“I snuck away,” she told him. “Hopefully, no one will come looking for me.”
Patrick yawned and stretched the kinks out of his neck from sleeping crumpled up against the side of the car.
“You’d better get used to being sore,” Linley said. “No soft feather beds out here. Only hard, damp ground. That was probably the best sleep you’ll have for a long time.” She grinned at him. Truly, Linley had been so excited to see him that she never stopped to let it sink in that he was really there. Patrick came to India to see her! She was so happy she could cry.
“Well,” he said, noting the way her tanned skin glowed as she smiled. “Getting out of London has done you good. I see those freckles are back in order.” He tapped the end of her nose with the tip of his finger. “I was starting to miss them.”
She tilted her head playfully. “Was that all you missed?”
“You know it wasn’t,” Patrick replied. “I told you before you left that I was no good without you. I barely made it two weeks before I jumped on the first ship over.”
Linley took his hand in hers. “I’m so glad you came. I’ve thought quite a bit about everything you said to me the night before I left. Would you forgive me if I told you that I made a mistake in coming here?”
“I’ll never say that you made a mistake because I understand why you left,” he said. “Your father is very important to you, just as Georgiana is to me—”
“Oh, Georgiana!” Linley cried. “I heard she had her baby!”
Patrick chuckled, a little frightened by her enthusiasm. “Yes, she did. A boy,” he said. “She named him John, after our brother who died.”
“Oh.”
“Some said it was bad luck to name a child after another child who died, but I don’t think so.”
“No,” Linley said. “It isn’t bad luck. I’m sure your brother would be very honored.”
Patrick shrugged. Even though he was only a boy when Johnnie died, he never really liked to talk about it. “Everyone thought I was mad for coming here,” he said, changing the subject. “It was Georgiana who encouraged me to go after you. After all these years of my parenting her, she turns out to be the voice of reason.”
“So they knew about me?” Linley asked. “About…us?”
“Of course.”
She frowned. “And they approved?”
“The day I left, Hereford slipped me a hundred pounds and told me I’d better not come home until I’d found you,” he explained. “I was miserable without you. Any fool could see where my heart was.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
“Absolutely not!” Sir Bedford said, taking one look at Patrick, who stood outside their rented rooms the next morning.
Linley followed her father out the door. “But, Papa! He’s come all this way!”
“I don’t care if he crawled here!” Sir Bedford said. “He has no idea what he is doing, and he will only slow us down.”
“He won’t,” she said, tugging at her father’s sleeve. “I promise!”
He glanced up at Patrick. “I’m sorry, Lord Kyre, but you will have to wait here until we return.”
“And when will that be?” Patrick asked.
“A few weeks,” Sir Bedford said. “Perhaps a month at most.”
“I’m not sitting here for a month!” Patrick replied. He struggled to find a better argument than that, and then struck upon a fantastic idea. “I—I’m an investor! I am an investor and I demand to know where my money is going.” When Linley’s father still looked to dismiss him, he continued, “If you don’t show me firsthand how the money I invested is being spent, I’ll tell everyone I know that you’re a fraud.”
Linley gasped. “Patrick!”
“You wouldn’t dare!” Sir Bedford cried.
“I would,” Patrick said in the most menacing voice he could muster. “Try me!”
Linley’s father huffed and crossed his arms. He opened his mouth to say something, but snapped it shut again. After a few shaky breaths, he finally spoke. “Fine. You may come, but you will have to make your own travel arrangements.” Then he stormed off, followed by Archie, Reginald, and Schoville.
“My father is not a fraud,” Linley said.
Patrick slipped his arms around her shoulders. “I know that.” For the first time that morning, he took a good look at her. She wore heavy boots and jodhpurs, much like the ones she wore the first day he saw her in Morocco. Yet it was such a far cry from the silk gowns he’d grown used to seeing her wear in London that Patrick had to take a step back and admire her. She was no frills and no nonsense. And she was absolutely gorgeous. “So, how do I go about making these travel arrangements your father warned me about?”
“Don’t worry. You can ride with me.” Linley took his hand and led him down a path that ran along the edge of the jungle. She pushed aside the branches of a broad, leafy banana palm to reveal another path, only this one was quite narrow, and seemed to sink back into the jungle and fade to nothing more than the morning mist.