Page 18

Chapter

NINE

The last thing Guy wanted to do was sit down to dinner with his aunt’s companion again. He almost sent his trumped-up excuses and skipped it but his conscience wouldn’t let him. He owed Miss Travers an apology after his uncalled-for rudeness this morning and had spent all day regretting it.

Except when he arrived for dinner, the menace wasn’t there and his mother was holding the soup course expressly for him, so the little speech he’d worked out had to wait.

He wanted to ask where she was but didn’t want to give his relatives any inkling that he cared, and after he’d witnessed her flirting with Bill, he did care.

Heaven only knew why. Most likely because Bill had the reputation of being both a lady’s man and a bit of a heartbreaker hereabouts.

As much as he respected Bill as a man, as a gentleman it was incumbent on him to make sure that Miss Travers was forearmed before she allowed herself to be seduced by the handsome bugger.

If she fancied Bill and knew the score, then fine, he would leave them to it.

His head groom and his aunt’s companion were both adults and they could continue their flirtation with his blessing so long as their liaison didn’t interfere with the smooth running of this house.

Or so he kept telling himself despite the bad taste the thought of any such liaison left in his mouth.

“Why are you late?” asked his aunt before he could even take his seat.

He suppressed the urge to roll his eyes and instead snapped open his napkin with more vigor than was necessary. “I’ve been working.” He gestured toward the window. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I have a large estate to run and we are a wasp’s breath from harvest time.”

“All he ever does is work.” Because of course his mother had to have a dig.

Now that he was also a wasp’s breath from turning thirty, anything he did that wasn’t making her a grandchild was a cause of consternation.

Not that he wouldn’t mind indulging in the sport of baby making, because frankly it had been too long since he had rolled around on a willing woman’s mattress, but he wasn’t keen on making the actual babies if it involved one of those bloody childish young debutantes back in Mayfair that she seemed overly keen he shackle himself to.

If he ever did find someone to shackle himself to, it would have to be a woman he could both live with and had things in common with.

He didn’t care how much it bothered his mother or how much she lamented his bachelorhood, he was not prepared to settle for one whose only discernible attributes boiled down to a pretty face who wanted to accomplish nothing beyond hooking herself a title.

He had made the mistake of being blinded by the shallow exterior of one of the fairer sex over the more important interior once before and that had ended in disaster.

Which was precisely why he knew that Bill was welcome to the trying Miss Travers.

She was too pretty by half. Certainly pretty enough to turn a na?ve man’s head and then turn him into a laughingstock once she had.

She’d already made a fool of him. Twice.

Thrice if he counted the irrational way he had reacted to her apology this morning.

“Do you know, Almeria, he has even pleaded work as the excuse why I cannot throw him a big birthday party in town this year. What a spoilsport he is.”

“If you are going to nag, Mother, I shall rescind my agreement to the small party here as well.”

“I wonder where the devil Travers has got to?” Ignoring their bickering, his aunt glanced at the clock on the mantel and frowned. “She left hours ago, and it will be dark soon.”

Which typically raised Guy’s brows. “Where did she go?” When the sun went down here it was as black as pitch, and he did not like the prospect of a woman out alone in it. There weren’t usually any incidents with footpads in this quiet enclave in Kent but it wasn’t unheard of either.

“I sent her into Maidstone on some errands after luncheon and thought she’d be back by now.”

He felt his eyebrows disappear beneath his hairline at that. “Surely not on foot?”

“I am not a blasted idiot, nephew! Nor that unreasonable an employer that I would make her walk all that way there and back until her feet bled. Maidstone is a good ten miles away, so obviously I sent her in my carriage.” Which went some way to calming his racing heart.

Aunt Almeria’s coachman was built like a prize fighter and probably drove with a pistol handy.

His pulse was on the way back to normal, and the soup course half finished, when Miss Travers appeared.

All it took was one look at her and it quickened again thanks to the becoming flush in her alabaster cheeks, the tousled curls which had escaped their pins, and the rapid rise and fall of her delectable, compact bosom in the constraints of her tight, fitted bodice.

