“You are going to have to come along with me,” he said ungraciously.

“I most certainly will not!”

“Very well, then,” he said, turning away, “you may remain here in virtuous isolation.”

She looked about her, and this time panic assaulted her knees as well as her stomach, and she almost sank into the snow never to be heard from again.

“Where are we?” she asked. “Do you have any idea?”

“Somewhere in Somersetshire,” he said. “Apart from that I have not the foggiest notion, but most roads, I have learned from past experience, lead somewhere eventually. This is your last chance, ma’am. Do you wish to explore the great unknown in my fiendish company, or would you prefer to perish alone here?”

It irked her beyond words that really she had no choice.

The two coachmen were exchanging words again, she was aware—none too gentle words either.

“Take an hour or two in which to decide,” the gentleman said with heavy irony, cocking that eyebrow again. “I am in no hurry.”

“What about Thomas?” she asked.

“Thomas being the man in the moon?” he asked. “Or your coachman, perhaps? He will bring the horses and follow us.”

“Very well, then,” she said, glowering at him and then pressing her lips together.

He strode ahead of her to the blue carriage, sending up showers of snow as he went. Frances picked her way more cautiously after him, trying to set her feet in the ruts made by the wheels.

What a coil this was!

He offered his hand again to help her up into the carriage. It was a wonderfully new carriage, she saw resentfully, with plush upholstered seats. As soon as she sat on one of them she sank into it and realized that it would offer marvelous comfort even through a long journey. It also felt almost warm in contrast with the raw elements outside.

“There are two bricks on the floor, both of them still somewhat warm,” the gentleman told her from the doorway. “Set your feet on one of them and cover yourself with one of the lap robes. I will see about having your belongings transferred from your carriage to mine.”

The words themselves might have seemed both kind and considerate. But his clipped tone belied that possible impression, as did the firmness with which he slammed the door shut. Frances nevertheless did as he had suggested. Her teeth were literally chattering. Her fingers might have felt as if they were about to fall off if she could just feel them at all—she had abandoned her muff inside her own carriage.

How long was she going to have to endure this insufferable situation? she wondered. She was not in the habit of hating or even disliking people on sight. But the thought of spending even half an hour in close company with that arrogant, bad-tempered, sneering, contemptuous gentleman was singularly unappealing. Just the thought of him made her bristle.

Would she be able to find some other mode of travel from the first village they came to? A stagecoach, perhaps? But even as the thought flashed through her mind, she realized the absurdity of it. They would be fortunate to reach any village. Was she expecting that if they did, there would be no trace of snow there?

She was going to be stranded somewhere overnight—without any female companion and without a great deal of money since she had refused what her great-aunts had tried to press upon her. She would be fortunate if that somewhere did not turn out to be this carriage.

The very thought was enough to make her gasp for air.

But it was a distinct possibility. It had seemed to her eyes just a couple of minutes ago that the road was all but invisible.

She countered panic this time by setting her feet neatly side by side on the slightly warm brick and clasping her hands loosely in her lap.

She would trust to the skills of the strange, impertinent Peters, who had turned out not to be hunchbacked after all.

Now this would be an adventure with which to regale her friends when she finally reached Bath, she thought. Perhaps if she looked more closely at him, the gentleman would even turn out to be describable as tall, dark, and handsome—the proverbial knight in shining armor, in fact. That would have Susanna’s eyes popping out of her head and Anne’s eyes softening with a romantic glow. And it would have Claudia pursing her lips and looking suspicious.

But, oh, dear, it was going to be hard to find any humor or any romance in this situation, even when she looked back on it from the safety of the school.

His mother had warned him that it would snow before the day was out. So had his sisters. So had his grandfather.

So indeed had his own common sense.

But since he rarely listened to advice—especially when offered by his family—and rarely heeded the dictates of common sense, here he was in the midst of a snowfall to end snowfalls and looking forward with less than eager zeal to spending the night at some obscure country inn in the middle of nowhere. At least he hoped he would spend it at some inn rather than in a hovel or—worse yet—inside his carriage.

And he had been in a black mood even before this journey began!

He looked hard at his woman passenger after he had climbed inside the carriage with her, everything that needed tending to having been accomplished. She was huddled beneath one of the woolen lap robes, the muff he had rescued from the other carriage and tossed in a couple of minutes ago under there with her, and he could see that her feet were resting on one of the bricks. Huddled was perhaps the wrong word to describe her posture, though. She was straight-backed and rigid with hostility and determined dignity and injured virtue. She did not even turn her head to look at him.

Just like a dried-up prune, he thought. All he could see of her face around the brim of her hideous brown bonnet was the reddened tip of her nose. It was only surprising that it was not quivering with indignation—as if the predicament in which she found herself were his fault.

“Lucius Marshall at your service,” he said none too graciously.

He thought for a moment that she was not going to return the compliment, and he seriously considered knocking on the roof panel for the carriage to stop again so that he could join Peters up on the box. Better to be attacked by snow outside than frozen by an icicle inside.

“Frances Allard,” she said.

“It is to be hoped, Miss Allard,” he said, purely for the sake of making conversation, “that the landlord of the next inn we come to will have a full larder. I do believe I am going to be able to do justice to a beef pie and potatoes and vegetables and a tankard of ale, not to mention a good suet pudding and custard with which to finish off the meal. Make that several tankards of ale. How about you?”

“A cup of tea is all I crave,” she said.

He might have guessed it. But, good Lord—a cup of tea! And doubtless her knitting with which to occupy her hands between sips.

“What is your destination?” he asked.

“Bath,” she said. “And yours?”

“Hampshire,” he said. “I expected to spend a night on the road, but I had hoped it would be somewhat closer to my destination than this. No matter, though. I would not have had the pleasure of making your acquaintance or you mine if the unexpected had not happened.”

She turned her head then and looked steadily at him. It was quite obvious to him even before she spoke that she could recognize irony when she heard it.

“I believe, Mr. Marshall,” she said, “I could have lived quite happily without any of the three of those experiences.”

Tit for tat. Touché.

Now that he had more leisure to look at her, he was surprised to realize that she was a great deal younger than he had thought earlier. His impression when his carriage passed hers and again on the road outside had been of a thin, dark lady of middle years. But he had been mistaken. Now that she had stopped frowning and grimacing and squinting against the glare of the snow, he could see that she was only perhaps in her middle twenties. She was almost certainly younger than his own twenty-eight years.

She was a shrew, nevertheless.

And she was thin. Or perhaps she was only very slender—it was hard to tell through her shapeless winter cloak. But her wrists were narrow and her fingers long and slim—he had noticed them when she took the muff from his hand. Her face was narrow too, with high cheekbones, her complexion slightly olive-hued, apart from the red-tipped nose. Put together with her very dark eyes, lashes, and hair, her face invited the conclusion that she had some foreign blood flowing through her veins—Italian, perhaps, Mediterranean certainly. That fact would account for her temper. Beneath her bonnet he could see the beginnings of a severe center part with smooth bands of hair combed to either side and disappearing beneath the bonnet brim.