To Dance until Dawn - Emma V. Leech Page 0,34

with pleasure.

“Oh,” she said on a breath of delight, and then frowned a little, folding her hands neatly in her lap. “And you mustn’t worry, Max. I have learned my lesson, truly I have. I shan’t get into any more scrapes or embarrass you. I shall behave properly, I promise.”

What? No!

“Oh, there’s no need for that,” he said at once, but she shook her head, a frown drawing her eyebrows together.

“Yes, there is. You’re being too kind, but you’ve always been kind. I can see that now. I… I was just too headstrong and stupid to see it before, and I’m sorry for that. I think perhaps I need to grow up, and I shall. I give you my word.”

Max stared at her, wanting to demand she take it back. He didn’t want her to change a bit. He’d fallen in love with her madcap ways and the scandalous things she said, and the fact she was so astonishingly, vibrantly alive. He could say nothing else, though, as Jack came and opened the door.

“Right, we’re on. You’ve got a private cabin, lord. They’re arranging for someone to show you to it.”

“Thank you,” Max said, stepping out of the carriage and helping Phoebe down.

She looked out across a grey sea, the waves topped with little white fringes, and swallowed hard.

“Oh, dear,” she said.

Chapter 8

My dearest Papa,

Please don’t be cross…

―Excerpt of a letter to The Most Honourable Lucian Barrington, Marquess of Montagu, from Miss Phoebe Barrington.

My Lord Marquess,

Lucian,

I hardly know where to begin.

I’ll marry her.

―Excerpt of a letter to The Most Honourable Lucian Barrington, Marquess of Montagu, from The Right Hon’ble Maximillian Carmichael, Earl of Ellisborough

8th April 1827. Calais, Pas-de-Calais, France.

“Are you feeling better?”

“Yes, thank you,” Phoebe said, lying through her teeth. She was damned if she would be any more of a nuisance to Max, though. As it was, she was burning with mortification and she had never missed Pippin more in her life. Pippin would have known what to do, and would have had some disgusting mixture at hand, which would have made her quite well in no time at all.

Pippin was not there, however, but tucked up comfortably in a neat little cottage at Dern. Phoebe sighed. As someone who rarely succumbed to so much as a sniffle, to have been brought so low by seasickness was incomprehensible and infuriating. Yet, no amount of willpower could rule her ungovernable stomach, and she’d been violently ill for the entire crossing. Worse still, it wasn’t even that rough, according to Jack. She could have wept at that information, handed over so cheerfully once they were back on solid ground. Not that it felt solid. It was still swaying and pitching as far as her stomach was concerned, though they’d been disembarked for the best part of two hours. It had taken an age for Max to bribe the necessary officials, as she did not have a passport, and neither did Jack nor Fred… a fact which had not even occurred to her.

In exasperation, he’d finally been forced into telling a whopping lie and had told the douanier they had just eloped and were just newly married, so he had not had time to put her on his passport. This, at last, had convinced them—this being France, after all—and they had let him go.

Phoebe glanced up at him, remembering how kind Max had been when she was ill, and how utterly horrified she still was at having had him see her in such a revolting state. To have such a man treat her so gently, holding the basin for her to be sick into…. Oh, she wanted to die. She was still in the dress she had worn last night, which was crumpled and wrinkled beyond saving. Her hair was a mess, as she’d not had the energy to put it to rights, and she was well aware she looked a fright. How was it only now, when he’d seen her at her very worst, when she’d dragged him into this terrible situation, that she saw what she had failed to notice before?

Max was rather wonderful.

He’d not once reproached her for entangling him into this ungodly mess, or for forcing him into a marriage he could surely not look upon with anything but regret. By neither word nor deed had he made her feel the least bit to blame, when she knew it was entirely her fault. Not only was he kind and patient and unfailingly good-humoured, he was also dreadfully handsome.

Phoebe