Page 25 of Road Trip With a Rogue (Her Majesty’s Rebels #3)

“‘Uncle’?”

Daisy froze, convinced she’d misheard. She glanced over at Vaughan, then back at the lovebirds, who were now crossing the street toward them. “Did he just call you uncle ?”

Vaughan took a cautious step back, but the glitter in his eyes made her heart begin to pound. A strange buzzing noise filled her ears.

“My decision to escort you has not been entirely motivated by altruism,” he drawled.

Daisy stared at him, incredulous.

“Peregrine Hughes is my nephew.”

“Your nephew,” she said levelly, somehow managing not to raise her voice to a screech.

“I’m afraid so. Marion, my elder sister, threw herself away on a mere Captain of the Guards, one Charles Hughes.

Perry’s their only child. They spend most of their time at Carisbrooke Hall and rarely come to London, but a few months ago Perry was sent to stay with me for a little town bronze while his parents went on an extended tour of Italy. ”

Daisy narrowed her eyes. “You were supposed to be looking after him, and he’s eloped with an heiress right under your nose.”

Vaughan’s lips curved. “Oh no. He eloped with an heiress with my full knowledge and consent. I’m the one who told him to do it.”

Fury was bubbling through her veins, but Daisy pushed it down, conscious of not making a scene in such a public place, even as she wanted to scream at him like a fishwife. Then fillet him like a fish.

“Why in God’s name have we been chasing them the length of England, then?” she hissed.

“Because as much as I love the boy, neither he nor Violet have the wits of a peahen. I wanted to make sure they arrived unscathed and actually managed to tie the knot.”

Perry and Violet were almost upon them, so Daisy pinned him with a look that promised violent and painful retribution and turned to the happy couple.

A grinning Perry shook hands with Vaughan, who clapped him on the shoulder, while Violet gave Daisy’s outfit a slightly confused look before she bobbed a curtsey.

“Hello again, Your Grace.” She smiled prettily at Vaughan. “We took your advice.” She held out her left hand to show them both the ring.

“Congratulations,” Vaughan said silkily. “I hope you’ll both be very happy.”

Perry glanced down at Daisy. Now that she saw the two men together, she could see a certain similarity. Perry was like a watered-down version of his uncle. Where Vaughan’s hair was almost black, Perry’s was a rusty brown, his eyes a warm hazel instead of a piercing dark coffee.

“And who’s this?” Perry asked with a friendly smile. “You’re definitely not Finch.”

Vaughan grinned. “May I present Lady Dorothea Hamilton.”

Unwilling to curtsey in her male attire, Daisy awkwardly held out her hand and Perry shook it.

He sent her an intrigued look, then shot Vaughan a questioning glance, and her cheeks heated as she realized the conclusion he was drawing: that Vaughan had brought her along as his mistress to keep him entertained.

“Why aren’t you wearing a dress?” Violet asked, her forehead wrinkling in confusion. “Did you have an accident? Were your clothes stolen, or something dreadful like that?”

“I’m undercover,” Daisy said stiffly. “On behalf of the investigative agency King and Company. Your father hired me to prevent your marriage.”

Violet’s big blue eyes widened, and a regretful smile curved her pink lips. “Oh, poor Papa. He’s going to be dreadfully cross. But he’ll forgive me, I know he will. He always does.”

“Aren’t you worried he’ll cut you off?” Daisy asked.

“Isn’t that what Robert Child, the banker, did to his daughter Sarah Ann when she eloped with the Earl of Westmorland?

He cut her out of his will, and left all his money to her second son, or her eldest daughter, so that no one bearing the Westmorland title would ever see a penny of it. ”

Violet gave a trill of laughter that sounded like tinkling bells. It made Daisy want to elbow her in the throat.

“Oh, no. Papa would never be so cruel. He dotes on me, you see. And the only reason he objected to Perry was because he thought he was a fortune hunter. Which isn’t true in the least, is it darling?”

“Certainly not,” Perry said, looking offended. “I might not have your vast inheritance, but with Uncle Lucien’s thousand pounds a year, we’ll be perfectly fine.”

Daisy turned and gaped at Lucien, but he merely bowed slightly to Violet.

“Don’t worry about your father, Violet. I’ll make it right with him when I get back to London.”

Violet’s ringlets bounced as she nodded earnestly. “Eloping is all the rage nowadays. The Duke of Wellington’s niece, Anne, married Charles Bentinck, brother to the Duke of Portland, here, you know.”

“And one should always strive to keep up with the latest fashions,” Daisy muttered. Her sarcasm was lost on everyone except Vaughan, who smothered a laugh behind a cough, but she was far too furious with him to feel any sort of kinship. The bastard had been lying to her for days.

His meddling meant she’d have to admit her failure to Violet’s father.

King & Co.’s reputation could be severely damaged if Brand started telling people about this disaster and her professional incompetence.

Much of their custom was from word-of-mouth recommendations, so his dissatisfaction would not be a good advertisement.

Damn Vaughan.

“We’ve taken rooms at the inn over there,” Perry said, gesturing across the road to a slightly shabby-looking establishment called The King’s Head. “I’ve ordered breakfast. Let’s all go and have something to eat.”

Daisy’s stomach gave a traitorous little growl, and since there was nothing to be done but accept defeat, she traipsed across the street after Violet and Perry, trying to ignore the nauseating way they were fussing over one another.

Instead of following them through the front door, however, she tailed Vaughan as he led their two horses through the arched entrance and into a stable yard at the rear.

A scruffy stable hand took charge of them, and when they stepped inside, she caught Vaughan’s sleeve, preventing him from going through to the breakfast room.

