Kitty strained to look out her window and avoid his twinkling blue eyes. He was looking at her—inconspicuously, but she knew he was looking at her—all the while making conversation with Nanny.
What had come over her? Why had she kissed him and allowed it to come to this? He was most certainly a challenge, and she so dearly loved challenges, but there was more to the banter they were forever engaging in.
And her heart? What was wrong with it? He made it race. The actual sight of him made it beat so hard she couldn’t think. He made her want to … seduce him.
Oh no! She was thinking and behaving like a tart. Henrietta once told her that, while being staid and demure was what was expected of well-bred young ladies, being a tart was, she was sure, much more fun. Ree had sighed then and added, “Though very few of us dare to go beyond a stolen kiss.”
“The Godwin sisters …” Kitty had pointed out.
“Oh yes, but look how they gossip about them,” Ree said. “We wouldn’t be comfortable having people talk about us like that … would we?”
She was right. She wouldn’t want such talk to get back to Nanny, but she did so want to kiss the earl again … and perhaps again after that.
The inn came into view, and she exclaimed excitedly, nicely diverted from such thoughts, “Oh! How quaint. Nanny, look how charmingly they have set all the flowers around the garden table and chairs. Oh my … so many tulips. What a lovely spot.”
“Indeed, I was sure it would be,” Nanny said and smiled at the earl. “His lordship knows just where to go.”
The carriage had come to a complete stop, and a bevy of young neatly clothed hostlers rushed to the horse’s head.
Max jumped from his driver’s seat and went around to open the carriage door wide. The earl jumped out first and turned to help Nanny. She moved forward, bending her neck a bit as she stretched, and the earl turned toward Kitty.
She realized she had not put on her gloves but did not take the time to retrieve them, leaving them with her purse as she gave him her hand. A bolt of excitement shot through her fingers, up her arm, into her brain, turning it into a mass of gruel before shooting another bolt into her heart.
What was this? What was wrong with her? Why did he have such an effect on her?
She heard Luts following them as he grumbled loudly about his aches and pains.
She lost her balance, tripped slightly on the step, and caught the hem of her skirt on the door hinge. She felt the tug on her skirt and, as she looked around, she totally lost her balance and went flying forward.
The earl had dropped her hand only to throw a steadying arm around her waist. He held her firmly up against himself.
Blue eyes gazed into green ones, and Kitty was conscious of a magnetism she was sure she had never before experienced with anyone else in her life. “Thank you,” she managed to whisper over the pounding in her head.
“Don’t move,” he answered as he held her and still was able to reach and bend. He released her skirt from the door hinge. “There. I don’t believe it has been damaged.”
His voice was soft and soothing, and Kitty was aware that she was holding her breath. What the deuce was wrong with her? She wasn’t missish. Why was she behaving like an infatuated schoolgirl?
The moment was lost to the sound of her name resonantly hitting the air waves in merry accents. “Kitty! My own little Kitty!”
Kitty looked up and past the earl’s broad shoulders at a tall, well dressed Corinthian coming towards her. “Alex! Oh, Alex!” she called as she hurried towards him.
Lord Alexander Magdalen picked up Kitty and spun her around in full view of the earl, who had turned sharply to eye the newcomer. He said with something of a rueful smirk, “Alex, I usually allow you more license than I do others, but even so, I must ask you to unhand my ward.”
“Brandon!” the newcomer exclaimed. “By all the Saints! What the devil are you doing in these parts?” And then before his friend could answer, he said, “Ward? What in blazes are you saying?” Then in quick succession, Kitty saw the dawning light in his dark eyes. “Ward? Lud! Do you mean?” He turned to her then once again and pulled her back into his arms. “Kitten, never say the old fellow is gone?”
Kitty nodded sadly. “Yes … for months and months now.”
Magdalen patted her back and then hugged her strongly. “There, there, poor girl. I know how much you loved him, and I was ever so fond of him as well. But how do you come to be in this rogue’s company? Where is Nanny?”
“Here, my lord,” Nanny said, coming from the boot of the coach. “I was just getting something I needed from my traveling bag.” She put out her hand and enveloped Magdalen with a warm smile. “How nice to see you looking as lively as ever.”
“She means looking as devilish as ever but is too polite to say so,” Kitty bantered.
“Bu
t you are not polite in the least, are you, my Kitten?” he returned amiably as he flicked her nose. He frowned then, and pursued his earlier line of inquiry. “Still, what does Rogue Halloway mean, calling you his ward?”
“Ah, that is an odd thing—” Kitty started.