The Scoundrel and the Debutante

She clucked her tongue and turned her head away from him.

“I am teasing you, Miss Cabot. A rooster can’t help but crow, can he? I am truly flattered.” He moved his hand from her arm to her waist and pulled her closer. “If I’m to be admired, I am very pleased to be admired by someone as beautiful as you.”

“Oh Lord,” she muttered, blushing furiously. “Don’t trifle with me. I’m mortified as it is.” And yet she made no move to step out of his loose embrace.

“I am very sincere. Nevertheless, as pleasant as this has been for me, you know very well that you shouldn’t be gallivanting across the countryside with strangers. You could very well fall victim to some rogue on the road. At the next stop, I intend to put you in a private conveyance to Hipple myself.”

“It’s Himple,” she corrected him, and regrettably, stepped away from him. “And I will see myself there, you need not concern yourself.”

Just like Aurora. It’s my life to ruin, Roan. You needn’t concern yourself with it.

“Seeing yourself there is not inconsequential, Miss Cabot. You don’t want to have your reputation marked by an impetuous moment, do you?”

“No, it’s not inconsequential, Mr. Matheson,” she said pertly. “But the ruin has already been done. I highly doubt that I could make it worse.”

And what did that mean? Roan wondered. In what way had she been ruined? Or was she prone to overly dramatic interpretations of the events of her life as was Aurora?

“Ho! The coach!” someone shouted. A cry of relief went up from the other passengers, and there was a sudden flurry of activity, of gathering luggage. As the second stagecoach pulled in behind the first, Roan watched the men over his shoulder a moment, then glanced at Miss Cabot. He looked her over, the purse of her lips, the color in her cheeks. Why were the most alluring women the most trouble? He couldn’t imagine Pratt would never dream of doing what Miss Cabot had done today. Which he supposed was what made her the perfect wife. Didn’t it? At present, Roan would keep telling himself that. He hadn’t actually offered to make Susannah his wife, but it was expected that he would. He expected he would, for all the reasons Susannah was not standing here under this tree with him.

Yes, he would keep telling himself that.

Roan looked away from Miss Cabot’s hazel eyes. “I should make myself useful in the repair of the wheel.”

“Yes, of course.” She held his gaze, watching him closely. A smile slowly appeared. “Thank you for not revealing me to Dr. Linford.”

He sighed. “I am unduly swayed by the smile of a beautiful woman. It is my cross to bear.”

Her smile deepened. “I’ll wait on the rocks.” She walked past him—gliding, really, with an elegance that was not learned, he knew from experience. She took a seat where they’d gathered previously, picked up her valise and balanced it on her lap, her hands folded primly on top. She looked straight ahead, as if she were at a garden party.

Roan couldn’t help his smile as he walked past her and touched her shoulder. “I didn’t thank you.”

“Thank me?” she asked, looking up at him.

“For your great esteem,” he said, and winked.

Miss Cabot muttered something under her breath that sounded very much like rooster and more, then turned her head, fidgeting with a curl at her nape.

Roan joined the men, discarding his coat. The driver of the second coach had the tools necessary to repair the broken wheel. Roan would have had the wheel repaired more quickly had he been allowed to conduct the work himself. He was familiar with broken wheels; he and his family were in the lumber trade, their teams bringing loads into New York City from as far north as Canada. It was arduous work, cutting and hauling lumber, and Roan had been pressed on more than one occasion to lend a hand to help with the work and the transport. He didn’t mind it—he liked the way physical labor made him feel alive and strong. As a result, he had repaired more wheels and axles and that sort of thing than perhaps even these men had seen.

But the driver was adamant that the work be done his way.

The wheel was fixed and attached to the axle, and the men began to load the luggage onto the coach once more. As the team of horses was harnessed, the driver asked the passengers to board.

Roan donned his coat, then collected his smaller bag from the pile of luggage that would be reloaded. He turned and looked back to the rocks, intending to rally Miss Cabot.

She was not sitting on the rocks.

Roan walked into the meadow, scanning the tree line and the road. The woman was nowhere to be seen. Had she boarded the second coach? He looked back to that coach. The passengers were gathering their things and boarding.

