niece made.
‘Pip...are we approaching safety yet? Where exactly are we?’
‘Cheapside...now settle down and be quiet,’ growled a rich baritone voice very unlike Pip’s.
Joan dropped the bottle of smelling salts and craned out of the window, looking up. But she couldn’t see any more of him than a long breeched leg and a single sinewy forearm terminating in grazed fingers entwined in the reins.
‘Stop the coach at once. Whoever you are you may pull over immediately! I didn’t give you permission to drive my father’s coach!’
He obeyed her order with such alacrity that Joan tipped off the seat on to her knees on the floor and Aunt Dorothea almost landed on top of her.
Joan was scrambling upright just as the door opened and without a by your leave an athletic figure vaulted in and sat down at the same time she did.
She gawped at him in alarm while obliquely aware of Dorothea stirring and muttering incoherently. Joan knew that once her aunt rejoined the land of the living, the woman was likely to swoon again at the sight of the dishevelled ruffian lounging opposite, even if he had now covered up his bare chest.
Yet he wasn’t a ruffian; of that Joan was certain. Oh, he might be dressed in clothes that had seen better days, but they were of good quality. He sported a stylish, if stained, lawn shirt, and his brawny legs were encased in buckskin breeches that had once been fawn, she guessed, but were now the hue of mud.
Her protracted inspection seemed to amuse him and he raised an arm, wiping blood from his cheek with a sleeve. ‘Well?’ he sardonically asked for her verdict.
‘Well what?’ Joan breathed and with an inner jolt suddenly realised to whom she spoke. ‘Well, am I disgusted by what you appear to have turned into, Mr Rockleigh? If that is what you require an answer to...then the answer is yes.’
‘So you remember me, do you? I’m flattered.’
‘There’s no need to be,’ Joan retorted hoarsely. ‘Nothing about you pleases me. Now remove yourself from my carriage and let us proceed towards home.’
‘No thanks from you, my lady? No offer to reward me for the service I have done you?’ he taunted. ‘At least on the last occasion that I saved you from yourself, you had the grace to apologise for the nuisance you’d been to me.’
‘I didn’t ask you to save me then or now!’ Joan snapped.
‘I’ll take you back to Ratcliffe Highway then, shall I?’ he suggested, lunging towards the door as though to again climb aboard the driver’s perch and carry out his threat.
Joan snatched at his arm. ‘You will not, you villain!’ Her fingers sprang away from him as though he’d scalded her, although his moist skin warming her palm had not felt unpleasant. But the muscle she’d gripped had flexed to iron at her feeble restraint. She knew if he wanted to appropriate their vehicle, or do any of them harm, she’d not be able to stop him. Neither would young Pip.
‘Remove yourself...please...before my aunt awakens and sees you,’ Joan uttered coolly.
Rockleigh glanced at the woman sprawled on the seat, her eyelids fluttering. ‘I’ll go when you tell me what a duke’s daughter is doing driving around the slums of Wapping.’
‘I would have thought it quite obvious we were lost,’ Joan returned.
‘Is your father reduced to hiring such incompetents to steer his coaches?’
‘No, he is not!’ Joan spluttered indignantly. ‘Pip has only recently been allowed to drive and I chose to employ his services today.’
‘Ah...so you planned to keep your father in the dark about your trip, did you?’ He idly assessed the coach’s interior. ‘Nice, but I imagine the Duke of Thornley has several better conveyances for his daughter’s use. You might be older, my lady, but it seems you’re no wiser,’ he drawled, lazy amusement glinting in his hazel eyes.
‘A remark that I could certainly return to you, sir, had I any wish for this conversation to continue.’ Joan had blushed hotly at his astute interpretation of events. She had intentionally chosen to employ Pip and a plain carriage because their loss from service was unlikely to be noteworthy, should her father call for a vehicle to be brought round. The grooms would assume that the master’s daughter and her chaperon had simply gone shopping locally. ‘I recall you once had good connections and were friendly with my brother-in-law. But not any more, that’s clear to see.’
‘I’ve not fallen out with Luke Wolfson.’
‘But I imagine he avoids your company!’
‘I avoid his...’
‘Ah, so you’re ashamed of yourself, and I’m not surprised.’
‘I’m not ashamed of myself. I do honest work for honest pay.’
‘You were brawling in the street like a common criminal!’ Joan choked out. She recalled Fiona mentioning that Drew Rockleigh had suffered a run of bad luck, but her stepsister had not made much of it. Joan imagined that Fiona was ignorant of just how low her husband’s friend had sunk.
‘Fighting for purses pays my way. What’s your excuse for trawling through the squalor, my lady? Did you think it a novelty to come to see how poor wretches live and end up with more than you bargained for?’
‘No, I did not! I was helping a friend teach those poor wretches’ children to read...’ Joan clammed up, furious that she’d allowed him to push her into explaining herself.
A shrill scream made Joan almost start from her skin; it announced the fact that her widowed aunt had come fully awake.
Without another word, but with a lingering stare that sent a shiver through her, Rockleigh jumped from the carriage. Joan could hear him talking in a low, fluid tone to Pip.
‘Who was that?’ Dorothea gasped out, a hand pressed to her heaving bosom.
‘He...he did us a service and helped us find our way out of that slum,’ Joan swiftly explained, rubbing energetically at her aunt’s hand to soothe her.
Dorothea flopped back against the squabs. ‘Your father will flay you alive when he discovers what you have done this afternoon.’
‘There is no need for him to be apprised of it. All has ended well and no harm done to any of us.’
‘Only by lucky chance!’ Dorothea squeaked. ‘What is our Good Samaritan’s name? Your father will want to know it and reward him.’
‘I...I...he didn’t introduce himself,’ Joan stuttered quite truthfully, glad her aunt had not recognised the boxer as a fellow who, not so long ago, had graced society with his elegant presence.
Once, Rockleigh had owned a house in Mayfair and a hunting lodge in the West Country, close to her father’s ancestral seat. He had mingled with the cream of society although he’d rarely attend tame entertainments. Many a hostess keen to have such an eligible bachelor at her daughter’s debut ball had been disappointed by Rockleigh’s absence. But on one occasion when Joan had attended the opera with her father and stepmother she had spied Drew Rockleigh in a box opposite with a female companion. Her father had pretended not to know the identity of the pretty blonde when Joan enquired after her. She’d realised then that Rockleigh was out with his mistress. That sighting of him in Drury Lane had been about a year ago; Joan imagined that in the meantime he must have lost a great deal.
As the coach set off at a very sedate pace, Joan guessed that Pip was too scared to set the horses to more than a trot. She scoured the pavements for a tall muscular fellow with very fair hair, but there was no sign of him—no doubt he had slipped back into that stew of destitution. But for the snuffling of her aunt, and a musky male scent within the coach strengthening her rapidly beating pulse, Joan might have thought none of it had happened and she’d simply awakened from a nightmare.
But it was