Page 9 of How To Tempt A Bodyguard

Florence

She pressed her hand harder against her chest, feeling the documents' phantom weight even though they were locked away in her trunks. Patents. Contracts. Letters in powerful men's own handwriting, proving illegal dealings that could destroy fortunes and end political careers. Evidence of her own transgressions too, enough to hang her alongside them if she wasn't careful.

Her insurance policy. Her leverage. Her freedom, all disguised as gowns and petticoats and frippery no man would think twice about.

Should she tell him?

If someone was actively trying to stop her from reaching Scotland, he'd need to know what he was protecting. A bodyguard working blind was a bodyguard who might make fatal mistakes. But if he was part of it, if this accident had been staged, if Mrs Raines had been compromised…

No.

She watched him kneel beside the driver again, checking the bandage, adjusting it with careful fingers. He'd thrown himself across the carriage to shield her. No hesitation, no calculation, just instinct. She could still feel the ghost of his arms around her, the way his body had curved to protect hers, the brutal impact he'd absorbed with nothing but a grunt of pain.

No one took a blow like that for a woman he was taking to the gallows. Unless, of course, he’d been instructed to bring her alive.

Still.

Florence had survived this long as Madam Tansley by trusting no one. Not fully. Not ever. Even Sylvia Raines, dear as she was, knew only pieces of the truth. No one got the whole picture.

She watched Matthew rise, rolling his shoulders with a wince he probably thought she didn't notice. Something was wrong with his back. She'd felt him tense when they'd crashed, heard the sharp intake of breath. An old injury, aggravated. He’d taken a bullet to the back, narrowly missing his spine, during a rescue. His rescue from execution. She knew about that because she’d give her authorisation. It had cost the network a pretty penny.

He was in pain. He'd said nothing about it. He was still working.

A man like that would not betray Sylvia Raines, would he? A woman who saved his life.

Her gaze drifted back to Matthew Collins. He was crouched beside the ruined carriage now, testing the broken axle with his hands, his face set in grim concentration. His long locks fell over his face, hiding most of it. He truly seemed to believe she was simply Mrs Archer.

If someone was hunting her, she'd need this man. This blunt, stubborn, infuriatingly unmovable man.

She arranged her features into petulant irritation and pitched her voice to its most grating register.

"Where is that wagon?" She let a whine creep in, the kind that had made suitors flee when her father tried to marry her off. "Surely you could go and hurry things along?"

"No."

The word landed like a door slamming shut. Flat, immovable refusal.

She blinked, letting her eyes widen with theatrical offense. "Whyever not?"

He didn't look up from the axle. "I'm tasked with your safety. I'm not leaving you."

I'm not leaving you.

The words hit her somewhere unexpected—a place she thought she'd long since armoured over. She felt her breath catch and covered it with a huff of annoyance.

The flat finality in his tone told her everything she needed to know. Here was one of those men who, once set on a course, became as immovable as stone. Bull headed, her father would have called it, with that particular curl of his lip. Tiresome in a husband, certainly. She'd watched her mother spend twenty years navigating around her father's intractable stubbornness, wearing herself thin against his edges, reshaping her entire life to accommodate a man who would not bend.

But in a bodyguard?

A knot she'd carried since London, one she hadn't even known was there, came undone.

Perfect.

She hid her satisfaction behind a theatrical pout, crossing her arms and turning away with a toss of her head.

"You're impossible," she muttered, just loud enough for him to hear.

He didn't respond. Didn't need to. He'd said what he meant, and he meant what he'd said.