Roan strode back to the second coach. “Excuse me,” he said, and stepped through the passengers to look into the interior. Only a woman and a small girl sat inside.

Roan turned back to the others. “Have any of you seen a woman? About yay tall,” he said, holding his hand out to indicate her height. “With a bonnet?” he asked, gesturing to his head.

No one had seen her.

Roan was baffled. Where could she be? He hurried back to the first coach, where the luggage was now secured. One of the men reached for Roan’s bag, but he held tight. “Have you seen Miss Cabot?” he asked the man. “She got on in Ashton Down.”

“No, sir,” the man said. “Shall I put your bag up top?”

“I’ll hold on to it, thank you,” Roan said. He stepped around the coachman and peered into the interior of the first coach. Two gentlemen who had ridden on top put themselves inside next to the young man who was scrunched down on the bench, swallowed in his coat, still holding the battered valise.

No Miss Cabot.

A sliver of panic raced up Roan’s spine. He turned to the driver, who was overseeing the last adjustments to the team’s harnesses. “Have you seen Miss Cabot?”

“The comely one?” the driver asked, squinting up at him.

Roan didn’t have time to think why it annoyed him the driver would refer to her in that way and said, “Yes, that one.”

The driver shook his head. “Heeding the call of nature, I’d say.”

Yes, of course. Roan looked back to the trees across the meadow.

“Come, then, climb up,” the driver said. “We’re late as it is.”

“But we’re missing one,” Roan said.

The driver glanced back at the trees. “I’m not in the business of chasing strays,” he said, and hauled himself up to his seat. “It’s been plain enough we’re on our way. Are you boarding?”

Roan glared at him. “You would leave a young woman unattended in the middle of the countryside?” he snapped as the second coach pulled around them and began to move down the road.

“How long do you suggest I wait, Yankee? I’ve a schedule to keep and passengers to deliver. They’ve not had any food. I’ll be lucky to reach Stroud by nightfall.”

Roan whirled around. “Miss Cabot!” he bellowed. “Miss Cabot, come at once!”

There was nothing, no answer. They waited, Roan pacing alongside the coach.

“Come on, then, move on!” shouted one of the men.

“Last chance, Yankee,” the driver said.

“What of the luggage?” he demanded, gesturing at the bags and things strapped to the coach. He had helped load her trunk and there it was, strapped onto the coach beneath all the rest, including his trunk.

“All unclaimed luggage will be left at the next station,” the driver said, and picked up the reins. “Will you board?” he asked once more.

Roan glanced over his shoulder at the empty meadow.

“Ack, I’ll not wait,” the driver said, and slapped the reins against his team. He whistled sharply and the stagecoach lurched away, the wheels creaking, the dust rising to envelop Roan as he stood on the side of the road with his bag.

Where the hell was she? Roan turned a full circle, his gaze scanning the quiet countryside, seeing nothing but a pair of cows grazing across the way.

And why the hell did he care, precisely? Wasn’t it enough that he had to leave his thriving business in New York to come after Aurora? It was just his luck—Roan’s father was too old to chase after his wayward daughter, and Roan’s brother, Beck, was even younger than Aurora. There had been no one but him, no one who could be depended upon to fetch his sister and bring her home to marry Mr. Gunderson as she had promised she would do.

He supposed that perhaps contrary to what Aurora had claimed, she didn’t love Mr. Gunderson after all. It had seemed highly improbable to him that she did, really, seeing as how her engagement had been carefully constructed by Roan’s father.

Rodin Matheson was a visionary, and he’d devised a way to increase the family’s wealth in a manner that would provide generously for generations of Mathesons—aunts, uncles, cousins, grandchildren. All of them. By marrying his daughter to the son of the building empire that was Gunderson Properties, he made certain that Matheson Lumber would be used to build New York City for years to come.

Roan thought it was brilliant, really, and Aurora had easily agreed to it after a few meetings with Sam Gunderson. “I adore Mr. Gunderson,” she’d said dreamily.

Perhaps she did...in that moment. That was the problem with Aurora—she flitted from one moment to the next, her mind changing as often as the hands on the clock.

