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A listair watched her fingers tighten around the purse until her knuckles turned white. He’d never excelled on the cricket pitch, but he recognized that grip. Why on earth would she be preparing to throw it at him? Unless—

In his mind he heard the echo of her last words. And his. The peculiar way the exchange had collided. As if he had been suggesting that, to repay his generosity, she should sleep in his bed.

Given how the day had started, it wouldn’t be an outrageous leap for her to have imagined that he intended to share that bed with her.

Quickly, he raised a hand to stay her. “Alone! I meant, of course, that you should stay here”—he gestured again toward the bed, palm upward, the sort of motion a man made to assure an opponent he was unarmed—“alone, while I pass the night elsewhere. In the room that was given to you, perhaps. That way, if anyone does come looking for you, they’ll not find who they expected.”

Color gradually returned to her fingers, though she did not drop the purse. “I...suppose...that makes some sense. I feared that you meant...”

“So I gathered.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “I realize, Miss Cooper, that my behavior toward you has not always been that of a saint. Or a monk. I accept full blame for this morning’s...unfortunate incident and have most sincerely attempted to make amends.” Her expression might have been carved from granite. “But may I now ask,” he continued with unwonted boldness, “what I have done to give you the impression that I am the sort of gentleman who would—who would take advantage—take advantage of—?” He cleared his throat. “That is to say, such a portrait of my character seems inconsistent with the rather, er, staid pictures you have in fact drawn of me. Repeatedly.”

He would have been willing to swear that a full minute passed before she blinked. “May not a man be judged by the company he keeps?”

“Ah. You’re referring, I suppose, to—”

“Lord Deveraux.” Each word rang with disapproval and called to mind the sketch she’d made of the man, complete with devil’s horns, to accompany the essay on rakes written by the magazine’s advice columnist, “Miss Busy B.” Burke—now, Lady Deveraux.

Alistair narrowly bit back a laugh. It was hardly the first time his friendship with Miles had got him into hot water. Though it might, he mused, be the last, since that devil, Deveraux had reformed and was now hewing to the straight and narrow—or straighter and narrower, at least.

But if the old Miles had ever happened to find himself stuck with a svelte and spirited redhead, he would certainly have found ways to pass the time that did not induce frustration of one sort or another.

Not that Alistair was without ideas. But unlike Miles, who had only ever been responsible for himself, Alistair had always been too aware that his every choice shaped his sisters’ future.

And Alistair’s father had seen to it that he had blessedly few choices to begin with.

Be that as it may, Alistair had made one choice all on his own, one he intended to honor: He had chosen to befriend Miles. “Lord Deveraux is my friend and, I hope, always will be. I have no intention of defending him to you, Miss Cooper,” he said. “Nor of defending myself. You may make of it what you will.” He turned to leave. “I’ll wish you good night.”

“You...” For the first time in their journey, he heard genuine worry in her voice. “You’ve not changed your mind?”

“About Miles?”

“About...me.”

In the dim room, her pale skin seemed to glow; the bruise on her cheek might have been no more than a shadow. The ruffles on her white cotton nightdress peeked from between the edges of her dark woolen mantle. She looked younger than he knew she must be, and he thought suddenly of her mother. Had she looked thus when she ran away from home, toward a dream that had become a nightmare?

“I think I was wrong,” he said, not really answering her. “You don’t trust me after all, do you? But perhaps it is as well. You clearly do not know me either.”

She looked as if she would speak. Her lips parted—lips he had kissed, for God’s sake—but the only sound that emerged was a shivery sort of sigh.

“Before I go, may I give you a piece of advice?” He paused, waiting for her almost imperceptible nod. “If you’re going to throw something at someone”—he jerked his chin toward the leather purse still clutched in her hand—“strike fast. Don’t let them see what you’re about to do. Don’t give them a chance to mount a defense.”

Her eyes flared. “You—you thought I meant to throw it at you?”

“Seven sisters, remember?” He managed something close to a grin. “As well as seven years in one of our nation’s fine public schools. Sharpens the eye and hones a fellow’s reflexes.”

She didn’t smile. “Your little jokes are rarely amusing, Lord Ryland. And usually poorly timed.”

He shrugged. “I wasn’t joking. At least, not about the advice.”

Then he closed the distance between them, reached for her wrist, and pried the small pouch from her unresisting fingers. Once, twice, he weighed the purse on his palm. Safer, surely, to take it with him. She had deceived him. She was desperate. She would think nothing of stranding him here.

He tossed it onto the bedside table, where it landed with a soft chink .

At the sound, she flinched.

“I think I now understand the real purpose of your spectacles,” he said.

“To—to take aim?” she ventured, obviously puzzled. “But I told you, I can see well enough without them.”

