Page 39 of Along Came a Rogue

Just like that, all the anxious dread fretting away inside her vanished, replaced by a wanton heat as his gaze drifted leisurely down her front. A gaze that was anything but disinterested. Her chest lightened. Grey might very well end up loving her and leaving her, but it wouldn’t be this morning.

“Major Grey,” she returned, staring at him a bit shyly through lowered lashes.

“I trust you slept well,” he drawled, his deep voice carefully emotionless even as his eyes shined wickedly.

“Very well, thank you.” As her face heated beneath the intensity of his gaze, she knew she was in danger of giving away without a single word what had happened between them. “And you?”

“Not a wink,” Hedley interjected with a grimace, reaching to rub the small of his back. “Those damned hard benches made it impossible—”

“Sergeant, your language,” Grey admonished quietly, nodding toward Emily. “There’s a lady present.”

Hedley’s face pinched with embarrassment. “Beggin’ yer pardon, missus.” He took a breath and began again, “Those darn hard benches made it bloody well impossible for me an’ the major to sleep!”

Grey rolled his eyes in exasperated amusement, his lips twitching but not saying anything. Likewise, Emily bit back her own laughter at the faithful sergeant’s expense.

“I am sorry to hear that, Mr. Hedley.” She placed a hand briefly on his arm and smiled at him with genuine affection. “Tonight when we stop, we’ll make certain you have a proper bed.”

“That would be lovely, missus.”

The idle chatter with Hedley continued for a few more minutes as he politely asked her about her breakfast and if she had everything she needed for the day’s travel, although she had no idea how she managed to participate coherently in their conversation with Grey’s eyes watching her so intensely. The raw desire inside him was transparently obvious to her. How on earth could no one else see it? Her mouth went dry at the devilish thought of what awaited her tonight in the darkness if he looked at her that heatedly in the bright light of morning.

She cleared her throat and forced away the thought before she turned scarlet and embarrassed all of them. “Are we departing, then?”

“If you’re ready,” Grey put in.

“I’m ready for anything,” she answered without thinking.

And at that, the expression on his face turned positively predatory. Like a wolf delighting in finding its prey. “Well, then.” He grinned. “Dalton!”

He turned to signal to the driver that they were ready to start. She wondered if he also did it to give himself a moment to wipe that sinful look from his face before Hedley noticed and suspected there was more between them than an old acquaintanceship, because when he turned back toward her, his face was once again composed.

“I’m taking the first turn up top at the reins,” he told her. “That way, Hedley can catch a few more hours of sleep inside with you, if you don’t mind.”

Disappointment stabbed through her, but she didn’t let it show. “I don’t mind at all.”

Hedley smiled gratefully. “My thanks to you, ma’am.” Another doff of his hat, another hand to his back. “An’ me spine thanks you, too.”

“Help Dalton with the team while I settle Lady Emily, will you?” Grey ordered. “The harness might have stretched from pulling through the mud yesterday.”

“Aye, sir.”

As Hedley hurried to the front of the carriage, the realization struck Emily that Grey no longer referred to her as Mrs. Crenshaw, and a happy warmth stirred low inside her.

“Are you all right?” he asked in a quiet voice, one surprisingly soft and intimate even as his eyes remained fixed straight ahead on Hedley and Dalton as they worked the harness. “You looked a bit uneasy when you approached.”

“I didn’t know what to think.” She gently accused, her own voice helplessly overflowing with emotion, “You left in the middle of the night.”

His shoulders sagged almost imperceptibly, but she noticed. Lord help her, she noticed everything about this man. “I had no choice.”

“You didn’t have to sleep on a bench with Hedley.” Knowing how well he could read her, she didn’t bother trying to hide the hurt she’d felt when she woke to find him gone. Or her confusion now to know that he’d chosen a hard bench over her bed. “You could have stayed with me.”

“No,” he corrected in a rueful murmur, “I won’t risk your reputation.”

“I don’t care.”

“I do,” he answered firmly.

Then she felt his fingers brush hers as her hand rested against the folds of her skirt, and her breath hitched. Just as suddenly as his hand had touched hers, he shifted away before anyone could see. At the loss of his warmth, she bunched her skirt into her hand, twisting the material around her fingers.