Chapter One
“I’ll be glad to put Egton Bridge at my back,” Sophie Potter grumbled as she left the Middleton Coach Company. “I cannot believe that man kept us waiting most of the afternoon, knowing we’d traveled all the way from London.”
She clapped her hat to her head. It was either that or let the wind send it reeling.
“Middleton’s losing control of his company thanks to the railway,” her man of business, Noah Carver, replied. “He’ll take any chance to exert what power he has left.”
Sophie had worked with Noah for two years, since he helped her purchase her family’s hackney business.
She usually appreciated his calm, measured demeanor.
Today, however, it grated on her nerves.
“It’s not my doing that progress has eroded his profits.
I didn’t dig a hole and shove his head into it. ”
Just like she hadn’t shoved cards and glasses of whiskey into her cousin’s hands. She hadn’t made him careless of the business that had been dropped into his lap, or the lives that depended upon his nonexistent good sense. Even his own family’s.
“Just so.” Noah’s wide smile matched the gleam in his deep brown eyes. “But then you wouldn’t have a chance to expand your holdings.”
Sophie shook her head and smiled. She was never certain if he was an intelligent man with a wicked bent or simply a wicked man with a brain better than most.
Then again, if he was wicked, he’d never tried to be wicked with her. Which might just mean she wasn’t what he was looking for in a woman.
Men weren’t interested in women who worked in trousers, braved the weather, and couldn’t wear lace gloves for fear of their calluses snagging them.
Their driver was waiting next to the open door, worrying the brim of his hat between his fingers. “We have a problem with the route, Mr. Carver.”
“What sort of problem, Dumfries?” Sophie asked.
The man frowned before refocusing on Noah. “Due to the hour, the fog’s rolled in from Whitby. The north road will be too dangerous.”
“South, then?” Noah looked at her, one fine eyebrow arched almost to the brim of his hat, and waited for her nod. “What’s the nearest village to the south?”
“Goathland, sir. There’s a small inn there, but we’ll be racing the fog. It’d be best if we stayed put and waited till morning.”
Sophie wasn’t wasting another minute in this town.
“No,” Noah said. “Let’s make for Goathland. We’ll pick up the main road after breakfast tomorrow.”
Dumfries dawdled at the door. “Begging your pardon, sir.”
Sophie resisted rubbing her temple. A treacherous road, in the dark, with a thick fog—it all meant they should be on their way. “Is it not possible to double back once the fog has cleared?”
This time, the driver focused on her. “It’s possible, miss, but you see”—he drew a deep breath—“the moor is haunted.”
“Haunted?” she and Noah asked in unison, the same tinge of humor in their voices.
“Aye.” Dumfries nodded, grave as a judge. “There’s a headless coachman driving about looking for the lady he lost. And she wails from the other side, always out of reach.”
Sophie blinked. A grown man. Afraid of ghosts. “Of all the—”
“Thank you for the warning, Dumfries.” Noah touched her waist the way he often did, just the slightest brush of his fingers. “But we’ll take our chances and trust you to get us to Goathland unharmed.”
Sophie had grown accustomed to the signal. It was a cross between an apology for speaking for her and a reminder to continue their ruse. She always appreciated the apology, and God knew she often needed the reminder to hold her tongue when they were in public.
But she would never be unaffected by his touch. It took all she had to keep from stepping closer or melting against him the way she had seen other ladies do.
“As you wish, sir.” The driver donned his hat and tugged its brim as he nodded to Sophie. “It’ll be a damp, bumpy ride, miss. And the moor’s a frightening thing in the dark.”
Sophie ignored the shiver down her spine and masked her irritation with a fleeting smile. “Thank you, Dumfries,” she said as she accepted Noah’s help into the coach. “I’m certain I’ll manage.”
The warmth in her fingers had nothing to do with Noah’s touch. Her imagination was overactive, which was hardly unexpected, given the amount of time they had spent together today.
If anything, it had to do with the thickness of the leather gloves she’d begun wearing to help protect her hands from the weather and the reins.
Sophie settled herself, careful to smooth her skirts like a proper lady. Noah removed his topcoat and took the seat across from her and nearest the door, as he had done on the train this morning. It let him stretch his legs without stepping on her toes.
“Thank you for ensuring I got into the carriage rather than on top of it,” she joked. “And for stopping my insulting our driver just as we put our safety in his hands.”
