But he was certain it was Tabetha. A stubborn set to her mouth, trudging along the muddy road, looking more than a little skittish. A young woman, alone, in the middle of nowhere—she could hardly have put herself in a more vulnerable position.
But she wasn’t alone. Who the hell was she talking to?
And then he saw it. By god, it was the ugliest cat he’d ever seen in his life.
“Go back, Archie!”Tabetha waved in the direction from where she’d come. “Go on now.”
She never should have fed him. The mercenary little fellow’s eyes never once left her reticule, in which she carried five pounds but more importantly, the cloth wrapped around the biscuits she’d procured from breakfast earlier that day.
“Tabetha!”
She halted. It wasn’t Culpepper’s voice, and it wasn’t coming from behind her. A rider up ahead. Fear and then relief nearly had her knees buckling.
And then embarrassment.
Even from a distance, and with the beginnings of a beard on the lower half of his face, she had no difficulty recognizing Stone Spencer. Of all the people who would come to her rescue, why did it have to be the one person who would not be averse to chastising her over this tiny little error in judgment?
He was riding toward her purposefully too, sitting atop a thick gray mare, his hat askew and his clothing more wrinkled and soiled than her own. She hated that even though he had circles under his eyes and looked as scruffy as a wicked henchman, her heart skipped a beat. Stone Spencer had no business looking so roguishly handsome while she looked like something that had been dragged through the gutter.
She was going to have to be grateful to him because his arrival meant she was not going to have to find her way home alone after all.
Something, if she were to be honest with herself, she hadn’t thought through properly.
She halted her march and, without thinking, lifted Archie off the ground and hugged him to her chest. Stone slowed his horse, dismounted with agile grace, and closed the distance between them.
“Fancy meeting you here, My Lady.” His voice held a trace of humor but something else as well. Irony? Insult? “Or is it Duchess, now?”
She shifted her gaze and studied an apathetic cow grazing in the nearby field as though he was the most fascinating animal imaginable. “Not Duchess.”
“Oh?”
“I… er… changed my mind.”
His lips twitched and then he chuckled. “Where is Culpepper?” He scrubbed a hand down his face.
Archie clawed at her bodice, climbing up so that he could rest his chin on her shoulder. He meowed by her ear, reminding her that his rightful owner would be wanting him back soon.
It wasn’t as though she’daskedthe cat to come along on her escape. “Up the road a ways—making arrangements with the anvil priest. He thinks I’m in the privy.”
Mr. Spencer cocked a disbelieving brow. “And you thought to what, walk to London on your own? In those?” His blue gaze flicked to just below her hem, where her slippers peeked out, soaked with mud, one toe protruding through a broken seam.
“I panicked.”
“I didn’t take you for a person who’d crumble under a little pressure.”
Tabetha smoothed the material of one of her sleeves, refusing to be goaded.
“So, the Duke of Culpepper is… waiting for you to emerge from the privy… at the blacksmith’s?”
Tabetha nodded. With each passing moment, she felt more and more like a disobedient child. Her escape plan had not only been hopeless, but it had also been nonexistent
“Did you expect him to come after you? To beg and grovel at your feet?”
“I didn’t think that far.” She ignored the mocking groveling comment. But Culpepper would have to come after her, wouldn’t he? Having taken her away from her mother’s home, he was responsible for her safety. And it was his duty to ensure that she made it back to London.
The sudden arrival at the blacksmith’s had spooked her. She hadn’t cared where she was going or how she intended to get there. But she’d needed to get away from him.
She couldn’t marry Culpepper. She would find someone else—some other duke.
