Turning on his heel, he entered the carriage house.
“Our coachman keeps a flint and some tinder to light the carriage lamps in the boot under his perch,” she offered as she followed him.
“How the hell did you know that?” Joshua asked.
She shrugged. “You notice danger; I notice where servants put things I might need some day.”
He shook his head as if that made no sense to him, then tried to open the boot. It didn’t open easily, so he pulled hard on it, and the perch shook a bit.
“Wait a minute,” he said, eyeing it suspiciously. “This may be what the fellow did.” He examined the bolts that fixed the perch to the carriage. “Damn him to hell, he loosened the bolts just enough so the seat would fall off once the carriage got moving at a sufficient speed.”
“How awful!” Gwyn said, rather shocked.
“Not just awful but dangerous.” He rummaged in the boot until he found the toolbox kept there. “Once the perch fell off, taking the coachman with it, the horses would be spooked and driverless. We could quite easily have ended up in a runaway carriage.” He found a screwdriver and tightened the bolts on the seat.
“But now that you’ve discovered it, everything will be fine, right?”
“It depends.” He restored the screwdriver to the toolbox and the toolbox to the boot. “I’m assuming our villain was hoping for a chance to abscond with you in the confusion.”
A chill ran through her. “So you think Mr. Malet is behind this.”
He dusted off his hands. “Unless it was a highwayman bent on robbing Thornstock. It’s difficult for a duke to travel without that being noted by criminals.”
“Which do you think is more likely the case?”
Facing her, he shrugged. “Probably Malet, if he’s still bent on kidnapping you.”
Lionel wasn’t bent on kidnapping her. He himself had said he knew better. But he might be hoping to rob Thorn, to revenge himself on her family for their perceived slights. Or perhaps he’d decided this would be a quicker way to get his funds.
“Anyway, we’ve done all we can tonight,” Joshua said. “But I think I should ride on the perch with the coachman tomorrow, in case the culpritisa highwayman and he brings friends.”
“I thought highwaymen were rare these days.”
“They are. Which is why I’m inclined to believe that Malet engineered this so he could spirit you off.”
“But how would he know when we’d break down?”
“He’d have to follow us. For that matter, so would any highwaymen. In either case, my pepperbox flintlock will be at the ready. And your brother can keep you safe inside the carriage.”
Gwyn hid her disappointment. She’d been looking forward to traveling in close quarters with him again tomorrow. It would have given her a chance to question him about his past—how he’d become wounded, whether he’d ever had a sweetheart, and what made him so grumpy and prone to sudden bursts of anger.
What had made him draw a weapon on two bewildered townspeople.
“We’d best go into the inn,” he said. “Your family is sure to be wondering where we got off to. And I’ll need to apprise Thornstock of the situation.”
She nodded. So that was that. Nothing at all said about their kiss. Clearly, she’d been imagining he’d felt something.
The realization that he had not—or hadn’t felt deeply enough to act further upon it—gave her the most disappointment of all. But it was for the best. She could never be happy married to a man with such a mercurial temperament. And once a rigid fellow like he knew the truth about her, which she couldn’t hide forever, he wouldn’t wish to be married to her anyway.
So no matter how much she’d enjoyed it, she would simply have to consider their kiss nothing more than a shared mistake.
The next morning, with Thornstock’s blessing, Joshua took a position up on the perch with the coachman. At first, the fellow, whose name was Peabody, seemed annoyed to have him there. He would only grunt in answer to Joshua’s remarks.
So much for taking Joshua’s mind off the kisses he and Gwyn had shared yesterday. He’d already spent half the night replaying them, so he’d been hoping not to spend the day replaying them, too, and wondering what had possessed him to be so reckless.
At the very least, he should have apologized for pawing her like a half-starved hound. It had seemed wisest at the time just to pretend it hadn’t happened. Pretend it toher, at any rate. He couldn’t pretend it to himself. He still smelled her lemony perfume, still relished the sweet sounds of contentment she’d made . . . still tasted her mouth, which had been even softer than he imagined.
After holding her perfect, shapely body in his arms, hewantedher more now than he had before. And she probably knew it, too. She would almost certainly use it to twist him this way and that. Damn it all.
