Not that it mattered. Mr. Colin Selwick’s psychoses—and I was sure a good psychiatrist could diagnose him with quite a few—were his own concern. In the meantime, I had the trunk of papers all to myself, and a whole night to read them in. Why waste time speculating about insufferable modern men when one could read about swashbucklers in capes and knee breeches?

Even if, from Amy’s letters, it appeared that Lord Richard Selwick was quite as infuriating as his obnoxious descendant.

At least Lord Richard had a good excuse, I decided charitably. Hiding a secret identity must put a considerable strain on a man.

Setting the precious bundle of papers down next to me, I tugged off my gangrenous boots, tucked my feet up under me, and leaned my back against the side of the armchair. Ruffling through the documents in my hands, I selected one from Lord Richard Selwick to his friend Miles Dorrington and resumed reading.

I would give Lord Richard a chance to prove himself more congenial than his aggravating descendant. . . .

Chapter Nine

Edouard’s carriage wasn’t there.

Amy looked out over the street for the fifth time in as many minutes. There was still no sign of a carriage bearing the Balcourt crest. The dock at Calais lacked the bustle and flurry Miss Gwen had frowned over at Dover. In the weak, early morning light, the wharf was almost eerily deserted. Only one carriage had braved the dawn chill, a battered black carriage with a broken sidelamp, and starbursts of mud along its sides. When they had wobbled off the ship an hour before in predawn dark, Amy had seen the bulk of a carriage, and assumed it must be Edouard’s. The coachman’s striding past them and making straight for the cargo in the hold had dispelled that happy notion. With little else to do, Amy tugged her shawl tighter and watched idly as three men in rough work clothes trotted up and down the gangplank, heaving assorted boxes and bundles into the carriage. Surely Edouard would arrive soon?

Amy started at the sound of hooves racketing against cobblestones. Four black horses trotted into view, followed by a sleek black carriage. The coachman rose on his box and gave an unservile halloo in a decidedly English voice. He was answered by the all too familiar tones of Lord Richard Selwick. It was utterly unfair, thought Amy, that a man as devoid of honor as Lord Richard should have his coach arrive on time while theirs was nowhere in sight. Where was the justice in that? Shouldn’t he be at the top of the list for divine retribution for his perfidy? Oh well, there was yet time for justice to be served. Maybe his carriage wheel would fall off and leave him stranded in a ditch.

“Hullo, Robbins!” Richard left his perch atop a pile of trunks and strode over to his carriage. “Have a nice drive?”

“As nice as can be had on them damned French roads, milord—begging your pardon, ladies,” the coachman hastily added, as Miss Gwen’s loud sniff of reproach alerted him to the presence of three rather disheveled female persons on the wharf. “All pits and potholes, they are,” he earnestly explained to Miss Gwen.

Miss Gwen sniffed again.

Feeling that he’d done the best he could to atone for his profanity, Robbins shrugged and turned his back on the old harpy with the strange hat. “When do I get to drive on good English roads again, milord?”

“When Bonaparte donates his collection of antiquities to the British Museum,” Richard said dryly. The words came out by rote; he and Robbins had been through the same routine several times before. Richard’s attention had shifted to the tousled collection of females huddling on the windy wharf.

The second he looked at Amy, she scowled violently.

It would have been quite an effective scowl if the wind hadn’t blown her curls into her face. Richard couldn’t help grinning as he watched Amy paw clumps of hair out of her mouth. She looked like a bedraggled kitten dealing with fur balls.

He, of course, didn’t feel one way or the other about the girl. Well, all right, he did feel quite an uncomfortable tightening in certain parts of his breeches when the wind flattened her skirts against her legs, just as it was doing now, outlining her—Richard let out his breath in a rush. It was best not to think about what the wind was outlining. At any rate, aside from lust—which, he quickly reminded himself, was a physical reaction, which could have been brought on by any other female with kissable Cupid’s-bow lips and intriguing curves outlined by fine yellow muslin—he felt nothing for her. She was just a chance acquaintance, and if she happened to dislike him, that was her own affair. He scarcely knew her.

