Regency Rogues and Rakes: Silk is for Seduction / Scandal Wears Satin / Vixen in Velvet / Seven Nights in a Rogue's Bed / A Rake's Midnight Kiss / What a Duke Dares. Loretta Chase

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      “Richmond Park,” Longmore said. He had to raise his voice to make himself heard over the wind and drumming rain. “What the devil’s there?”

      “I read that Richmond Park was beautiful,” Sophy said.

      “You think she’s gone sightseeing?”

      “I hope so. It might calm her.”

      He had to stop talking to negotiate the bridge. An old, narrow, uneven structure, it bulged up unexpectedly here and there. At this time of night, in this weather, the only way to proceed was cautiously.

      Caution wasn’t Longmore’s favorite style.

      He was grinding his teeth by the time he got them safely to the other side of the Thames. Thence it was uphill to Putney Heath and the obelisk, about two miles away.

      The horses trudged up the road while the rain went on thrashing them, torrents cascading from the hood’s rim. The wind, howling occasionally to add atmosphere to the experience, blew the wet under the hood. It dripped down Longmore’s face and into his neckcloth.

      Though he knew her glorious monstrosity of a traveling costume involved layers and layers, the wet would eventually penetrate to skin, if it hadn’t already.

      He threw her a quick glance. She’d turned her head aside so that the back of her hat took the brunt of the wind-driven rain. That was the only sign of discomfort. Not a word of complaint.

      He went on wondering at it, even while he watched the road and argued with himself what to do.

      When at last they reached Putney Heath, the wind abruptly died down. In the distance a bell tolled. An ominous rumbling followed. He turned his head that way in time to see the crack of lightning.

      The wind picked up again, coming from the same direction.

      It was driving the thunderstorm straight at them.

      * * *

      Sophy was petrified.

      Her heart had been pounding for so long that she was dizzy. She was terrified she’d faint and fall out of the carriage and under a wheel. If she fell, Longmore might not even notice at first, between the darkness and the rain’s incessant hammering.

      Safe at home, the sound of rain drumming on a roof, even as fiercely as this, could be soothing.

      This was not soothing.

      She was city bred. If she’d ever spent time in the country, it must have been in her early childhood. She vaguely recalled traveling across the French countryside when she and her sisters had fled cholera-ravaged Paris three years ago. But they’d traveled in a closed vehicle, and not at night in such hellish weather.

      Intellectually, she knew she wasn’t in any great danger. While a famously reckless man, Longmore was a highly regarded whip, too. In a carriage, one couldn’t be in safer hands. He drove with the magnificent calm the English deemed de rigueur in whipsters. The horses seemed tranquil and absolutely under his control. Traveling on the king’s highway, she knew, one could count on smooth, well-maintained roads. Hostelries lined them at short intervals. Help was rarely far away.

      All the same, she didn’t feel very brave.

      She’d started out concerned mainly about Lady Clara. The difficulties of travel, even at night, hadn’t crossed Sophy’s mind. For one thing, at this time of year, a sort of twilight prevailed rather than full darkness. For another, this evening had promised to be a pleasant one: When she set out from home for the Gloucester Coffee House, she’d assumed the moon would brighten their journey.

      Instead, within minutes they were pitched into a streaming Stygian darkness, which feeble lights here and there only seemed to emphasize. The world about her felt too empty.

      Breaking in on an unexpected silence, the crack of thunder, distant as it was, made her jump. Longmore’s head turned sharply that way, and in the faint glow of the carriage lights, she saw his jaw muscles tighten.

      He turned to her. “Are you all right?” he said.

      “Yes,” she lied.

      “The horses won’t be, in a thunderstorm,” he said. “I’ve decided not to chance it. With a broken neck you won’t be much help to my sister. We’ll have to stop.”

      She was only half relieved. As alarming as she found it to travel at present, she was impatient at delay. Back in London, after Fenwick had reported what his friends had told him about the cabriolet, she’d looked up Richmond Park in a road guide. It wasn’t very far from London. Still, near as it was, if even Longmore didn’t want to risk traveling on, no sane person would try it.

      Though they seemed to be crossing an endless uninhabited wilderness, it wasn’t long before he turned into the yard of an inn. White flashes lit the sky, and the thunder rumbled oftener and more loudly, nearer at hand.

      While the ostlers rushed out to take charge of the horses, Longmore practically dragged her from her seat and swept her along under his arm to the entrance, calling over his shoulder, “Look after the boy. If he isn’t drowned, dry him off and see that he’s fed.”

      A short time later, she was shaking off the wet from her carriage dress, and Longmore was treating the landlord with the same imperious impatience he’d shown Dowdy and her accomplice: “Yes, two rooms. My aunt requires her own. And you’d better send a maid to her.”

      “Your aunt?” Sophy said after the landlord had hurried away to see about rooms.

      Amusement lit Longmore’s dark eyes and a tiny smile lifted the corners of his mouth. “I always travel with my aunt, don’t you know? Such a dutiful nephew. Luckily, I’ve scads of them.”

      That was all it took: one rakish glint in his dark eyes and a ghost of a smile. Her heart gave a skip and pumped heat upward and outward and especially downward. She had to fight with herself not to rush to the nearest window and pull it open, storm or no storm. She needed a sharp dose of cold water.

      She told herself to settle down. He’d used that look on hundreds of women, probably, with the same effect. And she was a Noirot. She was the one who was supposed to slay men with a glance.

      In any event, she supposed she ought to be glad he owned at least a modicum of discretion.

      As fille de joie euphemisms went, “aunt” was probably more useful than “wife.” Half the world would probably recognize him, and that half would know he wasn’t wed or likely to be anytime soon, if ever.

      He took out his pocket watch. “This is ridiculous. We haven’t covered eight miles and it’s nearly half past ten o’clock.”

      “She wouldn’t travel in this weather, surely?” Sophy said in a low voice, though they were alone in the small office. “If she did visit the park, wouldn’t she stop at an inn nearby when it grew dark?”

      “I hope so,” he said. “But who knows what’s in her mind?”

      “She has Davis,” Sophy said. “She wouldn’t let her mistress endanger herself.”

      “Clara СКАЧАТЬ