Page 18 of How to Cross a Marquess (The Way to a Lord's Heart 3)

John gathered all his hope and courage. “Will you let me come with you?”

“Eh?” Tom turned his head to look at him.

“When you go. Run away. Or, it isn’t really. Running. When you walk off to see the world.” He clasped his hands, then quickly unclasped them. “I want to see all the snakes in the world. Particularly the spitting cobras!”

Tom sat up slowly, moving rather as he had when he captured the trout. He crossed his legs in the grass. “I’d just be rambling about in England,” he answered. “Mebbe Scotland. That’s right close, ain’t it? No cobras though.”

“But you can go wherever you want!”

Tom shook his head. “I can go where my feet will take me. And where I’m allowed in. That ain’t everywhere, by any means.”

“No one can stop you though.”

“Sure they can. I’ve been chased off and barely missed beatings. I was nearly taken up and put in the workhouse once.” Tom held up a hand before John could protest again. “Also. Seems to me it must cost a deal of money to get over to where these cobras live.”

John slumped, his dreams of unfettered freedom dissolving.

“You’d need one of them scientific expeditions,” Tom continued. “I heard Lord Macklin talking about one of them.”

“You mean like James Cook? I’ve read the chronicles of his voyages. And there’s James Strange and the other fellows in the East India Company.”

“Yeah. Them.”

“I’dloveto organize a scientific expedition to catalog snakes in India.”

“Well, there’s people that do that, eh?”

“Like the Royal Society, you mean?”

“Sure.” Tom nodded wisely. “You could ask them.”

“They want men with university degrees and fellowships and such.”

“Huh. Are there fellows studying snakes in them universities?”

John sat very still. With a smile, Tom let him be.

Four

Macklin’s company was soothing, Roger thought as they returned from a morning ride the following day. He seemed to sense when one wished to talk and when not. And his conversation was always sensible. Should he ever need advice, Macklin was the man, Roger concluded. Not that he did. He had no pressing problems.

“Isn’t that Miss Fairclough?” his guest said, almost as if disputing Roger’s thought.

Roger looked. Fenella rode ahead of them toward the castle gate, alone, as was her habit. He was surprised. She hadn’t visited Chatton since their falling-out. His fault, he acknowledged for the first time.

Her skirts billowed in the wind off the sea, and her horse took offense, sidling and dancing. Roger worried momentarily, but she controlled her mount with casual ease, caught the cloth, and held it down.

“She’s the careless young lady you spoke of at the London dinner?” Macklin asked.

“Careless?”

“The one who urged your wife to venture out in bad weather.”

“Ah.” He’d spoken with extra rancor that night, Roger thought. His feelings had been rubbed raw by his encounter with his in-laws, and he’d been itching for a target. “I don’t think she did, really.”

“Indeed?” Macklin looked interested.

“Arabella had…strong opinions. I expect shedidinsist on going, as Fen—Miss Fairclough says.”

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