When had he ever seen her back down?
Rescuing Miss Price in Vinegar Yard…bashing Crenshaw in front of Crockford’s…mocking Vere to his face in the Blue Owl…masquerading as a man in Jerrimer’s…climbing up the back of Helena Martin’s house…sashaying half naked through Covent Garden…playing jewel thief in Francis Street…. Grenville was game for anything, afraid of nothing. And when it came to pride, Vere could think of but one person who could match her for pure, overweening arrogance, and that was Lord Beelz himself.
With the thought, he became aware of something beckoning at the far fringes of memory—a wisp of an image, a recognition. It had appeared before, more than once, and it vanished this time as on previous occasions, in the way, sometimes, a word or phrase stays tantalizingly out of reach. He let it go because memory, the past, didn’t matter so much as the present.
At present, he could no longer believe the woman would give way, come forty-day flood or apocalypse. To back down was no more in her nature than it was in his. The difference was, what happened to him didn’t matter.
By the time he pulled into the yard of the inn at God-alming, he’d made his decision.
The cabriolet followed close on his wheels.
The clouds spat chill droplets and the warning rumbles grew louder.
“We’ll never outrun this storm, Grenville,” he called to her over the stable yard hubbub. “Let’s call a halt—and no forfeit. We’re as near a draw as makes no difference.”
“Thank God,” Bertie muttered beside him. He drew out his handkerchief and mopped his brow.
Grenville only stared at him, in the cold, deadly way Vere found so intolerably provoking. Even now, though he was drawing perilously near the edge of panic, he was provoked and wanted to shake her.
“Lost your nerve, have you?” she returned, her tones as cool and level as the vexatious look.
“I can’t let you kill yourself on my account,” he said. A stable man led her horse up. It was a large, black gelding with a wild look in its eye. “Take that beast back,” he snapped at the man. “Any idiot can see he’s a bolter.”
“Put him in the traces,” Grenville commanded.
“Grenville—”
“Look to your own animal, Ainswood,” she said. “I’ll see you in Liphook.”
“A draw, I said, drat you! No forfeit. Are you deaf, woman?”
She only shot him another gorgon glare and turned to raise the cabriolet’s hood.
“You don’t have to marry me!” he shouted. “It’s done, don’t you understand? Over. You’ve proved you’re a competent whip.”
“Obviously, I haven’t proved a dratted thing. You there,” she called to a yard man. “Give us a hand with the hood, and never mind gawking.”
While Vere watched in numb disbelief, the cabriolet’s hood went up, and the beast from hell was wrestled into harness.
Before Vere could summon the presence of mind to leap from the tilbury and pull her from her seat, the black gelding lunged forward, knocking aside the startled stable man, and throwing Miss Price back against the seat. In the next heartbeat, the cabriolet was hurtling out of the yard. Above the shouts and curses of the grooms, Vere heard Grenville’s laughter.
“Oh, Lord, Lydia, this animal is insane,” Tamsin gasped. She was clutching the side of the carriage with both hands—an intelligent response, given the gelding’s breakneck speed. “The duke will go off in an apoplexy, you know he will. I’m sure he’s worried to death, poor man.”
“Are you worried?” Lydia asked, keeping her eyes on the road. The gelding was a lively brute, to be sure, and strong enough to take them up Hindhead Hill at a good pace, but he did have a mischievous tendency to pull to the left.
“No. This is too exciting.” Tamsin leaned forward and peered ’round the hood. “They’re starting to catch up again. Sir Bertram’s face is very red.”
Thunder reverberated over Witley Common. Lydia caught a flash of light in the distance. Another rumble followed after a short interval.
The girl sat back. “I can’t think how you summoned the strength of will to refuse His Grace. He was so terribly upset. I know he’s dreadfully provoking, and he might have put his offer of a draw more tactfully—”
“He believes I’m so addlepated and irresponsible as to get myself killed—and take you with me,” Lydia said tightly. “That’s why he’s upset, and that’s what’s intolerable.”
