“She’ll ride with me,” Aden put in, his tone amused. “Miranda, this is Gavin. He came south with us to make certain our horses were properly seen to. Gavin, Miss Harris.”
“Miss Harris,” the groom said, tugging on his forelock.
Aden moved past her and swung into the saddle of the bay mare. Once aboard he kicked his left foot out of its stirrup and held a hand down to her. “I’ll have ye in my arms after all, it seems.”
With Gavin boosting her up, she stepped into the stirrup and then practically flew through the air to sit sideways across Aden’s thighs.
“Cozy?”
That wasn’t quite the word she would use, not with her heart pounding practically out of her chest, but she nodded, anyway. Once the groom had mounted a short-chested gray, they set off at a canter that would have had pedestrians frowning at them if they’d attempted it in daylight. As it was they nearly ran one hack off the road, and the driver of a grand, black coach gave them the two-fingered salute as they hurried by.
“Which bank are we burgling?” she asked, turning her head to look up at Aden’s lean face.
He glanced down at her, then back to the streets. She thought she saw brief humor in his eyes, but it could have been the moonlight. “The big one,” he returned.
“‘The big one’? Could you narrow it down a bit?”
“What do ye Sassenach call it? The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street, aye?”
“The… The Bank of England?” she croaked. “Thebank?”
“Well, aye. Where else would a man take his most precious possessions to make certain they stay safe?”
“Good heavens. I thought you meant some out-of-the-way private little bank that has favorable lending terms for criminals or something.”
She felt his responding laugh all the way to her bones, and that made her consider the other things she could feel, as she sat on his thighs and the horse rocketed down the lane. When she deliberately shifted a little, he gave a muttered curse.
“Here I am trying to be a bloody hero,” he murmured, “and all I can think of is that I want ye again, and now that I’ve had ye, I reckon no one else will ever do for me.”
She kissed his jaw. “I was beginning to think there was something wrong with me, because even with Vale breathing down my neck, being with you is all I can think about.”
“Mayhap we’re both wicked, lass.”
Miranda liked that. Wicked. A few weeks ago being called “nearly scandalous” had satisfied her, but she was finished with being “nearly” anything. And she was finished with frivolous evenings where the most serious discussion she was likely to have was whether the long-lost Lady Temperance Hartwood would finally reappear as the wife of a butcher or a tanner or something, six pudgy children in tow.
“We could keep riding all the way to the coast and board a ship bound for Portugal,” she suggested.
“I’m rescuing ye whether ye want it or nae,” he returned with a brief grin. “If ye want to flee after, well, the Highlands are a fine a place as any to get lost.” His smile flattened a little. “Or wherever ye wish. Ye’ll be free to call on Prussians or Egyptians or even Americans, if ye care to do so.”
There he went again, sidestepping any mention of a future they might share. Stubborn, stubborn Highlander. He would tell her that he loved her and melt her heart, tell her that he wanted her and heat her from the inside out, but he rode miles away from any mention of the word “marriage,” for fear that she might be answering out of gratitude or a sense of obligation or even a last, desperate effort to free herself from Vale’s grasp. And he doubted his own sense of honor.
When they reached Threadneedle Street, the massive Bank of England looming dark and imposing to their left, Aden slowed to a walk. “Northeast corner,” he muttered, turning them up Bartholomew Lane along the bank’s broad backside.
“You trust this fellow we’re meeting?” she whispered, shivering as she looked up at the building. “Not to disparage you, but heisa gambler. Valecouldown him.”
“I was a gambler, too, until a few hours ago. I reckon we’ll find out shortly if I read him rightly or nae.”
Half of her hoped Aden had been wrong, that they weren’t just about to burgle the Bank of England. But if hewaswrong, she would be paying a horrible price, anyway, and he would have been blackballed for no blasted reason at all.
“Gavin,” he called, his voice barely audible, “keep an eye on that lad in the blue coat. He’s a guard, I reckon. Let me know when he turns the corner.”
Keeping them at a walk, the two horses headed up toward Lothbury. If he didn’t decide what he was about soon, they would have to circle the entire building again.
“Go,” Gavin hissed. An instant later, Aden had his hands around Miranda’s waist as he lifted her to the ground. He followed her a second later and tossed the bay’s reins to the groom.
“Keep going up the street and around, in a big circle,” he instructed. “Look for us.”
Nodding, Gavin continued up to the cross street and headed left on Lothbury. “He seems very comfortable with this,” Miranda noted, hardly daring to breathe.
