Page 13 of Better Off Wed

Thornton too was all impatience. “Well, then?”

“You are too kind, sir,” the stranger said at last. “Don’t you agree…” When he turned those lapis lazuli eyes to her again, she could have sworn he saw through to her very soul. “Lady Sterling?”

Pinned beneath that gaze, she had to make an effort to nod, to shake off the sensation of his perceptiveness. Whoever he was, he was just a man—and men were simply not that clever.

“Very good. My coach waits just outside the door.” As Thornton spoke, he moved toward the exit. “Once we’ve arrived at Thornton Hall, I’ll send for the physician to tend to your wife, and you may travel on from there as soon as she’s fit.”

“Th-thank you,” she stammered, her mind busily at work weighing how to use the earl’s unexpected hospitality to bring about his downfall.

“May I be of some help?” Mr. Richardson spoke up, gesturing toward her as if she were a cumbersome piece of luggage.

The stranger looked from her to the squire and back again. “Thank you, my good fellow. But I’m quite sure I can manage.”

There was nothing of brawn about the man, but he nonetheless bent and lifted her into his arms with ease—and none of the huffing that Mr. Richardson’s similar efforts had required.

She tried not to gasp at her sudden awareness of the solidness of his chest, the surprising strength of his arms. “My valise?” she managed to ask, channeling her quickened breath into words.

Mr. Richardson picked up the bag and indicated with a gesture that he would follow them to the coach. She found an odd sort of comfort in his presence, although she suspected he was drawn only to the spectacle. “What of your hat and gloves, my lady?”

She eyed the sodden pile lying at the table’s edge, suddenly conscious of the ways in which even kid gloves and useless little bonnets were a sort of armor, shields behind which a woman might hide at least some small part of herself. Her hand was pale against the stranger’s coat. “My wedding finery, ruined,” she replied with a sigh. “Leave them.”

As her imposter-husband moved to follow a few paces behind Lord Thornton, she squirmed slightly in his embrace. “How did you—how do you know who I—?”

“Later.” The word came soft and low at her ear, and his arms firmed, drawing her closer to his chest. “Quickly, while Thornton is out of earshot, tell me your real name. A husband would know it,” he prompted when she hesitated.

“Laura,” she breathed against his neck, feeling the chill of his rain-damp skin against her mouth. “And yours?”

From below, she watched his lips quirk, only partly with amusement. “Lord Sterling.”

Chapter 4

Laura.

Jeremy had recognized her the moment he’d walked into the pub, though the accident had left her disheveled, and it had been nearly a year since he’d seen her.

Miss Laura Hopkins.

Quite a contrast from how she’d looked then, clad in a gown of demurest white, her hair a riot of burnished gold curls; vivacious and pretty, charming everyone at the holiday entertainment for some of the officers in Scott’s service. Though young ladies had been scarce that evening, he’d been too diffident to fight his way through a sea of red coats for an introduction. He certainly did not expect her to recognize him tonight.

Lieutenant Hopkins’s sister.

He knew Fitzwilliam Hopkins only as a genial junior officer, the up and coming field agent who had found the book that had subsequently made Jeremy’s life hell. Despite the tenuousness of their connection, Jeremy had been prepared to approach and offer his assistance, seeing a family member of a fellow officer alone and in obvious distress. Certainly, he hoped another man might do the same for Julia, if the tables were somehow turned.

And then Hopkins’s sister had pulled a watch—a gentleman’s watch—Penhurst’s watch—from her reticule, and the little gears and springs in his own head had momentarily jammed. Miss Hopkins was—?

No. Absolutely impossible.

But once again the facts were persistent. Less than a mile from here, he’d passed a coach lying in a ditch, the coach in which Lady Sterling had left Clapham on her way to Thornton Hall. Of course, Miss Hopkins could have been aboard that same coach, but he saw no sign of any other female passengers. And while it was possible that Lady Sterling had exited the coach earlier, it seemed unlikely. According to Betty’s information, her next victim stood less than an arm’s length away from him, as she pretended to check the time on a watch remarkably like the one Penhurst’s footman had described.

Certainly, he had not meant to speak her alias aloud. Even less had he expected Miss Hopkins to claim the title, to proclaim herself his wife.

For a long moment, Jeremy had not known what to do next.

When those little gears and springs that made up his otherwise reliable, occasionally even formidable, intellect had begun to click and whir once more, their motion had echoed in his head, sounding alarmingly like General Scott’s knowing chuckle.

I should think the answer would be obvious, Lord Sterling.

Had Scott somehow known—had he planned this encounter?