“Marcel adores you.”
“He’s the best of coachmen. I’ll have to find some way to reward him for his quick thinking today.”
As they spoke, Marcel was driving them to the village center. When they stopped in front of the inn, John told her to wait in the carriage.
“Don’t go anywhere,” he warned.
“I think I will be fine in the town square. And I have Marcel, anyway. More useful than you, really.”
“Go nowhere,” he repeated, pointing a finger and trying to look severe, but he had a smile curling on his face.
In two minutes, he returned to the carriage.
“Those were highwaymen who, apparently, have been menacing the village for days. I told the men that we knocked one out and that the magistrate should go and retrieve him before he wakes. Apparently, the cottagers have been staying elsewhere out of fear. Martha is at a farm only five miles down the main road.”
“Very well,” she said, nervous once more at the prospect of seeing Martha again.
John tapped on the roof. He looked out the window of the carriage and she could tell he was still tense. A small muscle worked in his jaw. He held his mouth in a line of tense worry.
“Do you want to tell me what’s wrong?” she asked, wishing she could read his mind. “Or shall I guess?”
“I was just thinking of how I should have taken that spade and knocked out each and every one of that monster’s remaining teeth.”
“The highwayman?”
He nodded, settling his eyes on her.
“Don’t be ridiculous. He just wanted my purse.”
He looked at her darkly. “I doubt that was all.”
“It is difficult to know. He was obviously desperate.”
His eyes flashed. “You have sympathy for such a man? You certainly didn’t seem sympathetic when you were wielding that spade.”
“Not sympathy exactly. I just don’t feel that his hostility is…personal.”
He made an almost imperceptible sound and she checked the impulse to move closer to him, to smooth away his mood more directly. She had to remember that they were only friends. And, compared to yesterday, thatwasquite an improvement.
“I understand what it is like to feel desperate for money in a world where it doesn’t come easily,” she tried to explain, wanting him to understand that, though the men had scared her, she didn’t feel particular anger towards them. “Their actions were inexcusable, but I still understand how one could become what they are.”
He studied her, his disbelief radiating off of him.
“Right now, we have our own desperate scheme driven by the same motive. You want to save your sister’s dowry. And I want your ten thousand pounds to help my own family.”
“Help your own family?”
She felt the coach slowing. They were pulling up to a pretty farmhouse.
“Ariel and Lady Wethersby,” she clarified, as the coach rolled to a stop. “We need this money to live a better life. It could return Ariel to his proper sphere. It would make all the difference to us.”
For a moment, she saw his mouth soften.
And then Marcel opened the door to the coach.
Once her feet were on the ground, however, she was surprised to find John beside her.
“I thought we agreed I was doing this alone?”
