Page 16 of The Lady Plays with Fire

“It’s no trouble,” he insisted as he held out a hand to help her up, though, in fact, he had been looking forward to the solitary drive and the chance to sort his thoughts about the play.

After a moment, she laid her fist on his palm, her fingers still curled around the ticket, as if it were some precious treasure. As she clambered into the carriage, he dipped his head to hide another smile.

When he swung up beside her, the carriage swayed, forcing another gasp from her lips.

“Are you nervous, Miss Addison?”

“Of course not, my lord.” She spoke primly, though her tone did not convey the confidence she evidently intended. “It’s only that I—well, I’ve never—”

“Ridden in a racing curricle?”

“No, my lord. The daughters of country clergymen are rarely afforded such opportunities.”

Ah. A clergyman’s daughter. That explained much—her clothing, her present position, the forbidden allure of an evening at the theater.

“Well, there’s no getting up to speed on these London streets,” he reassured her as he took up the reins.

Though he suspected it might not be the speed that concerned her, but rather the discovery that the curricle had a seat for two, with nary an inch to spare. She could not help but be aware—as he certainly was—of how their legs pressed against one another at hip and thigh and knee.

Then she tilted her chin just enough that he could see the twinkle in her eyes and said, “What a pity.”

Fallon, the near horse, gave his head a shake, rattling the harness and alerting Graham to the sudden tautness of his grip. He forced himself to relax his hold on the reins. “Perhaps another day, Miss Addison.”

“I know you do not mean that as a sincere offer, Lord Dunstane,” she said. “But I believe I would thoroughly enjoy such an outing.”

As would I.

He nearly spoke the words aloud, though he could hardly comprehend how they had risen to his tongue. He had purchased this curricle for the promise, the momentary pleasure, of outrunning his problems. Alone. He certainly had not purchased it for the prospect of taking young ladies on long country drives.

He didn’t take young ladies anywhere.

“Does Mrs. Hayes know that you go about without a servant to accompany you?”

It wasn’t concern that motivated the question. Not really. Graham made a point of not concerning himself with other people’s affairs, unless he could skewer them in a play. But a country miss, alone in London?

Innocence and enthusiasm were a dangerous combination, as he knew firsthand.

“I am a servant,” she reminded him. “I’m Mrs. Hayes’s companion.”

It wasn’t an answer to his question. “She calls herself your aunt.”

Ah, that pricked Julia’s conscience. He felt her shift on the narrow seat.

“Out of habit, I imagine,” she answered after a moment. “Her previous companion was her niece, who left when she married my brother, which is how I came by the post.”

“You went into service rather than live with your brother?” She likely thought him astonished by her decision, but his feelings were otherwise—something more akin to empathy and, at the very notion of having such a choice, spiked with a dash of envy.

“Jeremy has a taste for country living,” she said, turning to take in the bustle that surrounded them, the unbroken rows of shops and carts with their wares on display, the throngs of people along the pavement, and the tangle of conveyances in the street ahead. “I do not.”

“A clergyman like his father, I suppose.” To that, she made no answer at all. “To Clapham, then?” he asked after a moment, even as he longed, quite unaccountably, to choose another route, a dash to Brighton perhaps, some stretch of open roadway where he could let the horses have their heads.

“You needn’t go so far out of your way,” she said, though he’d given no indication as to where he was headed. “I have business to transact in Bond Street. At Porter’s Bookshop.”

At those last words, she looked away, as if she regretted having revealed so much.

“Again?” he said. “I confess myself astonished that you would require another volume of Hume so soon.”

As he’d hoped, his taunt brought her bright eyes back to his face. Stripes of color flushed across her cheekbones as she laughed, though a trifle self-consciously. “Did you doubt me when I told you that I find history excessively diverting?”