Out of the corner of her eye she glimpsed another shaft of light. A low boom of thunder followed. “If he had his way, I should finish sitting tamely beside him,” she went on. “While gazing up adoringly into his deceitful face. But he is not going to make me his private property and tie me to him until death us do part, if I can help it.”
They were more than halfway up the long hill. The black gelding was beginning to slow, but he showed no signs of wishing to rest.
“It wouldn’t be so bad if he would gaze back adoringly,” Tamsin said.
“That’s worse,” Lydia said. “Ainswood’s adoring looks can be lethal. I had a sample in Covent Garden, recollect. His Grace, on his knees, looking up worshipfully into one’s face, is a devastating sight.”
“I wish I had seen it.”
“I wish I hadn’t,” Lydia said. “I had to fix my mind on Susan, and her soulful gazes, which are motivated by greedy doggy concerns such as food or playing or petting. Otherwise, I should have melted into a puddle on the spot.”
“Poor Susan. How wicked the duke was to use her against you.”
“Poor Susan, indeed. Her behavior was disgraceful.”
“She may have simply felt sorry for him,” Tamsin said. “You know how she seems to sense when one is unwell or out of sorts or distressed. Only yesterday, Millie was upset because she’d scorched an apron. Susan went to her and dropped her ball at Millie’s feet and licked her hand just as though—Oh, my goodness, there’s the gibbet.”
They’d nearly reached the top of the hill. On the near side stood the Hindhead gibbet. The spitting rain beat down upon the carriage hood, and the shrieking wind mingled eerily with the gallows’ creaking chains. Lightning blasted at the distant edges of the Devil’s Punchbowl, on the far side, and the thunder rolled, adding its ominous drumbeat to this satanic concerto.
At the crest of the hill, Lydia drew the horse to a halt, for he was steaming and clearly needed a rest. But within minutes he was fretting and straining in the traces, impatient to go on.
“By gad, you’re a game ’un, aren’t you?” Lydia said. “Still, my fine fellow, you shan’t plunge us headlong down this hill.”
She heard behind her—close behind—the rattle of wheels and clatter of hoofbeats.
Ahead and below stretched the perilous decline, with packhorse tracks as deep as a Devonshire lane on either side. The only sign of habitation in this bleak terrain was the smoke coiling upward from the Seven Thorns Inn, an unsavory place in which she didn’t fancy takin
g refuge.
This stretch of the usually busy Portsmouth Road was virtually deserted, thanks to the storm. This, clearly, was not the time or place to have an accident.
The rain drummed angrily upon the hood—which, thanks to the wind, did little to keep them dry. But Lydia had no energy for considering her discomfort, having her hands full with the gelding. He fought her efforts to slow him while obstinately—and in typically self-destructive male fashion—aiming for the road edge.
By the time they reached the bottom of the hill, her arms were aching, and still the gelding showed no sign of tiring.
Lydia glanced guiltily at Tamsin. Her skirts were drenched and she was shivering.
“Two more miles.” Lydia had to raise her voice to be heard over the pounding rain and rolling thunder.
“I’m only wet,” Tamsin said through chattering teeth. “I won’t melt.”
God forgive me, Lydia thought, her conscience stabbing. She should never have let Tamsin come, should never have agreed to this fool race. At the very least, she should have accepted Ainswood’s offer of a truce. If Tamsin took a fatal chill—
A blast of lightning nearly jolted her from the carriage seat, and the thunderous clap following in the next heartbeat seemed to shake the road beneath them. The gelding rose up on its hind legs with a terrified whinny, and her arms and hands burned as she strained to bring him down and away from the road edge before he capsized them into a ditch.
The world went dark for an instant, then blindingly bright again as lightning bolted over the commons, accompanied by deafening crashes.
It took a moment to register the other sounds: shouts, the shriek of a horse in pain or panic, the clatter of carriage wheels.
Then she saw it, hurtling down the road inches away from her wheels. Lydia pulled the cabriolet back to the left, saw the tilbury jerk crazily to the right as it rumbled past, narrowly missing her. Lightning flared again and she glimpsed Ainswood’s taut silhouette, saw him work the ribbons in the instant before the crash of thunder and the next, more frightening crash as the tilbury went down, over the far side of the road.