The Scheherazade was shorter and smaller than he had thought she was. She had seemed to take up so much space in the carriage. And now, in his mind.
“Here.” He thrust the pie at her.
She smiled up at him. “Oh, no. It’s a Christmas present. I meant for you to eat it. I’ll have my own dinner soon.”
He still held it out. “As will I.”
“Oh. Yes, I see. Thank you.” She took the pie. “And I’m awfully grateful for your assistance with that other matter. I have a terrible tendency to talk too freely to strangers and unfortunately some men think it’s an invitation and then I’m in trouble and I was very glad of your help. Your solution was heaps better than mine.”
“Which was?”
“I was about to screamUnhand me, varlet!” She giggled.“Then jab a hatpin into his leg. Next to his bollocks.”
He felt his lips twitch. His little Scheherazade, an avenging warrior-angel wielding a hatpin.
But he couldn’t keep calling her Scheherazade.
“Your name,” he demanded.
“My name? It’s L—” She gulped. “Franny. And yours?”
“Kit—”
He had started to give his title. But it had been so enjoyable to hide behind his beard and his ragged, comfortable clothes today. So very liberating not to have been a duke for a few hours.
“Very pleased to make your acquaintance, Kit.” She gave him one more view of that seductive gap between her teeth before she scurried away and seized a satchel that had just been taken off the carriage roof.
He fretted while his own small trunk was freed from its lashings and then he was off behind her, the trunk on his shoulder.
It was dusk in Cheapside. Franny should not be walking alone. He must know she arrived at her destination safely. And what that destination was.
First, she walked west. Then she ducked into an alley, heading north. He almost missed her doing that. The sly minx. At the end of the alley, she broke into a run and went eastward, doubling back.
Oh.
She knew he was following her. He was just another strange man to whom she had spoken too freely. He put his trunk down.
He must let her alone and hope no evil befell her. Damn. If only he had worn a clean pair of trousers and shaved off his beard. And been in his carriage marked with his coat-of-arms. Then she would have let him convey her home.
But if he had been in clean clothes and his own carriage, it would mean he had waited in Little Effing-Green for the arrival of his valet and trunks full of tailcoats and cravats and waistcoats for every conceivable Christmastide occasion, including a Christmas Eve ball. He would be at the house party right now, and he wouldn’t have been in the stage coach in the first place.
And he would have never heard Franny’s laugh.
Therefore, best not to wish for things.
He turned to look for a hack to take him to his club where he would be shown to a room with a crackling fire. He would soak in a hot bath. His hair would be trimmed and his face shaven. He would eat a succulent meal and drink countless glasses of claret. He would read into the night before collapsing into a soft bed piled high with downy pillows and thick blankets.
He wasn’t sure why he felt sorry for himself, but he did.
Oh good,she had gotten away from her sweet, beardedhusband. Yes, she could tell he was kind, most people were, but the way he looked at her made her so thringly—a scramble of thrill and tingly—and she couldn’t afford an entanglement. Not now. Possibly never again. Entanglements were for women with secure positions in the world, not ones who needed their brother’s tuition paid three times a year.
She gave her pie along with aHappy Christmasto the first beggar she saw and began wending her way west again, towards Mayfair where Mrs. Tumney now worked as a cook to a duke.
“I have taken up a post in London. I just couldn’t bear staying on with the new marquess,” Mrs. Tumney had written Franny last spring. “Not after how you and his lordship were treated.”
Franny had written back: “Dear, darling, lovely Mrs. Tumney! I hope you didn’t uproot yourself on our account. And please remember Laurence is no longer a lord, just as I am no longer a lady. We are merely Ren and Franny now. He is a brilliant, hard-working pupil, and I am a rather insipidious companion. But we love you just as much as ever!”
In October, Mrs. Tumney had written: “All the servants at the London house have been given leave to go home during Christmastide because Their Graces will be away at a house party. Could you and Master Laurence come have Christmas with me here? We would have a grand time, I promise. I will make enormous feasts, and we’ll hang greenery all around the kitchen and carol in front of the fire until our voices are gone. It will be as close to old times as I can make it.”
