“Sir! Have you been attending?”

As Richard had learned from his youthful encounters with the Dowager Duchess of Dovedale, the best way to deal with irate ladies of a certain age was to be disarmingly honest.

“No, madam, I fear I was not.”

“Hmph. I said that now that the amenities have been served we would be pleased if you would take yourself off our boat.”

“I was afraid that was what you might have said.” Richard smiled winningly, while taking care to move himself out of the path of the parasol. “You see, I also paid the captain for the sole use of this ship.”

Miss Gwen’s face darkened alarmingly. Richard watched in some fascination as the flowers on her hat began to quiver with rage. Had she been a man, she would undoubtedly be indulging in strong language. As it was, given the ominous way she was swinging her parasol, it appeared that she was planning severe bodily harm to the captain, Richard, or both.

The quiet girl, Jane, moved forward to put a reassuring hand on the chaperone’s arm. “There must have been some mistake,” she said soothingly. “I’m sure we can all reach an amiable conclusion.”

Miss Gwen looked about as amiable as Attila the Hun.

“The only possible conclusion is for this gentleman to remove his person from our conveyance.”

Richard felt himself beginning to grow annoyed. Watching the chaperone bicker with her charge had been a mildly amusing diversion, but, blast it all, he had real work to do. Important work. War Office work. And, anyway, he had been here first.

That fact seemed like a particularly conclusive one to Richard, so he decided to point it out.

“Who was here first, madam?”

That argument had failed the Saxons in 1066; it was equally ineffectual with Miss Gwen, who regarded Richard with all the imperiousness of William the Conquerer. “You, my lord, may have been here first, but we are ladies,” Miss Gwen responded with a most unladylike scowl. “And there are more of us. Therefore, you should cede your place.”

“Why don’t we all go to the inn for a nice glass of lemonade and talk it over?” suggested Amy hopefully.

Neither of the combatants paid the least bit of attention to her.

Standing back with her arms folded across her chest—highly unladylike, but then, Miss Gwen wasn’t looking—Amy watched the debacle with the avid interest she would have accorded to a duel. As the two sparred, their barbed sentences ended with incongruous civilities, like protective tips on epées.

Lord Richard took a step closer to Miss Gwen, close enough that the chaperone had to tip her head back to see him. Miss Gwen was fairly tall for a woman, but Lord Richard Selwick topped her by nearly half a foot. His blond head loomed over the waving purple flowers on her bonnet, gleaming with its own light in the dim cabin. Unlike the men Amy had known back in Shropshire, who still wore their hair clubbed back with a ribbon, Lord Richard’s was cut short in the new French style. Lord Richard carried himself with an air of easy assurance infinitely more convincing than Derek’s swaggering. From his highly polished boots to his waistcoat embroidered in a subtle pattern in silver, he was dressed with a casual elegance that made Derek and his ilk look foppish and overdone. He had evidently anticipated being alone on the boat, because his black frock coat was tossed over a chair, his waistcoat unbuttoned and his cravat loosened. Where his collar gaped open, Amy could see the strong lines of his throat. He looked, Amy thought, like an illustration she had once seen of Horatius at the bridge, defending Rome against all comers.

Her cheeks flushed a deep, uncomfortable red as she realized that the cords of his throat had gone still, the room was silent, and Lord Richard was staring at her staring at him.

Amy covered her confusion by saying hastily, “This is absolutely ridiculous! There’s no reason at all why anybody should be forced to wait for the next boat. After all, there’s plenty of room for all of us.” With a sweeping gesture, she indicated the four walls of the room.

“Out of the question,” snapped Miss Gwen.

Amy shook her dark curls in an unconscious gesture of defiance. “Why?”

“Because,” Miss Gwen pronounced witheringly, “you cannot stay the night in the same room as a gentleman.”

“Oh.” Amy took a quick look at the watch pinned to Miss Gwen’s bony chest. From what she could make out, it looked to be just a little past four. Edouard’s carriage wasn’t due to pick them up until the following morning, anyway, so they would put up for the night at an inn in Calais. Surely it couldn’t take all that long to cross such a narrow body of water as the Channel. As long as they reached France before midnight, remaining in the cabin with Lord Richard couldn’t really be counted as spending the night in the same room as a man. After all, Amy resolved with splendid illogic, if nobody went to bed, it wasn’t spending the night.

