Free Lady Drusilla's Road to Ruin by Christine Merrill Page B

much. If I wished to flatter you, I would have mentioned your pleasant features and your beautiful dark hair. Both comments would have been true. But they would have nothing to do with your inability to disguise such an obviously female body in masculine clothing with any degree of success. And now, if you tell me that the Lord has given it to you, and you deserve no credit for it, then I will take that little book of sermons from your pocket and throw it into the next stream.’
    To put an end to the conversation, he gave his beast a gentle kick in the sides and was off at such a pace that she had to struggle to follow him.
    He needn’t have bothered. Any retorts she had for him had flown quite out of her head. Left in their place was a swirl of words: attractive, pleasant, beautiful and, best of all, obviously female. Somewhere in the midst of it, he had commented on her bad humour. But she was hardly bothered by a comment on something which was seen as a universal truth by those close to her.
    And he had laughed, not exactly at her, but in her direction, as though her temper amused more than it upset him. The negatives he’d thrown into the last interchange were like salt in a pudding, serving to emphasise the sweetness and bring out the subtle flavours of the rest.
    And he had threatened to throw her sermon book into the river. Taken as a whole, she could not decide if she wanted to stammer a blushing thank you, or ring a peal over him. But the last statement could not be allowed to stand.
    She spurred her horse to draw even with him. ‘I would not care if you did throw the sermons in a stream,’ she said, a little breathless from the ride. ‘It is not as if they are my exclusive reading.’
    ‘You brought other books with you?’
    ‘Not on this journey, no.’
    His features had returned to mild-mannered passivity, as though he had collected enough evidence for a decision, but saw no reason to comment on it.
    ‘Perhaps it was because I thought that the couple I was searching for needed a reminder of their duty.’
    ‘So you sought to give a sermon and not to read one?’ It was an innocent observation. But it made her feel horribly priggish, not at all like the beautiful hoyden of a moment ago.
    ‘We cannot always have what we want,’ she said firmly. ‘Where would the world be if everyone went haring off after their desires, eloping to Scotland on the least provocation?’
    ‘Where indeed?’
    ‘It would be chaos,’ she said, sounding depressingly like the voice of her father.
    ‘And you are sure you wish to stop this particular elopement,’ he said carefully. ‘If we are lucky, we might catch up with your friends tonight. Or perhaps tomorrow. But sometimes, when people are in love and intent upon their goal, they cannot be turned from it. If you stop them now, they will find another way.’
    ‘If they run again, I will chase them again,’ she said, feeling as stiff and flat as her sermon book. ‘I do not mean to give them any choice in the matter. This marriage cannot take place. It simply cannot.’ She was already near to on the shelf. With a scandal in the family, her own reputation would be in tatters. Her father would be livid at Priscilla and in no mood to launch the other daughter: the one who had failed to protect his favourite.
    The man beside her sighed. ‘Very well, then. If you are resolute, I load my pistols and prepare myself for the inevitable.’
    ‘The inevitable?’
    ‘To haul the loving couple back across the border by force, if necessary.’
    ‘You would do that?’
    ‘If you wished me to.’
    And now she was the one smiling at incongruity. He had replaced his spectacles since their last stop and the sun glinted off his lenses, causing him to squint slightly. He hardly looked the type to resort to physical violence. ‘If you will remember our conversation last evening, I requested discretion.’
    ‘The sound of a single shot will not carry all the way to London,’ he