The Lady Risks All

  Returning to the curricle where Miranda had waited, Roscoe climbed up, took the reins, released the brake, and set the horses in motion. “Kempsey and Dole went in. No one saw the man in the coach, but Dole took some water out to him.”

  Armed with the information that Roderick was injured and very likely unconscious, he could now ask for information as effectively as she; just her presence, all in black, on his box seat was enough to gain all the sympathy and help needed to trace her injured “cousin.”

  With the spires of Oxford rising before them, he said, “We need to start thinking like them. If they reached Oxford as early as it appears they did . . .”

  She stirred. “They would have driven through it, not stopped in the town itself.”

  “Exactly. We’re coming into the town from the east. There are several—three, I think—roads leading south.”

  “But why would they come this far north only to head south again?”

  “Indeed. So I propose finding us a decent hotel in the north or west of the town, and while you see what you can learn there, I’ll drive on along the road west, and the roads—there are two, I think—to the north, and see if I can pick up their trail.” He glanced at her, saw the frown on her face.

  “Perhaps,” she said, “it would be better if I went with you.”

  He pretended to consider it, then grimaced. “Given the type of establishment they’re using, it’s easier for me to investigate alone.” Much easier; having her near meant half his mind was focused on watching over her.

  “I suppose that’s true.” She sighed. “Very well.” She gestured ahead. “Let’s get on into Oxford and find a place to stay.”

  They rattled into the university town in the late afternoon. The pavements were busy with students and dons, and a, to him, familiar bustle.

  “It’s term-time,” he said when Miranda commented on the crowds. It had been decades since he’d last spent any time there; he doubted anyone would recognize him, but . . . “Oakgrove Manor’s in Cheshire. I assume you and your neighbors pass through Oxford on your way to the capital.”

  “Usually, yes.”

  “So it’s possible someone here or passing through might recognize you.”

  He heard her grimace in her voice. “Yes.”

  “So we’ll avoid the major hotels. One of the less frequented establishments will suit us better.”

  They found a quiet, family-run hotel tucked off the Woodstock road. After hiring two rooms and a private parlor, Roscoe departed to search for their quarry’s trail, leaving Miranda to oversee the disposition of their bags and to order dinner.

  Her disguise and their tale of him being a family friend escorting her, a widow, to some family gathering stood her in good stead; she detected no suspicion or disapproval in either the female innkeeper or her staff. Warm water was quickly delivered to her room; after washing off the dust, she descended to the parlor. Before she’d had time to start worrying, a maid popped in to ask if she required tea and scones to revive her. Deciding she did, she spent the following half an hour doing her best to divert her mind with some excellent scones, clotted cream, and delicious raspberry jam.

  Sadly, the distraction didn’t last.

  As the light started to fade, she paced before the window, stopping now and then to peer out into the gathering gloom. Roderick was injured, severely enough to be rendered unconscious. She hadn’t expected that, hadn’t, truth be told, allowed herself to imagine just how Kempsey and Dole had subdued her brother. Roderick wasn’t particularly large, but neither was he small or slight, and he’d been in rude health when he’d last left the house . . .

  With a mental curse, she hauled her mind from dwelling on his current condition. Find him first, rescue him second, worry about caring for him once she had him back.

  The parlor door opened and she whirled.

  Roscoe walked in.

  “Thank heavens!” Rapidly scanning his face, she waited impatiently while he closed the door. “Did you trace them?”

  Halting by the table in the room’s center, Roscoe read the desperate eagerness in her eyes, her almost fevered need to hear something encouraging. “It was as we guessed. They drove on through the town, then stopped at a tiny inn in Kidlington.”

  She frowned. “They’re heading north.”

  “I suspect,” he said, “that they’re going—or rather, have gone—to Birmingham. If you recall, Gallagher said they hail from there.”

  “Yes, I remember.” Her frown deepened. “Why would they take Roderick there—to their home, as it were?”

  “I agree it seems, if not senseless, then certainly not part of any obvious and expected plan.”

  Her gaze returned to his face, her expression sober. “Did you learn anything of Roderick’s injuries?”

  He hesitated, but the anxiety in her eyes forced his hand. “When they carried him into the inn, he was unconscious, and he was unconscious again when they carried him out. However, he wasn’t unconscious for much of the time he was there—the inn’s staff heard Kempsey and Dole speaking to him, but they didn’t hear Roderick reply.” He debated, then drew breath and said, “I think they broke his foot deliberately. It’s an effective way of incapacitating a man without doing any long-lasting or life-threatening damage. The pain is significant and can render a man unconscious easily enough. And with a broken foot, they don’t need to worry about him escaping.”

  She’d already paled, so he didn’t add that he doubted Roderick’s foot was his only injury; he would own himself surprised if Roderick hadn’t been coshed first. With the pain from his foot plus a tender head, another tap on the skull would be enough to render him unconscious whenever it was necessary to move him past strangers—such as inn staff—to whom he might otherwise appeal for help. In private, they would gag him, which was why the inn staff at Kidlington hadn’t heard Roderick—“the sick young gentleman”—speak.

