The Capture of the Earl of Glencrae (17 page)

Dominic nodded. “We'll be able to stretch our legs, at least, but eat first—we won't stop again for hours.”

They all took the warning to heart. As soon as the coach halted, they all climbed out and, joined by the other three, made their way into the inn. As soon as their orders were taken, Angelica, with Brenda to stand guard, slipped away to the facility located at the end of a narrow passage. By the time they returned, the innkeeper and his wife were setting platters of ham, eggs, and sausages on the table, along with freshly baked bread and jam, coffeepots, and a teapot.

Angelica applied herself to the fare, but she'd never been a big eater, especially not at breakfast. Not even to pretend to be a youth could she force anything more down. Her meager appetite sated, she considered going for a walk . . . but then realized that if she did, Dominic would feel compelled to go with her, and he, and the other men, too, and even Brenda, were plainly much hungrier than she.

So she sat and sipped her tea, and waited.

Too soon, the coachman and guard who had driven them thus far came around, apparently for a customary tip. Dominic must have been forewarned; he had the coins ready, as if they'd been gathered from the whole table and hadn't come solely from him.

And then the new guard was calling them to reboard.

Thomas, the last of the men to do so, rushed down the passageway after begging the rest of them to make sure the coach didn't leave without him. They dawdled and stalled for as long as they could, until Thomas came streaking out of the inn and scrambled up to his seat, just in the nick of time.

The new coachman cracked his whip, yelled to the horses, the guard sounded his horn, and they were off again.

T
hey made a luncheon stop at Stamford, only marginally longer than their breakfast halt. Angelica, Dominic, Mulley, and Jessup squeezed in a short walk, but the very real risk of the coach driving on without them restricted the excursion. At least they succeeded in properly stretching their legs.

On the road again, the coach rattled past Grantham, then on to Newark, where they were allowed half an hour for a rushed dinner. Then it was back in the coach, rolling north past Doncaster and on toward York.

The rattling, rumbling progress, the frequent blaring of the guard's horn as notice to other carriages to give way, the unpredictable pitching, and the constant, repetitive thunder of the horses' hooves all combined to make conversation well nigh impossible; the four of them inside the carriage quickly sank into a somnolent state, silently watching the scenery drift past.

Angelica had intended to use the hours to tease more information out of Dominic; instead, her normally active, alert, and inquiring mind sank into a miasma of . . . watching trees and fields slide past. She'd often traveled long distances with her family, although rarely at such a breakneck pace, but the Cynster carriages were much better made and better sprung, so the swaying and the noise were much reduced.

By the time the coach rolled into York, she'd made a firm resolution that she would not be traveling by mail again.

The cheery scene that met her weary eyes when their group walked into the York Tavern revived her somewhat, and the excellent supper laid before them further assisted said revivification.

Half an hour later, the call came for them to reboard. She rose from the bench on which they'd been sitting. “I can't believe it's going to take another whole day just to reach Berwick.”

“The roads aren't as well surfaced and are not as direct.” Having stood alongside her and stepped over the bench, Dominic reached for her hand—and only just stopped himself from completing the revealing action.

She arched a brow at him, then stepped over the seat.

He met her eyes, then turned and strode out. She followed, unexpectedly satisfied that, while she was a lad to everyone watching, she remained a lady to him.

They'd been preserving their wordlessly agreed mutual distance; as she settled in the coach alongside him, she remembered quite clearly why. Those moments in the pit, and even more the fraught minutes over the dinner table, were indelibly etched in her mind. Yet while she hadn't been able to focus well enough to interrogate him during the journey, her mind, it seemed, had been turning facts, notions, and ideas over and around, reexamining and reevaluating, and the time in the York Tavern had allowed the conclusions to rise to the forefront of her brain.

Clarity was hers again, and while uncertainty still lingered, she now accepted that a degree of uncertainty was unavoidable at this point.

At this point in her campaign to induce Dominic to fall in love with her.

Her principal problem, as she now saw it, was that when it came to experience of the opposite sex she was, indeed, twenty-one, not twenty-five. She seriously doubted Heather would have reacted to that scene over the dinner table with the same skittering nervousness that she had. While she was clever and observant, and in many respects had a sound understanding of men and how they thought, the one aspect to which she as yet had had little exposure was lust.

She had absolutely no doubt that the cauldron of hungry awareness she'd sensed across the table had been an eruption of lust, both his and hers. It had definitely been lust that had burned in his eyes, lust that had heated her from the inside out.

Which, as she understood the matter, was by no means a bad thing. Her problem lay in having no idea how to take that lust and convert it into love.

From what she'd observed, that was, more or less, what happened; lust overtook couples, then, either simultaneously or arising out of indulging said lust, love blossomed and bloomed.

What she had yet to learn was how the transformation, connection, or whatever it was, occurred.

Admittedly, ignorance alone wouldn't have done more than give her pause; if matters had been different, she would have been tempted to leap in with her usual confident abandon, commence her education, and trust that she would muddle through.

But the power of what had erupted between them had shaken her to her toes.

That
was why she'd panicked.

The maelstrom that had manifested between them last night had been so turbulent and strong, so elementally powerful, she'd been instinctively sure that if it had broken loose, she—and possibly not even he—would have had any hope of controlling it.

People thought her impulsive, but she rarely leapt into situations she couldn't control. And while she imagined that he, stronger and even more accustomed to exercising control, would have assumed he'd be in control, would he have been?

Admittedly he'd had sufficient control to allow her to escape, but if he'd seized her, kissed her? Would he have been able to hold the tide back then?

Regardless, the critical issue she now faced was whether she could risk not being in control if her aim was to take charge of their lust and convert it into love. How could she channel it, or influence it, if she couldn't control it?

