“You can’t if you don’t try,” Portia agreed, and shoved the reins toward Allegra.
“If Portia can drive,” Dorcas pointed out, “I’m sure you can, too.”
“You’ll be able to tell Captain L’Amour you were wild and spontaneous in your youth, too,” Portia coaxed.
“Listen,” Allegra said. “When it comes to driving a carriage, only one party gets to be wild and spontaneous. If the horse goes first, I don’t know what I’m supposed to—”
“If you can play the piano, you can hold a pair of ribbons,” Dorcas said. “Just keep them steady and firm. Loosen when you want speed, pull back when you want to stop.”
“I want to stop now,” Allegra said. “I think I’ll walk back to the hotel.”
Portia put her palms above her head. “Uh-uh, can’t give the reins to me. Better hold on to them.”
“That looks very dangerous,” Allegra said. “Your experienced hands should at least be near my inexperienced hands, since your hands are the ones that know what to do, and mine are the ones that do not. Dorcas, you’re always the voice of reason. Can you talk some sense into—”
Dorcas lifted her fingers above her head, too. “Ooh, how lovely it is to have a stretch in the fine sea air. I certainly cannot drive a carriage whilst stretching my poor, tired arms. I’m so glad my elder cousin is here to mind the phaeton as we take in the sweeping views.”
Allegra wasn’t taking in a sweeping view of anything other than her white-knuckled grip on the brown leather reins. Very well. Steady. Firm. Not too loose and not too tight. They were all going to die.
Suddenly, Portia bounced in her seat.
“Please stop bouncing,” Allegra said hoarsely.
“But Allegra.” Portia gesticulated at a row of windows on the other side of the cobblestones. “Do you see—just up ahead—”
“I don’t see anything,” Allegra said. “I can only see my hands bloodlessly gripping these reins until you take them away from me. Please take them away from me.”
“Didn’t you say Captain L’Amour was improbably handsome?” Portia insisted. “Like something from a gothic romance?”
“I cannot tell you Captain L’Amour stories right now,” Allegra said. “I am very busy trying not to crash this carriage.”
Dorcas lowered her voice. “But you did say Captain L’Amour possesses rebelliously overlong black hair with a soft curl that invites one’s fingertips?”
“Yes,” Allegra managed distractedly. “I spent many nights stroking it inappropriately. I’ll tell you about it later.”
“You said one can tell by looking at him that he is a sailor with a long and storied history,” Portia added. “The handsome scar, the telling limp, the cane with an eagle handle to symbolize the soaring raptor that gave him that handsome scar…”
“Mm-hm.” Allegra’s fingers were starting to slip with sweat. “These do sound like details I may have shared with you.”
“A face too pretty to stare straight at for long,” Dorcas prompted. “A propensity for blue-green waistcoats because they remind him of the sea…”
“What is your point?” Allegra whispered. “I am trying very hard not to kill us all at the moment.”
“Her point,” Portia said, “is that Captain L’Amour is right there!”
“What?!” Allegra jerked her gaze up from her hands.
There, on the pavement not ten feet away from them, was a man who very much resembled the yarn she had spun for her cousins. Tall, well-formed, curling dark hair, scarred, gripping a cane, a face so beautiful it hurt to look at him…and a brightly spangled blue-green waistcoat that glittered in the sunlight like the froth on the open sea.
She dropped the reins in shock.
Unexpectedly given their head, the horses darted forward too fast for the phaeton. The carriage listed one way. The horses curved the other. The world spun.
Dorcas gasped. Portia screamed.
And Captain L’Amour—or whoever the devil this gorgeous specimen might be—was caught right in their path.
Chapter 3
In all his years of amassing facts and figures, never once had John imagined he would one day need to scramble into a road in order to avoid an oncoming carriage.
His mismatched legs did not sprint easily—another reason to stroll exclusively upon clearly designated pedestrian pavements—but he gripped the sturdy brass handle of his walking stick and dove away from the empty tea shop and into the street.
The horses, he quickly noted, were not properly out of control, but merely confused, as if spurred to go faster without first being told in which direction. Upon glimpsing John’s sudden dash to safety, they reared back out of the way, narrowly avoiding the pedestrian path.
The phaeton, a high sporty conveyance with extraordinarily large wheels, veered much too sharply, and tilted precariously on one thin wooden wheel.
Inside the shallow, open bucket at the top sat three young women, clutching each other in panic.
Presumably panic.
Any reasonable person would panic.
Instead, three pairs of eyes stared at him with varying degrees of confusion and wonder, as though the unusual element in this bucolic beach town was the disgraced solicitor-turned-chef from London, not the rampaging horses and runaway carriage steered by…were any of the ladies holding the reins?
The one in the middle. Of course. Even whilst John was soaring through the air to save his own life, she had caught his eye and nearly distracted him from breaking his fall.
It was a very good thing John had sworn off women until his tea room was a roaring success, because this young lady was intriguing indeed. One need not be a profligate rake to find oneself drawn inexorably closer.
Her face was not classically pretty, which arrested him all the more. The wide-set eyes, the too-prominent cheeks, the lush pink mouth, the wild brown mane that looked as though she’d forgotten to brush her hair after taking a dip in the sea.
She looked like a force of nature. What he’d always imagined goddesses to really be like. Not slender columns of dainty beauty, but an explosion of life trapped in human form.
Even her gown had a mind of its own. Each sleeve looked as though it had once belonged to an entirely different ensemble. The mint bodice was of one material, the powder-blue overdress another, the golden underdress yet another. It was as though on her fall to earth, she had summoned raiments through the very air, gathering bits and bobs to clothe herself like Eve reaching for fig leaves.
The effect of so many textures at once made him long to touch each one of those fabrics. To feel her curves beneath his fingers, to see if he could bring a smile to those plump lips before lowering his head to taste them. Her presence was so bewitching, he scarcely noticed the spinning phaeton wheel returning to the road or the whinny of the horses. One of which beasts was currently sniffing the lapels of John’s second-favorite frock coat.
“It is him!” chortled one of the younger misses.
“He’s alive!” shouted the other.
Yes, that was the detail John ought to be paying attention to. He had attempted an outing without fully planning it first, and instead of acquiring a tea room, he’d backed straight into traffic. This was his fault, not the wild goddess’s. He had not meant to envelop her in his damnable tempest of bad luck.