Page 4 of The Lord Meets His Lady

“Indeed.” She checked the coach and leaning closer, her lips parted.

Did she seek a kiss? He waited stock-still. A whispered confidence or a kiss…the start of both looked the same. Conversation with the gentler sex often resembled battle, with lots of parries and thrusts, charges and retreats. The wise man assessed the field before charging boldly onward.

“Was there something you wanted to say?” he asked.

She hesitated, her profile dark as she looked again at the coach. “I would like a word with you, milord, but the coach needs fixing first. I was going to secure the brace myself. Perhaps you can help?”

“Of course.” He drew a mind-clearing breath and took a decent half step back, catching matronly glares from the coach windows.

His talent for reading women must be slipping. Midnight or not, a quick kiss wouldn’t happen, not here in staid Northumberland. He’d do well to remember he wasn’t loitering in some London alley.

He reached for the heavy strap draped over her arm. “Youwere going to attach this?”

“Wouldn’t be the first time.”

They turned together toward the coach. He hefted the stiff leather, glancing sidelong at her. Women of his acquaintance wouldn’t know a coach brace from a roller bolt. The strap in hand was shorter, a temporary solution until the conveyance reached the inn. Standard braces looped around the front axle to the rear axle, one on each side of the coach. Those wide straps absorbed bumps and jolts between the coach body and wheel frame.

What kind of woman knew about coaches and pistols?

Women fascinated him the way works of art mesmerized the beholder. Similar features painted the fair sex the same, but uniqueness and strength of mind captured his attention as much as silken skin and pretty eyes. Lavish black embroidery trimmed her cloak, but closer inspection of her gloves showed split seams. He’d wager those gloves hid callouses, and by the fullness of her cheek, she had to be young.

Marcus knelt by the front wheel and wrapped the new brace around the axle. “A woman of unusual skills, yet I don’t know your name. Considering the circumstances, I hope I don’t have to wait for a proper introduction.”

She stooped to the ground, frowning oddly at him. She set down the blunderbuss and ducked her head and shoulders to retrieve the larger, broken brace in the dirt.

“Oh, we’ve already met, milord.” Her voice floated from under the coach. “Two years past. At Golden Goose on Tavistock near Haymarket. It’s what I wanted to talk with you about.”

He froze.The Golden Goose?

“We’ve already met.” He glanced up at the coach windows, but noisy wind and their position on the ground saved them from being overheard.

“The way you looked at me a moment ago, I thought you’d recognized me,” she said, sitting upright, wiping dust off her hands.

He slid the brace for even placement on the axle. Their roadside conversation…it was a confidence she was about to share, not a kiss.

“You’re an actress, then.”

“Certainly not. I worked behind the scenes. Costumes and cleanup.” She handed over the torn leather. “And all-around fixer of broken things.”

Tetchy, wasn’t she? He took the proffered brace, grinning at her strong distinction between actress and laborer. His mystery woman assumed he believed her to be a light-skirt.

She’d be right.

The moon lit dark eyes and comely features. Her nose and cheeks were pretty, if noses could be counted as such. But her mouth snared him, a singular clue to her character. She sat back on her heels, close-lipped and quiet. The flat line of her mouth told him she was sparing with her smiles. Her seriousness intrigued him, and seeing her now, he’d put his mystery woman at nineteen or twenty years old.

He looped the shorter leather around the axle. “How did you come to know about coaches?”

“We traveled, summer fairs and such, before settling at the Golden Goose.”

Punishing wind stung his cheeks, a reminder to move fast and find his bed. Sitting this close, her visage skimmed the edge of recall, among other images of nights on Tavistock Street—none of them pretty.

There was no use putting a fine veneer on the Goose. The tavern-cum-theater offered coarse entertainment. Men jostled for seats on benches lining the straw-covered floor. Soldiers, sailors, and wharfmen with coin to spare guzzled weak ale alongside London’s highborn sons. Bawdy plays likeThe Wench from Walesfed their appetites for near-naked women. Most men tarried afterward in hopes of meeting an actress.

Once or twice, Marcus had done the same. Or three or four times. He never counted.

He knotted the brace, dust kicking up around them. She did say she’dworkedbehind the scenes. Now she was traveling north with proper-looking middle-class matrons. He doubled the knot and yanked hard, at a loss for words, yet his mysterious traveler sat calmly in the dirt, her legs folded under her skirts.

“I can tell you have some recollection…of the Golden Goose at least,” she said above the wind. “But you don’t remember me, do you?”