“It seems you have no more trouble on your hands,” Diana said, hoping to leave, as Artemis raked the dirt with a hoof.
“Not immediately, at any rate. From where do you hail, Miss Diana?”
His deep voice sent a tingle down her spine. Unnerved, she tightened her grip on the reins. “Over the way.” Diana gestured with her head in a vague direction, eager to be gone. She was vulnerable here alone with this stranger. Not all lords could be trusted. Quite the opposite, she’d heard. “I’ll be in trouble if I don’t return this horse to her master, my lord.” She turned Artemis’s head and nudged her flank.
“So, like Diana, Goddess of the Hunt, you ride into my life and disappear again leaving me mystified?” he called after her. “I remain deep in your debt, Miss Diana, And hope we shall meet again.”
Diana laughed as she steered her horse through the trees. She heard the earl instruct his coachman to continue on to Bath. Turning back, she watched the coach rattle away, the coachman cracking his whip over the dashing horses, the groom grimly clutching his gun.
She wondered if she would see the earl again when she and her father finally arrived in London. While it wouldn’t be wise, after the way they had met, she couldn’t help wishing she might.
Diana thought more about him as she rode home. Surely, he would attend some events during the Season. She’d never seen him before, but she’d remained at home in disgrace last year, after encouraging Lord Amsberry’s heir to refuse her, and angering her father. She wasn’t sorry. Not after his son had disappeared like a scared rabbit. Despite suffering months of interminable boredom as a result, it had been the right thing to do. Their natures would not have suited. She’d have made the poor man unhappy and herself as well. But Lord Ballantine! How different was he than the run-of-the-mill gentlemen she’d met. Who were those men who’d held up his coach? She suspected excitement would follow him wherever he went.
With a sigh, she urged Artemis into a canter, intent on arriving home before Papa noticed her missing and sent the groom after her. She must not risk his ire. Attending this coming Season had suddenly become even more interesting.
*
Damian Beaufort III,Earl of Ballentine, glanced up at his groom on the box before boarding the coach. “Keep your gun at the ready and be quick to advise me if even some small thing doesn’t look right.” With his loaded pistol within reach of his hand beside him, he kept alert. Bloody hell, but his head hurt. It had been an exhausting three-day bacchanalian, with card play, too much imbibing and engaging women. It had made a perfect respite from the tension of his work, and he guessed he would see the benefits of it eventually, although not now, as he’d gotten precious little sleep. His thoughts returned to Miss Diana. No woman he’d met in Devon could match the fearless beauty who’d dressed in such unusual riding clothes and acted with such courage. It was regrettable that he hadn’t been able to question the rogues. Could there have been another motive other thanrobbery behind the attack? Something to do with his spymaster? If so, this could mean trouble ahead.
The young woman had driven them off with a dueling pistol, no less. He chuckled and shook his head. Then he thought better of it when it threatened to fly off his shoulders. Beneath her wide-brimmed hat, she had scrutinized him, her unusual, dark-blue eyes the color of the ocean’s deepest depths. He’d considered himself coolly appraised as he’d looked back at her. A curl of honey-gold-brown hair had teased her smooth cheek, her pink, full-lipped mouth as ripe as a plum. Riding astride in those breeches! With the longest and shapeliest legs he’d seen. Enough to give a man a cockstand. What the devil had she been doing gallivanting about in that garb, and with a pistol, no less? The daughter of the local squire, perhaps? She’d had to set about returning the horse, she’d said. He doubted it. Her clipped speech had given her away, and she’d been far too confident. That had been a gentleman’s expensive dueling pistol and a devilishly fine thoroughbred she’d ridden with such ease. No squire would have trusted her with it. He knew they’d pulled up close to the Duke of Ashburnham’s estate. He seemed to remember the duke had a daughter, although for the moment, her name escaped him. Wait, wasn’t it Diana? Diana, Goddess of the Hunt, came to mind again, making him laugh. What would the Duke of Ashburnham make of his daughter riding about in men’s clothes? Or was he too busy with his art? Rumor had it he had affairs with his models while painting their pictures. It must have worked well for him. His prized paintings fetched high prices at Sotheby’s auctions.
