“Have you acquired a coach, Mr. Dover?” she asked.
“Yes, Lady Madeleine. We are ready to depart.”
Maddie nodded and prayed all would go smoothly. She wanted an uneventful elopement. No more adventures!
Sitting on the edge of the window, she gave him her hand. “Then what are we waiting for?”
And she fell into his arms.
Chapter Two
John Phillip Charles Martingale, Marquess of Blackthorne, did not look up from his copy of the Times when he heard the commotion.
He was used to commotion. One might even venture to say that commotion followed him.
Jack also recognized his brother Nicholas’s voice, rising above the din. And though Jack wouldn’t think of hiding from anyone, friend or foe—his brother being a bit of both—he wouldn’t have minded if Nicholas passed through the coffeehouse without ever seeing him.
“There you are!” Nicholas bellowed, arrowing straight for Jack’s table.
Clenching his jaw and turning another page, Jack noted that his luck wasn’t what it had once been. Of late, it seemed bad luck was around every corner, in every coffeehouse, at every—
Nick sat down.
At every table.
“I have been looking for you everywhere,” Nick said, sounding out of breath.
Jack began reading an article on the many varied uses of corn.
“I looked in at your club, then Tattersalls, then Gentleman Jackson’s.”
Amazing, Jack thought. He had not realized corn husks could be used to make clothing. He wondered absently if they would make good muzzles.
“No one had seen you,” Nick prattled on. “So finally I stopped by your town house. Ridgeley told me you had a habit of coming here. Good man, that Ridgeley.”
Jack set the paper down, extracted a pad of paper and pencil from his coat, and began to write.
“What are you doing?” Nick asked.
“Making a note to release Ridgeley from my service.”
“Release your butler!” Nick laughed. “Whatever for?”
Jack gave his brother a hard look, lifted the Times and turned the page. Suddenly, the paper was whisked out of his hands, an article on naval strategy superseded by Nicholas’s smiling face.
The fact that his brother was smiling was not half so annoying to Jack as seeing that smile on a face that looked so much like his own. Not for the first time, he wished his brother resembled him more in personality and less in appearance.
The two men were of a similar height, which in Jack’s opinion was rather more average than tall, and they shared a similar athletic build. Both had hair so dark the ladies called it blue-black, and bronze complexions from extensive time spent outdoors. Their eyes differed, Jack’s being dark and Nick’s a sky blue. And that summed up their divergent personalities as well.
Jack had a reputation for being dark and brooding, while Nick was all sunshine and blue skies. It wasn’t that Jack was never happy. He had been . . .
Once or twice.
It was more that when he was near Nicholas, say within a hundred miles or so, he fell into a perpetual scowl.
Jack felt the scowl take hold of his facial muscles now, even as Nick continued to grin. Wrapping his hand around his coffee cup, Jack pretended it was his brother’s neck.
“I’m in a bit of trouble,” Nicholas said, and Jack gripped the cup tighter.
