Matilda sucked in her breath at the unwelcome echo of Miss Charlton’s vitriol. She wasn’t going to cry. She wasn’t. Even if she was every bit as much a bother and an embarrassment as Miss Charlton had intimated.
Gilbourne sighed and dropped her wrists. “If you didn’t run off, then where did you go?”
Matilda didn’t answer. She couldn’t risk it. Every syllable threatened to spill out with a sob.
“To the modiste,” Buttons piped up.
“The modiste?” Gilbourne repeated in disbelief. “In the middle of a tart-and-pie competition? Why the devil would she do that?”
“The other ladies were cruel to her,” Buttons answered.
“Shut up, Buttons,” Matilda mumbled. “You weren’t standing close enough to hear.”
“They called her a piglet and said she didn’t belong,” Buttons added.
“Who said that?” Gilbourne growled, his eyes flashing dangerously.
Matilda shook her head.
“Five of them,” Buttons said helpfully. “They laughed at her in front of everyone. Others laughed, as well.”
“That does it.” Lord Gilbourne’s fingers closed about Matilda’s elbow. “Get into the carriage. We’re going.”
Chapter 15
Matilda supposed that any other rural born young woman desperate for change and adventure should be thrilled to find herself in a sumptuous carriage, barreling toward London.
And she would be. If there was the least hope of actually seeing any of it.
Her eternally scowling guardian sat at her side, scars facing away from her, his ankles crossed, arms folded, eyes closed, silent.
Matilda did not think for one moment that he had fallen asleep.
He was ignoring her. Occasionally Gilbourne’s jaw would clench, or the muscle at his temple would twitch. Whatever he was thinking about so furiously vexed him to no end.
Probably Matilda.
Also possible: that she wasn’t that important.
He might be cursing the journey that had pulled him from his comfortable seclusion and forced him, however briefly, into the public eye.
Or he might be thinking about all of the work he’d left unfinished in the name of duty. His responsibilities to the House of Lords. His hundred-and-one committees. His correspondence. His households, plural. Matilda did not know how many tasks the earl must manage. The only thing she knew for certain was that his responsibilities were legion, and she was one more item on a very long list.
She slid another of her dwindling supply of tiny, candied peel bits into her mouth and watched him openly. She ought to be staring wide-eyed out of the window at the passing countryside and the myriad vistas she’d never before seen, but she could not tear her gaze away from her obviously disgruntled guardian.
Perhaps he could feel her watching him. Or perhaps he kept his eyes closed because he did not wish to look at her.
She wanted to grab his hand and to press his knuckles to her pounding chest and to assure him that she hadn’t meant to embarrass him. Promise to never, ever embarrass him again.
But the truth was, she couldn’t guarantee it. She was exactly what she looked like: a green country miss. His plan to tuck her away in a guest chamber for three weeks until she was no longer his problem… was undoubtedly the sanest, safest path for the earl.
If a frustrating one for Matilda.
Once she gained control of her inheritance, the sky would be the limit. She could do as she pleased, go where she wished. If only she knew where and what that was! She would wake up the morning of her twenty-first birthday a free woman, but without any notion how to navigate London. Or a single friend therein who wished to spend time with her.
How she’d hoped that Gilbourne…
She reached out her gloved hand and hovered it a fraction of an inch above the earl’s. She would not touch him—rule number one—but she could pretend he, too, wanted to grab her hand and comfort her. That he was seconds away from—
