Deborah Hale - Lady Lyte's Little Secret

The innkeeper’s eyes lit up. No doubt he relished the prospect of hiring out the same rooms twice in one day. “Always delighted to oblige her ladyship, sir.”

“The horses will need tending, as well.”

“I’ll make certain the hostlers know to take special trouble with them, Mister…”

“Greenwood. Hawthorn Greenwood.” Thorn steeled himself against the fellow’s meddlesome scrutiny. “I’m an old friend of Lady Lyte’s. Her nephew’s…er…bride is my sister.”

“Indeed, sir?” The innkeeper beamed, as people tended to do when speaking of Ivy. “A lively little creature. Not one I’d have picked for a serious young scholar like Mr. Armitage if I’d had the ordering of it. But love often goes by contraries, then, doesn’t it, sir?”

“Perhaps so.” Did that explain his own intense, wayward feelings for Felicity? Thorn wondered. “By any chance, did my sister or Mr. Armitage mention where they might lodge once they reached Gloucester?”

The innkeeper’s smile widened further. “As it happens, sir, they asked if I could recommend any place that might offer them a warm welcome even if they arrived at a late hour.”

“Did you?” Thorn strove not to sound as desperately interested in the information as he felt.

“I should say so, Mr. Greenwood. The wife’s cousin keeps an inn in the old part of town between the cathedral and the shirehall. It don’t get as busy as the big posting inns on the roads to London and Bristol. I told Mr. Armitage it would be a rare night he and his fair bride couldn’t find a bed there, no matter what hour they knocked.”

“I appreciate your advising them.” Thorn fished out a shilling from his card winnings. He offered it to the innkeeper, who made a token show of refusing before sliding the coin into his own pocket.

“I’ll just see to the rooms for Lady Lyte and her servants, Mr. Greenwood.”

“One more thing, if I may?”

“Aye, sir. What might that be?”

“We ran into a spot of trouble on the road from Bristol—a highwayman.”

“My life, sir!” The innkeeper’s eyes grew wide. “No one hurt, I hope. That scoundrel’s been making a right nuisance of himself all spring. You’re not my first guests to have been molested by him.”

“I hope we may be the last.” Thorn nodded toward the door. “We fetched the bounder along with us to give an account of himself before the magistrate. Whereabouts should I dispose of him?”

“I’d fetch him over to Berkeley, Mr. Greenwood.” The innkeeper cocked his thumb in a direction Thorn took to be northeast. “They can deal with him there and be obliged to you for the taking of him, I should think.”

As the innkeeper bustled off, Thorn turned back to Felicity, who had sunk down onto a nearby chair. He knew better than to comment on how she looked, but a qualm of guilt rolled low in his belly. She might have slept better stretched out on the carriage seat opposite him than awkwardly nestled on his lap.

He knelt before her and took one of her hands in his. It had warmed a little since he’d touched it a few moments earlier, but not much.

“The innkeeper tells me they can deal with our highwayman over in Berkeley. Will you be all right until I get back?”

“Of course I will.” Felicity sat up straighter. “I’m neither a child nor a tottering old dowager, Mr. Greenwood. I do not need a keeper. You’re quite welcome to cart that awful creature off to London for all I care. I can manage quite well on my own.”

The gall of the woman! Dismissing his concern for her as if he held no higher standing in her life than her driver or her footman.

The notion sent Thorn leaping to his feet again. “As well as you managed last night on the heath?”

Felicity shot him a withering look. “Ah! Here is the lecture you’ve been saving since last night. I doubt it will taste any less bitter, warmed over for breakfast.”

He had never seen this unpleasant side of her character during their time together. Thorn cursed himself. He’d been a fool to let himself fall under the spell of her wit, her spirit and her passion. Any man of sense might have guessed that such a vibrant rose could not lack for thorns.

Well, he was feeling the sting of them now.

“Last night you as good as owned you deserved a reprimand.” Thorn struggled to suppress the memory of Felicity burrowing into his embrace, sweetly repentant. “I tried to show a little forbearance, believing you’d already learned your lesson in more forceful terms than any words of mine could match.”

Felicity surged to her feet, a welcome color returning to her face. “Why, you pompous…How dare you scold me as if I was one of your flighty little sisters?”

“My sisters have more sense than—” Thorn choked back the rest of his words as another party of inn guests descended into the posting hall.

He forced himself to pitch his voice lower, though his anger had not abated. “We can resume this discussion in private when I return from Berkeley. In the meantime, I suggest you rest and take some food.”

“I told you, I’m quite capable of looking after myself.”

If he stood there a moment longer, Felicity’s stubborn opposition might goad him to shake her. Worse yet, her nearness and the strange stirring friction between them might make him sweep her into his arms for a kiss so fierce and brazen it would fuel juicy gossip at the King’s Arms for years to come.

As Thorn Greenwood executed a crisp pivot on his heel and strode away from her, Felicity struggled to subdue the storm of emotions that raged inside her.

How could she have taken the man into her bed night after night without ever guessing his true character? She’d thought him quiet, gentle and amiable, not the sort to demand more than she could give him or make a nuisance of himself in her life.

That was part of the reason she’d chosen him as her lover over a number of other candidates who had far more to recommend them. How could she have guessed Mr. Greenwood’s accustomed mild manner masked an iron will that vexed her beyond bearing even as it excited a grudging respect?

The only thing she detested more than being bossed and bullied was being manipulated.

Perhaps some good had come of Oliver’s foolish elopement if it had opened her eyes to aspects of Thorn Greenwood’s temperament that she had either overlooked or willfully ignored. Now she could cast him off without any troublesome qualms of guilt.

Glancing out the window, Felicity spied the highwayman. Now that she got a good look at him in the belittling light of day, she could see he was no more than a spotty-faced youth. Damn his callow hide for giving her such a fright!

His hands were tied and bound to the pommel of his saddle. He appeared to be pleading with Thorn not to turn him in.

Quite against her will, a twinge of pity tugged at Felicity. The lad would almost certainly hang for his petty crimes—mischief that had probably sprung from some rash devilment of youth with no pause to consider the consequences. Just the kind of impulse that had propelled her to the altar with Percy Lyte at that age.

At least she’d survived her youthful mistake and learned from it. Felicity forced herself to look away. She gave a start when she discovered the innkeeper hovering nearby.

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