The Baron’s Betrothal: An On-Again, Off-Again, On-Again Regency Romance (The Horsemen of the Apocalypse Series) (5 page)

Even with her funds restored, she couldn’t remain in hiding for a month, much less most of a year. She would never sell the baroque pearl earrings her father gave her on her twentieth birthday, nor could she part with her mother’s locket. Ever.

No doubt, her father had already hired Bow Street runners to find her. They’d have little trouble determining her route from London. She was an unusually tall, young lady traveling alone, which simply was not done, so her movements would have been particularly noteworthy. (Hence the wisdom of a sidearm.)
 

Then again, she dressed like a charwoman to be ignored, so it was conceivable no one noticed a gawky, overgrown servant seeking to squeeze into the hot, close confines of a mail coach headed to Shropshire.
 

No, she concluded, her father could afford the best runners. They would see through her ruse. Even now, they had to be on her trail, questioning innkeepers en route to determine her ultimate destination. Though out of the way, Clun village was on the map. Clun Forest was well enough known. Sightings in the village would be the final clue. She relished the thought of her father’s additional mortification upon learning she hid right under the baron’s brandy-blighted nose.

The runners were taking longer than she anticipated. Of course, she could always send news of her whereabouts to her dear friend Constance Traviston and ask that she, or her mother Lady Petra, reveal it to the earl ‘out of concern.’ First, she wanted her father to appreciate how upset she was and to regret his unilateral decision. He must recant, or do whatever one’s parent did, to render the infamous betrothal formally null and void.
 

If she became truly desperate, she could present her bedraggled self to old Lord Clun and cry off in person. Word around the village indicated he was expected soon though no one spoke at length to her about anything, much less his lordship. If possible, she hoped to avoid doing violence to the elderly lord’s sensibilities, but one could only bake scones and filch cow’s milk for so long.
 

She decided on the spot to redeem a chicken’s worth of her credit with the butcher. This helped her look forward to the coming day.

Much as she resented Mr. Tyler’s mocking tone, he hit a nerve when mentioning the delights of a hot bath. Elizabeth hadn’t felt clean since leaving London. For two days and a night she sat pressed up against the great unwashed, feeling nauseous inside a cramped, bouncing, swaying mail coach.
 

The chilly, that is to say frigid, water in the stream was extremely unpleasant for bathing. So she resorted to heating water in a cracked crockery bowl on the hearth and swabbing down the parts that most needed it with an old mobcap. It was just awful.
 

In the absence of soap, she felt herself ripening like a wheel of Stilton cheese.
 

She’d left all her pretty gowns and most of her unmentionables behind in London to travel light. Her clothing now consisted entirely of a slightly tatty kerseymere pelisse, her warmest woolen shawl and two simple, dark homespun shifts she plucked from a trunk of theatrical costumes stowed in the unused ballroom. If she’d aspired to play one of the witches in
Macbeth
, she would’ve looked the part. Indeed, the odd frocks might’ve been made for the purpose. She did pack several of her own chemises (she hated drawers), three pairs of silk stockings and two fine flannel petticoats with hems in simple cutwork because she refused to go entirely rustic during her rustication.
 

On the morning she ran away, she’d made her way to the kitchen, where she helped herself to a maid’s mobcap (now wash rag and all-purpose market bag) and a long, heavy linen apron to complete her servant’s costume. Before striking out, she realized no servant wore immaculate lilac kid gloves so she took them off and tucked them away. She did wear stays tied as well as she could manage because she would’ve otherwise felt scandalous going about completely unbound. Then she gritted her teeth, covered her head with the mobcap and muffled her bare hands within the shawl before she slipped away.
 

She’d counted on the fact that a servant scuttling through Mayfair streets early in the morning hardly mattered. No one would notice her flagging a hackney cab or eavesdrop on her telling the Jarvey she must run an errand for the lady of the house. She made no attempt at an accent, hoping her refined speech, like breadcrumbs, would help the runners trace her flight.