“How long does it take to reach Calais, my lord?”

“That depends on the weather. Anywhere from two hours to three days.”

“Three days?”

“Only in very bad weather,” Richard drawled.

“Oh. But look! It’s absolutely lovely outside. Really, what’s the harm of sharing the space for an insignificant two hours?”

Amy looked around the small group expectantly. Jane suddenly turned toward the window, and held up her hand for silence. “Listen,” she said.

Amy listened. She heard the steady slap of waves at the keel of the boat, the keening cry of a seagull, and the scrape of their bags on the wood floor as the motion of the boat made them shift back and forth. Nothing more.

“What am I supposed to hear?” she asked curiously. “I don’t hear anything. Just—oh.”

From the disgruntled expression on Lord Richard’s face, she knew he had reached a similar conclusion.

Miss Gwen rapped her parasol impatiently on the ground. “Just what? Speak up, girl.”

Amy glanced from Jane to Lord Richard for confirmation. “I don’t hear the sounds of the people on the dock anymore.”

“That’s right,” Lord Richard nodded grimly. “We’ve set sail.”

Amy’s face fell for a moment. “So much for plan A,” she muttered. Stopping at the inn had ceased to be an option. At least she had the consolation of knowing that the odds of running into the Purple Gentian there had been slim in the extreme. For all she knew, he was in France at this very moment, giving instructions to his band of devoted men or filching documents from under the noses of French officials or . . . Upon reflection, it really was best that they get to France as quickly as possible.

“Well, that’s that, then!” Amy proclaimed cheerfully, making for the porthole to peer out. “There’s no point in arguing about it anymore, is there? Two hours and we’ll be in France! Do come look, Jane—don’t they look like dolls on the wharf?”

Miss Gwen stayed where she was, standing ramrod straight smack in the center of the room. Richard sank back down into the chair he had been occupying when the ladies had barreled into the room. “I don’t like this any better than you do,” he said softly. “But I shall endeavor to stay out of your path if you will keep your charges out of mine.”

Miss Gwen afforded him a grudging nod. “We must hope it doesn’t rain,” she said tartly, and stalked off to join her young ladies at the window.


Precisely three-quarters of an hour later, the first drops hit the porthole. Richard was alerted to it by Amy’s loud cry of distress.

“It can’t be raining, it can’t be raining, it just can’t be raining,” she muttered, like an incantation.

“Yes, it can,” said Richard.

Amy’s expression indicated that she was not amused. She cast him a look of great disdain that was somewhat diminished by the fact that the boat swayed suddenly and she had to stagger to catch her balance. “I can see that, can’t I?” She returned to her mournful vigil by the window, but couldn’t resist turning around to ask anxiously, “How much longer do you think the trip will take?”

“My dear girl, I already told you, anywhere from—”

“I know, I know, anywhere from two hours to three days.” She looked as frustrated as his mother’s cat when someone dangled a cloth mouse in front of her and then drew it away.

“It depends on how bad the storm is.”

“How bad do you—?” A low growl of thunder cut off her words. “Never mind,” she finished, just as Richard answered her unfinished question, “That bad.”

Despite herself, Amy laughed. The sound rang an unexpected note of gaiety in the rain-dimmed chamber. The portholes were too small to let in much light under any circumstances, and with the sun overcast with clouds, only the eerie gray glow of a stormy sky crept into the room. The gloom created a Sleeping Beauty effect. Jane had succumbed to sleep on a berth across the room, her embroidery still in her hand, her feet discreetly tucked up under the hem of her gown. Defying the usual laws of nature, Miss Gwen had managed to fall asleep upright in a rickety wooden chair. Even the combined forces of sleep and the rocking motion of the boat failed to relax Miss Gwen’s iron spine; she sat as bolt upright asleep as she had awake.

The only other person awake was Lord Richard Selwick.

Amy stifled the ignoble impulse to shake Jane awake. She needed to speak to someone about something, anything, just to dull the anticipatory jitters that were making her palms tingle. If she didn’t do something to distract herself soon, she would probably start running madly about the room or jumping up and down or twirling wildly in circles, just to spin off some of her excess energy. Even one of Uncle Bertrand’s lectures on cross-breeding sheep would be welcome.