Free The Passion of the Purple Plumeria by Lauren Willig

most remarkable effect. His happiness was dizzying. “Mrs. Davies. She’s my Kat’s grandmother.”
    “Whatever her name may be,” said Gwen crushingly, “you would think she would have written.”
    “Not if the girls haven’t told her they’re away without leave,” said Colonel Reid cheerfully. “If I know my Lizzy, she’ll have told her it’s half term, or whatever it is they call it here. She can spin a tale, that one.”
    His Lizzy wasn’t the only one. “Arriving by themselves without luggage?” Gwen said witheringly.
    “My Lizzy will have found a way to make it sound entirely plausible,” he said. “Trust me.”
    “After that,” said Gwen tartly, “I don’t see why I should.”
    For a moment, the Colonel was taken aback. Then he let out a hearty bark of laughter. “Fair enough! I’ll not deny the gift of the gab runs in the family. Come with me, then, and see for yourself.” He turned to Jane. “You said it’s not far to Bristol?”
    “Only two hours by stage,” said Jane, who knew the routes of every major method of transportation and the relative travel times involved.
    “Well, then,” said Colonel Reid, his blue eyes sparkling. “We can be there and back in no time. Shall we go retrieve those erring ewe lambs?”
    The full force of Colonel’s Reid’s smile was a dangerous thing indeed. “The stage will have already gone,” said Gwen.
    “Tomorrow, then,” he said heartily. “I shall call for you in the morning.”
    “No need,” said Gwen coldly. “I can just as easily meet you at the White Hart. The stage leaves from there at—”
    “Nine twenty-three,” Jane supplied.
    “As you like,” said Colonel Reid easily. “Then we can collect our wayward lassies and give them the dressing-down of their lives, eh, Miss Meadows? Unless”—he had caught something of the look that had passed between the ladies—“is it not the thing for the chaperone to go unchaperoned? I’m new to these conventions. I can just as easily go myself, and faster, too.”
    “Nonsense,” said Gwen, stung by the implication that she couldn’t go anywhere she chose. “I’m far past the age of scandal.”
    The Colonel was too happy to be wise. “Hardly that far, Miss Meadows,” he said gallantly.
    Gwen looked at him loftily. “Flattery will get you nowhere, Colonel Reid.”
    “Not even to Bristol?”
    Was he flirting with her? If so, it was time to put a quick stop to that. “You can try your charm on the stage master,” retorted Gwen, “but I suspect he’d prefer hard coin to empty words.”
    “Sure and that’s preferable to hard words and empty coin,” the Colonel concurred blandly.
    “It’s a soft wit that turns hard coin to hard words,” said Gwen scornfully.
    Colonel Reid waggled his brows. “But a sure wit that turns empty words to hard coin.”
    Jane and Mlle. de Fayette turned one way and then another, like spectators at a tennis match.
    “In that case,” said Gwen triumphantly, “you can book our passage for tomorrow, and there are my empty words for your hard coin.”
    “As they say, touché.” Colonel Reid assayed a bow. “Madame, I bow to your powers of persuasion. One passage to Bristol, at your disposal.”
    “And back,” Gwen reminded him.
    Colonel Reid caught her eye and grinned. His eyes were blue, pale in his sun-browned face. The lines around them crinkled when he smiled. “And back,” he agreed. “It will be my honor and my privilege.”
    Gwen let out a crack of laughter. “That’s doing it a bit too brown, Colonel Reid. It will be your honor, certainly, but many would question the privilege.”
    “Then,” he said, with a courtly tilt of his head, “they are both foolish
and
rude.”
    Jane cleared her throat slightly. Nobody paid her any mind.
    “I look forward to our journey tomorrow,” said Colonel Reid cheerfully. “And to retrieving my wayward Lizzy.”
    “And my wayward Agnes,” Gwen reminded him.
    Jane cleared her throat again, more