“I know.”
“Be careful. And bring her back. Preferably betrothed. To you.”
He’d try.
Josiah had his gelding Arrogance saddled and barreling down the road in a quarter of an hour. He did not know how long he rode, and he had to slow at points to avoid ruts that had formed. Sooner than he expected, the large, hulking shape of a coach rose before him. He pulled up on the rein, slowed to a trot, and patted Arrogance’s neck. “Thank you.”
As he approached, the coach grew larger. It sat heavy and still, gathering snow on the side of the road. It tilted a bit with the curve of the road into the gutter, one set of wheels lower than the other. Had she changed her mind? Was she even now debating returning to Apple Grove, returning to him? Or had they gotten stuck?
He dismounted and strode forward.
“Mr. Evans!” The coachman turned around from his perch, his brown hat and greatcoat dusted white. He tipped his hat, and snow fell off it.
“It’s you, John.” Good to see she had an experienced driver at least.
John’s face softened from curiosity to something like relief. “She found help, then? Reached the big house?”
“What do you mean?” Dread pooled heavily in Josiah’s chest as he stopped just below the coachman, his gaze flickering toward the coach windows, its wine-colored curtains drawn tight.
“The lady I was taking to London. Lady Georgiana, I think. She set off down the road a half an hour ago to get help. The front wheel on the other side is broken. We hit a rut.”
“And you let her go?” Josiah swung open the coach door. Empty.
“I couldn’t stop her. I tried to go myself, but she said she’d do it herself and that she expected me to stay here with her luggage to keep it from getting stolen by the highwaymen.”
“We have no highwaymen, John! And damn the luggage. She’s more important! She’s everything! Where’s the second coachman?”
John’s eyes grew wide. “Everyone’s gone home for the day who wished to. And I didn’t have time to scavenge up a footman. The lady wasn’t interested in waiting.”
Josiah cursed under his breath. “I shouldn’t have yelled. Apologies, John. Take Arrogance and tell Lord Flint she’s missing. I’ll look for her on foot. Starting here and moving toward the house.”
John’s face took on the pale sheen of newly fallen snow. “I’m so sorry, Mr. Evans. I didn’t mean… I should have…”
“Don’t worry about it, John. You couldn’t have stopped her unless you physically locked her up.” And that might have angered him more than this, to see her stripped of her freedom, her independence crushed under lock and chain. He’d lost sight of that yesterday in his need to have her by any means necessary. But now he knew having her wasn’t the most important thing. Her happiness was. From now on he’d protect that as fiercely as he protected her.
Worry was a feral beast inside his belly, he turned into the forest that lined the left side of the road as John mounted Arrogance and galloped away. She’d not been on the road itself. She’d not been at the house or in the stable. He would have seen her on his mad ride to catch up with her. But she would be somewhere in the world between there and here. He knew this land better than he knew himself some days. The trees swallowed him whole, the snow fell faster, and he would find the woman he loved.
ChapterEight
“I loved a man once. It would have been nice to have him love me back.” –from The Masculine Inconvenience: Memoirs of a Superior Lady
Georgiana pulled her fur-lined cape closer and scowled up at the sky. The sun had dropped below the canopy line of the forest, and each heavy step forward saw it drop lower. Soon it would kiss the horizon and darkness would spread like spilled wine across the sky.
Then she scowled down at her boots. Perfectly acceptable for traipsing through muddy London streets, but perfectly horrid for wading ankle-deep in snow.
With darkness approaching and being soaked to the bone, Georgiana realized she was lost. Worse than that, she was a mutton-headed fool for insisting she could do this on her own. She navigated London streets, not country roadways. She’d taken a wrong turn. She’d not even known there were turns to take in wide open spaces.
And to think, just yesterday, she’d been reconsidering her position on the country. It did not seem so bad as all that. In fact, she’d begun to suspect that her aunt had poisoned her against it. Or perhaps, her own experiences had. She’d once loved stables and puppies and lakes and, yes, snow, but she’d been forced to leave it, and leave it she had, in heart as well as in body. If she could not have it, she had determined not to want it.
Well, she was a woman now, an heiress in charge of her own destiny, trying to be at least. Though clearly, she needed to know and listen to her limits. She could love the country if she pleased, though. That much she could manage, to form her own opinion on this particular matter. And since she had nothing else to do as she wandered in who knew what direction, she formed it. Skating had been invigorating. Puppies were precious. And snow… well, she still hated that. Perhaps she wouldn’t so much if she were dry and sitting before a fire, a good book in hand, a large, warm, muscled body nearby who’d tease her and laugh with her and—
No. Thoughts of Josiah were worse than snow sinking through her shift, turning her into a walking icicle.
Because she hated men.
Particularly one man.
Because they—he—thought they knew best, thought they could shove a woman around, control her fate. She’d never allow that. No matter that the man could skate pleasure across her skin as delicate and lovely as the shapes the skates cut into the thick blue ice.
