A yawn rose up then, one she valiantly tried to hide behind her palm. Or perhaps she might catch up on the sleep she missed last night. Sudden exhaustion pulled down on her. Unable to keep her eyes open a moment longer, she rested her head back against the seat and allowed her lids to drift closed…
… and woke up on the floor of the carriage.
Panic tore through Seraphina as a cacophony of sound invaded her ears: men shouting; horses neighing; Phineas screeching; the carriage groaning as it shifted under her. And above it all—or rather, above her, for he was lying half atop her—were Iain’s curses, rough and loud.
But they did not last long. In a moment his hand was on the side of her head, his gaze scouring her face.
“Seraphina, are you hurt?”
Why, she wondered a bit wildly, did he look so worried for her? It was almost as if he cared.
But he didn’t care, she reminded herself brutally. Just as she did not care about him. The whole point of them being together, after all, was so they could separate for good.
Yet that realization did not stop her heart from twisting as the worry in his eyes appeared to grow.
“Seraphina? Seraphina!”
His voice was growing more desperate, calling to something in her. And then his hands began to work over her limbs. There was nothing sexual in it at all, of course. Deepdown she recognized it for what it was, a means of determining if she had any broken bones.
Yet combined with the weight of his body over hers, his thick thigh between her legs and pressing to that most intimate spot, his warm breath washing over her face, it was like a spark set to dry kindling.
She gasped, her hand trapping his against her leg, preventing it from traveling farther down. “I’m fine,” she croaked.
The relief on his face as he glanced back at her, the softness in his eyes, turned that small spark in her belly to a bonfire. Did he have to look at her that way, as if she were important to him, as if her safety were paramount? Blessedly Phineas announced his outrage just then, his mad squawking and flapping halting whatever it was that had passed between Seraphina and Iain in its tracks.
With a grunt, Iain planted his hands on the benches and pushed himself up until he was perched on one seat. “Stop your complaining, you damned pigeon,” he growled, apparently back to his grumpy self as he helped Seraphina gain her own seat—no easy thing, she soon learned, as the carriage seemed to be listing in a pronounced way toward one side.
Finally free of Iain’s body on hers—though, regrettably, not free of the aftereffects of said body pressed to her own—Seraphina busied herself with Phineas. “Are you all right, darling?” she cooed as she righted his cage. The accident had sent Phineas sprawling along the bottom of the brass structure in an inglorious heap of feathers and outrage.
But the parrot was not to be soothed. He screeched, fumbling about, wings flapping. Finally, knowing heneeded much more than mere platitudes, she opened the small door. Phineas scrambled out immediately, climbing his way up her arm until he was perched just where he liked it, on her shoulder. Even then he was not a bit happy. Low trilling sounds issued from his throat as he swung his head back and forth, an obvious sign of distress.
“Oh, my poor dear,” she crooned, running her hand over his head and his back, pressing her cheek to his warm body.
“Your Grace,” the driver called out, his face appearing in the window, “are you and Miss Athwart all right?”
Iain, who had been watching Seraphina, nodded sharply. “Aye, we’re well, Jones. And you and Kenneth and the horses?”
“We’re fine, sir. Though the carriage isn’t. The road is blasted steep, and with a rut at the bottom. I’m afraid the wheel is badly damaged. Seeing as how violently we listed to the side, we could be looking at a broken axle as well.”
“Damn it all to bloody hell,” Iain muttered. “Was the drag not properly set?”
Jones’s face heated. “I’m sorry, sir, that would be my fault.”
Heaving a beleaguered sigh, Iain ran a frustrated hand over his face. “As long as no one was hurt,” he said to the man in a far gentler voice than Seraphina expected. Then, pushing open the door, he maneuvered his way to the road as best he could before turning back to offer a hand to Seraphina. She took it with alacrity, not wanting to spend a moment more in the cockeyed interior, scrambling out of the carriage with Phineas attached firmly to one shoulder and her bag hastily slung over the other.
Iain moved to the far side of the conveyance and bent down beside his men to peer beneath the wreckage.
The man named Kenneth grunted before spitting off to one side. “It’ll take a good half day to fix, I’m thinking.”
A half day extra on the road with Iain. Seraphina bit back a groan. Of all the bad luck.
“And how far to the next town?” Iain continued, his brow dark as he looked up and down the road.
“That there is Sunderland Bridge,” Kenneth replied, gesturing to the stone bridge just up ahead that spanned a wide river. “Durham must be some three miles up the road. Perhaps four.”
Seraphina’s muscles seized, her stomach twisting until she was certain she would cast up her accounts. Durham? She had known they would pass the village, of course. She did not have an idle mind and had not wished to put herself entirely in Iain’s hands without at least educating herself on the path they would be taking north. The name of the place had jumped out at her from the maps she had pored over, not because she was familiar with it, but because it was so very close to Lanchester—and her father’s main residence, Farrow Hall, her childhood home.
Pressing a fist to her stomach, she forcefully swallowed down the bile that rose in her throat. They were not supposed to have stopped for any length of time anywhere near that place. Perhaps a change of horses, a quick meal in Durham, and then onward to the next stop on their journey. She had attempted to comfort herself with the fact that even if she were to run into her father or someone in his employ while passing through the town, she was well past the age of her majority; he no longer had any power over her.
