Free A Dark and Brooding Gentleman by Margaret McPhee Page A

bed as Phoebe hurried down the main staircase two mornings later, reticule in hand, shawl around her shoulders. Through the window she could see the sky was an expanse of dull grey filled with the promise of rain, and all around her the air held a nip that boded of the end of summer. Phoebe’s normally bright spirits on a Tuesday morning were clouded by the prospect of meeting the Messenger empty-handed. Ahead of her the front door of Blackloch lay open, rendering the house all the more chilled for the cold seeping breeze. But Phoebe barely noticed; her mind was filled with thoughts of her father as she crossed the smooth grey flags of the hallway.
    She was through the doorway, down the stone steps and out onto the driveway before she realised that Jamie was not wearing his normal clothes, but a smart black-and-silver livery. Where the gig should have stood was a sleek and glossy black coach complete with coachman in a uniform to match Jamie’s.
    ‘Miss Allardyce.’ The voice sounded behind her; his booted footsteps came down the steps, then crunched upon the gravel. And she did not need to turn to know who it was that had spoken for the whole of her body seemed to tingle and her heart gave a flutter.
    She turned, showing not one hint of her reaction to him. ‘Mr Hunter.’
    ‘Forgive me for borrowing Jamie when you had asked him to drive you to Kingswell, but I have a meeting in Glasgow and as we are both travelling the same way I thought we might travel together.’
    For just one awful moment Phoebe felt the mask slip and something of her horror show. They could notpossibly travel together, not when she was going to the Tolbooth gaol. But she could think of not a single excuse to extricate herself from the situation. She forced the smile to her face and looked at him perhaps a little too brightly so that he would not fathom anything of her real thoughts on the matter.
    ‘I thank you for your offer, sir, but I could not possibly put you to such inconvenience.’
    ‘It is no inconvenience, Miss Allardyce.’ He was standing close to her, looking down into her face with the same brooding intensity he always wore. Those stark ice-green eyes, the gaze that seemed to see too much. She glanced away, feeling uncommonly hot and flustered, and pretended to fix the handle on her reticule.
    ‘Indeed, I insist upon it, the roads being as unsafe as they are these days.’ ‘I …’
    But he was already walking the few steps to the coach.
    Jamie had already opened the door and pulled down the step.
    Hunter reached the door and turned to her. ‘After you, Miss Allardyce.’
    She stared at the coach, consternation filling her every pore, for she knew there was no means to escape this. Phoebe took a deep breath, thought of her father and climbed into the coach.
    The interior was as dark as the outside. Black-velvet squabs upon black-leather upholstery. And at each window matching thick black-velvet curtains tied back to let in the daylight.
    The ride was comfortable and smooth, but Phoebecould not relax, not with Hunter sitting opposite, his long black pantalooned legs stretched out by her side, so that his booted feet were close to the hem of her skirt; too close, she thought and she remembered the feel of him standing so near when she was half-naked, clutching the pile of clothes to her breast. She blushed and pushed the memory away.
    His boots looked as if they were new, as black and gleaming as the horses that pulled the coach. Her eyes travelled up to his thighs, noting that the pantaloons did little to disguise the muscles beneath. Phoebe realised what she was doing, blushed again and averted her eyes to look out of the window at the passing moorland. But even then she was too conscious of him, of the sheer size of him, of his strength and his very presence. The coach seemed too small a space and the atmosphere held a strain. Her hands clasped tighter together.
    ‘To which hospital do I deliver you?’
    She ignored his