Free In Pursuit of a Scandalous Lady by Gayle Callen Page A

Julian without even seeing him, and he took off at a run for the front of the house and his horse.
    By the time he caught up to her carriage in the London traffic, he was feeling like a fool. Did he plan to follow her night and day?
    But he just had a bad feeling about all of this. She’d left a carriage sitting out front, only to take another one she could drive herself. Why? He didn’t believe for a moment that she was teasing him about traveling. She had something planned.
    And his instincts were confirmed when she pulled up to the Euston Railway Station, with its massive columns holding up an arch like a Greek temple. She hopped down without waiting for her groom, and more than one man had a fleeting, impressive view of her trim ankles.
    At the entrance to the train station, she looked back one more time at the street—and saw him.
    Julian saluted and smiled, even as he dismounted near her carriage. But to his surprise, her face drained of blood. She picked up her skirts and practically ran inside.
    Frowning, his sense of urgency increasing, Julian caught the Madingley groom before he could step up into the cabriolet.
    â€œYou there,” Julian said. For once he was glad he could say, “I am Parkhurst. I need you to return my horse to my town house on Berkeley Square.” He handed over several coins.
    The boy’s jaw dropped. “A-aye, milord.”
    To Julian’s surprise, he almost didn’t catch up with Rebecca. She had a train ticket, and he didn’t, and she was able to show hers at the gate and hurry toward the waiting train. At least he knew they were headed north, for this station only served the London and Birmingham Railway.
    Was he really going to do this? he thought, even as he purchased his own first-class ticket at the counter. Get on a train without luggage and see what happened, in pursuit of Rebecca Leland?
    Her face flashed in his mind, all pink and languid and expectant just before he’d been about to kiss her. And then he saw a more recent memory, where she’d looked almost terrified to see him. What had happened in the space of an hour?

Chapter 6
    R ebecca found it terribly easy to switch her train ticket from the 5:10 to the 3:15, even though she dropped her ticket in the booking office from sheer nerves. Two men fell to their knees to retrieve it, and she concentrated on them gratefully, afraid to look behind her.
    The Earl of Parkhurst had been following her.
    She had wanted that to happen, hadn’t she? She’d practically told him she was going on a journey. She’d wanted a grand adventure—
    And then she’d been held captive in her carriage, threatened, forced to run—surely not at his behest. She couldn’t believe that of a peer. Or his friends, men she and her family had socialized with their whole lives.
    But he’d seen the painting and the diamond. Who else could connect that to her?
    She reminded herself she’d worn the necklace to a ball before knowing that the painting wasn’t in a French collection. Probably any number of men, members atthe same club, might have connected her to the jewel, once they’d heard that a Society woman had posed.
    But it was Lord Parkhurst following her, no one else. Was the thief following separately, or were they together?
    She prayed that his lordship didn’t have a ticket, that he wouldn’t make the train. She needed to figure out what she was going to do next.
    The London and Birmingham train was already there, steaming in the sunlight. Men and women bustled to their carriages, carrying portmanteaus or having their luggage loaded on carts pushed by porters. Not her, she thought, resisting the urge to give in to a grim laugh.
    But as she was assisted into her compartment in the first-class carriages, she looked behind her and saw the thief. She almost stumbled going up the stair. In daylight, he’d looked more respectable than she’d imagined, in his coat