He dismounted and walked his horse to the wagon. He proceeded to tie it to the back. “If I tell you, you’ll make sure I can’t do it again.”
She noticed he had found his boots, coat, and gloves. What a disaster. Not only had he escaped; he’d also proven she was hopelessly inept at executing her own scheme.
“Where is the old man?” he asked.
“He hurt his leg a week ago and it has taken a turn. He needs to rest it more.” Old Tom had returned to helping her before he should have and now paid the price.
“And the young man?”
“On errands.”
Adam climbed onto the wagon. “Then it is just you and me. You take the reins and I’ll take care of the hay.”
She swung one leg over the bench seat’s back, then paused. “Why didn’t you keep riding? You could be well away by now.”
He lifted a bale and threw it out toward some horses. “I recalled that I gave you my word not to escape.” He turned that smile on her again. “I also wanted to see you in pantaloons.”
Her position, straddling the back of the seat, showed how she looked in pantaloons rather too well, she realized. She tugged down on her coat and finished her move so those pantaloons would be hidden while she sat. She heard a soft laugh behind her.
She moved the wagon and bales flew. “That should be enough,” he finally said.
To her surprise, he climbed over and sat beside her.
“How do you know what is enough?” she asked. “Have you taken care of horses?”
“As a youth I dawdled around my uncle’s stables. Now I make good use of my cousin’s when I visit. I find horses excellent society, often better than that in the drawing room.”
How well he put it. Few people understood what he meant, but Caroline did. She had always had an affinity with her father’s horses and had learned to care for them while still a girl. That had made that horrible day when the men came with muskets all the worse and a tragedy from which she had never really recovered.
She turned the wagon and headed back to the house and outbuildings. Lord Thornhill did not try to take the reins from her, even though he wore his good gloves now. He must have found them where she set them near the door. There really wasn’t enough room for both her and Adam on the seat, which meant that they were pressed against each other. She inhaled the scent of the soap she had left him and noticed how those gloves fit his hands perfectly, as if molded to their strength with liquid leather.
“I suggest we come to an understanding about my stay with you, Miss Dunham.”
“I am listening.”
“You now know I can get out. I propose you simply allow that and spare me the effort of getting that bar up again.”
“Next time perhaps you will not stop before you disappear into the trees.”
“I will swear my parole. In olden times, when a knight was taken in battle, and was being held for ransom, he was not imprisoned. If he swore his parole he had free movement in the house and grounds. He might join the household knights on hunts, and would eat at the high table.”
“We don’t have a high table. Just one. If you dine at it, you will dine with servants.”
“Which will save you and those servants the trouble of feeding me up in an attic.”
Considering most of the servants, if she could even call her faithful retainers that, could not serve anyone at the moment, his proposal had some appeal.
“What happened if one of those knights broke his parole?”
“That rarely happened, because if it did the world would know that man had no honor.” To her shock, leather-encased fingers lightly touched her chin and turned her head until she was looking into the bluest eyes she had ever seen. “Whatever you have heard, whatever you think, I am a gentleman, Miss Dunham. When I say I will not escape, on my honor I will not.”
Her chin and neck quivered under that touch. She could not pull her gaze away from his. Confusion swirled in her mind, and shock at her lack of will. She remained enthralled for a half minute until he released her, but that release was all his doing, not a matter of her demanding it.
She snapped the reins to get the horse moving faster. She needed to get back so she would not feel his warmth against her side like this, and so she would stop stealing glances at that face of his. As stupid as she felt for again succumbing, she grasped the one good thing to come out of the encounter. She counted on his being a gentleman once he saw Amelia. If he kept insisting like this that he was one, it would be impossible for him to refuse to do the right thing when that happened.
* * *
Miss Dunham brought the wagon right to the stable yard. She hopped out with a quickness a dress would have denied her. The coat she wore had little length. It looked to be a boy’s coat, chosen so it would not drown her in fabric. That meant, however, that he had a fine view of how those pantaloons encased her legs and hips while she unhitched the horse.
