Free The Marriage Ring by Cathy Maxwell Page B

she would not be responsible for the damage…
    But there were no bumps. The coach rode amazingly smoothly.
    For a long moment she sat quietly and then started to hum a tune from her childhood. She hummed it louder and louder.
    Mr. Lynsted studiously disregarded her.
    “Are you angry with me?” Enough of the games. Where was the gentleman of the night before?
    He didn’t answer.
    So she leaned her knees against his thigh.
    That gained his attention.
    “What?” he said, scowling at her offending knees.
    “You aren’t being companionable,” she complained.
    “We aren’t companions. This is a business trip.” He tried to turn his attention back to his scribbles and numbers.
    Grace swung her feet to the floor. “Scotland is a long ride,” she explained.
    “Ummm-hmmm.”
    “If we ride in silence, the whole trip will seem ten times longer.”
    “It’s unfortunate you are too frugal to hire a maid, Miss MacEachin,” he said, not even deigning to look at her. “Then you would have someone to whom you may talk. However, I’m making this trip to set serious allegations to rest. I don’t have to entertain you.”
    To whom you may talk. No one spoke with such stilted formality anymore. At least, no one reasonable. And if he thought that set-down would shut her up, he was wrong.
    “We must talk,” she insisted, putting a lot more whine in her voice. “It isn’t nice to not talk. Nor have I ever been disregarded before.”
    He looked at her then and smiled, the expression not nice. “More’s the pity.” He drawled the words out, making them last, before returning his attention to his ledger.
    Grace’s fingers ached to grab him by the ear and give it a savage twist. That would wipe the smug smile off his face. “What is the matter with you?” she asked.
    “The matter? Nothing.” He capped his ink, leaned over and put the bottle and his pen away in their proper little carrying case, and retrieved his satchel.
    “You were much friendlier last night,” Grace continued. “In fact, I almost enjoyed your company.”
    He pulled out a paper from his satchel and opened it, putting up a very effective barrier between them.
    “I find you very rude, Mr. Lynsted,” she declared. “What? Do you believe I have not been so ill treated before? I have. Back when I was first being presented. My family background was such that I should have been invited to all the events. Because of my father being convicted of a crime, a crime he didn’t commit ”—she had to be certain he remembered that—“the only invitations I received were for parties hosted by my relatives, who begrudged everything they did for me.”
    He stayed behind his paper.
    The disdain hurt. It always did.
    Over the years she’d reacted to it by running, or proving herself to be exactly what supposedly respectable people thought of her. Defiance was also a good reaction.
    But if she was ever going to reclaim her life, to be the person she’d once believed herself to be, she could not let him cow her.
    She tapped her foot on the floorboard, beating out the passage of time. They traveled in silence with only the sound of the horses, the rattling of the traces, and the squeaking of hinges.
    He pretended not to be aware of her. She knew he was. Last night, this man had come across as honest. Today, he was a pretender.
    “Usually people turn the pages,” she observed, “when they read the paper.”
    There was a beat of silence, and then he flipped the page over.
    “What is it?” she wondered. “Have your father and uncle warned you away from me? Have they made you afraid of the ‘Jezebel’?” She sneered at herself, all too aware of what those paragons of virtue and vice might have told him. “I liked you better when you thought for yourself.”
    The paper came down. His eyes were angry and she noted they weren’t brown as she’d first thought, but a green. A dark, mossy green. “I do think for myself.”
    “And that is why you’ve had a