In Shropshire, Elizabeth disliked the witch’s weeds she wore, but reveled in her freedom from low bodices and short stays. No matter that they ended at her ribs, they pinched whenever she took a deep breath or wanted to laugh aloud.
⁸
What’s more, she couldn’t hope to lace them up properly by herself. She also grew accustomed to going about without gloves. There was too much to do that they impeded. One couldn’t possibly grasp a cow’s teat and produce a stream of milk without ruining one’s suede gloves. (Although having seen the calluses on the village dairyman’s hands, cows might appreciate gloves on
him
at milking time.) In any event, the village women only wore gloves on Sundays. So she kept the pair she brought neatly folded in her portmanteau.
 

The cottage, with its thatched roof, was quaint in its way, but the thatch sheltered numerous small rodents that were full of frisk at night. The sound of tiny, skitter-y mouse feet forever dampened Elizabeth’s initial transports of joy over her charming abode. Mice kept her vigilant most of each night.
 

But be that as it may, she would never admit any sort of discomfort to a smug bumpkin like Mr. Tyler. If she were to meet him again before being whisked back to civilization, he would still find her happy as a lark in spring.
 

Please, she prayed,
please
let the runners find her soon.

* * *

The baron crept as near as he dared to the little thatched cottage. The waning moon offered paltry light by which to find his way and a dry twig snapped underfoot. He froze, hunkered down and held his breath. She had a gun after all. Fortunately, no one stirred. Hard to believe she could sleep soundly on her paltry straw bed.
 

He sniggered to himself.

At dinner, he’d noticed her rough pallet in the corner. He knew he shouldn’t let his betrothed sleep on a pile of musty straw for long. The problem was that he couldn’t make her more comfortable without revealing himself and he had no intention of doing that. Not just yet.
 

Settling against an ancient yew tree’s thick, interwoven trunk, he withdrew both pistols from his greatcoat pockets and laid them carefully on either side of his hips. Though tired, he made certain he was too uncomfortable to fall asleep. Lady Elizabeth would rest safe tonight.

At dawn, Clun crept away to return to The Graces, where he spent most of the day with Roddy reviewing the estates’ ledgers and discussing plans for the spring planting and livestock. Late in the afternoon, Clun shaved again and took himself off to the cottage.

Chapter 3
 

In which there are partridges and pranks.

A
s Elizabeth went about preparing her evening meal, she whistled and sang off key to herself. Earlier that day, her good friend the butcher had given her two plump, plucked partridges. She mashed dried black currants she’d found, slipped some under the skin and spread the rest over the birds before skewering them on a spit to roast over the fire. All the while, she thought about the annoying stranger who came to her aid yesterday.
 

Mr. Tyler was handsome. Strong. Charming when not infuriating. And blessedly tall.
 

Height was something of which Elizabeth was painfully aware. Though not the tallest woman in the
ton
, she only missed that misfortune by an inch or so.
 

Elizabeth’s petite friend, Constance, envied her height and told her she had ‘willowy grace.’ The salesmen at Grafton House in New Bond Street adored her height. Then again, drapers so enjoyed charging the earl for the yardage it took to dress her in true Indian muslin or to enshroud her in diaphanous layers of silk in the Grecian style. For an exorbitant fee, London’s most exclusive dressmakers came to No. 1 Damogan Square and fashioned elongated riding habits and morning, walking, carriage, dinner and evening dresses for her. The last, with their demure puff sleeves and low-cut bodices accentuated her swan’s neck and ample bust, or so the modistes swore. Those gowns made her feel particularly weedy and over exposed.
 

Men did not help matters either.
 

Elizabeth was tall enough to look most of them square in the eye. Her frank, level gaze unsettled them almost as much as it displeased her. At balls, she disliked reaching across or down to place her hand on a man’s shoulder while waltzing.
 

Those not discouraged by her stature, especially short, shameless men, openly enjoyed having her décolletage at eye level. They addressed their
bon mots
happily to her bodice in conversation. Transfixed by her twin, mute mounds, her partners’ attention rarely strayed up to her mouth, which could make reply but was usually fixed in a tight not-quite-smile. And their gazes never ventured further northward to her chignon-topped polar region where the glacial glint in her green eyes would’ve frozen them solid.
 

