she went limp, her body suddenly hot and liquid. Wild, turbulent emotions bubbled through her, surprising and disturbing her as much as his insolent action had. Nicola was a beautiful woman, with a petite but curvaceous body, thick pale-gold hair and wide, dark-lashed eyes. She was accustomed to men being attracted to her, even to their making improper advances. But she was not accustomed to feeling such a response herself.
He released her as abruptly as he had seized her. His eyes flashed in the darkness, and Nicola was certain he had been aware of the way she had melted inside. Hot anger surged through her, and she reached up and slapped him sharply.
Everyone went still and silent around them, frozen in a tableau. Nicola faced him, certain that he would punish her for what she had done, but too furious to care. The man gazed at her for a long moment, his expression unreadable.
Finally he drawled, “My lady.” Then, sketching a bow toward her, he turned and fluidly remounted his horse. He wheeled and vanished into the darkness, followed by his men.
Nicola watched him leave. Her lips burned from his kiss, and every nerve in her body seemed to be standing on end. Anger roiled inside her, making her tremble. The problem was, she didn’t know whether she was more furious at the highwayman because the wretch had had the audacity to kiss her—or at herself for the way she has responded to his kiss.
“DAMN HIS IMPUDENCE!” The Earl of Exmoor slammed his fist down onto the closest thing to him, a small table of knickknacks that shook and rattled at the blow. He was a tall man, as all the Montfords were, and looked younger than his nearly fifty years. His hair was brown, graying at the temples, and his sharp features were generally considered adequately handsome. Today, however, they were distorted with rage.
Predictably, he had been furious when Nicola arrived and told him of the highwaymen waylaying her carriage. He had been striding up and down the length of the drawing room for the past few minutes, his face red and fists knotted. His wife, Deborah, had watched him with pale-faced anxiety, Nicola with a poorly suppressed dislike.
“Attacking my very own carriage!” Richard continued, disbelief warring with rage. “The effrontery of the man!”
“I would say that effrontery is something that man is not lacking,” Nicola pointed out with cool amusement.
The Earl ignored her. “I’ll have the coachman’s head for this.”
“It was not his fault,” Nicola pointed out. “They had dragged a cut tree across the road. He could hardly have ruined his horses on it, even if the horses had not balked.”
“What about the groom?” Richard swung around, pinning her with his piercing gaze. “I specifically put him up there beside the coachman with a gun to ward off such an attack. But he not only didn’t fire a shot, he gave them his weapon!”
“I don’t know what else you could expect. There were at least six men surrounding the coach. If he had fired it, both he and the coachman would have been dead in an instant. And then where would I have been? It would scarcely be doing their duty to leave me stranded and unprotected in the middle of the road, would it?”
Richard snorted. “Lot of protection they were.”
“Well, I am here and unharmed, with nothing worse lost than a few jewels and some coins.”
“I must say,” her brother-in-law said resentfully, “you seem rather blasé about the whole affair.”
“I am happy to be alive. For a few moments there, I was certain that I would be killed.”
“Yes. Thank heavens you got here safe and well,” Deborah put in, reaching out a hand to her sister.
Nicola moved nearer to Deborah and closed her own hand around Deborah’s.
The Earl regarded the two women sourly. “Well, I am glad that you can regard it so lightly. But it is something I cannot ignore. It is a blatant insult to me.”
“Oh, really, Richard! I am the one who was attacked!”
“You were traveling under my protection. It is a slap in my face. That blackguard is as good as saying that my protection is worthless. He clearly did it to humiliate me.” He smiled grimly. “Well, this time the chap will find out that he has gone too far. I won’t rest until I have his head on a pike. Thank heavens I had already sent for a Bow Street Runner. As soon as he gets here, I’ll set him on this. Then that scoundrel will learn that he has been tweaking the wrong man.”
It was typical, Nicola thought, that Richard would be much more concerned over the presumed insult to himself than he would be over his passenger’s safety. She glanced at her sister, wondering if Deborah was still so blinded by love for the man that she did not see how cold and self-centered he was.
But, looking at Deborah’s pinched, pale face, Nicola quickly dropped all thoughts of Richard or of the attack. “Enough of this talk,” she said crisply, going to her sister. “Deborah is obviously tired and needs to go to bed.”
Her sister cast a grateful smile in her direction, though she demurred, “No, I am all right, really.”
“Nonsense. It is quite clear that you are dead on your feet. Come along, I will take you up. Richard,” Nicola said, casting him a perfunctory nod, “if you will excuse us…?”
Richard bowed back, barely sparing a glance for his wife. “Of course. I need to go out to question the coachman. Good night, Deborah. Nicola.” He hesitated, then added with a wry twist of his mouth, “We are pleased to have you visit. I apologize for the inconvenience.”
He left the room, and Nicola took her sister’s arm and helped her up from her chair. They began to walk to the stairs. Deborah cast an anxious look toward the front door, through which Richard had disappeared.
“I do hope Richard will not be too harsh on the coachman. I—he would not be unkind normally, of course. It is just that this highwayman has him so upset.”
“I could see that.”
“It is because the man plagues Richard, you see. He—I know it sounds odd, but he seems to particularly delight in stealing from Richard. Tenants’ payments, the shipments to and from the mines—I cannot tell you how many times those wagons have been stopped. Even in broad daylight. It is as if he were thumbing his nose at Richard.”
“It makes sense. Richard is the largest landowner around here. It would stand to reason that much of the money the man takes would be from him.”
“Oh, he stops other things—other carriages, the mail coach sometimes. But it is Richard who has been hit the hardest. It has cut deeply into his profits from the tin mines. Richard has been nearly beside himself. I think what bothers him the most is that ‘The Gentleman,’ as they call him, has evaded capture so easily. He comes out of nowhere and then melts back into the night. Richard has sent men out looking for his hiding place, but they have found nothing. He has put extra guards on the wagons and his carriage, but it doesn’t stop him, just as it didn’t tonight. And no one will come forward with any information about him. Even the miners and farmers who work for Exmoor claim to have no knowledge of the man. Do you think that is possible?”
“I don’t know. It does seem somewhat unlikely that no one would know anything about him.”
“Usually
