Her hand had been tracing random patterns on the sheets. She stopped. “Why would you think you did something?”
“I don’t have any precise recollections. But the bed is small and a man’s impulses strong. Besides, you knocked over a glass of water while fleeing the bed. That would be a pretty good indication.”
“It was nothing particularly egregious. Probably wouldn’t have alarmed anyone but an old maid like me.”
“You were alarmed?”
“I fled, didn’t I?”
Why didn’t you give in?
And with that thought came a sudden memory, of arousal, her body pressed against his, her breast in his hand, warm and pliant, her nipple hard with excitement.
He sucked in a long breath. “You know you have nothing to fear from me.”
“Of course not,” she concurred all too readily.
He left the room for her to dress. Then he returned and banished her. “I need to sleep another hour or so.”
He locked the door and laid down on the bed. He would doze some, but not yet, not until he’d exorcised this unwanted lust that had abruptly taken hold of him.
So for now, he would allow himself not only to remember what had taken place during the night, but to imagine what would happen in slightly less than four years, when he’d have her naked and open beneath him.
Just this once.
Fitz, are you there?” Millie rapped loudly on the door. It was ten o’clock, two and a half hours since she left him. “Wake up, I need to talk to you.”
“I’m not sleeping. I’m in the bath. What is it?”
“My mother—” She swallowed. “She is not well.”
“Give me one minute.”
Millie looked down again at the telegram in her hand.
Dear Lord and Lady Fitzhugh,
I regret to inform you that Mrs. Graves has taken ill. She wishes to see you most urgently. Please make your way back to London at your earliest convenience.
Yours, etc.,
G. Goring
She could not believe it. Not her mother, too—she was far too young. But Mr. Goring, Mrs. Graves’s personal solicitor, would not have taken it upon himself to cable unless the situation was critical.
Fitz opened the door. His shirt clung to his person and he was still toweling his hair, the abandoned bathtub half visible behind a screen.
He took the cable from her hand and scanned it. Giving the cable back to her, he tossed aside the towel and pulled out a book of schedules from his satchel.
“There is a train that departs Gorlago in three hours. If we leave right away, in a fast carriage, we might make it.”
They were twenty miles out of Gorlago. The road was decent, but narrow and steep at times. Three hours seemed a very optimistic assessment.
She did not argue.
“Have Bridget pack our things but we are not taking the trunks—they will slow us. Arrange with the innkeeper to send the luggage and take only what you can carry in hand. I’ll find us that fast carriage. Be ready when I get back.”
He was back in a quarter hour with a lightly sprung calèche and a child of about eleven. Millie climbed in with a picnic basket, Bridget followed her with a satchel stuffed with a change of clothes for everyone.
“Where’s the coachman?”
He flicked the reins. The horses eased into a trot. “I’ll drive.”
“What about directions? And the changing of horses?”
“That’s what this young gentleman is for—he will tell us where to go. And when we reach Gorlago he will stay with cattle and carriage until his uncle comes for them. He is six stones lighter than his uncle, so I chose him.”
The boy’s slighter weight and their lack of luggage made the difference—as did the Italian railway’s tendency to run behind schedule. They arrived at the Gorlago station ten minutes after the published departure time for the train to Milan via Bergamo, but had just enough time to purchase tickets and catch the train—Fitz, the last one up, had to run and leap onto the steps.
By the middle of the afternoon they were in Milan. Thanks to the modern marvel that was the Mont Cenis Tunnel, twenty hours later their express train pulled into Paris.
Now they only had to hurry to Calais and cross the English Channel.
Someone gently shook Millie by the shoulder. “Hot air balloons—do you want to see?”
Millie opened her eyes—she didn’t realize she’d nodded off.
There were indeed seven or eight hot air balloons in an open field, most of the envelopes still limp tangles of bright colors, in the process of being inflated. “Is this a competition of some sort?”
“Maybe. Look, there is even an airship.”
“Where?”
“It’s behind the trees now. But I saw it, it had propellers.”
Millie rotated her neck. It rather ached from her nap. “Calèches, trains, and hot air balloons, I feel as if we are attempting Around the World in Eighty Days.”
“The current record is sixty-seven days, so you will have to do a little better.”
“How far are we from Calais?”
“Seven miles or so.”