Page 26 of The Lady Makes Her Mark

But she had not anticipated the dangers of a simple carriage ride into the country. She did not know how to escape the treachery of her own thoughts.

“I’ll t-take it. Yes. Th-thank you,” she stammered as soon as his hands fell away, turning back toward the girl with hot cheeks and fumbling beneath the added layer of fabric for her reticule.

Once the purchases had been rung up, paid for, and wrapped, Lord Ryland stepped forward to pick up the bundle—everything but the mantle, which she still wore.

The girl nodded toward the array of packages. “Much obliged, Mrs.—”

“Cooper,” Ryland supplied, without hesitation this time.

They did not speak again until they were on the street. “Fortuitous, wasn’t it,” she said, mostly to keep from having to speak of anything else, “that she had this cloak waiting? But perhaps we ought to cut across before we reach the Jolly Gander. It might be recognized.” She glanced upward to see if Lord Ryland had smiled at her little joke.

His expression was abstracted, as if his thoughts were far away, though he did steer them back to the other side of the street with his free hand.

“Is it Cooper, I wonder?” he mused, once they had gained the opposite pavement. “The name came to you so readily last night, I began to wonder.”

“I, uh . . .” She pretended to test its familiarity in her mind. In reality, she was recalling the day Lady Stalbridge had approached her while she had been sketching in the park. Some nearby children had been laughing and rolling an iron hoop. Constantia had thought of the cooper who had made the barrel from which the hoop had been salvaged and wondered whether he would have been gladdened by the sight. “No,” she told Lord Ryland firmly. “No, I don’t believe it is.”

But he didn’t appear to have been waiting for, or even listening to, her reply.

“Then this morning, as I watched you draw in the church, I thought that ‘Miss C.’ might be a reference to the artist’s critical eye. You see what others do not.”

The idea was surprisingly poetic, and more flattering than she had any right to expect, especially given the previous drawings she’d made of him.

“Perhaps,” she conceded, as they walked on toward the Coach and Cask. “Art does require perceptiveness.”

In the distance, she saw that their carriage was waiting in the stable yard. The repairs must be complete, for the horses were even now being hitched. A curious mixture of relief and apprehension surged through her, and she glanced up again, studying the contours of her companion’s visage, grateful for the shielding edge of her new hood.

In the case of Lord Ryland, had she failed in the past to perceive the real man?

Or was she now so desperate she was seeing only what she wished to see?