Anne Gracie - [The Devil Riders 02] by His Captive Lady

for ages.”
    “It’s a ten-minute walk each way to that woman’s lodgings. Have patience.”
    He scowled and folded his arms.
    “Just look at the state of you!” Aunt Maude shook her head. “It would have saved me a great deal of bother if you’d told me about her in the first place, Harry.”
    “I didn’t know she was here,” he confessed. “She said she was going to London.”
    “Then why didn’t you go to London instead of wasting my time?” Aunt Maude said with asperity.
    He hesitated then said in a low tone, “Because she’d already turned me down.”
    Aunt Maude dropped her lorgnette. “What? That girl— that plain little spinster with not a penny to her name or a friend in the world—turned you down? And chose life with La Beasley instead?”
    Harry gritted his teeth. He wasn’t exactly flattered, either, especially not when he could see what she’d turned him down for. He recalled what she’d said about taking tea and reading aloud to a sweet old lady and tried to stifle a surge of ignoble satisfaction. How wrong she’d been. She should have chosen him.
    “What did you do to her?”
    Harry clamped his mouth shut. Wild horses wouldn’t drag that tale out of him, not to a living soul. He felt his face warm as he recalled the way he’d hauled an earl’s daughter into his arms and ravished her mouth till they both could barely stand.
    “Nothing. I was perfectly polite,” he said stiffly. “I made her a perfectly correct offer.”
    “And she turned you down.” His aunt chuckled. “I must meet this girl,” she declared. “There’s more to Lady Helen Freymore than meets the eye.”
     
Nell clutched the shawl to her and raced up the steep, cobbled street, ignoring the startled looks of the passers-by. The shawl wasn’t the slightest bit soiled, of course, it was just an excuse Mrs. Beasley had made to draw attention to herself, but oh, how glad Nell was of it. An escape.
    She was shaking.
    What was Harry Morant doing in Bath? In the Pump Room, of all places? He surely couldn’t have known she was here.
    Bath had been a last-minute detour. Mrs. Beasley had been feeling run down and her physician had recommended that on her way to London she stop off at Bath and take the waters. They’d been here a week now, and this morning Mrs. Beasley had announced that on Monday they would depart for London.
    Two more days.
    But Harry Morant had seen her and she could tell by his face that he wasn’t going to ignore her. She’d watched him out of the corner of her eye the whole time, from the moment he’d stepped through the doorway with his aunt.
    A frisson of feminine excitement had rippled through the room. Who could blame the ladies, she thought; he was such a handsome man, so tall and broad-shouldered and so . . . manly.
    She could still not believe that he had offered for her.
    She’d almost been tempted—what woman wouldn’t be? But it was just for a moment; there was really no choice. She had to find Torie.
    And finding Torie would remove whatever slender chance of marriage Nell had.
    No gentleman would take on a wife with an illegitimate daughter, especially if that wife had neither fortune nor looks.
    Harry Morant was ambitious, a man who was determined to move up in the world. More important, he was a man trying to put his own irregular birth behind him.
    So she wasn’t—she couldn’t be—interested.
    She was certain Torie was somewhere in London. Papa had died the day after he’d stolen her baby away, and he’d died on the London road, so he must have been coming back from there.
    She’d buried him in the village where he’d died. She’d sold his horse to pay for the funeral; she didn’t have the money to pay for him to be taken home. She tried to learn as much as she could about the circumstances of his death, and where he had been before, but nobody could tell her anything.
    She then traveled as far as she could toward London, questioning everyone she encountered on the