The Scoundrel and the Debutante (The Cabot Sisters #3)

Roan was also keenly aware of how much time he’d wasted in his hunt for his sister. Every moment he wasn’t in pursuit of Aurora was a moment he risked losing her. It was so unlike him—he’d always been a man of integrity and responsibility, the one to whom his family turned to solve problems. That Roan was still in Ashton Down. He didn’t recognize this Roan. And yet, he didn’t know how to go back.

He wasn’t sure he even wanted to go back.

“All right, then, I’m ready,” Prudence said.

She had her bag in one hand. She looked like a vagabond. If Roan didn’t know her, he’d expect her to offer to read his palms. He tried to hide his smile at that thought.

“What?” she demanded.

“I’m just happy that you are, at long last, ready to continue on with our little journey. I have a sister to catch and a trunk to find if you haven’t forgotten.”

“Oh, I’ve not forgotten,” she assured him. “I am as anxious to see my trunk as you are yours.”

Roan settled her on the back of the horse and once again strapped their bags onto the old nag’s rump. He walked alongside the horse, leading it back across the meadow and the wide swath the nag had mowed. The old girl would probably want a nap now.

He liked walking, even at the pace of a turtle. He needed the physical exercise to expel his frustrations with the thievery and his own bad behavior.

Prudence, however, seemed almost jovial, as if she were very much enjoying one disaster after another. He supposed she was too privileged and too young to appreciate just how wretched their lot was, but he was desperately aware of it. If his trunk had gone missing and he was forced to go to London to the central bank—he had no idea how far they were from London—he might never find Aurora.

Prudence was talking, he realized, something to do with a garden party where an illustrious guest had fallen in a fountain and had needed rescue. His thoughts were racing, plotting and planning for what would come next if they reached Himple and found their things missing.

They passed through the trees over which they’d seen the curls of smoke. When they rounded the bend, Roan said, “Look ahead, Pru—we’ve reached Himple.”

Prudence sat up.

Himple was a village, a real village, with a proper high street, a central green and houses tucked into narrow lanes that meandered away from the high street. There were people, too, scores of them out on that warm summer afternoon. Carters moving their wares, women carrying buckets of water away from a central well, children playing in the roads. Roan felt immeasurably relieved as they rode down the main road. He brought the horse to a halt before a building with the emblem of the Royal Post emblazoned proudly in the window. He whistled for a stable boy. The boy hurried to him and took the reins as Roan helped Prudence down, then unlashed their bags. “Stable her,” he said to the boy. “Feed her well. She deserves it.”

The boy touched his cap and tugged the horse’s bridle to move her along.

Prudence was already at the door of the Royal Post office, peering into the window. When Roan opened the door for her, she walked in and cried out with delight at the sight of her trunk against one wall. His was beside it. “Yours?” she asked Roan.

“Yes, thank God.” He walked to the trunks and squatted down to have a look. Miraculously, the lock was intact.

A man with a wide, flat nose and garters around his sleeves wandered out of a back room. He was holding a monocle, which he polished as he eyed them. “Yes, please?”

“Mr. Roan Matheson,” Roan said. “I’ve come to collect my trunk. The other one belongs to Miss Cabot.”

The clerk continued to clean his monocle as he squinted at the trunks. He moved to a small counter, put the monocle to his eye and began to rifle through some papers. He picked one up and brought it close to his face. “Ah.”

“Ah what?” Roan asked.

“The black trunk is marked for Roan Matheson,” he said, and glanced up. “That you?”

Roan glanced at Prudence. “Yes, as I said.”

The clerk looked again at the paper. “The second belongs to Miss Prudence Cabot.” He looked up. “Is that you, miss?”

“It is.”

“You’re the lass the stagecoach lost when the wheel broke, are you?” His gaze flicked disapprovingly over Prudence. The color rose in her cheeks.

“And you’re the gent who went after her,” the man said to Roan.

What was it to this man? Roan responded with a dark look for the man.

The clerk did not seem to care that Roan looked at him in that way. He turned back to the paper and said, “The Cabot trunk will be picked up by Mr. Barton Bulworth’s man at noon on the morrow.” He removed his monocle then and looked at the two of them.

Roan could feel the tension radiating off Prudence. “Tomorrow?” she repeated, and looked at Roan uncertainly. He knew what she was thinking—what was she to do until the morrow?

“Aye,” the clerk confirmed. “And you, sir? Where am I to have the trunk delivered?”

Roan stared at the man. “I’ll take it with me. I intend to be on the four o’clock stage for West Lee.”

“You want the southbound coach. It’s come and gone, comes through promptly at one o’clock—”