Page 8 of Miss Prim and the Duke of Wylde
Meg transferred her gaze to the cottage. No Mrs. Kennedy opened the rear door and came rushing to assist with her drunken employer. There was a stillness about the place that assured Meg that there truly was no one at home.
“Damn!” She looked at her still-comatose passenger. “Now what?”
Could she just leave him snoring on the seat?
She glanced at the horses. If she tied them up…
No. They would grow restless, and then who knew what they might do? They could easily injure themselves, let alone someone else.
She returned to studying their owner’s long, relaxed limbs and wide-shouldered frame. There was no possibility that she could even shift him; he would have to move under his own steam.
How to revive him? She couldn’t sit there all day, just waiting for him to rouse.
She ought to have asked Carter and Miller if they knew which lord he was. She’d dismissed the point as inconsequential at the time—she hadn’t needed to know who he was to deliver him to the cottage—but now… It would be nice to have a name to bark at him.
Instead, she used the point of one elbow to nudge him sharply. “Wake up!”
He sucked in a breath, then softly snorted. Two seconds later, his absurdly long lashes fluttered, then squinting warily, he eased up his lids.
Raising his head, he squinted at her, then his gaze went past her. Slowly, he looked around, then struggled upright. “You brought me back.”
“Carter and Miller—the woodsmen who found your horses wandering along the road without a compos mentis driver—told me you were staying here.” She glanced at the cottage, wondering if the men had got that right.
“I am.”
“There doesn’t seem to be anyone here.”
“My valet and groom went to Rolvenden, to the market.”
He sat fully upright and, frowning, scrubbed the fingers of one hand through his hair, disarranging the black locks thoroughly, yet when he lowered his hand, his hair appeared merely fashionably windblown.
She swallowed a humph and, in increasing dismay, stared at the cottage. “So there’s really no one here?”
“’Fraid not. And my head’s still spinning. If you’ll excuse me, I should go inside and lie down.” Before she could stop him, he swung his long legs out of the curricle and stepped onto the gravel. He stood tall, settled his coat over his shoulders, then promptly collapsed, falling back against the curricle’s side and slowly sliding down to end in a heap on the ground.
Startled, the horses shifted. Immediately, Meg gave them her attention and spent the next minute calming them again.
Exasperated, she sighed and listened, but no sound of retching reached her ears. That was better than the alternative.
Seeing no other option, she pulled on the brake, climbed down on the other side of the carriage from where its owner now lay, and playing out the reins, discovered they were long enough to tie to the hitching post outside the barn door.
That done and the horses secured, she walked around the carriage and halted, looking down at the rumpled figure now sprawled against the curricle’s wheel. His dark head was once again down, his chin sunk almost to his chest. “Are you still awake?” she demanded.
“Sadly, yes.” He raised a hand to his temple. “There’s no need to shout.”
She pressed her lips tightly together to suppress an unholy grin, then bracingly said, “Come on. You have to get up. Although I’m sorely tempted, I’m too well brought up to leave you lying there.”
A moment passed, then he raised his head and angled a dark glance up at her. “I promise you I would get up if I could. Unfortunately, for reasons of their own, my limbs aren’t cooperating.”
“The reason is probably all the whisky you’ve drunk.”
“I only had one half mug this morning. It was all the ale last night that’s to blame.”
She shook her head. Several of her male cousins turned talkative when drunk. Stupidly so. Just like this lordling, whoever he might be.
Seeing nothing for it, she heaved a theatrical sigh. “All right.” She stepped around and positioned herself in front of him. Facing him with her feet planted at what she judged to be the appropriate distance from him, she held out her hands and wriggled her fingers. “Give me your hands. Obviously, you’re a great deal heavier than I, but with the carriage behind you, we might just manage to get you on your feet.”
He focused on her hands, then sighed, too, as if her direction was a massive imposition. But obediently, albeit slowly, he sorted out his arms and legs, got his feet planted before him, then reached up and grasped her hands.