“I’m sure. Plain glass rarely improves one’s vision.” He paused as understanding washed over her features: He had known all along that she was deceiving him and had still given her help. “Yes, that’s right. I had a look at them the day of the accident. I couldn’t quite figure out why you wore spectacles if not for poor eyesight. But I’ve since learned that your eyes reveal more than you must sometimes wish. It must have been useful to have something to hide them behind. Sleep well, Miss Cooper,” he told her. After snatching his greatcoat from the peg, he turned and walked back toward the doorway to the sitting room, then paused and glanced over his shoulder. She hadn’t moved, though her gaze had dropped to the floor. “I’ve instructed John Coachman to be ready to depart at dawn. Barring yet another unforeseen disruption, we’ll be at Rylemoor shortly before dark.”

In the corridor, he listened for the grate of the key in the lock. That sound was followed by the scrape of some large piece of furniture being dragged across the floor—the settee, he supposed—and the bump of it being nestled against the door.

The barricade felt personal, though he knew it likely wasn’t. Her fear and distrust weren’t primarily directed at him, and they weren’t going to be conquered in two days. Perhaps not in a lifetime—not that he’d ever know.

He had been the sort of boy who’d taken in wild, wounded things and tried—with middling success—to nurse them tame. His friendship with Miles was just another example.

He ought to have remembered the risk of being bitten.

One floor below, in her room, he looked around at the remarkable disorder she’d created in, what, an hour at most? Clothes strewn across the bed, paper on the table. The air smelled of the pear blossom soap she’d purchased in Price’s Mercantile.

As did, he now knew, her skin.

He dragged in a shuddering breath, exhaled, and then set about putting the room to rights.

“What a mess,” he muttered to himself. Not that he was entirely surprised. It was the sort of chaos he’d learned to expect from artists. “Still, if she intended to be off immediately after retrieving her money, shouldn’t she have packed?”

As he neatened the papers, he studied the sketch she’d been making in the carriage: a landscape that must have come entirely from her imagination, as it certainly did not match the dull one that had been scrolling past the windows.

Or perhaps the landscape was not so dull when seen through fresh eyes.

The sketch she had made of the church and churchyard was there, too, and he dared to trace a fingertip over the empty place beside the sexton, where he knew he’d been standing. He wasn’t sure whether to be resentful over his deliberate omission or, given her previous treatment of the subject, grateful.

He recalled what she had told him about her art, how she had never really been at liberty to draw what she wished or for herself. At least in some small way, perhaps, he had given her that.

Mostly, though, he wanted something that would tell him whether he was in her thoughts as much as she was in his.

Once the pictures were collected, he carried the paper and box of charcoals over to the bed, tucked it along the side of the valise and tried not to think about the portrait of her mother. Best not to look at it again, even if Constantia’s story had made his curiosity twinge.

“Not much point in sending up her clothes now,” he debated aloud with himself, recalling the barricaded door. As he folded a pair of petticoats and a dress, laid them on top, and closed the valise with a snap he countered, “But will she still be there if I wait ’til morning?”

He wasn’t foolish enough to imagine that the fact she was wearing only a nightgown—and ordinary shoes; her mud-caked ankle boots were lying topsy-turvy on the floor—would be enough to deter her if she was determined to go.

Bending, he snatched up one of the boots and, with a knife from the discarded supper tray, began to scrape away the mud, collecting it on a crumpled piece of brown wrapping paper from one of her purchases at Price’s.

The tap at the door that came a moment later was quiet, unassuming, but even before he could answer, the door swung inward and a mob-capped servant peeked into the opening. “Is everything all right, miss? I thought I heard a man’s voi—oh!” The door swung wide as she crumpled into an inelegant curtsy. “It’s you, my lord.”

“Miss Crawley—er, Creevey—and I elected to exchange rooms.”

The maid goggled but was too well trained to ask questions, and Alistair was glad his standing at the inn did not oblige him to offer any further explanation. Her gaze flitted about the room, as if ascertaining that he was indeed alone, and landed finally on him. Her eyes widened further. “I can do that, sir.” She nodded toward the boots.

“No. I—” I need something with which to occupy myself. “I’m almost finished.”

“If you’re certain,” she said, though her voice was incredulous. She curtsied again, more shallowly this time, as if she were eager to get away—and relate her discovery of a lord turned bootboy to every other servant belonging to the place, he had no doubt.

“See that I’m awakened at five,” he told her as he once more bent his head to his task.

“Very good, sir.” The door clicked shut and she was gone.

Seated on the edge of the bed, he worked at the boots awhile longer, careful not to mar the leather. It was occupation for his hands but, unfortunately, not his mind.

Constantia had released thoughts and emotions that now crashed through his head without regard to the lanes and fences he’d so carefully built over the years to keep everything in line.

He felt, inexplicably, as if something had been stolen from him. But what? The money was hers, without question. And regardless of how ill-advised it might be for her to slip away into the night, it must be her choice. Even the kiss could not rightly be called stolen.

He’d given it far too willingly.

She kissed with an innocence that seemed somehow at odds with the story she had told. Not that he agreed with those who would claim that she shared her mother’s sin—or even that her mother bore the blame for what had happened to her. But there was something in Constantia’s unique way of looking at the world that seemed as if it should have made its way to her lips. The same power that made his breath catch when he looked at one of her drawings made him imagine that her kiss could leave a man breathless, if she chose.

