Stephanie Laurens - Viscount Breckenridge to the Rescue

One he would feel were he in her shoes.

Halting, he raked a hand through his hair, then realized what he was doing and lowered his arm. He glanced at her, sitting on his bed wrapped in his coverlet, her head high, chin tilted upward, but the angle was not yet an outright challenge.

He knew that challenge would come if he didn’t agree with her direction and tried to pull her from it. He could, very easily-he was Viscount Breckenridge after all-but she would fight him every step of the way and hate him forever after. All of which he would accept without a qualm if he could only be certain that he was, indeed, acting in the best interests of her and her family.

As things stood…

“Very well.” Halting, he met her eyes, a darker gray in the lamplight. “If you’re stubbornly determined on this?”

Up went her chin. “I am.”

“In that case, we’ll continue on, more or less as we have been, at least for tomorrow.” He frowned. “We’ll have to play it by ear.” He’d have to trust her to do so. “If you’ll give me your promise that the instant you learn either the employer’s name or his direction-or even the place where they plan to hand you over-you’ll tell me, give me some sign at least so I can arrange to whisk you out of their clutches… if you promise that, we’ll go on as we have been.”

She smiled, pleased. “I promise. As soon as I learn anything useful, I’ll give you some sign so we can meet and discuss it.”

He noted the difference between what he’d asked and what she’d promised, but that, he suspected, was the best he could hope for. He nodded in acceptance, then waved her to the door.

She rose, slid the coverlet from her shoulders and laid it back on his bed, then walked to the door.

Keeping his gaze on her face, he waved her to a halt. He opened the door and looked out. The corridor was empty. Reaching back, he took her arm and drew her through the door. He escorted her quickly and silently back to her room.

She opened the door, and the sound of robust snoring issued forth. She turned to him, grinned, and mouthed, “Good night.”

Slipping through the door, she quietly closed it behind her.

He stepped back, put his back to the corridor wall opposite the door, and waited, listened. After enough time had elapsed for her to have slipped back into bed, and the sonorous snoring hadn’t ceased, he pushed away from the wall and headed back to his room.

Inside, he stripped and slid beneath the covers-and was immediately enveloped in a subtle scent he had no difficulty identifying.

It was hers, the scent that clung to her hair and had transferred to the coverlet. The airy, delicate, vibrantly female scent instantly evoked the vision of her stockinged ankles, the way the sheer silk had sheened over the curves…

He groaned and closed his eyes. Clearly he wasn’t destined to get much sleep.

Accepting that, dampening his reaction as well as he could, he sought distraction in the pragmatic details of the adventure they’d somehow embarked on. He was going to have to devise ways of staying close to her while remaining invisible to her captors. Appearing inconspicuous wasn’t a skill he’d had much cause to develop.

No more than he’d had cause to learn the ways of dealing with her on a rational basis.

Keeping her safe on her quest was a task that looked set to tax his ingenuity in ways it had never before been challenged, yet no matter how he turned the puzzle of her kidnapping over in his mind, no matter what perspective he took, in one respect she was incontestably correct.

This was no ordinary, run-of-the-mill abduction.

At one o’clock the following afternoon, Breckenridge sat at one of the trestles set up outside the White Horse Inn in the small town of Bramham. Leaning his shoulders against the inn’s stone wall, he sipped a pint of ale and watched the archway leading into the yard of the Red Lion Inn further up the road.

The coach carrying Heather and her captors had turned into the yard more than an hour ago. After scouting the place and confirming that there was only one exit from the Red Lion’s yard, namely under the archway, he’d retreated here to keep watch while simultaneously keeping his distance and, he hoped, staying out of Fletcher and company’s sight. He was fairly certain they hadn’t yet seen him, or if they had, hadn’t noticed him enough to recognize him again, especially given he was varying his disguise.

Today he’d reverted to the outfit he’d acquired in Knebworth. The ill-fitting jacket and loose cloth breeches made him look like a down-on-his-luck salesman; as long as he remembered to modify his posture, he’d pass a cursory inspection.

He took another sip of ale. He increasingly misliked how far north they were heading. They’d traveled all morning further up the Great North Road. Bramham was nearly as far north as York. Yet despite his misgivings, he, too, was finding this abduction and the challenge of learning who and what was behind it increasingly intriguing. Now he’d had time to digest all Heather had learned yesterday, he had to admit it was a most peculiar puzzle.

A pair of horses appeared beneath the Red Lion’s arch, followed by a second pair, then the kidnappers’ coach. The coach turned ponderously out of the inn yard, still heading north.

Breckenridge watched it lumber on, then drained his pint, set the mug down, rose, and headed for the side yard of the White Horse where he’d left his hired curricle.

Five minutes later, bowling along the highway once more, he glimpsed the coach ahead and slowed the bays he currently had between the shafts. He rolled slowly on in the coach’s wake, far enough back that they’d be unlikely to spot him even on a long straight stretch. Not that they’d shown any signs of searching for pursuers. They might have looked back once or twice, but since he’d caught up with them at Knebworth, they’d seemed unconcerned about pursuit.

Of course, as far as they knew there had been no immediate chase given from Lady Herford’s house; no doubt they assumed they’d got clean away. And indeed, if he hadn’t seen them seize Heather, any pursuit the Cynsters would have mounted would have been days behind. It most likely wouldn’t have even started yet, because her family would have had to search extensively to determine in which direction she’d been taken-even that she’d been taken out of London at all. As she’d pointed out, if she’d been kidnapped for ransom, then it would have been assumed her kidnappers would keep her in the metropolis; so much easier to hide a woman among the teeming hordes, in the crowded tenements, where no one would ask awkward questions.

The miles slid by. Initially he kept pace with the coach, but the further north they rolled he gradually closed the distance. Their steady push north was making him increasingly nervous about where they were headed and, especially, why.

H eather forced herself to wait until they’d been traveling north for at least an hour after their luncheon halt before recommencing her interrogation of her captors.

She’d been acquiescent, and had made no fuss through the morning. Other than casting a quick glance around the inn where they’d stopped for lunch, searching for Breckenridge-but they hadn’t known that-she’d played the part of gently bred and, therefore, relatively helpless kidnappee.

Although she hadn’t sighted Breckenridge, she felt reasonably confident that he’d be somewhere near. Leaving him to his self-appointed but now gratefully accepted role of watching over her, she’d applied herself to encouraging her captors to relax and, she hoped, grow less careful and more talkative.

By way of introduction, she heaved a huge sigh and glanced out of the window.