Adam fell in beside her as they moved out of the herd. “Jason? Who is he?”
She turned to look at him. “Ah, that is right. You never learned his name. Jason is the young man who helped me abduct you.”
He lined up his impressions of this Jason in his mind. Blond hair, blue eyes, attractive enough, taller than average, and a bit lanky. Well spoken. All of that did not raise any jealousy. That he was a close friend, close enough to join her in a crime, did.
“Where is he now? I haven’t seen him since that first day.”
“He went to bring my sister home. You didn’t think I had her locked up in the attic, too, did you?”
Chapter 8
“Iassume you have a horse in London.” Caroline had slowed her horse to a walk while they approached the house and stable. She spoke after he fell in beside her. She had risen in the morning none the worse for her plunge in the pond. No fever or malady had taken hold overnight, to his relief.
“I do.”
“A good one?”
“He is a fine gelding. I have had him four years.”
“With your eye, I would expect him to be better than fine.”
“He is finer than I could hope to own. Fortunately, my cousin believes that it won’t do to have a Prescott on anything except very fine indeed. There is the family reputation to uphold.”
She looked over. “Has he been so generous that you are in his debt?”
“Not financially.” There were other kinds of debts, however. Other ways to extract payment for generosity. Margaret Millerson, for example.
Nigel wanted Millerson’s money in that canal project, but the two men did not really trust each other. They were too much alike. So a marriage between families would serve as it always served, as a blood tie that proved good intentions. With an allowance dependent on Nigel, and other debts like the horse and social connections, Adam was hard pressed to refuse.
He had not thought about Margaret for two days now and was surprised that the proposed match appealed far less now, when it had never appealed much at all.
“After you marry my sister, would you want to stay here and help rebuild Crestview Park? Would he object to any of that?”
She asked it ever so calmly, as if the first part were a given and the second parts the only unknowns.
“Marry your sister?”
“Of course. That is why you are here. I thought you knew that by now.”
He had enjoyed this ride with her. He liked horses. He liked her. Now they were in a conversation about his future that ideally would be held elsewhere, if at all.
Caroline had brought him here, abducted him, to coerce a marriage with her sister. “Why didn’t you just write to me in London, explaining the situation and learning my reaction?”
“Would you have responded? I could not count on it. Nor could I depend upon your seeing her if I brought her there, or to your cousin’s house. More likely we would have been turned away. Now you will have no choice but to see her and hear her name you, and remind you of the truth of it. Then as a gentleman you will do the right thing.”
“Only if I truly am the man who seduced your sister, something I have no recollection of.”
“I think you will remember everything when you see her.”
He considered the implications of that while they dismounted and led their horses into the stalls. He left his and came over to help her unsaddle hers. “When will Jason have her back here so I can meet her?”
“You have already met her. However, she will be here in a day or so. So you can marry her.”
Caroline thought he had figured all this out. He should have. He would have if his thoughts had not become increasingly preoccupied with Caroline herself.
“And if I refuse?” He set the saddle on the beam where it lived. He turned to face her and saw her expression set in one much like that while she held him at pistol point in that wagon the first day.
“You will marry her,” she said. “I’ll not have my sister live her life in shame because you lacked courage. The border is less than a day’s ride away and we will go to Scotland and you will wed there.”