  “One point to bear in mind,” he said, “is that the only reason Kempsey and Dole would have for breaking Roderick’s foot is that they intend to keep him alive. They aren’t planning on killing him, at least not soon.”

  She stared, shocked but nevertheless taking in his words. Some of her welling desperation eased, but her anxiety remained. “They weren’t intending to kill him when they seized him, but for how long do they plan on holding him? And why?”

  Unanswerable questions. He was saved from having to respond by the innkeeper and her daughters, who arrived to set the table and then serve them a simple but excellent dinner.

  Over the meal, his partner in pursuit remained captive to her imagination and the anxiety it spawned. He attempted several conversational gambits, but none succeeded in breaking the hold of her worry.

  The sight of her overcome by dire thoughts pricked and prodded at him. Made him restless in a discomfiting and unfamiliar way.

  Until finally, with the meal at an end, he pushed back his chair and rose. “Come on. Get your cloak. Let’s go for a stroll.”

  She was surprised, but she fell in with his plan, doubtless imagining he had some purpose in mind.

  Which he did.

  Her hand resting feather-light on his arm, they walked into the town. It wasn’t far to the hall he’d noticed when they’d driven through earlier; when he drew her to join the queue of well-dressed patrons, interspersed with students and dons, waiting to pay for admission, she blinked at him. “A concert?”

  “There’s nothing we can do about Roderick tonight. I thought we could both use the distraction.”

  She read the playbill posted beside the door, then glanced at him. “Handel?”

  He paid at the little window, then took her arm and steered her into the foyer. “I’m partial to Handel.”

  She humphed disbelievingly. He smiled.

  He sat riveted through the performance, sparing only the occasional glance to confirm that she was riveted, too. The choir excelled with a selection from the maestro’s secular oratorios, with a few arias for contrast
; the quality of the accompanying small orchestra suggested it was drawn from the university’s music school.

  At the end of the performance, when the resounding applause had died and they joined the wave of patrons flowing out of the doors and finally found their way onto the street, it was to discover night had long ago fallen, and that the music was powerful enough, memorable enough to follow them, filling their minds as they walked back to the inn.

  Soothed on multiple planes, he nevertheless kept his eyes peeled as they walked through the darkened streets. Oxford was safer than London, but they were on its poorly lit fringes.

  Slowly drifting back to earth, with the music only gradually relinquishing its grip on her, Miranda realized that her lips were curved, a glow of simple pleasure gently coursing through her. Her concern for Roderick was still there, but held in abeyance; as Roscoe had said, there was nothing they could do to help her poor brother tonight.

  Instead, he’d set out to distract her. For the past two hours her mind had been held hostage by the music, a respite from her thoughts, her compulsive cares. He might have enjoyed the interlude, too, but the impulse to bring her to the concert hall hadn’t sprung from self-interest.

  Most of the audience had come from deeper in the town; strolling along the Woodstock road, she and he were now alone, the night peaceful and still about them.

  Roscoe halted at the corner where they needed to cross the street. He paused, looking ahead, his features etched by the light from the last lamp they’d passed, some yards behind them.

  She studied the face of London’s gambling king, the long, chiseled planes, the strong lines of nose and lips, the sculpted jaw, broad brow, and heavy lidded eyes.

  A face others saw as hard and unyielding, but one she’d learned hid a bone-deep kindness.

  Yielding to impulse, using the hand resting on his arm for balance, she stretched up to brush a kiss—a simple, unadorned, thank-you caress—across his cheek.

  Just as he turned his head her way.

  Their lips met.

  Touched, brushed.

  They both froze. For an instant, for a fraction of a heartbeat.

  Lids lowered, her gaze had locked on his lips. His gaze was on her face.

  Then he moved. She moved.

  And their lips touched again.

  This time they clung.

  Hers softened; his firmed.

  And the connection became real.

  Transformed, aching and sweet, into an exchange so delicate, so unrehearsed and unintended, its very fragility fascinated and lured.

  With no plan, no intent, no purpose, the mutual pressure of their lips, so tantalizingly novel, spun out and stopped time . . . letting sensation flare and wash through her.

  She forgot what she was doing. Forgot where they were, why they were there.

  For seconds, minutes, however long, the touch of his lips on hers imprinted, the gentlest of brands, on her senses.

  For those minutes, nothing else mattered. Nothing else had ever captured her like this, had ever been this exquisitely enthralling.

  Roscoe’s head slowly spun. Giddy. Him. And all from just the touch of her lips.

  He wanted more. His muscles tensed, well-honed instincts rearing, ready to direct, to take charge and orchestrate . . .

  What was he doing?

  His mind reengaged with a rush, a mental slap.

  Abruptly, he raised his head, shattering the delicate, evocatively innocent caress.

  Stunned, he stared into her shadowed face—tried to see the siren who had captured him so easily. She had to be there . . . somewhere.

  Miranda Clifford blinked lustrous eyes wide and stared back.

  Even in the poor light he saw color flood her cheeks.

  Then she stepped back.

  Putting distance between them.

  He hadn’t even taken her into his arms, but he had to fight a sudden urge to reach out and haul her back.

