There was an edge to her voice that he sincerely hoped wasn’t fear. Guilt lanced him at the notion. Perhaps he should untie her after all, potential danger to his eyes aside.
He winced. “It wasn’t you I was meant to take.”
“If not me, then whom?”
He cleared his throat, his cravat too tight and stealing all the air in the cramped confines of the carriage. “I would prefer not to elaborate.”
Although it was quite obvious, was it not? A gentleman would not steal into a fellow lord’s town house to take one of his servants.
Confirming his thoughts, Miss Brooke gasped softly, the color leaching from her cheeks and leaving her pale, a study in contrast with her dark hair. “Lady Worthing.”
“Your discretion would be most appreciated,” he offered grimly, as way of confirmation.
But his inquisitive companion was not finished.
“Is this the sort of thing you do often, then?” she asked with a tart tone “Kidnapping your mistresses?”
Ah, damnation.
He eyed her dourly, thinking she shouldn’t be nearly so appealing, given all the trouble she’d thus far caused him. Also, that he didn’t have an answer to her sharp query.
“I’ve only one mistress currently,” he said. “Not more than one.”
“That wasn’t what I asked.”
His mystery governess was dashed good at stinging reprimands. She rather made him feel like a recalcitrant lad who’d been caught thieving sweets from the kitchens.
“Not in recent memory, I haven’t,” he offered with an indolent shrug. “Before that, I couldn’t say.”
Pretending as if his lack of memory didn’t affect him had become commonplace. If he feigned contentedness in his wretched state, no one looked at him with pity. He could not abide being looked at as if he were a stray mongrel who’d just been kicked.
Her brow furrowed. “What do you mean you couldn’t say?”
Ah, fortunately for him, he had kidnapped the one person in London who apparently had yet to hear the salacious tale of Lord Torrington’s disastrous phaeton accident and ensuing amnesia. It wasn’t a tale he particularly enjoyed retelling. Nor one he cared to elaborate upon now.
“It doesn’t matter,” he told her, his mind whirling with the implications of what he had done, and what it would mean for not just him but for Miss Brooke as well. “Whatdoesmatter is returning you to where you belong without anyone else being the wiser.”
A largely impossible feat, he was beginning to fear. One from which, it was almost certain, neither of them would manage to escape unscathed, reputations intact.
CHAPTER2
The carriage swayed over the Mayfair road, lumbering slowly through the darkness of the night to take Elizabeth back where she belonged. Her wrists chafed where the rope he had used to bind her mercilessly rubbed against her sensitive skin. Her pride was in tatters. Her reputation was in shreds. And her situation as governess—won in desperation when Lady Andromeda had finally told her she must find a different set of circumstances for herself—was in dreadful danger.
“How do you propose to return me to Worthing House without anyone discovering?” she asked coldly.
His long fingers drummed on his thigh idly. She told herself she would not take notice of the figure he cut in his evening clothes. Nor would she be affected by the strong slash of his jaw.
“I shall think of something,” he told her with a hopeful air that made her long to box his ears for his lack of care.
Elizabeth needed her position.
Without it, she had no roof over her head. No hope. No future.
“How reassuring,” she snapped, tugging ineffectually at her wrists yet again. “Untie me now, if you please.”
He had instructed his coachman to return them to the earl’s town house. With each moment, every clop of the horses’ hooves beyond the carriage, she was one step closer to imminent doom. But at least she might face her complete and utter ruination without a rope binding her wrists behind her back.
“You’re quite angry,” he said, as if she were the unreasonable one amongst them.
