Her Secret Lover (Aphrodite's Club 2)

He barely glanced up at her. “No, you’re not, miss. I have my instructions.”

He was wearing a grubby jacket with that cap pulled down low over his face, his co

arse black hair sticking out in all directions. Did he never brush it? Antoinette knew she should cultivate Coombe if she wanted him to help her escape, but it was difficult to get enthusiastic. She could smell the earthy, horsy smell of him from several feet away.

She took a shallow breath as she stepped closer. “Then come with me. I’d like an—an escort,” she declared brightly. “I don’t feel safe since the highwayman held up my coach. Coombe, do please ride with me?”

He stopped pitching the soiled hay into a wooden barrow, resting on the fork and staring at his boots. “Ride with you?” he repeated in his almost incomprehensible accent, as if the concept was as foreign to him as bathing.

Antoinette laughed at the note in his voice. “Good heavens, Coombe, don’t tell me you can’t ride? I certainly won’t believe you. Especially when I know you’re such a racing enthusiast.”

He gave a snort and finally looked at her.

Just for a moment, a heartbeat, she thought she knew him. But the impression was gone an instant later. This was Coombe, she reminded herself. His face was sweaty and streaked with dirt, and some of his black hair had fallen into his eyes. His kerchief was tied around his mouth and chin; she supposed to save him the dust, or the smell, of his task. Although if the truth be told, if anything smelled it was Coombe. He needed a good long scrub. Her tongue itched to tell him so but she couldn’t afford to upset him. He was her one hope.

“Well then…?” she said impatiently, tapping her foot. “Will you come with me? Or do I have to take Wonicot, and watch him fall off his mount after ten paces?”

Coombe’s hunched shoulders shook as if he might be laughing but he made no sound. With elaborate care he rested his pitchfork against the wall and slouched past her to saddle her mare. Antoinette gulped in fresh air as soon as he’d moved on.

“I’ll come with you, miss,” he growled. “If that’s what you want.”

Antoinette beamed a smile. “Oh, I do, Coombe, I really do.”

Gabriel was glad he’d made such an effort with his disguise this morning. In hindsight, something had told him she might be seeking out Coombe when she woke. He remembered that whenever she was with the highwayman her next move seemed to be a desperate need to escape. So he’d donned Coombe’s filthy jacket and he’d rubbed mud onto his face, just enough to disguise his appearance, and pulled on the hideous concoction of cap and horse hair. The final touch was the red kerchief.

His own mother wouldn’t know him. Better yet, she wouldn’t want to get within a mile of him, and from the expression on Antoinette’s face, she felt the same.

It was amusing, watching her trying to ingratiate herself with him while at the same time holding her breath. He knew very well she was only wheedling him into going with her because she wanted something. Well, he was happy to while away the hours playing the country dolt. It would give him the chance to learn what she was up to.

She was a good rider, he admitted critically, as he followed her from the stable yard and out onto the road. Her back was straight, her hands up, and she moved well. Wherever she came from, she’d learned to ride like a lady.

Gabriel was well aware that the courtesan Madame Aphrodite was from poor and difficult circumstances and had transformed herself into a lady, learning to talk and walk and pass as a gentlewoman. He didn’t think it was the same for Antoinette Dupre. Her behavior was so instinctive, and she had a touch of arrogance—as if she was used to being treated with deference. In his opinion she was born a lady, however low she might have fallen.

Gabriel was well aware that some women were forced into selling their bodies by poverty and family circumstances, gentlewomen as well as those from less privileged backgrounds. A friend of his family had run off with a suitor after her parents refused them permission to marry. Unfortunately the parents were right, because the girl was abandoned by the scoundrel, and without the protective shelter of a wedding ring, she was considered ruined. Subsequently her family refused to take her back, and she found herself with no option but to seek work. But her education and upbringing hadn’t trained her for anything apart from being a gentleman’s wife. For a time she was employed as a governess, underpaid and badly treated, but eventually the position wore her down and she left. After that she slipped out of the circle of his friends and acquaintances, and into the murky world of the demimondaine. She became the mistress of the owner of several drapery stores, a man whose wealth had lifted him higher than the class to which he’d been born, and who felt her ladylike ways contributed to his social status.

Had something similar happened to Antoinette?

Had she, abandoned and alone, had no option but to seek her livelihood by using her wits and her body? Or was he making excuses for her, trying to turn her into a fallen angel, someone who had gone to Appleby without a choice, someone he could save. Gabriel admitted it was quite possible she’d leaped into her profession with both feet, perfectly happy to trade her favors for cold hard cash and a comfortable lifestyle.

He didn’t blame her, nor did he despise her. Since his own life had become precarious, he’d grown to understand so much better a longing for all the comforts he’d once taken for granted. And he was by no means destitute or abandoned. How much worse must it be for someone who was? How much greater the temptation?

“Hurry up, Coombe!”

She sounded impatient. She’d been riding ahead of him, but now he saw that while he’d been woolgathering she’d stopped and turned to see why he was dawdling. Quickly Gabriel assumed Coombe’s blank expression and kicked his mount into a gallop, coming level with her and then passing right by. Her surprised gasp made him want to laugh out loud, but a moment later he heard the pounding of the mare’s hooves as she made up ground on him.

“I didn’t think you had it in you, Coombe,” she called breathlessly, as she came level with him again.

He grunted, holding on to his cap with one hand, so it didn’t fly off.

“You’re wasted here at Wexmoor Manor. You should be in a stable with horses that win races.”

Ah, back to her agenda, he thought, hiding a smile. Did she really see Coombe running a racing stable? Gabriel tried to picture the groom in a well-cut jacket and breeches, with shiny riding boots and a cigar clenched between his teeth as he shouted out orders. No, he couldn’t see it, no matter how hard he tried. Antoinette’s imagination must be far more vivid than his.

“I happen to know someone who owns such a stable,” she said airily. They’d slowed their horses now and were ambling along under the leafy boughs of the trees that lined the lane.

“They wouldn’t take me on, miss.”

It took a moment for her to interpret what he’d said, but she managed, more or less. “Of course they would, Coombe. I’d put in a good word for you, you can be sure of that.”