When a Rogue Meets His Match - Elizabeth Hoyt Page 0,1

the carriage box. Even if Bartlett had overestimated the highwaymen, Mr. Hawthorne and his men had been badly outnumbered.

“Did you worry for me?” His sly, rasping voice interrupted her thoughts.

“No,” she said flatly.

“You’d prefer a band of highwaymen to me?” His inflection had just a hint of the London streets.

“Yes!”

“Fortunately,” Mr. Hawthorne said softly, ominously, “you’ll never have the chance to make that silly choice. Not while I have possession of you.”

“Possession.” Messalina glared at him even as she suppressed a shiver. Why would he use that word? As if he owned her. “Whatever makes you think you can—” she began, and then she noticed that he had taken something from his pocket.

He held her bourdaloue, pink and dainty, in his hands.

“I think,” he said, examining the vessel with unseemly interest, “that this is yours.”

Messalina’s mouth dropped open.

Bartlett snatched the dish from Mr. Hawthorne’s hands. “I never!” she muttered as she put the thing away.

Mr. Hawthorne smirked, leaning back and tilting his hat over his eyes until only his curled lips could be seen.

Messalina turned pointedly to gaze out the darkened window.

A little over a week ago Mr. Hawthorne had waylaid her carriage in the north of England and informed her that her uncle, Augustus Greycourt, the Duke of Windemere, required her presence immediately. So immediately in fact that the duke had sent Mr. Hawthorne to personally escort her back to London. She’d been forced to abandon both her carriage and Lucretia, her younger sister, with whom she’d been traveling. There had just been time for Messalina to indicate to Lucretia that she should go to their eldest brother, Julian, for help before she’d been whisked away.

After that, Messalina had spent a week traveling with the odious Mr. Hawthorne.

She darted a glance at him from beneath her eyelashes.

Mr. Hawthorne was apparently asleep now that the danger was over. His booted feet were crossed at the ankles, his arms over his chest. The carriage lantern threw a glow on a sculpted chin and breathtakingly high cheekbones. His mouth was curved at the corners as if even in sleep he were privately amused at some lewd joke. The upper lip was thin and strictly constrained to a classical Cupid’s bow, but the lower lip belied the upper’s repression with obscene plushness.

He had the most depraved mouth Messalina had ever seen on a man.

She looked away hastily. Mr. Hawthorne was a ruffian. Messalina knew—as did everyone else—that he’d emerged from the worst stews in London. There were rumors that her uncle had found him earning his living by competitive knife fighting. Mr. Hawthorne had been but seventeen at the time. Up until ten minutes ago Messalina had always dismissed that gossip as far too lurid to be true.

She was beginning to revise that opinion.

She eyed the white scar bisecting Mr. Hawthorne’s left cheek. It was thin and silvery like the trail of a teardrop. She would do well to remember that Mr. Hawthorne was a man accustomed since youth to savage violence.

Messalina shivered in distaste and turned away again from her guard dog. Instead of woolgathering over Mr. Hawthorne, she ought to be considering Uncle Augustus’s purpose in summoning her. Mr. Hawthorne had flatly refused to inform her why her uncle wanted her in London. Naturally that had meant she’d spent the past week becoming more and more anxious.

Not that she let it show.

Whether Uncle Augustus had decided to exile her to the American Colonies, present her with a new riding mare, or cut her living expenses entirely, she would meet the news equally phlegmatically.

The Duke of Windemere gorged on fear.

Better to remember the small amount of pin money she’d saved over the last few years. When Messalina had saved enough, she would take Lucretia and disappear into the Continent or the New World.

A place where her uncle could no longer dictate their lives.

“Ah, now we’re in London proper, miss,” Bartlett whispered, nodding to the bright lights outside the carriage window. “It’ll be nice to sleep in a decent bed after so many nights on the road, if you don’t mind me saying so.”

“Yes indeed,” Messalina replied, not bothering to whisper.

Mr. Hawthorne didn’t react. He was either still asleep or pretending sleep, the better to spy on her.

Messalina watched out the window as they trundled slowly into the West End, feeling quite weary and ready for a rest.

It was nearly an hour more before the carriage drew up outside the towering classical facade of Windemere House, the London residence of the Dukes of