Elizabeth had suffered through her first Season with few men of acceptable stature. Due to unfortunate circumstances, her second Season was postponed a year until the spring of 1815. And after the war ended in June, strapping officers began to filter back to England from the continent just in time to lift her mood. And her sightline.

The earl warned Elizabeth repeatedly against attractive, ineligible military men ‘determined to cozen her heart and marry her fortune.’ Too many second and third sons of nobility returned from war only to ruin themselves in gaming hells. This meant the chances of a desperate bachelor compromising her to claim her dowry grew exponentially. Elizabeth shrugged off his concern, confident that she could discourage undesirables. Evidently, her father did not share her confidence and took matters into his own hands.
 

With the sudden surfeit of tall, dashing Ineligibles in Society, Elizabeth had just begun to enjoy the Season’s last entertainments when the exasperated earl discreetly negotiated her betrothal to the Right Honorable Baron Clun.

For her further protection, the earl insisted that the
ton
— and in particular, rascals neck deep in the River Tick — learn of her betrothal only after she’d married and the
Times
had published the announcement. Lord Clun agreed to this. The baron also agreed without demur to the customary yearlong betrothal, during which she was expected to come to terms with her future and prepare herself for it.
 

While Elizabeth understood the earl’s motives, she had detested his methods. She wanted a groom of her own choosing. (That Society was populated by leering, bug-eyed midgets during the war wasn’t her fault, was it?) But in accordance with her father’s wishes, and because she couldn’t quite believe it would come to pass, she agreed only to speak of her betrothal to Constance and Lady Petra, on whose discretion she could rely.

For some time after the earl had divulged the absurd arrangement, Elizabeth’s marriage remained an improbability. Lord Clun never came to call and she never complained. (Why beg for trouble?) Moreover, she never laid eyes on him at Vauxhall, the opera, or any subsequent private function, so she concluded he was too elderly or fat to make the effort. She remained complacent until without warning the earl told her, in effect, that she would be wed and packed off to Shropshire as the baron’s legal chattel at month’s end.

Naturally, she fled.
 

Now, she lay on a foraged hay pallet each night, a grubby, fermenting runaway listening to the squeaks and faint scribble-scrabble of mice till dawn.

The earl should’ve trusted her. She knew how to manage men of the
ton
. The less than civilized specimen she encountered the previous evening, on the other hand, was attractive beyond her wildest imaginings and utterly ineligible. Mr. Tyler stood over her, grinned down at her, and the breadth of him surrounded her. He left her feeling somehow incandescent
⁹
in a way she couldn’t explain. Still, he would not do.
 

Try as she might to steer her mind back on the road to rectitude, she couldn’t stop thinking in the direction of a deep ditch.

Just then, the Utterly Ineligible himself strode into the clearing near the cottage, as if her wayward thoughts conjured him from the gloaming mists. He wore a snowy white linen shirt, an open greatcoat and snug buckskin breeches tucked into unadorned boots. No frock coat only a plain waistcoat, she noticed. His undress was scandalous even for a farmer; still, she was glad to see more of the man and less of the trappings that might have disguised him.
     

Stare she must and did till she looked way unnerved.

“Something amiss, Lady Elizabeth?” Mr. Tyler asked as he bowed to her. When he stood before her, she tilted her head up to allow a moment of eye contact. She did so enjoy the prospect of him. His heavy black brows suited his direct, jet gaze. He had a strong, straightforward nose, a masterful jaw, chiseled into angles with a hint of cleft in his chin that tempted her to explore its contour. His hair, though combed, was too long to be
comme il faut
. She dropped her gaze lower. His bull’s neck sported a simply tied cravat.
 

For the first time ever, a man made her feel delicate. At last, she smiled.

“Lady Elizabeth, you look
Rrr
ather bemused,” he rumbled sensuously.

“That I am, Mr. Tyler.” Again, she smiled up at him. “That I am.”

* * *

Heaven help him, her smile dazed him like a blow to the head. Who was this demure lady and what in damnation did she do with yesterday’s she-devil?