up to the lady to decide if she would like to go with you.” His chin was held high and his gaze intense. “Or not.” Patience knew if she were to refuse Lord Bryant’s offer, Mr. Woodsworth would make certain he stayed away from her.
Patience gave Mr. Woodsworth a slight smile. She didn’t want to worry him. But her smile only caused the lines between his eyebrows to deepen. “I will walk with Lord Bryant. It isn’t every day a lady is invited to take a stroll with a baron.” She wrapped her arm around his, ignoring the deep sickness inside the pit of her stomach. She had nothing of value at the Woodsworth home. If Lord Bryant wanted to march her home this afternoon, she would be back to her old life within hours. This whole fiasco would remain a dream. She would probably hear of Mr. Woodsworth’s marriage through her brother but perhaps not. She smiled more broadly at Mr. Woodsworth. This could be goodbye, and he didn’t even know it. She wanted him to remember her smiling. “Don’t worry, Mr. Woodsworth. We shan’t start any fires. Not even little ones.”
“Definitely not,” said Lord Bryant. “I probably couldn’t even if I wanted to.”
Patience raised an eyebrow in triumph, but Mr. Woodsworth didn’t react.
“You are certain?” Mr. Woodsworth’s size had never been more apparent. In his home and while walking, he never seemed intimidating. Now she saw hints of the general in him.
She kept her chin high. “Of course.”
He nodded, and then with one last glance, he led his group away.
Lord Bryant led Patience in the opposite direction.
Patience closed her eyes and followed the movement of Lord Bryant. Just as she suspected, as soon as they were out of earshot, he pulled her closer to his side and put one hand over hers. “So, Lady Patience, what has brought you to Green Park looking so . . .” His eyes travelled up and down her borrowed dress. The last time they had been together, he had been married, and she had been very young. He definitely hadn’t looked at her like he was looking now. “Blonde?”
They didn’t stop walking, and Patience struggled to keep one foot in front of the other. “I barely looked at you,” she hissed. “How did you know it was me?”
“I suspected something right away. Believe it or not, there are not many women in London who ignore me when I am introduced. And even though I hadn’t gotten a solid look at your face, no one laughs like you, Lady Patience. That laugh hasn’t changed since you were a young girl. At the Simpsons’ ball, I had thought perhaps I had imagined it, but hearing it again today?”
When had she laughed? Not while they sat on the blanket. Her laughter must have carried as she walked with Mr. Woodsworth. Why hadn’t she been more careful? “Why didn’t you say something earlier?”
“It looked to me as if you didn’t want me to.”
She relaxed a bit at that. The Lord Bryant she had known would have helped her. She didn’t know this hardened Lord Bryant, but at least he was perceptive, and it seemed as though he didn’t have plans to out her at the moment. “I didn’t want you to.”
He raised his eyebrows and lifted her hand. Cocking his head to one side, he gave her a rakish smile. “Well then, it seems like a beautiful young lady owes me a favor.”
“Oh please.” Lord Bryant had to be in jest. “You are old enough to be my father.”
He dropped her hand and placed one of his over his heart. “You wound me, and besides, you know that isn’t true.”
“Well, old enough to be my uncle, anyway.”
“I can’t be more than three or four years Woodsworth’s senior, and you seem quite taken with him.” He shrugged in the direction the other group had walked.
“I’m supposed to seem taken with him.”
“What exactly is that supposed to mean?” He stopped walking and turned to her, quirking his eyebrows. “Are you in some sort of trouble?”
Patience shook her head. How exactly was she supposed to explain this? “Only the kind I put myself into, and I am not looking for someone to rescue me.”
He scoffed. “You don’t need to worry about that. I’m not the rescuing type.”
Somehow she doubted that. Memories of him jumping to his wife’s aid every time she carried a tray or alighted from a carriage popped into her mind. At one time, Lord Bryant had