Her uncertainty sprang from her conclusion that she would have to accept the risk, or else risk running out of time.

She'd agreed to give him her response to his offer of marriage after he'd reclaimed the goblet and saved his clan; that translated to after the first of July. She now knew him well enough to guess that he would demand her answer by the second of the month at the latest, and neither he nor her family would readily countenance further delay.

Which meant that her window for inducing him to fall in love with her ran from now until then. But in a week's time, he and she would reach his castle and have to deal with whatever waited for them there; she wasn't silly enough to imagine that convincing his mother to return the goblet would require nothing more than her turning up and curtseying.

Once they reached his castle, he and she would have other matters demanding their attention, other issues claiming their minds.

Realistically, the best time for her to engage their combined lusts and shape them into love was from now until they reached the castle. During that period they wouldn't have any other major distractions, any urgent calls on their attention. In Edinburgh they would be staying at his town house, and from Edinburgh to the castle they would be riding and stopping at inns every night.

All of which confirmed that she'd been correct in viewing the journey to the castle as a deity-given opportunity to draw closer to him; her mistake had been in assuming that “closer” had meant through talking.

Thinking over the whole, her resolve firmed. She'd recognized from the first, on that night she'd agreed to help him, that her way forward would require unconditional trust in love. It was time to stop being a control-coward, to trust in love and take the risk. A risk that, as she wanted him as her husband, she couldn't avoid taking at some point.

Their future, the nature of their marriage, lay in her hands. It was time to act and move forward.

The coach had rumbled out of York long ago. They were bowling through darkness lit only by the faint glow cast by the carriage lamps. Mulley and Brenda had already settled, curled up in their respective corners, eyes closed; Mulley was softly snoring.

Beside her, Dominic was still awake. She didn't need to look to know he was; she could sense his alertness, although it wasn't focused, just there in case of need.

Midnight was upon them, the witching hour ahead.

She sat still for a moment more, letting sleep draw near, then she yawned, shifted, and drew up her legs, curling them on the seat and tipping sideways to pillow her head against his upper arm. “You don't mind, do you?” she mumbled, then stifled another, perfectly genuine yawn. It truly had been a long day.

She felt him staring down at her, sensed his surprise, and perhaps a touch of suspicion, but she wasn't the least surprised when he whispered, “No.” After a moment, he added, “Just sleep.”

Lips lightly curving, she relaxed against him, and did.

T
hey reached Berwick at ten o'clock the following night.

Descending from the coach, Dominic walked to the inn's open door, forcing himself to allow Angelica to trail after him. The impulse to escort her properly—so she was within his sight and reach—had only grown after the previous night.

In the small hours, he'd finally given into temptation and had lifted her until her hatted head had been pillowed on his chest, and in her sleep she'd curled against his side, then he'd put his arm around her, closed his eyes, and, to his surprise, had got a few hours' decent sleep.

Other than that, however, he'd yet to decide how to react to her unexpected breaching of their invisible wall, or if, indeed, he should react at all. As an indication that she was willing to draw closer, it was all well and good, but was it enough of a declaration to be taken as an invitation to proceed to intimacy? He suspected not. Regardless, now was not the time for that.

Sitting alongside her as their group rapidly accounted for a supper of soup, bread, cold beef, ham, pickles, and assorted condiments, he pretended not to notice her thigh touching his.

Not that he moved away. Not that he imagined she didn't know he felt every inch of the sleek feminine limb she pressed against him.

As usual, she ate less than anyone else, but politely filled the gap with conversation. “I have to admit I've had enough of traveling on the mail. I can't wait to stretch out in a bed.”

He looked up and met her eyes as the others voiced their agreement. He swallowed, then said, “Sadly, we have one more night to endure.”

“Hmm.” She studied him. “As I'm the smallest of the group, I suppose I can't complain—or at least not too loudly.” She allowed her gaze to sweep the others before returning to him. “I truly cannot imagine how you're all faring, there being so much more of you than me.”

“Oh, it's not that bad,” Brenda said, oblivious to the undercurrents on the other side of the table.

“For me,” Mulley said, “it's that ‘one more night.' I hold a vision in my mind of my bed at the Edinburgh house as incentive—as what I'll have tomorrow night if I can just make it through tonight.”

The others all agreed.

“Edinburgh Mail! Passengers back on board, please. Hurry, now—we've a schedule to meet.”

With a sigh, they all rose, and after Dominic paid their shot, they trooped out and climbed back into the coach or clambered up to their seats on the roof. They'd dropped the pretence that they weren't all one party after York.

He followed Angelica into the coach and sat beside her.

From being on tenterhooks at the Bull and Mouth, then living in expectation of running into some hurdle at every halt until Newark, once they'd reached York, he'd started to hope. Now, with Scotland three miles up the road, he was no longer concerned enough to growl at Angelica to keep her hat tilted down as she scanned the yard.

In the press and crush of the crowds around the coaches, in the yards, or in the taverns at which they'd stopped, no one had yet looked closely enough to detect the subtle differences, still vividly clear to his eyes and vibrantly apparent to his senses, that revealed her true gender.

With luck, they would make Edinburgh without leaving any trace.

Once they were away again, they all settled to get what sleep they could. Dominic waited only until Brenda's and Griswold's heads started to nod, then raised his arm, reached around Angelica—who, he was well aware, had been waiting for the gesture—and drew her against him again.

She came readily, sighed and curled close, settling under his arm.

Tipping his head back against the squabs, he closed his eyes.

Later—he didn't know how much later—he heard her whisper, “Are you holding in your mind an image of your bed in Edinburgh as incentive for suffering through tonight?”

All but asleep, he tried to think, couldn't, so answered truthfully. “Yes.”