Chapter One
Miss Serena Davenport had almost given the Frenchman the slip, but not quite.
She was traveling from London to Oxford posing as a lady of leisure. She tried to behave as one of her cousins might, as an empty-headed girl who never had a moment’s worry, and who never thought of anything beyond her next bonnet, or the next waltz. She tried very hard to compose her features into those bland, quiet lines. In spite of her dazzling red hair and well-endowed frame, she tried to comport herself like a lady.
She failed.
The Unicorn was a quiet inn, in spite of being only a short distance from the Great North Road. It did a brisk but relaxing trade in pensive ales and calming beers. It was not a place for a tall red head, or for a wild Frenchman. If her adversary were to arrive, he would definitely be seen for what he was: a blight on the landscape, on the green haven that was England.
Serena stepped into the quiet inn, and for once in her life, drew no notice. The men inside were not lusting after a red-haired Valkyrie who, despite her quiet gray gown and black cape, looked like a French opera dancer. All minded their own business, save for a man seated in the corner, as far from the noisy doorway and the sunlit windows as he could get.
Arthur, Baron Farleigh sat staring down into a small beer that he had yet to touch. Until he looked up from it, and met her eyes.
Serena knew then that she would succeed. In that one moment, with Arthur looking hard at her face, clearly trying to remember where he had seen her before, Serena knew that she would win. She would get her father’s legacy safely to Magdalen College. Sir Chester Davenport would be remembered, not as a man who had little sense and less luck, but as a man of discovery.
The Frenchman would fail.
She heard a shout from the inn yard, and the frightened bleat of a sheep who had wandered off from the commons. She knew that the Frenchman often left shouting men and frightened farm animals in his wake. She had very little time to accomplish what she must now do.
Unlike the sheep, she was no longer frightened. She tossed back the hood of her cloak and strode across the public room to the man seated in the corner.
Arthur Farleigh did not look alarmed, as he no doubt should have, but puzzled, as if he still could not place her. She did not hesitate, but leaned down and kissed him.
“Husband,” she said, loud enough for the entire inn to hear her. “I am so glad to be home.”
***
Arthur, Lord Farleigh, had been drowning his sorrows in a bit of beer. Though he had been deserted on the road to Gretna Green by his intended, he did not feel particularly sorrowful. Annoyed, perhaps, and more than a bit relieved. Of course, his problem still loomed before him, the very prickly notion of where he was going to find a wife.
In that moment, a vision from his past stepped into the inn, crossed the room, and kissed him.
“Serena?” he asked, dumbfounded.
The woman he had not seen in over a decade sat down beside him as if she had done so every day of her life. She crowded close, not like a doxy meaning to display her wares, but as a wife might, reaching for the bit of bread that he had left untouched on the table beside him. The vision before him reached for the butter, too, and slathered it on. That was when he knew that he was right.
“Serena Davenport, I thought you were in Italy.”
She laughed, the same tinkling laughter he remembered from their childhood. He did not laugh
Similar Books
