After she got her bonnet and coat and gloves, Edmund handed her up into the high-perch phaeton next to Phineas as one of the Sudbury footmen held the horses’ bridles.
“Mind what I said, Phin. Not too fast,” her brother rumbled.
“I never go fast in London. The traffic is abominable.”
“You’re carrying precious cargo.”
“Yes.” Phineas snapped the reins and the carriage started moving.
As soon as they were halfway down the street from the town house, Phineas said in an undertone, “I’m carrying the most precious cargo of all. My wife-to-be. On this wintry afternoon, shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”
Phineas was quoting Shakespeare? And not a play, which he might have seen in his box at the theater, but a sonnet? Phineas read poetry?
She darted a look at him. He turned his face to her for a moment, as if he had asked a real question and expected an answer from her.
“N-no.”
“Good, because I can’t remember the rest. Thou art something, something. But I’m sure you know it?”
“M-m-more lovely.”
“Of course! Of course! How could I forget, when I am with the loveliest of lovelies, my darling Caro.”
The horses took a corner at rather a good clip and the phaeton tipped a little bit and she slid into Phineas.
“T-t-too quick!” She scrambled away from him on the seat. She might be engaged to Phineas, but that didn’t mean she could sit in his lap in public.
“Yes, yes,” Phineas pulled back on the reins. “I’m so sorry, Caro, that was entirely my fault. I wasn’t paying attention.” He slowed the horses to a walk. “Are you all right? Are you hurt? Are you frightened?”
“N-no.”
“I should have brought my coachman and my regular carriage. But I thought it would be rather fun to drive you around in the phaeton. What do you think of it?”
Caroline looked down the side of the phaeton at the cobblestones far below her. She had been so flustered getting into the vehicle that she hadn’t realized the seat must be at least eight feet off the ground and there was nothing to keep one from falling out.
“I th-think . . .”
Phineas waited.
“I think you like tall things.”Thingth.
There was a pause. Then Phineas burst out laughing. “Oh, Caro. Oh, yes. Yes, I do, darling.”
She almost smiled to hear him laugh so hard at her joke.
His laugh lessened her disappointment in herself for agreeing to marry a man because she desired him. She would have that laugh in her life. She had never thought to hope for laughter. For joy. It was so alien to her.
He reached over and lightly brushed her knee with his hand. “I’m so glad you’re funny, darling, and have such a good sense of humor. Maybe even someday I’ll make you smile, eh? But now I very much regret not having brought the closed carriage. Because we could have had a bit more privacy.”
Caroline had not known she could desire him more than she already did. But that light touch of her knee. His laughing at her joke and not at her. The thought of being in a private place with him. She burned for Phineas, sitting atop this ridiculous carriage with its gargantuan wheels.
“But I will restrain myself, won’t I? I must show you I can be a friend. And that I can be good. But after the drive, maybe one kiss in the drawing room? And maybe,” he whispered and she could barely hear him over the noises of the street, “I’ll even put on my spectacles.”
Twenty
Three days later, the long-suffering king died. The prince regent was a prince no longer. Lady Huxley’s ball was moved to the end of April when the country would be out of mourning. Phineas and Caro’s wedding was also moved accordingly.
But despite returning to the black of full mourning, Caro found herself experiencing the courtship she had dreamed of when she was a girl. Roses came every day. Little notes that praised her beauty, her hair, her eyes. Phineas would recall some small adornment he had seen her wear the day before and write that it was his new favorite.
