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

He’d taken one look into the interior of this coach, seen the young mother with her two children and a highborn gentleman who nodded congenially at him, and he’d shut the door without a word. He’d stalked to the back of the coach, where the coachmen had loaded his bags, and two sacks with the official seal of the Royal Post, and had climbed onto the back bench.

He was angry with himself for having allowed this...affair with Prudence. That’s what it was—a dalliance. What else could it have been? He could tell himself that she was beautiful, and that he, being a man with urges more powerful than any force, had no hope of resisting the temptation of her. He told himself that like the dalliances before this, the sting of ending it would subside by the time the coach left Himple.

Roan could tell himself any number of things, but as that damn post coach positively meandered down the road, none of the things he told himself seemed to ease him. The only thing working in him was a fervent, regretful longing.

He was being irrational. Childish. Where was the man in him? Where was that mighty being capable of tamping down useless emotions? The one who could agree that a marriage to Susannah Pratt would benefit all concerned and easily convince himself that was reason enough to marry? That man was apparently lying in the road, trampled by his runaway emotions because Roan was truly and utterly heartsick.

They stopped in a hamlet to change horses. Roan glanced at the two men in worn brown coats and buckskins who rode up top with him. None of them looked very talkative, and for that Roan was grateful.

As the coach rolled away from the hamlet, the fresh team as plodding as the first, Roan closed his eyes, hoping to block the image of Prudence leaving, twisted around on the seat beside that boy to see him. But in his effort to block that image, another one, of the two of them last night, invaded his thoughts. Of Prudence’s creamy flesh, of the soft curves of her body, of how fragrant she smelled and how silky her hair. How she’d gazed at him. How it had felt to be inside her.

A strong shiver ran down his spine.

The coach rocked unsteadily, and his mood grew blacker. He hoped they reached West Lee soon, for who could say what tree he might fell, what beast he might taunt if this ordeal didn’t end. He stared off into the distance, watching fields turn to forest, then turned his attention to the ribbon of road they left in their wake as they jangled along. That was when he noticed a wagon coming at them. And at quite a clip, too.

The driver was bent low over the reins, and Roan couldn’t make out if the driver meant to catch them or pass them. Whatever he meant to do, he was driving much too fast for that wagon.

The guard had noticed them too and pulled his gun from his shoulder and readied it. “Highwaymen?” a passenger asked, but the guard said nothing.

Roan squinted at the wagon through the dust the post coach was kicking up. That was no highwayman. Highwaymen did not make daring mistakes in wagons, they made them on horseback. A movement to the driver’s right caught his attention and Roan gasped. That was Prudence, and she was trying to stand!

“Slow the coach!” he shouted and surged to his feet. “Stop!”

“Sit down, sir!” the guard ordered him. “You’ll fall and break your neck but good.”

“Halt!” Roan shouted. “Halt, halt!”

“What call have we to stop?” one of the men demanded. “So that we might be robbed?”

“That wagon is for me!” Roan yelled. “It’s for me!”

“Then let them be for you at the next stop,” the man barked. “We don’t all stop for it.”

“Halt the goddamn coach!” Roan roared. The guard shouted at the driver, and the coach began to slow so quickly that Roan did indeed almost fall from it.

“Bloody hell,” the man in buckskins swore at him as the wagon shuddered to such a violent halt behind the coach that it appeared as if it might come apart.

The two horses were lathered and breathing hard as if they had raced all the way from the Bulworth estate. Roan leaped to the ground as Prudence scrambled down from her seat. “What are you doing?” he exclaimed. “What utterly mad, foolish, imprudent thing are you doing?”

Prudence was beaming. She was breathing as if she’d run alongside the team of horses, but she was beaming. “Weslay,” she said as she tried to drag breath into her. “Maybe I ought to see you to Weslay.”

Emotions Roan didn’t recognize rushed through him, and he grabbed her up in a rough embrace.

“Maybe you ought,” he muttered, and kissed her cheek. He put his arm around her and dragged her to the coach, yanked the door open and practically shoved her inside. “Make room, make room,” he commanded, and to Prudence he added, “I’ll get your things.”

He stalked to the wagon and took her trunk himself, carrying it to the coach and lashing it on. He grabbed her smaller bag, too. “There you are,” he said to the young driver, and handed him a banknote, the value of which he didn’t even notice. Whatever it was, it was not enough, it could never be enough. Roan was elated, his heart rushing with the thrill of knowing she’d come back to him.

He carried Prudence’s smaller bag to the coach’s interior.