It was Mr. Pratt who had suggested to his friend Rodin Matheson that perhaps Roan would be a good match for his daughter Susannah. Mr. Pratt was the owner of Pratt Foundries, and Rodin began to see a bigger, more successful triumvirate of construction. He explained to Roan that between Pratt Foundries, Gunderson Properties and Matheson Lumber, their business and income would soar as they became the construction industry of a growing city.

It was a heady proposition. Roan had never met Susannah, learning that she summered in Philadelphia. But Mr. Pratt had insisted that his daughter was a delight, a comely, agreeable young woman who would make him a perfect wife. Roan hadn’t thought much about the qualities of a perfect wife—he wasn’t a sentimental man, and when it came to marriage, he accepted it as something that had to be done. Neither had he given much thought as to who he would marry; that had been the furthest thing from his mind as they’d worked to expand Matheson Lumber. He’d supposed that whoever it was, familiarity would eventually breed affection. Affection was all that was necessary, wasn’t it? His parents had found affection somewhere along the way and seemed happy. Roan imagined the same would be true for him. As for siring children, he hardly gave that a thought—he could not imagine any circumstance in which he’d be anything less than willing and eager to do his part.

And then he’d met Susannah Pratt.

She’d come to New York just before Roan’s aunt and uncle had returned from England. She was nothing as Mr. Pratt had described, and worse, Roan could not find anything the least bit attractive about her. It was impossible for him to accept that she was the one he was to acquaint himself with and then propose marriage. Privately, he’d chided himself for that—a woman’s value was not in her face, for God’s sake, it was in her soul. So he’d valiantly tried to see beyond her appearance. Unfortunately, she was not the least bit engaging. He could find no common ground, and even if he had, the woman was painfully shy and afraid to look him in the eye.

Just before his aunt and uncle had come home, he had decided he would speak to Susannah about her true desires. Perhaps she found him as odious as he found her. Perhaps she was desperate for escape from this loose arrangement.

But the news his aunt and uncle had brought home trumped everything else. They were all desperate to find Aurora before she was lost to them, and Roan had put aside his own troubles to chase after her. What could he do?

He could curse Aurora for the weeks it had taken him to cross the Atlantic, that’s what. The longer Susannah Pratt thought he would be her husband, the harder it would be to disengage from her. Roan was even angrier with Aurora for not being in West Lee, or whatever the hamlet he’d been directed to, but in the other West Lee, north. That alone was enough to concern him. Did he really need to fret about another incorrigible, intractable, disobedient young woman?

No. No, he did not. He didn’t care that Miss Cabot’s eyes were the color of the vines that grew on his family’s house. Or that she had boarded this coach because she’d been attracted to him. Or that he’d teased her and embarrassed her and thereby was probably the cause of her running off.

She was not his concern, damn it. And yet, she was.

For the second time that day, Roan swept his hat off his head and threw it down onto the ground in an uncharacteristic fit of frustration. Damn England! Damn women!

He kicked the hat for good measure and watched it scud across the road.

And then, with a sigh of concession, he walked across the road to fetch it. But he discovered he’d kicked his hat into a ditch filled with muddy water. Roan muttered some fiery expletives under his breath. He’d find another hat in the next village. He picked up his bag and hoisted it onto his shoulder and walked on.

Now, to figure out where that foolish little hellion had gone.

CHAPTER FIVE

PRUDENCE HADN’T ACTUALLY intended to flee. She’d been as anxious as anyone to board the coach and be on her way. But as the repair work had dragged on, she began to imagine any number of scenarios awaiting her at the next village. Dr. Linford and his wife, first and foremost, their displeasure and disgust evident. Worse, Dr. Linford and his wife in the company of someone in a position of authority, who would escort Prudence back to Blackwood Hall in shame. She could just see it—made to ride on the back of a wagon like a convicted criminal. As they moved slowly through villages, children and old women would come out to taunt her and hurl rotten vegetables at her. Shameless woman!

