Chapter Five
He wasn’t there.
Melissa slowed her steps as she wended her way through the congestion that was Hyde Park Corner. Although not quite eight o’clock, an hour considered obscenely early for the gentlefolk of London, everyone else seemed to feel otherwise. She stopped close enough to survey the throng without plunging into its madness. Then she tamped down her disappointment.
No magnificent Highlander stood holding the reins of two perfectly matched bays as he’d promised.
He wasn’t waiting for her.
She saw only a teeming mass of humanity. Plainly dressed folk and those who were clearly servants, plus a never-ending coming and going of carriages, farm carts, and street hawkers with their stalls-on-wheels. She also noted scores of running, laughing, dirt-faced children, and a good number of barking, equally excited dogs.
Compared to the quiet and serenity of the countryside around Cranleigh, the noisy chaos before her could be the gateway to hell.
Shuddering, she wished she hadn’t worn her best riding dress, a rich emerald design that flattered her – to her mind – too generous hips and breasts, and drew the eye to her flame-colored hair, said by many to be her best feature.
She wasn’t sure about that, for the moment only worrying that her gown would attract unwanted attention.
Already, she was aware of speculative glances.
To her surprise, she couldn’t deny the fast beat of her heart or the need to keep peering into the crowd. How could a brief meeting with a man she hardly knew affect her as powerfully as her encounter with the Black Lyon of Lyongate Hall?
Time spent in a cloakroom of all places.
She didn’t know.
But then, since meeting him, she almost felt reborn, a different person than she’d been on climbing into her stepmother’s carriage for the journey to London. Her world suddenly brimmed with hope, struck her as having shifted, becoming right. So much so that everything around her seemed brighter, crystalline, and more colorful than before. Was her mother’s out-with-the-faeries blood calling to her?
Making her even more fanciful?
More Scottish?
She gave herself a shake and brushed down her skirts, a brace of her English father’s practicality warning her to school her emotions and think of practicalities.
So she lifted a hand to her brow and turned in a circle, sure she’d spot the Highlander somewhere.
She didn’t.
Before she could decide if she should wait, or leave, a herring cart bumped into her.
“It be the cat,” the hawker excused herself, the old woman’s voice oddly familiar.
Undeniably Scottish.
Melissa knew her, too, for the black-garbed crone was forever emblazoned across her memory.
“You! Wait…”She reached for the crone’s arm as she shuffled by, pushing her fish cart.
Melissa’s hand closed on thin air.
“No, come back!” she cried, shock raising gooseflesh over her skin. “Please…”
“Eh?” The old woman was suddenly there again, right before her. “Are you wanting some herring?”
Peering at Melissa, the gray-haired hawker looked nothing like the crone she’d seen at the Merrivales’ townhouse.
This old woman was taller and gaunt, her clothes not black, but a serviceable brown with a hodge-podge of colorful patches that seemingly held her garments together. Her shawl, once cream-colored, was now yellowed.
She wheeled her cart closer, her smile revealing a missing front tooth. “You’ll not find tastier herring in all London-town,” she said, her accent not at all Scottish. But her blue eyes twinkled, reminiscent of the crone.
