Games of Pleasure by Julia Ross

ribbon. Something rather thrilling about being tied up like that, don’t you know?”
    The impulse to kill and do a little dismembering of his own washed hotly through Ryder’s blood, yet he stood up with studied unconcern.
    â€œThere’s also the small matter of some damage to duchy property—some furnishings, the minor defacement of some plaster. Trivial, but annoying.”
    Hanley threw aside the paper and rose to look the younger man in the eye. “I’m sure you can understand that no gentleman appreciates being made to look the fool by a harlot. She’s a gutter creature, Ryderbourne. Corrupt as a rotten peach. If you can find her, take her. Meanwhile, if you wish to dabble in home repairs, pray send a statement to my man of business. Now, if you’ll excuse me?”
    The newspaper slipped to the floor as the earl bowed and stalked out.
    Ryder inhaled several deep breaths. He was a St. George. He stood at the heart of the world’s greatest empire. He was as helpless as the most pitiful of the king’s subjects in his search for this one woman.
    Yet if Hanley had beaten her and discarded her in that boat, the man had better start practicing his aim with a pistol.
    He strode out onto St. James’s Street and walked blindly across the park. The Houses of Parliament bulked beside the Thames. At Westminster Bridge he stopped and gazed at the span of white arches over the river. Every week some poor wretch ended a miserable existence in those fast-flowing waters.
    But not Miracle! Surely life burned too brightly, too vibrantly, in her soul for such a desperate step? Yet she was obviously not in London, and meanwhile he had learned this single clue about where she might have gone.
    If she rode as much as forty or fifty miles in a day, she could be halfway to Derbyshire by now, but at some point she must have crossed the London to Bristol road. If he could once pick up her trail there, he could follow it. It was his only hope.
    Ryder spun about and stalked back to his townhouse.
    As dawn rose hazily over London the next morning, Ryder’s fastest carriage drove him west out of town. Once he passed Marl-borough, he would ask after the chestnut gelding at every tollhouse and inn where she might have been seen. If it took him the rest of his life, he would find her.
    THERE was solace in the night sky, but she could not eat stars. There was comfort in Lord Ryderbourne’s cloak, but it was not a warmth that soothed her heart. The imprint of sea and man disturbed her like a haunting shadow that she could not quite focus on.
    It was foolish. Fatal. Wrapped in his scent every night, she could not forget that one encounter with this one man. A duke’s son! Had she at least also given him a night to remember? Or had he already dismissed her from his mind and his life, and returned undisturbed to his daily round?
    There had been a time when she would have leaped at the chance to take such a powerful protector. Yet something had happened between them that she could not afford. The thought of it terrified her. Something that threatened her almost as deeply as the threat of Hanley’s revenge.
    But life had surely taught her to have courage and faith and perseverance. She would not give up now.
    The next morning Miracle struggled through endless fields and along boggy lanes that ran into quagmires of mud. Farm workers shot curious glances at her as she passed, but no one harassed her or asked where she was going. At last she climbed up a small rise and sat down on a fallen tree trunk to survey the countryside ahead.
    Beneath her lay a broad stretch of road, busy with travelers: the main Bristol turnpike from London. Carriages and coaches were turning in and out of the arched entryways to several grand inns on the edge of a sizable town.
    Several miles farther west a green path crossed the road. A drover’s track, running northwest. Another building, small and low-slung and fenced