Eugenie waited, huddled into her cloak and stamping her feet to keep warm, as Sinclair collected such items of clothing as he considered necessary. She saw him reach into the coach and take a pistol from a pocket between the seat and the door, adding it to his saddlebag. The bags were then attached to his horses.
Robert Coachman set off, and without him it seemed very still and quiet, because of course Eugenie could not speak to Sinclair.
The coach horses had no saddles, and the traces were unwieldy, but Eugenie was an experienced horsewoman and had no trouble riding bareback. He took a moment to admire her seat. Much as he disliked Sir Peter, he knew he was right when it came to his daughter’s riding abilities. Eugenie would have made a fine addition to the local hunt.
They set off at a comfortable pace.
“It can’t be far to the next village,” Sinclair called to her over his shoulder.
Eugenie had allowed him to go first, so that she didn’t have to speak to him. She didn’t answer him now. She had a great deal to think about, and it suited her to remain at a distance from the duke while she did so.
There was the problem of him trying to kiss her in the coach, after he had insulted her so thoroughly at the inn. She’d slapped his face and enjoyed doing it. It had certainly soothed her hurt feelings, but it didn’t seem to have affected him greatly. Instead he had continued to treat her with scrupulous politeness. Why couldn’t he be rude and arrogant again, so that she could hate him as he deserved?
If Eugenie hadn’t felt so confused herself she may have realized Sinclair was feeling no better. That he kept glancing over his shoulder at her made her uneasy, and his treatment of her after the coach collapsed, as if she was as fragile as a porcelain doll, made her want to slap him again. Honestly, she didn’t know what to think anymore.
Chapter 24
The woods were as dark and villainous-looking as Robert had warned. Sinclair, who had taken his pistol from his bag and slipped it into the waistband of his breeches, could imagine every sort of rascal hiding among the trees, watching them pass. The rain grew heavier, which didn’t help. Whenever he glanced back to see if Eugenie was still following him, she had the hood of her cloak pulled low over her head and he couldn’t see her face.
She was sulking about something, although he didn’t know what. Women had always confounded him. As a boy of seventeen he’d loved drawing their bodies but what went on inside their heads was a complete mystery. It didn’t help that she wouldn’t ride beside him, so that he could speak to her or at least keep a watch on her. No, she had to keep back, too far for him to converse with unless he wanted to shout. He told himself for the hundredth time how lucky he was not to have done anything irrevocable, like making her his mistress.
Although, of course, the fact that he’d wanted to and it had been Eugenie who denied him, was something he preferred not to remember. Better to believe the decision had been entirely his; certainly more soothing to his self-esteem. And right now his self-esteem needed all the soothing it could get.
By the time they reached a tavern in a small village in the forest, Sinclair was soaked to the skin. Which certainly didn’t improve his temper. But like the gentleman he told himself he was he waited for Eugenie and helped her down to the cobbled yard beside him. She swayed a little, stiff from riding, and he held her longer than necessary, worried she might fall, worried she might be ill.
“I should never have agreed to you coming on this mad journey,” he said.
Her head came up, her green eyes narrowed in her white face. “You’ve already made your feelings perfectly clear, Your Grace,” she said in a voice as icy as the weather. Tugging herself free she whirled around and began to make her way toward the door leading into the low, smoky-looking and rather dismal establishment.
Sinclair ground his teeth. Once again she’d misunderstood him—deliberately he was sure. Maybe she was right in not speaking at all. Yes, they would proceed in deathly silence; it was the only way they could manage to be together without arguing.
But as he went to follow her he saw that she’d stopped and was standing perfectly still. Puzzled, he drew closer. Something had caught her attention and a moment later he saw what it was.
A child of about seven or eight with a pale, peaked face and dirty dark hair. It was standing by what looked like a pile of old straw and stable rakings. Wide, suspicious eyes flicked between Eugenie and the duke, and the child took a step back. His—Sinclair thought it was a boy—feet were bare and he was wearing clothes that had been roughly cut down to fit his skinny frame.
Forgetting they were not speaking to each other, Eugenie reached out to grasp Sinclair’s arm. “Oh,” she whispered. “The poor thing must be frozen.”
The sight of such children gave Sinclair no pleasure, but London was full of them, and he was currently busy trying to catch
up with his sister, as well as getting his coach repaired or arranging for a new one, and more important getting Eugenie out of the rain and into whatever comfort this poor hostelry could offer.
“Come on,” he said gruffly, and brushed past her, leading the way into the building, confident she would follow.
But she didn’t follow. After waiting impatiently and stamping his feet, he was forced to retrace his steps. As he expected she was still with the child, only now she was kneeling at the boy’s feet, holding his hands, her skirts dragging in the muddy water of the yard while droplets of rain ran down her cheeks from her sodden curls.
The first emotion he was aware of was shock. And then the gentle compassion of her face, in her eyes, caught his heart and squeezed so tight he reached out to grasp the doorjamb, to steady himself. No woman he knew would act with such wholehearted love and compassion; no woman he knew would behave in such a way without worrying what her fellows might think. Would they laugh at her, snigger at her, tell her that she was behaving in a manner that ladies did not behave in?
One does not allow oneself to show emotion in public.
It was his family’s mantra. And yet here was Eugenie, completely unaware that she was breaking all of society’s rules. They simply did not matter to her as much as the plight of this child.
He didn’t know what to feel. A part of him knew he should drag her roughly to her feet and tell her she was disgracing herself, and him, by kneeling in the dirt before the urchin. That was what he should do. But the other part, the part that had been closed off for so long, wanted to wrap his arms about her and hold her. Eugenie was a woman completely oblivious to the petty rules of his world, and if she had known them then she wouldn’t have cared.
He was confused. Until now it seemed as if everything had been clear and precise, laid out before him so that he knew exactly how he was supposed to act and what he was meant to do. And now . . . Eugenie had shown him that those rules were like paper in the wind.
Feeling naked and vulnerable, Sinclair became even more the arrogant duke. In this role, at least, he felt ironclad.
“Miss Belmont, what do you think you are doing?”