Chapter One #2
In fact, he slipped away from Isley Place that very night, leaving a gracious note to Lord Hazlett to explain that he was going away for a month or two, during which time he would most certainly call on Lady Lily.
There was another note for his kind old valet, and for his groom who had taught him to ride very carefully the gentlest of well-mannered horses.
Saddling, bridling, and grooming, were, of course, the safer lessons in horsemanship, and Isbourne was particularly skilled in them, so he had no trouble at all in preparing his own mount and riding quietly off into the night.
A massive relief, a sense of freedom that was almost joy began to build up inside him as he approached his own lantern-lit gates. The land beyond was still his, of course, but it was the open road, and he took it with huge excitement, in search of his first, long-awaited adventure.
He was no longer the Duke of Isbourne. To himself and everyone else he encountered, he would be merely Jack, which had been the name of his remote childhood before everyone had addressed him only by his title, as if he existed in no other form and with no other meaning.
Well, Jack was back, and he intended to have fun.
***
SOME THREE WEEKS LATER, he was seriously discommoded for the first time. He stood by the side of the road watching a plausible ruffian ride off at the gallop, taking his horse, his pistol, and all the cash in his pocket.
Jack did not much care for the highwayman who had robbed him, but it was certainly another experience to add to his growing list. Plus, it was a long walk to the next town, and he wasn’t convinced he could achieve it before nightfall.
A glance at the darkening sky warned him that rain was on the way.
Shrugging philosophically, he strode out, feeling slightly bereft without his horse.
Not that it was his own nag. He had changed horses frequently on his erratic journey—almost as often as he changed his surname—so that he would be harder to trace.
But he had developed some kind of friendship with each of those equines, the difficult and the obedient, the tired and the frisky.
He had met a number of interesting people, too, many of whom he had liked a great deal, and would never have encountered in the normal course of his life.
The highwayman was not one of those.
He had only been walking for about a quarter of an hour when a travelling coach pulled by four matching chestnuts swept past him in a cloud of dust. There were two coachmen on the box, and two outriders bristling with weapons.
To his surprise, this impressive equipage slowed and moved further to the side of the road where it halted. One of the outriders and a coachman seemed to be having a conference through the coach window with their passengers.
Rather wiser than before his trip began, the duke approached with caution.
The outrider appeared to be waiting civilly for him, but despite the outward respectability, he knew there were many tricks and flim-flams to be played on the unsuspecting.
The outrider turned his mount to face Jack and tugged his hat.
“Sir, my mistress is concerned that you were held up on the road.”
Jack halted some feet from him and rather wished the highwayman had not taken his pistol. “What could have made her imagine such a thing?”
Before the outrider could answer, the coach door sprang open and a lady’s head appeared. It was an undeniably beautiful head of copper-red curls framing a face so lovely that he forgot to breathe. Large, hazel-green eyes, exquisite cheek bones, full-lipped, almost sulky mouth.
Languidly, she looked him up and down.
“It may,” she drawled in a low, charmingly husky voice, “have something to do with the fact that you are in riding dress without a horse, coupled with our own recent experience seeing off a ruffian with two horses, who tried to hold us up too.”
Isbourne bowed. “Then I congratulate you, ma’am. I confess I came off rather worse.”
“Well, we shall both have our revenge by reporting the villain at the next town. Did he take everything?”
Isbourne turned out his pockets out to show the linings. Not even a penny remained there.
“Dear me. May I offer you a seat in my carriage, since we appear to be traveling in the same direction?”
Isbourne regarded her lovely yet weary young face, the elegant hat adorning her perfectly coiffed auburn curls and knew there were several tricks of this order.
And he had already proved himself to be an easy mark.
Against this, he weighed up his empty pockets, her polite ennui, her fascinating eyes, veiled in feminine mystery yet frankly amused at his caution.
He also took into consideration the clear disapproval of her scowling servants.
And his own inclinations. To say nothing of the rain clouds above which threatened a severe soaking.
“If it would not be an imposition,” he said diffidently, “I should be very grateful to be taken as far as Cogglesworth.”
The lady inclined her head and vanished from his view.
“Mind how you go, sir,” the coachman said pleasantly, yet with a clear warning in his voice as Jack climbed into the carriage and sat down in the vacant seat with his back to the horses.
The lady sat opposite him, alone, without maid or chaperone. Her servant’s warning to him began to make more sense. Jack might have had no experience of Society, but he knew the rules of propriety and etiquette.
The coach began to rumble forward, while she eyed him with an expression he could not read.
He said seriously, “This is indeed an imposition. I beg your pardon. I had not realized you were alone. You will not like to be seen with me in a closed carriage.”
A gleam of mockery eased into her eyes. “My dear sir, I am a widow, not a debutante, and there is much worse gossip to my name. It is your reputation that is liable to suffer.”
“Well, I shan’t tell if you don’t.”
That surprised a quick breath that might have been laughter. She settled back gracefully against the velvet squabs, watching him. “It strikes me, that for such a young man, you are taking your highway robbery very much in your stride.”
“Well, I have never been robbed before, so the mechanics of it were interesting, if quite inconvenient until you took me up.”
