Sin With a Scoundrel (The Husband Hunters Club 4)

She tried to focus on the scenery outside. They had entered a forest, and it looked so dark and cool. She wondered if there was a stream nearby and how it would feel to dip her feet in the cool water. To sit in the silence and breathe the fresh air and forget all about the family expectations weighing her down.

“I say, Tina, are you all right? You’ve gone very pale.”

It was Charles who spoke, and he looked worried. Perhaps he’d sensed her change of mood after all.

“No, I’m not,” she said sharply. “I need to get out. Please ask the driver to stop.”

The forest was as cool and shadowy as she’d hoped, and for a moment Tina took deep breaths, regaining her composure. The silence was actually not silence at all, but a choir of sweet birdsong.

“Miss, are you well now?” Maria was by her side, dark eyes anxious.

Tina sighed.

“It is just that the coachman is worried.” She glanced back, and Tina could see the man in his coat, seated up high on the coach, peering through the trees. “He says there are robbers in these woods, miss, and we’d be wise to get through them as quickly as possible.”

Horace had already taken up the subject, exclaiming loudly, “Robbers? Along here?” as if he found the idea of them daring to even think about robbing him infuriating. “We are armed, aren’t we?” this aside to the coachman.

“Yes, my lord.”

“Well then, I think any robbers who came upon us would be very sorry indeed.”

“But, my lord—”

“Allow the lady to take the air, coachman, and we’ll hear no more of robbers.”

Tina found herself smiling at his sheer arrogance, and she reentered the coach in a much better frame of mind.

“Are you better now, miss?” asked Maria, as they settled themselves again on the comfortable seats.

“Yes, quite better. But I shall be happy to arrive. I’d forgotten how much I detest traveling in a coach. Even one as fine as this one,” she added hastily, aware that Horace was listening.

“I should have brought my curricle,” he said mildly, “and you could have had the wind in your face. Put some color into those pale cheeks, Tina.”

“You could always sit up with the coachman,” Charles added, a twinkle in his eye. “Get plenty of color in your cheeks up there, sis.”

Suddenly their banter was comforting rather than irritating, and Tina was able to smile and say with perfect truth, “Thank you both, but I am quite content where I am.”

Richard was making a similar journey, traveling with Will Jackson. He knew Will quite well although he had never considered him a friend, but this journey was proving a surprise for he found himself enjoying Will’s company very much.

They didn’t discuss Guardian matters, not with Archie in the coach with them, and had to find other topics. To Richard’s surprise they seemed to find plenty of those. Still, he’d be glad when they reached Arlington Hall, Sir Henry and Lady Isabelle’s country estate.

Archie spent most of the time dozing in the corner, or pretending to. Richard had found his manservant rather a disappointment when it came to his spying activities with Tina’s maid. Archie had discovered very little, or at least he had told Richard very little. He had a suspicion that Archie was growing fond of Maria, and perhaps his emotion for her was affecting his job.

Richard frowned.

It just went to show, it did not do to allow one’s emotions to interfere with one’s work. He should remind Archie of it. And remind himself, he thought wryly. Emotion had no place in his life—not until he’d completed his mission.

Sir Thomas and Lady Carol had waited until their children had departed before setting out on their own journey. It was a final effort to find the funds to keep the house in Mallory Street, and it was a vain hope, but it was one they felt it necessary to make.

They were heading for Sir Thomas’s brother, Harold Smythe.

Harold had already rejected the pleas for help Sir Thomas had made by letter, but he was confident—or so he told his wife—that a face-to-face meeting would do the trick. “Harold won’t see me go down,” he said, as their hired coach bumped out of London. “Turn on the waterworks when you see him, old gir

l. Harold could never abide women crying all over him.”

His wife gave him a scathing look. It was the sort of look she’d been giving him a lot lately, and in his heart he couldn’t blame her. This was all his fault. He’d lost everything. But the house, the material things, he could manage without them. It was his wife as she used to be that he missed, and he was beginning to wonder how he could live without her love.

Chapter 18