“You were about to say what I was thinking.” Noah chuckled as he lifted his writing slope into his lap. “And I’m sure you could drive as well or better than Dumfries.”
If she knew the road and the weather was fine, perhaps. “Even a London street can be dangerous in the fog.”
After all, part of being good at her business was knowing her limitations. So many people forgot those.
“Not to mention the ghosts.” Noah snapped open his inkwell and placed it in the slope’s topmost tray. The silver casing caught the weak sunlight. “I’m sorry that we’ll be late returning to London, though.”
Sophie couldn’t help wondering over the reason he wanted to be in London. It couldn’t be work. After all, she was his largest client—he had told her as much only last week—and she was here.
“We do what we must,” she said as she removed her gloves and used her skirt to dry her palms. Perhaps he was going to the opera with his parents. They did that often. Maybe he was escorting one of the eligible women his mother was surely putting in his path.
Or perhaps a diva was his lover.
Her stomach fluttered at the thought of Noah’s having a lover, but it was much less troubling than his seeking a wife.
“Mm-hmm.” He was already bent over the slope, his pen scratching across the paper. “Did you have any observations about our meeting?”
She opened her portfolio and removed her notes from their negotiations with Middleton. “Not that you’ll be able to make sense of my handwriting.”
It was another part of the ruse that was necessary for her freedom.
The first was that Noah was the face of the business, the one who shook hands and shared brandy to celebrate successful deals. She was the one who paid his salary and made the daily decisions that the business required.
The second was that she attended meetings as his secretary. It raised eyebrows at first, but the men soon forgot about her as she listened quietly and stayed focused on her observations.
She offered the pages just as the coach bounced into a deep rut, almost jarring her from her seat. The papers fluttered to the floor.
Sophie bent to scoop them and came up nose to nose with Noah, close enough to see the golden flecks in his forest-green eyes. His warm breath fanned her cheek.
“It will be easier than shinnying under those coaches to assess their maintenance.”
He had a nicely shaped mouth, and she wondered if his shadowy beard would scratch if he kissed her.
Sophie retreated to her side of the coach. There was no if. Noah Carver was a business associate. That was all he could ever be. “Watching you do that is one of the more fun parts of our bargain.”
Any hardened driver would have been struck speechless if they had found her on her back under a coach, only her feet and hem visible as she looked for the signs of poor maintenance.
“It’s damned difficult to sound intelligent about something that just looks like wood.”
“You don’t give yourself enough credit. You’re very knowledgeable about how these lumbering beasties work.” She grinned. “For a solicitor.”
*
Noah scanned Sophie’s notes, already knowing what he would find.
Meetings always filled his head with numbers and contract details.
Sophie, however, focused on the people in the room.
Who wouldn’t meet his eye, who drank too much, who didn’t seem eager but still scribbled too fast and bent too close to their ledgers.
“You captured more than you think. For a hackney driver.”
He had tried once to explain how valuable her impressions were, but she had brushed the praise away like dust from a coat. Far too much, Noah. I don’t believe a word of it.
So he stuck to scant praise and the trust of his employer.
There were many things Noah liked about working with Sophie Potter.
She paid him well and on time, and she never complained about his invoices. His father’s practice didn’t have that luxury.
She valued his advice, and she was not shy about asking questions or disagreeing.
Noah hadn’t been sure what to expect of their relationship at first. It had taken less than a week for him to learn that Sophie might use him as a shield against Society’s rules, but she was in no way going to hide behind him.
Her handwriting was precise and easy to read. None of the loops and swirls that young ladies learned at finishing school.
Every time she smiled, the dimple appeared in her pink left cheek.
She smelled of soap and rosewater.
“What’s your decision about the opportunity?” he asked.
“We can’t compete with the railway,” Sophie said after a moment. “We would need to work in tandem with it.”
Noah nodded. “You could focus on getting people and goods to and from the depot.”
Drake Fletcher, another of the Lending Circle’s men, did something similar in Norfolk. The success of his freight business had inspired Noah when he learned of Middleton’s offer.
“You could eventually expand to other cities, other depots.” He watched Sophie think, waited for her to tuck her hair behind her ear. That was her tell. She only did it when she was truly considering what he said.
“But it will be difficult to keep a close eye on operations,” she said. “You would be traveling at least once a week.”