Damian scratched his jaw where stubble itched. He’d left at first light and without his valet, had taken no time to shave. With a slow smile, a thought struck him. Might Miss Diana be one of Ashburnham’s models? He laughed. Should it be so, he would keep an eye out for the painting. He’d buy it. Hang it on hisdrawing room wall. Sure to shock his infernal female relatives, who might think twice before arriving unannounced and pestering him.Time you settled down. Come to dinner, I’d like you to meet Lady So-and-So…Hadn’t they heard the gossip? To keep hopeful mamas at bay, he had declared he wouldn’t marry until his hair turned gray. Assuming he reached such a venerable age. He was still on the shady side of thirty, and there was much to do which could not include a wife and children.
But who is Diana?he mused, as her astonishing appearance, like a fierce Valkyrie, lingered in his mind’s eye. The duke wasn’t an acquaintance, so Damian couldn’t ask him. But surely, a duke’s unmarried daughter, if that was who she was, and he was now almost sure of it, would attend the Season, and he might see her there. By necessity, he must spend some time in London, after duty required him to visit an aunt in Bath. He groaned. He was fond of his Aunt Hattie, who had helped to raise him and his younger brother, Luke, after their mother had died young, but Hattie, true to form, was sure to have a lady in mind for him.
Damian gazed from the window at the road curving away ahead of them, searching for any sign of a disturbance, a flock of unsettled birds, or rising dust, but there was only the bark of a fox, and the call of a crow, and then silence, broken by the rhythmic pounding of his carriage horses. His groom was young and too inexperienced to deal with masked gunmen. Damian hadn’t considered it necessary to bring a footman this time and conceded that might prove a mistake. While the lady’s dueling pistol had spooked the two men, it might not have been for long. Would they be game enough to try again? He was wide awake now and ready for them.
The more he thought about it, the more convinced he was that this had not been a chance meeting. It was not usual for highwaymen to rob coaches on this road. He suspected they’d been after not money, but him. If that were so, then who laybehind the attack? And what did they want, if not his death? Information? Their means of extracting it would not be pleasant and it made him angry he’d been so cavalier. His first stop when he finally reached London would be the Quartermaster General’s Department at Army Headquarters in Horse Guards to consult his spymaster.
Chapter One
Daintith Park
Three weeks later
The guests, drinkingwine, milled around the Marquess and Marchioness of Daintith’s drawing room, speaking in subdued voices. When the news had come that her best friend, Lady Anne, had been kidnapped while returning from a shopping trip in Bath, Diana had wept until her pillow had been soaked. No trace of her had been found, even after her father had paid a ransom. Now, Diana had no more tears to shed, and a lump blocked her dry throat.
Anne’s ill mother absent, Lord Daintith walked among the guests looking strained. Anne had admitted privately to Diana to struggling to like her father, whom she found overbearing, but perhaps he loved his daughter.
“The gentleman in black in the corner is Viscount Withnell,” Grandmama whispered. “Apparently, his and Anne’s betrothal was about to be announced when she was taken.”
Diana saw no sign that the viscount was heartbroken. He looked impatient, tapping his hand against his thigh, as if he wished to leave. He was a tall man with a hard mouth. But grief affected people differently, she reminded herself.
The last letter Anne had written to her mentioned a gentleman her father had been considering for her husband. This, apparently, was he.
With a nod to her sorrowful grandmother, who stood with her father, Diana slipped out through the open French doors onto the terrace. Everyone talked as if Anne were gone forever. They could not give up on her. They must not. Surely, it was possible to uncover something that might lead them to the place where Anne was held? Diana could not believe she was dead. She wasn’t prepared to believe it.
Anne’s maid had been sent home carrying a note from the kidnappers with instructions for where to leave the ransom. She had become hysterical and had been sent off to stay with her mother.
Though the weeks since Anne’s disappearance had blurred together, Diana remembered, a few days after she’d gotten the news, riding her horse to the Daintith estate. Instead of heading to the front door, as she always had, she’d gone to the stables. She’d found Joseph Cullin, the groom who’d been in attendance to Anne’s carriage that day, grooming a horse on the cobbles.
He swung around as she entered the courtyard, his jaw agape. “Lady Diana!”
Diana dismounted from Artemis. “A sad day, Joseph. Can you tell me how it happened?”
“I told them everything I know, my lady,” he said, his voice trembling.
“Yes, but, Joseph,Ineed to know.”
