She was besotted, yes, infatuated, yes, and probably had been since the first moment she saw him in the Egyptian Hall.
That was not love.
“The only remaining question is whether it will fit,” he said. His dark gaze slid over her, as warm and wicked as his hands.
Now was the time to say Thank you but no, I cannot accept this. Thank you, but I must make do with my own clothes . . . the ones I’ve taken apart and turned inside out and restitched . . . the ones I’ve mended and mended and mended until little remains of the original cloth . . . the ones I’ve washed and washed until nothing remains of the original color.
Who was she trying to fool?
She’d gone to bed with a man to whom she was not wed. She was a whore.
She might as well be a happy one.
She said, “I’ll make it fit.”
She took the clothes from him and sorted out the underthings. She would have declined his assistance but Thomas had bought the type of garments women of the middle and upper classes wore, the kind one couldn’t manage single-handed. Her usual dresses and corsets fastened in the front. The new corset and frock fastened in the back.
“I shall need your help with the stays,” she said after she’d donned drawers and chemise.
“Then I had better fix my mind on sobering thoughts,” Rathbourne said. He flung aside the waistcoat he’d been about to put on, and came to her.
“Will scandal do?” she said. “Or a pair of missing children? Or both?”
He moved behind her and set to work. “Those will do admirably. Let us review in an orderly fashion our possible courses of action regarding the brats.”
Orderly thinking was beyond her at present. She was too aware of his hands at her back, of the intimacy of this moment, the curious domesticity of it.
Fortunately, Rathbourne did not need any more help with orderly thinking than he did with managing the intricacies of women’s attire.
“Here is what comes to mind,” he said. “One, we continue to do what we’ve done thus far. Two, we turn back to the last place we had word of them. Three, we alert the authorities and assemble a formal search party.”
“Good grief.”
“Have I pulled the stays too tight?”
“No, it was only . . .” She sighed. “Never mind. It is foolish to worry about how much scandal we make.”
“It is not at all foolish,” he said. “There are degrees of scandal. A formal search will assure us of the highest possible degree. It will be fact—published fact, no less—not mere gossip. Denial would be out of the question.” While he spoke, he wrestled her into her petticoat.
“There is one more possibility,” he said. He tossed the frock over her head. “We might proceed to Bristol—to the end of the trail, in other words—and await them at the gates of Throgmorton Park.”
It was like trying to choose the least of four evils.
Stalling, she twitched the frock into place. “It fits remarkably well, considering I was not present to be fitted,” she said.
“I advised Thomas to find a maidservant of a similar size,” Rathbourne said.
“I am not sure I am altogether comfortable with the idea of Thomas’s taking such careful notice of my figure,” she said.
“Don’t be absurd,” he said. “Thomas is a servant, true. He is also a man. The only men who do not take careful notice of your figure are dead or blind. So long as they keep their hands off, no one will have to kill them, and you need not be uneasy.”
Startled, she started to turn to read his expression.
He gave the frock a tug. “Keep still,” he said. “I’m not done.”
Ah, well, she had as good a chance of reading Sanskrit as she had of reading his thoughts from his face.
She stood obediently still.
He tied the last of the tapes and stepped away. He eyed her up and down and frowned.
Uneasy, she moved to the dressing glass and studied her reflection. “It does not fit perfectly,” she said, smoothing the skirt. “Still, it fits well, indeed, considering the circumstances.”
“Ah, yes, the circumstances,” he said. “The damned circumstances. We have neglected those long enough.” He pulled on his waistcoat and buttoned it. “What is your preference, madam, regarding our course of action?”
LORD RATHBOURNE WAS not the only one who’d faced facts and decided to make the most of the remaining time.
By ten o’clock that morning, Peregrine knew he’d never reach Edinburgh in time to avert catastrophe. He could only assume his uncle had somehow gone astray.
Though the idea of Lord Rathbourne making an error was nearly unthinkable, Peregrine was obliged to think it. Had his lordship stopped in Maidenhead and made inquiries at the inns—the logical thing to do—he would have found them by now.
Since, therefore, catastrophe was inevitable, Peregrine reviewed his situation while awaiting breakfast in the inn’s public dining room.
He did not want to go to Edinburgh.
He hated school and schoolteachers.
Since his parents would bar further visits with Uncle Benedict, Peregrine’s life for the next several years would be disagreeable in the extreme.
Therefore, he had better make the most of the present.
Breakfast arrived as he reached this conclusion.
His mind at ease, he attacked his food with gusto. The room and the meals had made enormous inroads into his limited funds, but he would not worry about that. An explorer must be resourceful.
It might have taken him longer to achieve this state of mental equilibrium had Olivia not continued quiet.
Peregrine was too busy thinking, then eating, to notice this. It was only after he’d cleaned his plate that it dawned on him. “You’ve hardly said a word since last night,” he said. “Are you unwell?”
“I’ve been thinking,” she said.
He had much rather Olivia didn’t think, but he had no idea how to stop her.
He nodded and tried not to hold his breath.
“How are we to get rides to Bristol if people don’t feel sorry for us?” she said, lowering her voice. “If it’s unsporting to have a dying mother, what are we to say? You can’t expect us to tell the truth. You know we’ll be taken straight back to London.”
P
eregrine considered. Last night his goal had been London, not Bristol. This morning his goal had changed. But she didn’t know that.
“It wouldn’t be unsporting to tell something like the truth,” he said. “We could say we’re going to Bristol to seek our fortune.”
“That’s not unsporting?” She raised one pale eyebrow.
“Well, it’s true of you, certainly,” he said. “And it won’t make people cry—the way that old lady did who gave us the money for Twyford. That was shameful. For all we knew, she needed the money worse than we did. How do we know she wasn’t poor, living on her widow’s mite? Maybe she’ll have to go without her bit of chop this week, because of us.”
Olivia stared at him for a while. Then she looked at the table. Then she looked about the crowded dining room.
“Oh, very well,” she said with a shrug. “We’ll seek our fortune. But you’d better leave the talking to me, your nibs. Your accent gives you away.”
He couldn’t help his upper-class accent. Unlike her, he couldn’t change his speech at will, mimicking the style of whomever he spoke to. “You’d better come with me to settle up with the innkeeper, then,” he said.
The innkeeper, who studied them more carefully than made Peregrine comfortable, asked whether they wanted a horse.
Olivia looked at Peregrine. He shook his head.
When they left the inn he said, “I’ve only three shillings left. I’d like to save it in case of an emergency.”
She stood on the pavement, looking down the High Street. “It’s market day in Reading, I heard people say,” she said. “We might have some luck there. But it’s twelve miles. Have you ever walked twelve miles, m’lord?”
“Don’t call me that,” he said, looking about him. But no one stood in hearing range. “I can walk twelve miles. Easily.” He’d never done so in his life, but he’d die before he admitted that to her.
In any case, he didn’t have to prove his hardihood that day. Four miles down the road, a young couple in a dogcart offered them a ride.