“I’m afraid there will be further inconveniences at Cogglesworth. I hope you have friends there?”
“Oh, no,” he said vaguely. “I will merely be passing through.”
“How?” she said at once. “You can have no means of buying another horse or paying your shot at the inn for the night. Yet you maintain a rather astonishing...insouciance.”
“Not quite so astonishing,” Jack said, crossing his left calf across his right knee and poking his fingers inside his mud-stained boot, while the lady watched him with some fascination.
When he fished out the roll of banknotes that had been wrapped around his leg, she laughed with genuine amusement that brought an involuntary smile to his own lips.
“Why, you are rather more than a pretty face,” she drawled. “I suppose you have a pistol in the other boot?”
“Sadly not. It made walking too hazardous. Perhaps you would tell me to whom I am indebted for my rescue?”
“Then you did not see the crest on the carriage door?”
“I had other things on my mind, although a crest does impress. My name is Jack De’Ath.” He used the name only very occasionally, but for some reason he wanted to give his rescuer the version nearest the truth.
Her eyebrows rose. “Not one of the Isbourne De’Aths? I didn’t know there were any left. Apart from the duke.”
“The Duke of Death?” Jack said boldly. “He certainly doesn’t acknowledge the connection. If he is still alive.”
“Oh, he is,” the lady said unexpectedly, preventing him from changing the subject as he intended. “Or at least he was a year or so ago. My brother knew him at Oxford.”
The duke blinked. He hadn’t known anyone at Oxford apart from the tutors and doctors and chaplains who had travelled with him, plus a college professor or two. And Amy who had cleaned his rooms.
“Well,” the lady continued, as though she perceived his scepticism, “perhaps saw him at Oxford would be more accurate. Barty glimpsed him occasionally surrounded by his entourage, poor boy, but never spoke to him. No one did.”
Poor boy. The description set his teeth on edge for some reason. There were times he had felt sorry for himself, but other people’s pity was intolerable. Particularly hers.
She said, “There was an on dit in London in the spring that his grace was dead—”
“At last,” Isbourne interpolated.
“As you say. And that the family were keeping it quiet so that the estate could be maintained and all the pensions paid as before.”
“Amusing,” Jack said.
“Do you think so?”
Was that disappointment in her languid voice? At any rate, there was silence until she spoke again.
“Are you travelling far, Mr. De’Ath?”
Relieved by the change of subject and wishing he had used a different surname after all, Jack said vaguely, “I have not decided.”
She blinked. “You have no destination in mind?”
“I do,” he admitted. “I’m just not sure how long I should take to get there.”
Again, amusement sparked through the weariness in her eyes. “So you just go where the spirit takes you? Good for you. One should not be wedded to custom—London for the Season, Brighton for summer, visiting friends and relatives in the autumn—and yet so many of us do it.”
“Why?” he asked.
She shrugged. “Habit, boredom, company. And occasionally, the unavoidable responsibility—you are lucky if you have none of those.”
“I am escaping them, temporarily. I should probably go home soon.” Or at least write to the uncles to prevent any hue and cry for him, or even a repeat of the rumours of his death that the lady had mentioned.
He stirred and met her gaze so suddenly that he surprised a warm, wistful expression on her face.
His heart gave a funny little bound because she was looking at him, though he suspected she did not actually see him, just her own private thoughts.
“You never did tell me your name,” he remarked.
She sat forward a little, extending one languid, gloved hand. “Tabitha Lisle. Such a good name for a widow, is it not? Old and fluffy like everyone’s favourite great aunt. Or cat.”
Hastily, he took her slender fingers and nodded over them which was as much courtesy as one could manage while seated in a coach.
He hoped it covered his unease, for Lisle was the family name of the Earl of Sark and therefore of the woman he was expected to marry.
And it could be no co-incidence that they were travelling in the vague direction of the earl’s country seat.
Perhaps Tabitha was the widow of one of old Sark’s sons. It was amazing how many people seemed to have died before Jack.
An even more alarming thought struck him. Could this be Lily, up to mischief and giving a name as misleading as his own? He could see no discernible likeness to the child he had met, but it had been a long time ago and his own memory was likely to be clouded.
This woman, Tabitha, was young but not girlish. He did not feel competent to guess her age, but surely an unmarried girl of such rank would not be travelling unchaperoned? No, she must be the widow she claimed to be.
He must have stared too long, for a tired, cynical smile curled her lips. “Yes, I am that Lisle, the Damned Dowager of Sark, the Wicked Widow herself. But you may safely release my hand. I shan’t use it to importune or seduce.”
He let her go at once, but he was not shocked by her blatant little speech, as she clearly intended him to be. There was too much challenge in it.
“Why do people call you those things?” he asked.
Again, he seemed to surprise her. “Because they are true. In my defence, they called Sark the Damned Earl, didn’t they? But the Wicked Widow is all my own work.”
“And are you?”
“Wicked?” she said. “When I choose to be. What of you?”
“Oh,” he said vaguely, “one cannot be good all of the time.”
She laughed, her eyes flashing with something unreadable and yet unbearably exciting. “A man after my own heart.”