  She swung away, faced the street. “I’m sorry.” The words reached him on an agonized whisper. She dragged her cloak more tightly about her. “I only meant to . . . thank you.” Without glancing at him, stiffly she inclined her head his way. “It won’t happen again.”

  Why not?

  He bit his tongue, banished the errant thought. She was right—she was a lady and he was London’s gambling king. There could never be anything between them; better they both kept that in mind.

  No matter their impulses.

  But what could he say? What, that wouldn’t be an outright lie?

  Accepting there were no glib words he could utter to ease her, he went to offer his arm, realized the futility, and converted the gesture into a wave. “Come—we should get back.”

  Head rising, she nodded. Still without looking at him, she stepped out, and he fell in beside her.

  Chapter Six

  They were, Roscoe discovered, both excellent at dissembling. Regardless, as he and Miranda traveled at a good clip up the road to Birmingham, awareness sat, an all but tangible phantom, between them.

  On reaching the hotel the previous night, they’d retreated to their rooms with barely a mumbled “Good night.” This morning she’d emerged and had joined him in the parlor for breakfast; no matter how hard he’d looked, he hadn’t detected the slightest sign that she even remembered what had passed between them.

  Except that she’d reverted to treating him with rigid correctness; he hadn’t realized how much she—and he, too—had relaxed in each other’s company. Now, however, they were once more London’s gambling king and a lady wedded to respectability, with nothing in common beyond their mutual desire to rescue her brother—a simple, straightforward connection with no overtones or undertones of any complicating attraction.

  He wondered if they’d be strong enough to hold to that line until they found Roderick and returned to London.

  Last night, alone in his room, he’d had time to think—about that kiss, about what it had revealed. He’d been attracted to Miranda Clifford from the instant he’d set eyes on her in the upstairs foyer of his house, her face and figure lit only by diffuse moonlight. But he was accustomed to feeling such physical tugs and, on learning her identity along with her purpose in coming to his house, had dismissed it with little further thought.

  Then she’d returned and asked for his help, a plea of a sort he was constitutionally incapable of refusing; he knew his own weakness on that score. But he couldn’t claim to have been unaware of the particular edge to his interest in her, an edge further honed by increasing fascination.

  He’d never been a monk; his thirty-eight years encompassed ample experience of the opposite sex, from the Cyprians of his wild youth to the bored matrons of the ton seeking relief from the ennui of their marriages, who, over the last decade, had been his principal source of incidental bedmates. Since becoming Roscoe, he hadn’t kept a mistress—a dangerous proposition, for him as well as the lady—but he certainly hadn’t retreated from that aspect of life.

  Experience had, from the first, told him that his attraction to Miranda Clifford was reciprocated.

  The same experience had warned that far from embracing, let alone encouraging, that mutual attraction, she found it unsettling, something she wished to ignore.

  Despite his wolf’s clothing, he was a gentleman born; he’d done his best to oblige her and ignore it, too.

  Until last night.

  Neither of them had meant it to happen, but it had.

  That reality sat between them, large as life, as the wheels rattled and they rolled on up the road.

  Eventually Birmingham rose before them, a haphazard conglomeration of buildings old and new. He was familiar with the town; it was the closest to Ridgware, although he usually traveled to the estate by a more direct route.

  Miranda looked about her with increasing dismay as Roscoe drove into Birmingham. The town had grown significantly since she’d last visited; finding Roderick in such a teeming city would be a harder task than she’d supposed.


  As they approached the town’s center, she glanced at Roscoe. “What now?” Other than the simple courtesies, they’d barely exchanged three words through the day.

  “Now we take rooms in one of the smaller hotels, then I’ll go out and make inquiries.”

  “But if this is where Kempsey and Dole call home, they won’t be using taverns and inns.”

  “No, but we need to confirm that they have, in fact, remained here, rather than simply passed through on their way to, for example, Liverpool.”

  She was tempted to ask why he’d thought of Liverpool—the port from which many vessels left for the Americas—but decided she’d leave exploring that until it became more than hypothetical. She had to keep focused.

  They’d inquired after her “sick cousin and his companions” at numerous small inns and taverns along the way. At the last, on the outskirts of Birmingham, they’d learned that the battered coach with its odd pair of horses had driven into the town. The possibility—like Roscoe, she would put it no higher—that Roderick lay somewhere within reach left her equal parts excited, reassured, and apprehensive, but it definitely spurred her on.

  And helped keep her from dwelling on the man beside her and that wholly unexpected, eye-openingly magical moment they’d shared on an Oxford street.

  She’d told herself she had to regret it, that scintillating moment, yet she couldn’t quite force herself to be that hypocritical, even in her own mind, so she’d decided that ignoring it, wiping it from her conscious memory and denying it any scope to influence her behavior, was the wise, sensible, and respectable course. But all that had accomplished was to make her even more tense, as if she was constantly battling herself, her true inclinations . . .

  Realizing her mind had once more drifted, she ruthlessly hauled it back on track. And realized he was glancing at her, puzzled.

  He’d asked her something.

  She blushed. “I’m sorry. I was woolgathering. What did you say?”