changed her bag to her left hand, clutched her hood to her throat with her right and strode out a little faster.
The sound of thunder grew steadily louder; in fact, so steadily it began to sound more like carriage wheels.
She glanced over her shoulder, and, sure enough, cresting the brow of the undulating lane behind her came a carriage and pair at a spanking pace. Such a spanking pace that she had to leap nimbly over the ditch that flanked one side of the road to escape being run down.
She managed to stay upright, even though the stubby crops made for a most uneven surface. Though naturally, given the way her day was going, she landed ankle deep in mud. She looked up from the quagmire in which she stood in some surprise when the driver hauled on the reins, drawing the carriage to a halt abreast of her, and shouted, ‘Miss Peters?’
When she nodded, he pointed his whip at her and bellowed, ‘Do you have any idea how long I’ve been driving up and down these lanes attempting to find you?’
His words sent a shiver of dread coursing through her. Surely he could not be a Bow Street Runner? Not after she had taken such pains to cover her tracks. Nobody could possibly know she was in Yorkshire.
Though how could he know her name, if he was not a paid investigator of some kind? She eyed him with trepidation, rapidly taking in the many-caped coat and tricorne hat of a typical coachman. His appearance was no consolation. A really good thief taker would naturally be a master of disguise. If he was masquerading as a coachman, then he would take care to handle the ribbons nonchalantly, as well as dressing the part so convincingly!
With the tip of his whip, he pushed back the hat that had been pulled low down over his forehead, sending a shower of water cascading over his broad shoulders, and revealing the fact that he wore an eyepatch. It gave his harsh, weatherbeaten features such a sinister touch that she promptly abandoned all thought of either begging him for mercy, or offering him double whatever he had been paid to capture her to let her go.
Then he tugged down the muffler that had covered the lower half of his face, and said, ‘What the devil do you think you are doing out in this weather?’
She had been cautiously feeling her way backwards with her feet, but the incongruity of the question halted her. Why on earth would a man paid to hunt down fugitives care what kind of weather she was out in? Unless it was on his own account. That must be it. He resented having to be up on that exposed box, in such foul weather.
Well, it served him right! As she surreptitiously tried to ease one foot out of the mud that held it fast, she glared right back at him, the villain! What kind of man took on such work?
He watched her freeze, then frown up at him in bewilderment. And felt as though somebody had reached into his chest and squeezed hard. It was as though somebody had cast a spell on the figurehead from The Speedwell, bringing her to life and casting her ashore in that muddy beet field. Dripping wet, confused and somewhat afraid, she still had sufficient spirit to lift her chin and square her shoulders, as though daring him to do his worst.
‘Mr Jago!’ he bellowed. Behind him, he heard the coach window come rattling down. Miss Peters tore her eyes from her appalled perusal of his wreck of a face. He saw the moment she recognised Mr Jago, then closed her eyes, her whole body sagging with what looked like profound relief.
Just who the hell had she thought he was? And what was she doing out here anyway?
He half-turned, and roared over his shoulder, ‘Did your letter not specify that we were coming to fetch Miss Peters from the King’s Arms?’
Aimée wanted to kick herself. Of course this vehicle and its driver were the transportation arranged for her by her new employers. It was just because her nerves were in tatters that she had immediately jumped to the conclusion that Bow Street Runners or thief takers must have caught up with her.
Thank heaven she had honest work now! She was not cut out for a life of crime. Her guilty conscience had left her fearing arrest every minute these last couple of weeks.
Perversely, the stupidity of her mistake made her absolutely furious with the coachman for giving her such a fright.
‘Don’t you yell at him!’ she yelled at the piraticallooking driver. ‘The letter offering me this job did say someone was coming to fetch me, but I had been waiting for an age in that filthy inn yard, and assumed that my arrival must have been forgotten. So I decided to walk.’
‘In this weather?’
‘It was not raining when I set out,’ she replied tartly. ‘Besides, I am not made of spun sugar, you know. I will not melt.’
Mr Jago opened the carriage door fully and clambered down. ‘Well, never mind who thought what,’ he said, crossing the road. ‘The thing is to get you out of this rain now.’ He extended his hand to her across the ditch.
A fleeting look of chagrin flickered across Miss Peters’s face as she regarded Mr Jago’s outstretched hand. Then her mouth compressed into a thin, hard line. She looked as though she wished she could consign the pair of them to perdition. But in the end, he saw a streak of practicality overcome her pride. He nodded to himself in approval as she reluctantly took hold of Mr Jago’s outstretched hand. The former bosun had come back from London telling the rest of the crew that he’d found a woman who boasted she had a backbone of steel. Which was just as well, considering what lay in store for her. But even better, her swift suppression of that little flash of temper showed him that she was sensible enough to know when to bow to the inevitable.
He could not help grinning when she consoled herself by pausing to bestow one last, fulminating glare at him before accepting Mr Jago’s assistance into the carriage.
Coxcomb! Aimée fumed, gathering the folds of her sopping wet cloak around her as she settled herself into the seat. It was his fault she was covered in mud now. And the shaft of pure terror that had lanced through her when she had thought he had come to arrest her and haul her back to London had left her shaking like a leaf.
‘Captain Corcoran intended to pick you up in the gig,’ said Mr. Jago, his face creasing with concern as she knotted her fingers together on her lap in a vain attempt to conceal how badly they were shaking. ‘But seeing the weather likely to blow up a storm, he went to his neighbour, Sir Thomas, to see if it would be possible to borrow his carriage, so you would not get wet.’
His eyes slid to the little pool of water that was forming around her boots, and added, with a faint tinge of reproof, ‘It all took a bit longer than we anticipated. But you really should have waited.’
Aimée’s chin went up. She absolutely hated being criticised for showing some initiative. Looking Mr Jago straight in the face, she considered telling him exactly why she had set out on her own across unknown terrain. How could she possibly have known what this Captain … whatever his name was, had arranged? It was not as if anyone had bothered to inform her. Why, the Captain had not even deigned to put his name to the letter his man of business had left for her at the Bull and Mouth.
And was she supposed, then, to just meekly accept any arrangements he might or might not have made on her behalf? As though she had no brain in her head?
However, she reined in her impulse to inform him exactly what she thought of him and his employer. It would not be a good start to her new life, to spend the journey to The Lady’s Bower arguing with a man who seemed to be very much in her employer’s confidence.
The fact that the carriage, with her in it, was even now rattling into the very yard of the King’s Arms she had hoped never to see again almost overset her good intentions. All the time and energy she had wasted, getting thoroughly soaked into the bargain, and here they were, back in the King’s Arms, presumably in order to collect her trunk.
She seethed. If anybody had thought to inform her of their intentions, she need never have set out in the rain at all!
And Mr Jago was still looking at her with that faint air of reproof as though he expected her to be grateful to his employer!
For one moment, just one, she admitted