That public humiliation would be followed by Lord Merryton’s look of abject disappointment. Merryton was a strange man. He was intensely private, which Grace insisted was merely his nature but, nevertheless, everyone in London thought him aloof and unfeeling. Now that Prudence had lived at his house and dined at his table these past two years, she knew him to be extraordinarily kind and even quite fond of her. But he did seem almost unnaturally concerned with propriety and if there was one thing he could not abide, would not tolerate, it was scandal and talk of his family.

As he had been her unwavering benefactor and her friend, Prudence could not bear to disappoint him so. She held him in very high regard and, shamefully, she’d not thought of him in those few moments in Ashton Down when she’d impetuously decided to seek her adventure.

She’d begun to wonder, as she sat on the rock, watching the men repair the wheel, if she ought not to find her own way back to Blackwood Hall and throw herself on Merryton’s mercy. To be ferried back to him by Dr. Linford, who would be made to alter his plans to accommodate her foolishness, would only make Merryton that much more cross. She decided it was far better if she arrived on her own, admitted her mistake and begged his forgiveness.

That’s why, with one last look and longing sigh at Mr. Matheson’s strong back and hips, Prudence had picked up her valise and had begun to walk. She wanted to thank Mr. Matheson for his help, but thought it was probably not a very good idea to draw attention to the fact she was leaving.

She had in mind to find a cottage. She would offer to pay someone to take her back to Ashton Down. And, if she reached the next village before finding a cottage, she could keep herself out of sight until Dr. Linford had gone on. He’d be looking for her coach.

She walked along smartly, trying to be confident in her new plan. All was not lost, she told herself. She was at least as clever as Honor and Grace. She would see her way out of this debacle.

She hadn’t walked very far when she heard the approaching coach, and her confidence swiftly flagged. It was surely the stagecoach, and the driver would stop, insist she board the coach. She hadn’t thought of that wrinkle. But Prudence was determined not to be delivered into the hands of Linford. “You will not falter,” she murmured under her breath. “You have as much right to walk along this road as anyone.”

Prudence lifted her chin as the coach rapidly approached. It wasn’t until the last possible moment that she understood the coach did not intend to stop and inquire about her at all, and with a cry of alarm, Prudence leaped off the road just as the team thundered by, cloaking her in a cloud of dust.

When the coach had passed, Prudence coughed and picked herself up with a pounding heart, dusting off her day gown as best she could. “He might at least have slowed to see if I’d been harmed,” she muttered, and climbed back on the road, squared her shoulders, and began to walk again.

She had no sooner taken a few steps than she heard the sound of the second coach. Now an old hand at navigating passing coaches, Prudence hopped off the road and stood a few feet back.

But this coach slowed. The team was reined down to a walk, then rolled to a stop alongside where she stood.

The driver, her driver, peered down at her a moment, then turned his head and spit into the dirt. “Aye, miss, wheel’s fixed. Climb aboard.”

“Thank you, but I prefer to walk,” she said lightly.

“Walk! To where? There’s naught a village or a person for miles.”

“Miles?” she repeated, trying to sound unimpressed. “How many miles would you say?”

“Five.”

“Well! Then it’s a good thing that I wore my sturdy shoes,” she lied. “A fine day for walking, too. Thank you, but I shall walk, sir.” She wondered if Matheson was sitting in the interior of the coach overhearing her, laughing at her foolishness. Was that why he hadn’t shown himself? Perhaps he didn’t want anyone to think he was in any way familiar with a featherheaded debutante who was walking down the road in slippers more fitting for a dance?

“Suit yourself,” the driver said, and lifted the reins, prepared to send the team on.

“Sir!” Prudence shouted before he could dispatch the team. “Will you see that my trunk is delivered to Himple?” She opened her reticule to retrieve a few coins and began to make her way across the ditch to the road. “Please. If you will leave it at the post station, someone will be along for it.” She climbed onto the road—slipping once and catching herself, then climbing up on the driver’s step. She held up a few shillings to him.

“You’re alone, miss?” one of the gentlemen riding behind the driver called down to her.

She ignored him. Her heart was racing now, not only with fear, but also with anger that was very irrational. She could imagine Mr. Matheson sitting in the coach, rolling his eyes or perhaps even sharing a chuckle with the boy. One could certainly argue that she deserved his derision given what she’d done today, but she didn’t like it one bit.

