protested. “You know that as well as anybody.”
In a sense, he’d taken a flutter on his liaison with Felicity Lyte—hoping to win a jackpot of pleasure. He’d dealt himself a hand believing he had everything to gain and nothing to lose. Too late he had come to realize that he’d bet on his ability to bed a woman without falling in love with her.
The stakes had been nothing less than his heart. And he had lost it.
Weston St. John paused at the doorway and regarded his friend. “You may try as hard as you like to play it safe, old fellow, but life is a gamble any way you look at it. You’re welcome to stay here the night, then roust me out at some uncivilized hour of the morning to see my banker. Or, if you’re determined to be on your way before sunrise, you can come along with me and risk your invaluables on the turn of a few cards. Which will it be?”
Rubbing the face of his signet ring, Thorn struggled with his decision. The watch was so old it showed only the hour, which limited its use in all but the most leisurely time keeping. The signet ring was older still. Both had passed down, father to son, through the Greenwood line to him.
He had slight reservations about leaving his watch and ring as security against a loan, to be redeemed at the earliest opportunity. To run the risk of losing them altogether…
Of course he would still be head of the family without these ancestral badges of authority. Yet somehow, deep in his heart, it felt otherwise.
Reason assured Felicity Lyte she was following the only sensible course of action open to her. Her heart warned her otherwise, but she had learned long ago to place no trust in that capricious organ. Not even when her coachman agreed with it.
“Are you sure this journey of yours can’t wait until morning, ma’am?” Even Mr. Hixon’s massive hand could not stifle the great yawn that threatened to tear his face in two.
“I regret having to drag you out of bed at this time of night.” Keeping her tone polite yet insistent, Felicity resisted the urge to yawn in reply as Hetty helped her on with her cloak.
Even in May, the nights could be chilly, particularly when one would be sitting in an unheated carriage for many hours.
“I’m afraid this cannot wait. Is the carriage ready to go?”
“Aye, ma’am.” The coachman turned his old-fashioned tricorn hat around in his hands as he nodded toward the front door. “Where are we bound, if I may ask?”
“I hope to be in Tewkesbury by tomorrow evening.” Felicity made a few quick calculations, guessing when Oliver and Miss Greenwood might have left Bath.
She prayed her nephew had hired a post chaise, rather than relying on the faster stage coaches or, worse yet, The Royal Mail. “I hope we shan’t have to venture much farther than that before we can return.”
The coachman nodded, as evident eagerness to be out on the open road battled his fatigue. “At least we’ve clear weather and a good moon.”
He opened the door and held it for his mistress as she emerged onto the moonlit street. “What with leaving now, we’ll be through Bristol before even the market traffic. If we make good time, we should be able to stop at The King’s Arms in Newport for breakfast.”
“A capital suggestion, Mr. Hixon.” Felicity descended the front steps of her town house and climbed into her carriage.
They nearly always stayed at that clean, well-run inn on their way to or from Bath. If Oliver had hired a coach and spirited Miss Greenwood away some time after noon, they would almost certainly have spent their first night at The King’s Arms. Felicity could catch news of them there, perhaps even intercept them if they did not get back on the road at too early an hour.
The coachman scrambled up to his perch, and, a moment later, Lady Lyte’s elegant traveling carriage rolled off toward Bristol Road. Inside, Felicity smiled to herself in the darkness. She could picture the astonished look on Thorn’s face when she arrived back in Bath tomorrow evening with his chastened little sister in tow.
When she tried to stop picturing Thorn’s face, however, she encountered considerable difficulty.
Unbidden images of him plagued her. Thorn appearing at her bedroom door in search of his sister, his dishevelled state rather endearing. Thorn hovering over her when she’d stirred from her foolish swoon, a warm air of concern radiating from him. Thorn, angrier than she had ever seen him, full dark brows brooding like thunderheads on the horizon. No sooner did Felicity banish one memory of Thorn Greenwood than another rose to take its place.
Perhaps it was just as well she’d been forced to make this break with him now, before the unsettling influence he exerted upon her grew stronger.
As the horses settled into a steady, mile-eating trot, Felicity pulled her cloak tighter and wedged herself into one corner of the carriage. Resting her head against the smooth fabric of the upholstered seat, she tried to elude all thoughts of Thorn Greenwood by fleeing into dreams.
When that didn’t work, she decided to concentrate her mind on one subject sure to divert her from anything else.
Her baby.
Under her cloak, Felicity passed a hand over her flat belly in a gesture at once tender and fiercely protective. Despite all evidence, she still had trouble believing there could be a baby growing inside her.
How many times, during the early years of her marriage, had she prayed for this very thing, only to be cruelly disappointed again and again? Meanwhile, Percy’s tribe of merry-begotten offspring had grown apace. Each one an added insult, proof of his virility, to be cared for and educated by the bounty of her fortune.
How many odious cures had she endured for her barrenness? Sometimes downright painful, always humiliating.
Year after year, she had watched the lack of an heir eat away at her husband and at her marriage. Until she could no longer bear to look him in the face because she knew what he must be thinking. Why had he married this tradesman’s daughter, to refill the empty coffers of his noble family with her fortune, when she could not produce a child to inherit what he’d sacrificed so much to restore?
As Lady Lyte’s carriage drove through the tranquil shadowy countryside of Sommerset, a queer sound like the bastard spawn of a sigh and a bitter chuckle echoed within, too quiet for either the driver or the footman to hear from their outside perches.
Who had been the more gullible goose, Felicity asked herself—she or Percy? How could neither of them have suspected his mistresses might’ve had other lovers to sire their children? Foisting their maintenance off upon him because he had the wealth to provide for them and because he was so pitifully eager to prove his virility by claiming them as his own.
Now here she was, with child at last. By a man she had no intention of marrying.
Would Thorn Greenwood ever have consented to become her lover if he’d thought there was any danger of her conceiving? Felicity knew the answer to that, for Thorn had raised the question himself when she first approached him with her scandalous proposition.
He’d blushed and stammered with an awkwardness she’d found endearing in such a consummate gentleman. It had taken two or three tries before he could frame his query in blunt enough terms for her to understand what he was asking.
She had almost abandoned the whole undertaking then and there, rather than expose her painful past. Then some baffling compulsion, deeper than her embarrassment and self-pity, had made her confess the truth.
“Don’t trouble yourself on that account, sir. While we were married, my husband sired several children—none of them by me.”
To forestall any word or look of pity, she had forced herself to laugh. “So you see I am as free as a man to take my pleasure.”
Perhaps those words had tempted fate to play her for a fool. She would have the last and best laugh, though. Her fortune and her widowhood would make it possible for her to enjoy the pleasures of motherhood without the