He straightened. “Good.”
Gilbourne turned his gaze toward the front of the carriage. A solid black wall. Even the panel to the driver was closed. The earl would rather look at nothing at all than at Matilda.
Her shoulders slumped back against the squab. “How long did you say the journey is?”
“Eight hours.”
“Eight hours?”
“My coachman can manage it in seven and a half.”
Of course he could. “How many hours have passed so far?”
“Three and a quarter.” Gilbourne hadn’t even needed to check his pocket watch to know the answer. Perhaps time was moving as interminably for him as it was for Matilda. “At least you are not atop a mail coach, Miss Dodd.”
“I wasn’t complaining about the carriage,” she said quickly. “I’ve never been in a coach this fine or on a journey this long. And I told you: It’s Matilda.”
“Miss Dodd.”
“Must we suffer so much formality? If I’m to call you Gilbourne, could you not call me… Dodd?”
The earl recoiled in horror. “Address you like a servant? You are not a maid, Miss Dodd. You are my ward.”
“Then call me Tilly, as my parents did,” she suggested.
His eyes glittered. “Let there be no confusion between us. I am not your father, Miss Dodd. I harbor no parental feelings toward you whatsoever.”
She swallowed, then turned her gaze out the window. “Perhaps I’m just peckish.”
Gilbourne rapped on the driver’s panel at once. “John!”
The panel swung open and cold air rushed inside the coach. “Yes, my lord?”
“Stop at the first inn you find,” Gilbourne ordered.
“There’s one just ahead, my lord.” The panel closed.
Within minutes, the carriage pulled into a traveler’s inn. A row of carriages lined the front garden, and even more clumped before a large stable, where fresh horses could be rented and swapped.
“I thought you were in a hurry to return to your study,” she stammered.
“I am,” he said. “And you are hungry. So we eat.”
“I’ll hurry,” she promised.
“Good. I hope to arrive before nightfall. There’s an errand that… well, you’ll see.”
Chapter 16
They did not arrive before nightfall.
London stretched out on both sides of the carriage in a blur of black on black, with dazzling sparkles of yellow and white in the windows of the houses they passed. Matilda watched, transfixed.
Soon, the carriage pulled to a stop on a pretty little street lined with what appeared to be long rows of closed shops, with cozy residential lodgings above on the first and second floors. It was not at all what she had imagined for the Earl of Gilbourne’s residence.
“Which one is yours?” she asked, unable to contain her eagerness to know this side of him.
“None of them,” he replied flatly.