“You’re certain, are you?” the driver said, taking the coins from her palm and pocketing them.

“Quite. Thank you.” Prudence stepped down.

The driver put the reins to the team. Once again, Prudence was almost knocked from the road. As it was, she stumbled backward into the ditch, catching herself on a tree limb to keep from falling.

She watched the coach move down the road and disappear under the shadows of trees.

Five miles from a village.

She looked around. There was no one, and no sound but the breeze in the treetops and the fading jangle of the coach. Prudence had never been alone like this. But, as her poor, mad mother used to say before she’d lost the better part of her mind, no one could correct one’s missteps but oneself. The sooner one set upon the right course, the sooner one would reach the right destination.

Prudence would argue the point about the right destination, but there was nothing to be done for it now. And for God’s sake, she would not shed a single tear. There was nothing she detested more than women who resorted to tears at the first sign of adversity. Yes, walk she would, in shoes that were meant to wander about a manicured garden...just as soon as she gave her aching feet a rest.

Prudence dropped her valise and sat down on top of it, her knees together, her legs splayed at odd angles to keep her balance on the small bag. She folded her arms on top of her knees, pressed her forehead against her arms and squeezed her eyes shut. How could you be so stupid?

Reality began to seep into her thoughts.

Whatever made her believe she could be like her sisters? She’d never been like the rest of them, had never taken such daring chances, disregarding all propriety on a whim. What made her believe that she could step out of bounds of propriety now? Yes, she’d been at sixes and sevens of late, unsatisfied with her lot in life, but still! She was alone on a road, perfect prey for highwaymen, thieves or other horrible things she couldn’t even bring herself to think of. Gypsies! Prudence gasped and her heart fluttered, recalling the frightening tales Mercy had insisted on telling.

“Well.”

The sound of a man’s voice startled her so badly that Prudence tried to leap up and scream at the same time and managed to knock herself off her imperfect perch and onto her bottom.

Mr. Matheson instantly reached for her, and Prudence, in a moment of sheer relief, grabbed him with both hands, hauled herself up with such vigor that she launched herself into his person and threw her arms around his neck.

Perhaps he was as stunned as she—he caught her, but neither of them moved for one long moment. Then Mr. Matheson put his hands firmly on her waist and carefully set her back, staring down at her as if she’d lost her mind.

“I beg your pardon,” she said apologetically. “I was momentarily overcome with relief! What are you doing on foot?”

“Isn’t it obvious? Rescuing you.”

Prudence could feel the color rising in her cheeks, the thump, thump, thump of her shame and delight in her chest. “You gave me such a fright,” she said, pressing her hand to breast. “I thought I would perish with it.”

“Well, I think we’ve sufficiently delayed your ultimate demise for at least an hour or so,” he said. “What the devil are you doing here? Why did you leave the coach? Where in hell do you think you’re walking?”

“To the next village or cottage,” she said, gesturing lamely in that direction. “I mean to pay someone to return me to Ashton Down.”

He squinted down the road in the direction she gestured. “What a perfectly ridiculous thing to do,” he said gruffly. “Why would you? You had a seat on a coach!”

“Because I feared Mrs. Scales would not be able to restrain herself from reporting all that had happened since leaving Ashton Down, and she...might possibly utter my name.”

“I think the odds of that are excellent,” he said, nodding, as if it were a foregone conclusion. “And your solution to this was to, what, run away?”

“No,” she said, as if it were absurd to suggest she’d run, even though she obviously had. “My solution was to go at once and find someone who would return me to Blackwood Hall. I should rather my family learn of this...turn of events...from me.”

“Mmm.” He folded his arms and stared down at her with such scrutiny that her skin began to tingle. “So you thought you might march up to anyone with a conveyance and ask that they see you to this hall where you might report your folly?”

When he put it like that, it sounded ridiculous. Prudence sniffed. She scratched her cheek and gazed down the road, then looked at him sidelong. “Well, you needn’t look so smug, Mr. Matheson. You’ve made your point. I’ve been foolish.”