“Even if we share a room tonight, which you should insist we do not, and even if we marry in three days, the baby will be born at the right time.”
“True enough.” Without another word, she lifted the thick wool blanket under which she’d been keeping warm and changed her place, nestling beside him.
He put his arm around her shoulders.
“I am sorry,” she said, straightening. “This is all wrong.”
Geoffrey tensed. If she’d changed her mind, he would probably throw himself out of the moving carriage over a well-placed cliff if he could find one.
“I need to sit facing the way we travel.”
He breathed a sigh of relief. Many people felt a stomach upset when riding backward, including his own mother.
They rearranged themselves and faced forward, snuggling under the covering.
“Much better,” Caroline said. Once again, she rested her head upon his shoulder.
“I confess I barely slept last night. And then after the excitement of the morning, I believe I could doze off if you didn’t think me too rude.”
“Please, take a journey to the land of Nod if you can. Maybe I shall join you. My driver and footman will alert us if there is any trouble whatsoever.”
As she rested her hand on his chest, his heart bloomed with love, and he thought nothing could be better than having her start snoring gently in his arms.
Until that night when she told him to obtain a single room.
As he descended from the carriage to speak to the innkeeper, she reached out and laid her hand upon his arm.
“After all,” she said, “I consider myself already your wife in all but the formality.”
Her trust in him shook Geoffrey. When he had secured them the best room and were now discussing going downstairs to dinner or having it brought up to their room, he couldn’t help telling her what was on his mind.
“I am actually concerned for you.”
“What do you mean?” She had been removing her outer coat but now stopped to look at him, her pretty lips parted in a smile.
“You are too trusting. What if you were here with a rogue? You can’t tell a man you already consider yourself married. What if I tupped you and left you here?” He was working himself up into righteous outrage on her behalf.
Instead of understanding the gravity of her circumstances, Caroline laughed and finished shrugging out of her coat, which she laid over the end of the bed. Approaching him, she put her hands up to take his face between her slender fingers.
“Geoffrey Diamond, are you going to tup me tonight?”
Swallowing hard at the instant image of fornication that sprang into his brain while his staff sprang to hard arousal as well, he stared into her unfathomable green eyes and could speak only the truth.
“Probably. In fact, certainly. Yes, I intend to.” He stopped babbling as she stroked her thumb over his lower lip.
“And are you going to leave me here afterward as a fallen woman? Or will we continue our journey to Scotland, so we can marry in haste and enjoy our lives at leisure?”
“That is not how the saying goes,” he pointed out. “Regardless, I am never going to leave you anywhere but stay always by your side.”
She nodded, went up on tiptoe, and kissed him full upon his lips.
Before he could wrap his arms around her, however, she had broken contact and slipped past him.
“I am famished,” she said. “If we are going to get to swiving later, then I need to eat now.”
Chapter Thirteen
Lord James Diamond decided his son was a chip off the old block. First the episode in the butler’s pantry that all of London had read about, and now it seemed Geoffrey had absconded with the willing Chimes wench.
