of her maid on her wedding day. The tale was outlandish, but so was Lady Minerva.

If he was honest with himself, Lawrence liked Lady Minerva’s outlandishness. He liked how different she was from any other woman of his acquaintance. He liked her vivid, often macabre imagination. He liked the easy way she carried herself and pleasing shape of her, even when she was squashed in a carriage seat, squirming to be comfortable as they jostled over bad roads.

He liked the soulfulness of her dark eyes and the softness of her hair, which always found a way of escaping from the careless chignon she kept it in while they traveled. He liked the porcelain softness of her skin, even if it had gained color since they set out from London. And her lips…. Well, her lips inspired thoughts in him that were best not thought of when they were stuck in such close proximity for so long.

The simple truth of it was that he liked Lady Minerva Llewellyn, and even more astounding, Lawrence was relatively certain that she liked him as well. There was something easy in her manner that had developed over the course of the last few days that made him nearly certain of her regard. It was in the way she now smiled at him freely whenever he gestured with her, the way she propped her feet up on the seat beside him sometimes so she could stretch out as they traveled, and the way she touched him so freely, almost without thought.

Yes, Lawrence was certain of it. He and Lady Minerva liked each other.

But with that knowledge came a terrifying feeling of doom. Things had always started off well for him in the past, but a woman’s passion cooled all too quickly when she discovered he was not the man she thought he was. He was not perfect. He had glaring flaws. In the past, every time those flaws had come to light, the women he’d given his heart to would leave him, laughing as they went.

“My lord, are you quite alright?” Lady Minerva asked as they rolled across Wiltshire on their final approach to Tidworth Hall, where the former Lady Wimpole, now Lady Jessica Bellinger, lived with her husband, Lord Otho Bellinger.

“Hmm?” Lawrence glanced up from the hole he was boring into Clarence with his gaze. “Oh, yes,” he said, smiling tightly.

“You and Clarence seemed to be in deep discussion,” she said, eyeing him carefully, then glancing to her faithful skull companion, then back to Lawrence. “Is there something the two of you would like to share with me? I’ve found that while Clarence is an excellent listener, he is not much of a conversationalist.”

Lawrence relaxed by a hair, and his smile relaxed with him. “I was just relating stories of days gone by to our hard-headed friend,” he said.

Lady Minerva’s lips twitched as though she were hiding a smile. “You know I love stories of days gone by.”

Lawrence’s smile faded. He needed to tell Lady Minerva the sad tale of his failed love affair with Jessica, but the humiliation of it all was too much.

Then again, Lady Minerva had been free with her own tales of woe, if they were to be believed.

“I was telling Clarence a tragic love story,” he said, figuring he owed Minerva the same sort of truth she had shared with him, but grateful to have Clarence as a buffer.

“They are my favorite sort,” Lady Minerva said, closing her book and setting it aside, as if indicating she was ready to hear all. “Clarence’s as well.”

Lawrence sighed. “It’s the story of a bright-eyed and eager young artist who spent a lovely summer in East Anglia, years ago, at the house of a certain Lord Wimpole.”

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