No, Lady Starling wouldn’t be sinking her talons into Peter.
Two maids delivered an assortment of aromatic and steaming foods. Stone had gone nearly two days without a hot meal and, lovesick or not, needed food to sustain a body such as his.
Taking a bite, and finding the dish adequate but almost flavorless, he realized nothing was the same without her. Last night, their fare had tasted like manna and the wine like nectar.
Had she felt the same?
“The curricle’s repairs were completed yesterday.” Creighton spoke up for the first time, not at all used to dining with a baron and an earl.
Westerley winced, and Stone jumped on the opportunity to discuss anything that might distract him from contemplating the meaning behind everything that had happened over the past week. He regaled Westerley and Chase with a detailed tale of the calamities he and Creighton had met after they’d left London together.
Westerley shared some of his journey as well.
“Halfway to Culpepper’s country estate, with not a scrap of evidence of a ducal entourage having driven through before us, I took a calculated risk that you’d been right all along. Thought you might need a hand.”
What would he and Tabetha be doing this instant if Westerley hadn’t made that decision?
“I’m glad you did,” Stone said. But he would have appreciated another day alone with her. And another night.
“Hand me that bottle,” he added.
Chapter 25
Girl Talk
“I’m biting my tongue to keep from saying ‘I told you so.’” Bethany tipped a pitcher of warm water over Tabetha’s head while Charley, Westerley’s American wife, sat nearby, holding Archie and petting him affectionately.
The last time Tabetha had bathed, she’d been in Gretna Green. She’d been plain old Tabetha Chester, and her life had been so much less complicated. The time before that, Stone had assisted her.
She bit her lip. He had been his annoying self when he’d shown up to rescue her, but he’d also been surprisingly sweet. Now she realized that she’d been the luckiest girl in the world when he appeared on that dusty road.
“I can’t believe you kidnapped Culpepper’s cat.” Charley giggled. “And how is it that I’m so fond of such an atrocious-looking creature?” She leaned forward and kissed the top of Archie’s head. “No offense, sweetheart.”
The memory of Culpepper’s hand clutching Archie’s collar flashed in Tabetha’s mind.
“Culpepper is a beast,” she said. It was doubtful he would have treated her any better.
Bethany had been right to warn her.
“But he is a duke,” Bethany pointed out.
“Did Mr. Spencer really kidnap you from him?” Charley asked, her startling green eyes wide with curiosity.
“Stone didn’t kidnap me. Whatever gave you that idea?” But then she realized. “Culpepper.”
“Yes.”
Tabetha disabused her sister and sister-in-law of the falsehood, confessing how she’d changed her mind when they’d arrived at the blacksmith’s. She told them everything that happened from the moment she took off on her own, to the point where she and Stone had arrived in Gretna Green. She particularly enjoyed the dramatic telling of how Stone had beaten Culpepper’s men handily and then thrown her on the back of Poppy and carried her away to safety.
All the while, her sister had massaged soap into Tabetha’s hair, rinsed it out, and was now smoothing a brush down her back, having worked out every last tangle.
“And how,” her sister asked quietly, “did you come to marry Stone… rather,Mister Spencer? And are you planning on obtaining an annulment?”
“You know?”
“Jules says Culpepper wouldn’t have left you behind otherwise,” Charley said.
That had been her and Stone’s initial reasoning, Tabetha remembered. Stone had sat patiently in the mercantile while she’d asked his opinion on various items of clothing.
