She bit her lip as she considered. He watched her small white teeth sink into the pink flesh and tried not to think of sinking his own teeth into that flesh. She was lost and alone. He needed to help her, not maul her. This was the problem with months of bride-shopping—all looking and no touching.
Finally, she looked up at him and cleared her throat. “Portugal,” she said.
Duncan sat back on the seat. “Christ and all the saints.”
Duncan sat silently for some time with the word she’d spoken ringing in his ears. He was a man of action—some said too much action. He often acted without thinking, and that was fine by him. He lived by his wits and his instincts, and they hadn’t led him wrong yet. Sure, some might call him a lunatic—his fellow soldiers did—but Duncan couldn’t see how caution and restraint had served them any better than impulsivity had served him. But now, just for the moment, he wished he had Stratford or Phineas here beside him. Those two seemed to always know the correct course of action. They’d know what to do with this lass.
Duncan looked at her and sighed. She looked back at him, her legs still curled under his greatcoat, and her eyes wide with concern. She dropped her gaze when it met his, and a blush rose on her cheeks.
“I dinnae suppose ye ken what tae do aboot this situation?” he asked, mostly to himself, but she looked up at the sound of his voice. “I can’t exactly leave ye oot on the road nor can I take ye tae Scotland with me.” He rubbed a hand over his eyes, which burned with fatigue. He wished he had slept last night. His mind would be clearer. “I can only think of one option. I’d better take ye back tae London.”
“London?” she asked in an accented voice. “Não. Não London.” She shook her head and looked the most animated he had seen her.
Duncan leaned forward. “What’s wrong with London?”
She didn’t answer, merely looked at him.
“Ye dinnae like London?”
“Não London,” she repeated.
Well, that was a problem. He needed someone who spoke her language to find out who she was and where she belonged. A few of the men in Draven’s troop had been in Portugal and knew the language—Neil was one, but he was back in London. Nash was another. Nash was a sharpshooter who had been injured in battle. Duncan hadn’t seen him in a year at least, since Nash had retired to his family estate. If Duncan remembered correctly, that estate was only about fifty miles out of the way in the village of Milcroft.
“But if we go too much further north, we’ll have tae dooble back,” he said before parting the curtains and sliding the window down. “John Coachman!”
A moment later the driver’s voice carried back on the breeze. “Aye, sir?”
“Stop for the night at the next inn!”
“Sir?”
Duncan looked at the woman staring at him in alarm. “Our plans have changed.”
EMMELINE
Emmeline Wellesley—a distant relation to the duke of that name—was beginning to realize that perhaps she should have thought through this plan of running away a bit more thoroughly before embarking on the adventure.
That is to say, she should have thought about it for more than the quarter hour it took her to gather her belongings and depart. Yes, she was weary of the Season. It was her fifth Season, and the way things were progressing, she could envision a sixth and seventh Season as well. Emmeline had begun to wonder exactly how many Seasons her mother planned to force her to endure. Surely with three younger sisters, her mother might try to economize and cut her losses.
Emmeline was most certainly a loss in the eyes of Society. She had received only a handful of lackluster proposals from men she would not have married had a pistol been pointed to her head. The problem, as her mother had told her often enough, was that Emmeline insisted on opening her mouth when she met an eligible gentleman. And once she opened her mouth, she had the Very Bad Habit of saying what she thought. Her mother chastised her continually for her impertinence. Women were not supposed to have ideas of their own about matters other than fashion. Unmarried women, especially, were not to have thoughts about anything. They were to smile and flutter their lashes and agree with the man at their side.
Emmeline never fluttered her lashes and seldom agreed with any man. And whenever she was out in Society, she rarely smiled. Her mother always forced her into undergarments that cut off her breathing and dresses that were too small, so Emmeline could barely inhale much less dance. Added to the inconvenience of not being able to take in sufficient oxygen, her mother also did not allow Emmeline to eat, hoping that Emmeline would wither away and actually be able to fit into the too-small gowns. And her mother wondered why Emmeline did not look forward to the Season.
But this year insult had been added to injury. Marjorie, who was enjoying only her first Season, had a suitor who had asked Mama’s permission for Marjorie’s hand. Mama had agreed, but she wanted to keep the betrothal quiet until the end of the Season to “give Emmeline more time to make her own match.”
Emmeline was the eldest of the five siblings, and it was traditional to marry the eldest before the younger. But Marjorie had accused Emmeline of “ruining everything” and “standing in the way of all my happiness” by remaining unattached. Though her sister’s words had hurt Emmeline, she could not fault the sentiment. Of course, Marjorie, who was only twenty years old, wanted to publicly celebrate her good fortune. Her betrothed was the son of an earl—a younger son, but he had a good living as a barrister and had also inherited money from a doting grandfather. He seemed a pleasant enough man, though Emmeline found his conversation dull and plodding and his ideas about justice very wrongheaded indeed.
But then Marjorie’s brain was also dull and plodding, full of useless information about fichus and fripperies. She never read anything beyond the Morning Post’s descriptions of the clothing the fashionable set wore. Emmeline’s family preferred cards to literature, embroidery to long walks, and an evening at Vauxhall to the Royal Opera House. They did not understand Emmeline any more than she understood them.
But sitting in the packed coach, wedged between a woman with a baby whose nappy needed changing and an older woman whose head was drooping as she snored silently, Emmeline thought she might be more like her family than she had been willing to acknowledge. After all, running off like this was one of the more idiotic things she had ever done.
Yes, her feelings had been hurt by Marjorie’s cutting words. Yes, Emmeline had wanted to shock her mother and catch her attention so that she might finally listen when Emmeline said she did not want to go to another ball or assembly or dinner party. That she could not stand another evening of her stays biting into her ribs. But perhaps this method was a bit too extreme?
Emmeline hadn’t even really decided where she should go. She had a vague notion of visiting her paternal grandmother, who lived in the far north of England, but Emmeline realized now she did not really know if the coach on which she rode would take her anywhere near her grandmother’s residence in Carlisle. She had known it traveled north, and that seemed all that mattered at the time.
Now she had been sitting on this coach with the smelly infant and the snoring woman and the two men across from her arguing about the price of wool for the last three hours, and she needed to use the necessary and stretch her legs and fill her lungs with fresh air.