He did, however, know Edouard de Balcourt. Balcourt would think nothing of leaving his female relations stranded in Calais for a week, if sending the carriage to pick them up didn’t suit his own schedule. Richard could easily imagine Balcourt being distracted by a fitting for the latest style of breeches and completely forgetting to send the carriage at all. He didn’t like to think of three gently bred young ladies being stranded by the wharf. Certainly, there were inns in Calais, but they catered to a very different sort of clientele. No doubt there was at least one respectable establishment, but docks, as Richard knew far too well from his peregrinations back and forth across the Channel, tended to attract the most unsavory sort of riffraff. With that deadly parasol of hers, Miss Gwen made a formidable guard—whoever picked her to look after Amy and Jane had known what they were about—but, even so . . . Richard imagined Henrietta stranded for a week in Calais and his lips tightened grimly. There was nothing for it but to take the women back to Paris with him.

Amy caught Richard’s eye, flushed, and quickly looked away again. “Insufferable man!” she muttered.

“Amy, I really wish you would tell me what happened between you and Lord Richard.”

“Shhhh! He’s coming this way!”

Casually swinging his hat in one hand, Lord Richard strolled towards them . . . and past them, bowing to Miss Gwen.

“Madam, your carriage seems to have been . . . delayed. May I be so bold as to offer the use of mine?”

Oh no, thought Amy. Oh no, no, no.

Amy drew herself to her full five feet and three inches and set her chin. “That really won’t be necessary! I’m sure Edouard’s coach will arrive any minute now, don’t you think? There are dozens of reasons why it might have been delayed. Broken wheels or bandits or . . .” Amy’s voice petered out. Miss Gwen and Lord Richard, on either side, were looking down at her with frighteningly similar expressions of polite incredulity. “Well, I’m sure there must be bandits, and a broken wheel could happen to anyone!”

“Indeed.” Lord Richard positively exuded skepticism in a highly unpleasant way.

Richard felt highly unpleasant. Here he was, trying to do something nice for the girl, dash it all, despite all of the extremely rude things she had said to him the night before, and she was treating him as though he had offered to convey her to a leper colony! She could at least attempt to be civil in return. For heaven’s sake, it wasn’t as though he had murdered her parents.

Amy took a deep breath and resisted the urge to stamp her foot. Preferably on Lord Richard’s. Again. “At any rate, when Edouard’s carriage does arrive—which it will—it would be dreadfully rude of us not to have waited for it, after he’s put his coachman to so much trouble. And what if the coachman thinks we haven’t arrived yet and stays to wait for us? Why, the poor man could be stranded here for days!”

“Your concern for your brother’s coachman does you credit, Miss Balcourt,” Lord Richard commented dryly, with a wry twist of the lips that suggested that he knew it was not Edouard’s coachman who troubled her, “but, at present, you seem to be the one stranded, not he.”

Amy squared her shoulders for further argument, but Miss Gwen prevented her with a commanding thump of her parasol. “I will have no more argument from you, Miss Amy! Your brother’s coach was to have been here this morning. It was not. Therefore we are accepting Lord Richard’s kind offer, and I trust that your brother’s coachman, should he appear, shall have the basic sense to return to Paris. Is that understood? My lord, you may instruct your man to load our baggage.”

“Miss Meadows, I am yours to command. Miss Balcourt, the opportunity to extend our acquaintance, as I am sure you will agree, is an unexpected delight.”

“Indeed.” Amy tossed his own word back at him with twice the skepticism.

And he laughed. The bounder actually laughed.

Amy stomped off to the side of the dock as Richard’s coachman joined two sailors in loading all of their trunks onto the top of the carriage. At least, she tried to stomp. Her kid boots made disappointingly little noise on the wooden planks. Amy longed for loud noises—stomping boots, slamming doors, breaking china—to vent her displeasure. Oh for a parasol to thump like Miss Gwen! “Maybe that’s why she carries it,” Amy murmured to the waves. The waves crashed obligingly in affirmative response.

“It is very good of him.” Jane slipped an arm through Amy’s.

“It gives the appearance of goodness,” Amy corrected crossly. She stole a glance at Richard, who was speaking gravely to Miss Gwen. “All the better to hide a thoroughly black heart.”

Jane’s pale brows drew together in concern. “What did he do to make you feel so about him? Amy, he didn’t behave improperly to you?”

“No,” Amy said grumpily, feeling, if possible, even crosser than before. The memory of the almost-kiss—had it even been an almost-kiss?—danced mockingly at the edge of memory, taunting her with her own foolishness. Good heavens, how could she even have considered kissing such a base rogue? Amy wasn’t sure whether she was more irate with Richard for charming her into liking him or with herself for allowing herself to be charmed when she ought to have known better. Either way, she was irate.