to see where it might take her, but she’d be damned if she’d curtsy. “I suppose turnabout is only fair. I am Morgan Becket, of Becket Hall. That’s in Romney Marsh, so you probably won’t have heard of us or it.” And then, before she could bite her tongue, she added, “I’m on my way to London for the Season.”
“Is that so?” Ethan said, hastily attempting to reshuffle his initial conclusion that she was a kept woman. “Unaccompanied, Miss Becket? How…very original.”
Morgan blinked at this, at the earl’s tone that suddenly seemed entirely too familiar, as if, in the blink of an eye, the game had turned serious. She suddenly wished the six outriders back. She looked toward the stables just in time to see Jacob leading Berengaria out into the yard.
Yes, there he was. Her remaining “accompaniment.” And here she was, having disobeyed her papa’s strict orders to stay as private as possible and for God’s sake not cause any disasters between Becket Hall and Upper Brook Street. “I can rely on you to do this one thing,” Ainsley Becket had asked her, “can’t I?”
Obviously her papa had overestimated both her limits of obedience and Jacob’s power to control her.
But if she was in a pickle now it was through her own fault, and she couldn’t allow Jacob to become involved, try to defend her honor or any such nonsense. Not with a man like the earl, who could easily chew up Jacob and spit him out again before the younger man could count to three.
She quickly looked at the earl once more.
He was still smiling at her. As if he knew something she didn’t know, and delighted in that fact.
Damn. This was no longer even in the least amusing. Now she truly understood why she was supposed to stay in the coach, or in her private dining room when they stopped for meals, and in her private bedchamber at the inn where she’d passed the single night they needed to be on the road.
Bringing a maid from Becket Hall had been out of the question, partly because Morgan didn’t actually have a personal maid there, partly because no one at Becket Hall had the faintest idea of how to properly dress a lady’s hair or such things…and mostly because the fewer tongues hanging about and liable to flap, the better.
Careful. Through years of practice, the Beckets had learned how to be careful. Too careful, Morgan had always believed, which was one reason she’d always tugged so hard on the reins. After all, the island had been so many years ago….
Yet now here she was, alone and seemingly unprotected, strutting about as if she had an army at her back, when Jacob was her only soldier—and with no reason for the earl to believe her better than it had to appear she was.
How different from Becket Hall, where everyone knew her and every last man there would stand in her defense against any danger. Why, if Jacko or any of the others had heard the earl’s words, even seen the unnervingly familiar way he was now smiling at her, Ethan Tanner’s life wouldn’t be worth a bucket of warm spit.
But Jacko wasn’t here. The outriders weren’t here. Nobody was here. And Morgan couldn’t simply stand here and brazenly stare back at the earl while waiting for Jacob to do something that would probably get his nose broken. She had to talk her way out of the predicament she’d created.
“My maid has taken ill, my lord,” she improvised quickly, “and therefore is on her way back to Becket Hall in the company of my outriders. I know my position to be precarious at the moment, except for the fact that my groom, Jacob, along with my coachman, would skewer anyone who dared to so much as look at me crookedly or take insulting notions into his head. You wouldn’t be addlepated enough to do either of those things, would you, my lord?”
Ethan bowed again, amused by her sudden vehemence, and very much pleased that he would appear to be without competition. Miss Morgan Becket wasn’t a kept woman, a high-flying concubine. She was simply badly managed by her keepers and more accustomed to free and easy country ways. In short, she was marvelously unencumbered, and his for the taking if he played his cards correctly.
Until she showed her face, and that body, in London society. After that, she would set her own style, and he could end up as one of many vying for her favor.
The devil he would! He’d noted the way she’d looked at him. He knew how he’d felt when he’d first caught sight of her, would not easily forget that figurative punch to the gut that had all but bowled him over. The attraction had been instant, and definitely mutual. Even Alejandro seemed to know, for God’s sake. The horse also appeared to be smitten, which simply showed how a man could never quite trust other males when a beautiful female was added to the mix.
In fact, there was now only one new problem to supplant what he’d believed his previous problems. Miss Morgan Becket, if truly a hopeful debutante, was also most certainly a virgin. He’d always made it a point not to come within ten yards of a virgin.
Then again, in exceptional circumstances, exceptions could be made. In this case, the exceptional circumstance was that he felt reasonably sure he’d never want another woman until he’d first had this one beneath him.
Ethan searched for something to say, anything that couldn’t be misconstrued.
“Far be it from me to reprimand you, Miss Becket, and you must be sad about the loss of your maid—but you should not be standing out here alone. People, some people, could not be faulted for thinking you less than you should be.”
All right, she was standing on firmer ground here. She knew a veiled insult when she heard one, and was not the sort to pretend she hadn’t. She much preferred to take the gloves off and lay them on the table—challenge him to either say what he meant outright, or shut up. “You wouldn’t be one of those people, now would you, my lord? Or would you? Come, come, my lord. Have you been thinking me less than I should be?”
Ethan scratched at his temple, trying to hide his surprised smile with the gesture. “Polite ladies don’t as a rule confront gentlemen, Miss Becket.”
Morgan shrugged. Her heart was pounding hard again, but this time with excitement, delight, because she wasn’t backing down, and doubted he would, either. “I’ve never been accused of being polite, or overworried about rules. Although I’m quite convinced you’ve often been accused of being quite rude.”
“Guilty as charged, madam,” he said, bowing to her.
Then he looked past her, to watch as a dainty, high-stepping black mare was led toward them, the groom holding the mount’s bridle looking like a fellow caught between recognizing his betters and contemplating mayhem. And mayhem appeared to be winning.
Morgan, watching the earl’s eyes, turned to see what had caught his attention, and nearly groaned aloud.
“We’re less than two hours from London, my lord, and well into civilization,” she pointed out quickly as she faced Ethan once more. As she spoke, she put one hand behind her back, waving Jacob away, while hoping her childhood friend wouldn’t go making a cake of himself. “I will be safely under my brother’s roof before dark.
“Not that my traveling plans are any of your concern, you grinning idiot,” she added as she pointedly turned to say goodbye to Alejandro, stroke his mane, her temper beginning to rise past levels she knew to be controllable. But she had every reason to be angry. After all, she wasn’t the one who was looking at him as if he were a particularly tasty plate of mutton chops, was she? Had she been?
Possibly, she realized.
