Maggie stopped at the foot of the main staircase. Her voice sank to a whisper. “I’m never getting in a carriage with you alone again. Next time I might not be lucky enough to have a highwayman happen along to save me.”
Fred’s face reddened in the light of the crystal chandelier that hung overhead. “Must you make everything an argument? You force me to take you in hand.”
“Is that what you call it?”
He again grasped her arm. “If you’d exert yourself to be sweet to me on occasion—”
“I shall exert myself to slap your face if you don’t let go of me.”
His body went stiff as a poker at her words. Taut seconds passed before he grudgingly released her. “Your temper is unbecoming.”
“Then you must take care not to rile it.” And clutching the heavy skirts of her silk dinner dress in her hand, she turned to climb the stairs.
Early the next morning, before the guests—or their servants—had risen from their beds, Maggie crept down to the Beasley Park stables. Made of stone, with strong wooden doors and red-clay roof tiles, they housed the Honeywell coach horses, riding horses, and what remained of her father’s bloodstock. As a girl, the stables had been her second home. Now however, there was a distinctly unwelcoming air about the place.
“What do you mean my carriage isn’t available today?” she asked, outraged.
The stablemaster, Mr. Tilley, shuffled his feet. He held his cloth cap in his hands in front of him. “Mr. Burton-Smythe says as how I’m not to allow any use of the vehicles unless it’s on his authority.”
Tilley had been employed at Beasley Park for only two years, the majority of which Maggie had been either ill or in mourning. No doubt he’d come to look on Fred as his master.
“That’s all very well,” she said, “but Beasley Park belongs to the Honeywell family. To me, in fact. And I need my carriage this afternoon.”
Fred and his guests would be lunching with Sir Roderick at Letchford Hall, and then driving down to view a neighbor’s collection of etchings. Their absence would provide the perfect opportunity for Maggie to embark on an errand of her own. An errand that required her maid and her carriage.
And perhaps one of Papa’s pistols.
He had a smallish one in his collection. An old Queen Anne that would fit nicely inside Maggie’s reticule.
Tilley fidgeted with his cap. “I’d like to oblige you, Miss Honeywell, but I did promise Mr. Burton-Smythe I’d do as he told me.”
Maggie’s blood commenced a slow boil. She endeavored to keep her temper. She wouldn’t have anyone accusing her of being as unreasonable as her father. Not after what Mr. Entwhistle had said to her. “Well then, I’ll simply have to take up the matter with Mr. Burton-Smythe, won’t I?”
With that, she strode from the stable, but she didn’t go back to the house. She was too angry. Besides, it wasn’t long past dawn. No one was up yet, save the kitchen staff. And frustrated as she was, she couldn’t condone waking Jane merely to complain to her about the injustice of it all.
Instead, she walked.
She crossed the drive and made her way out over the sloping lawn and down to the path that would take her to her sanctuary. The old meeting place she’d shared with Nicholas so many years before.
Branches caught at the skirts of her pelisse as she went deeper and deeper into the trees. The stream lay ahead, framed by the blue splendor of its forget-me-not covered banks. It was as she stopped amidst the sweet-scented wildflowers, one hand clutched at her side, panting for breath that she saw him. A fine, tall gentleman standing along the edge of the water.
He was clad in breeches and top boots, the broad lines of his shoulders outlined by a dusky blue coat that had obviously been cut by a master tailor. He held his tall beaver hat loose in one hand along with his whip, looking for all the world as though he was waiting for someone.
For her.
At the sound of her tread on the grass, he turned to look at her. But she already knew who he was. There was no mistaking that golden hair glinting in the morning sun. No mistaking those stormy gray eyes and that lean, panther-like grace.
His name formed on her lips as she ran to him. His real name.
He reached her in two strides and caught her up in his arms, lifting her straight up off of