Instead, she opened the first door on her left, which let into a storage cupboard, stepped in beside the mops and sweeping brushes, and pulled him in after her. She closed the door, then fixed him with a narrow-eyed glare.

“I could kill you,” she growled. The room was so small they were barely two feet apart.

“I don’t doubt it. In a hundred different ways.”

She shook her head at his flippancy.

“Now you see why I’ve been reluctant to give your knives back,” he said.

Her fingers twitched with the impulse to pull her remaining blade from her boot and stab him with it. Nowhere fatal. Just his shoulder, maybe. Or his thigh.

“I trusted you, you arse!” she fumed. “And you’ve been lying to me from the moment we met in that bloody lane.”

Her initial disbelief at his deception had been replaced by a volcanic anger and a sickening knot of hurt in her belly.

“God, I’ve been so stupid! You’ve been trying to delay me for days .

” She glared up at him. “You’ve been laughing at me, stringing me along, making me think I had a chance of catching them, when all this time you’ve been sabotaging me for your own twisted amusement!

” She sucked in a breath. “There was nothing wrong with the bloody girth strap this morning, was there? You told Finch to come up with something to stop us getting here on time.”

“Well…” Vaughan had the grace to look guilty, and she let out a growl of annoyance. And then a new, even worse, thought struck her. She stabbed him in the chest with her finger.

“Oh God, you tried to keep me in bed this morning. Did you only seduce me to slow me down? To distract me?”

His brows lowered. “No! Absolutely not! I seduced you, if that’s how you want to put it—even though I seem to remember you being just as much of an active participant—because I’ve wanted you for fucking years .”

He reached up and wrapped his hand around hers, engulfing the finger poking him in the sternum. “I still want you. Every second of the day.”

She shook free of his hand, ignoring the way her stupid heart twisted in her chest at his words. He was a lying toad. She couldn’t trust a thing he said.

“Stop it. Just tell me why you told Perry to elope. Why couldn’t he stay in London and earn Brand’s approval?”

“Because I was sick and tired of him moping about my house like a lovesick puppy.” Vaughan said crossly.

“It was a purely selfish gesture. The two of them are ideally suited—they’re both equally silly—and since Brand’s only real objection was the fact that Perry didn’t have an income of his own, I promised to give them a thousand pounds a year simply to get him off my hands. ”

“That’s…” Daisy struggled to find the words.

“Practical,” Vaughan supplied. “I knew Brand would come round eventually, so I told Perry to elope, then present him with a fait accompli . Easier to apologize for something you’ve done than to gain permission for something you haven’t.

The two of them can find a nice little house in Mayfair, and I’ll get the pleasure of a solitary existence once again. ”

“What about your sister? Won’t she be upset that her only son’s married in her absence?”

Vaughan shook his head. “Of course not. The only thing she’ll care about is that he’s married someone he loves, who loves him back. She married for love herself. She’ll understand.”

“I don’t suppose the fact that Violet’s almost as rich as the king will hurt either,” Daisy said cynically.

“Her wealth doesn’t matter. I’ve got more than enough to help them if Brand chooses to cut them off, and don’t forget that for all his money, Brand’s still the son of a wool merchant, whereas Perry’s uncle is a duke. Marrying into an aristocratic family has a cachet all of its own.”

Daisy knew that well enough. She’d been avoiding socially climbing suitors for years. But Vaughan’s perfidy still stung. “Your scheming has wasted my time and ruined my professional reputation.”

“Which I genuinely regret,” he said. “Look, I’ll pay you the five hundred pounds you would have had from Brand. And I’ll talk to him when we get back to London. Let him know it was entirely my fault that you couldn’t stop the wedding. King and Company’s good name won’t be adversely affected.”

“I don’t want your charity. Or your company, for that matter.” She stepped around him and pushed open the door.

“Where are you going?”

“I’m not staying here. I’ll take two fresh horses back to Finch, and he can take me back to London in your carriage. It’s the least you can do. You can share a coach with Violet and Perry as far as your estate. I’m sure they’ll be wonderful company.”

Daisy hastened back through the inn’s central hallway and emerged in the cobbled courtyard at the back.

The stables were off to one side, with a trio of rough-looking stable hands loitering below the arches, but the arrival of a carriage through the arched gateway impeded her progress.

She waited for it to stop, but as soon as it did, a woman dressed in a deep green velvet cape and matching bonnet stepped down in front of her.

Daisy moved back into the doorway to give the new arrival room just as the woman glanced up. Mutual recognition was instant, and Daisy’s blood froze as horror filled her.

The new arrival’s eyes widened, and her thin brows rose in astonishment.

“Dorothea Hamilton? Good Lord, what on earth are you doing here?”

The shrill tones carried across the yard as the woman’s fascinated gaze swept over Daisy’s jacket and breeches with almost comical slowness and her nose wrinkled in well-bred disdain. “And wearing that ?”

Daisy willed for the ground to swallow her up. It did not oblige.

Bloody Hell.

Letty Richardson was the worst gossip in the whole of London.

She’d come out the same year as Daisy, Tess, and Ellie, and her spiteful gossiping was legendary.

She’d always seen other women as a threat to her own marriage prospects, and her sly smugness when she’d accepted an elderly baron at the end of the season had been unbearable, despite the fact that her new husband was an overbearing letch no other woman would have wanted.

Now, as a married woman, Letty loved to feign pity for “poor unfortunate spinsters” like Daisy, while simultaneously whispering about all her unfeminine flaws behind her fan with her little coterie of petty-minded friends.

This was, without doubt, a nightmare.