“You look like you’ve been dragged through a hedge backward, gal!” Unlike Guy, clearly Aunt Almeria was completely immune to the beguiling effects of a disheveled Miss Travers. “Why are you so late? Not only have I been greatly inconvenienced by your absence but you’ve made my poor nephew worry.”

The minx shot him the perplexed look of utter disbelief before she treated his aunt to the same sort of disdainful expression that she always gave him.

“I was running all the errands you sent me on and, unsurprisingly”—she was speaking slowly as if laboring a point, her cornflower eyes slightly narrowed—“all that to-ing and fro-ing took a while.”

Before he could stop himself, Guy was defending the minx. “If you were inconvenienced by Miss Travers’s absence, why didn’t you send one of my servants or one of the battalion of your own that you brought with you to run your errands instead?”

“Because I do not wish for any of them to know my private business and because I entrusted Travers with it.” Admonishment issued, his aunt leaned over to her companion, who was in the midst of taking her seat beside her. “Was everything completed satisfactorily?”

“Of course, my lady. Just as I said it would be.”

“That still doesn’t explain why you were so late back when you left at two.” Aunt Almeria pushed her soup away. “I sincerely hope that the next time I send you on an errand, you’ll be home in time to help me get ready for dinner. Especially when you were granted full use of my carriage.”

In impressive, clipped tones, Miss Travers gave her surprisingly short shrift.

“Your carriage can only go as fast as the roads it has to travel upon. Roads which were congested thanks to it being market day in Maidstone. Had your carriage been able to travel cross-country like a lone horse would, I’d have had the errands done significantly sooner and been back here to attend to you hours ago. ”

“She makes a valid point,” said his mother. “We have more fields in this part of the county than we do roads and they are always a nightmare on market days.”

“Days?” For reasons best known to herself, that seemed to perturb Aunt Almeria. “How many days is the market in Maidstone?”

“That depends on the market, sister. The fruit and vegetable sellers ply their trade every Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday because it is the county capital and everyone goes there. On alternate Fridays there is livestock—though I am not sure if that means that it will fall on this coming Friday or the next.”

“How inconvenient is that?” His aunt seemed disproportionately incensed by that until she had some sort of an epiphany and pointed a bony finger at him. “You must lend Travers a horse, Guy. That is the only way around it.”

“Er…” He wasn’t sure what he felt about that. Especially as Miss Travers’s much too pretty eyes instantly lit at the prospect.

“Of course he will.” His mother squeezed his arm in a mock affectionate don’t-you-dare-say-no kind of way. “Guy has more horses than he knows what to do with so it will be no trouble to allocate her one for the duration of her stay. Assuming you know how to ride, Miss Travers.”

“By all accounts, she rides like one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Isn’t that right, Travers?

” His aunt cackled with glee at that while her companion winced, sheepish.

No doubt remembering how they had collided in Hyde Park.

“So whatever you do, don’t give her a sedate old pony as it will not be able to cope with her. ”

“Then it’s settled,” answered his mother. “She can use Juno, can’t she, Guy?”

“Well…” If the thought of the whirlwind wandering alone on the quiet Kentish lanes gave him the jitters, the prospect of her cutting across them at speed on an Arabian gave him palpitations. “Juno is—”

“ Can’t she, Guy?” His mother’s fingers dug into his forearm like talons, making it impossible for him to yank it away without an unseemly tussle.

“Surely you trust Longbottom to run your errands instead, aunt?” His question made the sparkle in Miss Travers’s fine eyes dim and her plump lips flatten with disdain but she said nothing.

She didn’t really need to when her renewed dislike of him shimmered off her in waves.

“It isn’t safe for a young lady to travel all those miles alone. ”

“For pity’s sake, Guy.” Mama’s claws retracted so that she could fold her arms and glare at him.

“Why must you always be so difficult? All we are asking for is the lend of a horse—not your firstborn son. Although at the rate you’re going, pigs will fly before you get around to providing me with one of those! ”

“What does this”—he jabbed both pointed palms left—“have to do with that?” He jabbed them right. “Why does every single conversation with you currently get twisted to suit your agenda?”

Arms still folded, his mother stuck her nose in the air. “Because you would try the patience of a saint, Guy, that’s why. I am honestly at the end of my tether with you. Your dear father would be turning in his grave to see the horrid man you have become!”