Perhaps if she hadn’t broken off the kiss quite so soon, or if he hadn’t been caught off guard.. .

Perhaps what he’d lost was an opportunity.

But if so, it was an opportunity that he must hope never presented itself again.

No matter how much she intrigued him—oh, and frustrated and exasperated him, too, as in his experience artistic types were wont to do. No matter if he was beginning to suspect that at least some of her annoyance with him might mask another emotion entirely. No matter that hearing part of her story had made him only more eager to pry open all her secrets.

Their paths had been marked out for them long ago, and neither of them could afford to explore other tracks. So, he would do as he’d said, do what he’d always done: ensure that she was safe from predators until her injured wing righted itself, then let her fly free.

While his feet stayed firmly on the ground.

“Firmly on the ground,” he scoffed beneath his breath as John Coachman reached out a hand to hoist him onto the top of the coach, where he’d elected to ride the remainder of the journey.

Alistair had risen even before the knock had come to wake him, and when the servant did arrive, he had employed her as an emissary to send up Constantia’s neatly packed valise, with instructions that they would depart as soon as she was ready.

Now he was sitting huddled in his greatcoat, watching dawn begin to streak the sky, and wondering if she would show up.

The leap of his heart when she emerged from the inn told him that he’d been wise to take extra precautions.

She pushed the edge of her hood back just enough to give him a glimpse of her red-gold curls and looked up at him quizzically.

“Thought it would be best to have a second lookout,” he told her. And it wasn’t an untruth; there was even a pistol by his feet, though he’d never been what anyone would call a crack shot.

Her nod of understanding held a bit of uncertainty, but she accepted the hostler’s assistance into the carriage. In another moment, they were off. And once the sun had risen, he did, indeed, feel a bit safer for being able to see far and wide.

A great deal safer for not having to share the cozy interior with her.

And a great deal colder too.

At most stops, she did not leave the coach, and when she did, she was back again more swiftly than previous travels with a party of young ladies, namely his sisters, had led him to believe was possible.

Late afternoon, they alighted for dinner at a modest-looking inn.

“You will dine with me?” he asked, offering an arm to escort her inside.

She shivered when her hand brushed the wind-chilled wool of his coat. “If you wish it.”

He did, though he knew it was not wise.

While waiting for her tea, Constantia removed her gloves, and he glimpsed the telltale marks of her craft. “You’ve been sketching again.”

“It passes the time.”

He did not ask her subject.

“You spent a restful night, I hope?”

“Entirely,” he lied.

“I’m glad to hear it. You certainly ceded the more comfortable room to me.” In spite of that fact, there were shadows beneath her eyes. Sleep, it seemed, had not come quickly for either of them.

The food arrived then, relieving them of the burden of conversation. When they had finished, he donned his hat and gloves and buttoned his coat securely over a woolen muffler he’d borrowed from the coachman.

“I’m sorry you have had a chilly ride,” she said—ironically, the warmest sentiment she had uttered all day. “Without...incident, I hope?”

He knew precisely what she meant.

He considered whether she might be amused by a recounting of his reaction to his first—and only—slug from the coachman’s flask. Whatever it contained, he felt certain she could use it to thin paint.

But he remembered what she had said the night before about his failed attempts at humor.

“Entirely,” he said instead. Again.

He had no intention of mentioning the solitary rider who had kept pace with them just long enough to catch even the coachman’s notice—and to make that ordinarily taciturn fellow recall a rather hair-raising tale about a three-fingered highwayman—before shearing off northward and being lost to sight.

Alistair had never before been prone to flights of fancy, had strenuously avoided them in fact, and he didn’t intend for that to change now.

Once they reached his home, he would order things so that he and Constantia saw very little of one another, as it should be. They would put this strange, intimate interlude behind them.

As night fell, he spotted the approach to Rylemoor, marked by a wrought iron gate suspended between two stone pillars. He hoped that bit of fancywork would put her mind at ease, though he’d never employed a gatekeeper. Those were wages he couldn’t afford to waste, not when there was nothing and no one from which the house needed to be guarded. Bleak and treacherous moorland stretched in every direction, with nothing more than outcroppings of stones or a few scrub trees for an intruder to hide behind. For an abbey, and a religious community bent on isolation from the world, it was the perfect spot.

But he had often wondered whether the long-ago king who’d presented this particular earldom to Alistair’s ancestor had intended the gesture as reward or punishment.

The house itself was hardly more inviting. Over everything loomed the dilapidated west wing, made up by and large of the former church, which he would dearly love to raze. Unfortunately, even tearing down required funds.

They rolled to a stop on the graveled courtyard, surrounded on three sides by weathered stone walls that blocked what little daylight remained. He had not expected his sisters to be waiting in the cold to greet him, arriving as he was in unexpected fashion and later than he’d hoped. But evidently even the servants had been caught out. Alistair swung down and opened the carriage door himself.

“Welcome, Miss Cooper,” he said with a flourish that was only a little self-mocking, “to Rylemoor Abbey.”