Chapter Six
ALEXANDER’S HEAD WAS POUNDING, WHICH WOULD HAVE BEEN HIS chief concern if not for the fact that he also was moving. He didn’t remember getting into a carriage at any point, although he was rather crapulous. Still drunk even, perhaps. He decided to prise an eye open in case that cleared things up.
Bloody hell.
Sitting across from him was a woman. Not just any woman either. The woman. The woman with the wrists. From the library. The woman who wanted to marry him. Good Lord, where were they? Where had they gone? When had they gone? Why had they gone?
None of those pressing questions, however, escaped his lips. Instead, the first question that formed was: “What are you doing?”
Harriet startled at the sound of his voice. She looked down at the book in her lap and then up at him. She took only a second to collect herself, then pertly replied: “You do know about reading, don’t you?”
Alexander tried to work out whether she was teasing him or if she really thought maybe he didn’t know about reading, but the puzzling required too much effort in his current state. As he closed his eyes again, he thought he saw her smirk. Yes, closed eyes were much better.
“Why are you reading in my carriage, Lady …” What was her name?
“Harriet. Lady Harriet. Strictly speaking, it’s not your carriage.
Well, you know, it may be. I don’t actually know if you purchased it for Miss Hightower as a gift, or if she purchased it with her earnings, or if it is more of a loan.
I admit I’m unfamiliar with how those sorts of … arrangements … work.”
Despite the continued ache in his head and the ever more desperate desire he had to stop the carriage, Alexander found himself smiling.
“You’ve never kept a mistress? A mister? … Is there a word for that? Well, whatever it is.”
“Not yet.”
That had to be the smallest number of words she’d spoken to him.
He peeled one eye open again for a moment only to find her mouth on the verge of continuing, which oddly made him smile again.
Alexander was quite used to smiling at women.
Smiling, he’d found, was at least a third of charming a lady.
Another third was dancing and the last third mostly involved other things with mouths.
But these present smiles were unusual. They were for his own benefit.
“Do you have something to say?” he asked, certain he would regret it.
“You haven’t asked why I’m here, my lord.”
“I try not to question when a woman is in my carriage.” Before she could correct him again—for he knew she was itching to do so—he added, “I did indeed loan this carriage to Miss Hightower. Although should our arrangement ever end, I would not ask for it back, so perhaps your point stands.”
Harriet made a quiet hmm and didn’t continue the conversation.
Alexander opened both eyes this time, slowly accepting that despite her silence, he was not going to be resting.
She was reading quickly, occasionally pausing to scribble something in the book on her lap, with a short stub of a pencil.
Just watching her read was making him feel sick.
He glanced at the slivers of early-morning light coming in from the curtains, just enough for her to read, he supposed.
He peeled one back just a little. Greenery whirred past and despite being in an incredibly well-sprung carriage—one didn’t want their mistress to be jostled when her mouth was on their most valuable parts—the road was quite rough.
Alexander assumed they were outside of London, a place he tried to be as little as possible.
“You seem quite undisturbed, so I assume this is your doing.”
Harriet didn’t look up from her book to answer. “I would argue that this entire affair is your doing; I had no desire to be compromised in a library. Compromised at all, even.”
“I find that rather difficult to believe.”
Harriet’s gaze finally lifted. “My lord?” she repeated, although this time, the words were dripping with disdain.
“Please stop with this infernal ‘my lord.’ Call me Alexander.”
“As you wish, my lord.” Her gaze dropped back to the book, the casualness of her tone belied by her clenched jaw. Alexander stretched and spread himself across the seat further, taking up as much space as possible. He felt—hoped—doing so would irk her.
“So, you did not come to the ball intent on ruin by a very wealthy—and might I add handsome—son of a duke?”
“That was indeed my aim. Unfortunately, I met you instead.” She seemed pleased with herself for this retort.
Alexander chuckled lightly. “Come now, you must find me at least a little enticing.”
“I find you inconvenient, arrogant, and morally bankrupt.” He started to counter that before she cut him off.
“I also find you necessary, seeing as Lady Neddlesby is mere hours away from trading her version of last night’s events in for a small dose of the attention ordinarily lavished upon her dear sister.
Try to set aside your high opinion of yourself for a moment’s time and understand that I have absolutely no wish to marry you. ”
“Sharing a carriage with me seems a poor way to avoid that fate.”
“You mistake intent for desire. I am no happier about it than you are, I assure you. I came to Miss Hightower’s house last night to discuss an elopement with a rational, conscious man. Alas, none was to be found. This seemed the best course of action.”
“Naturally. Kidnapping is rather more convenient than waiting until morning when I might call on your father and clear this whole mess up,” Alexander tossed out, sarcastically.
He couldn’t recall a more aggravating female companion in his past. Truly, a wasp’s nest would have been more welcome in the carriage than she.
Harriet paused for a moment before she answered. “Yes, in fact.”
He breathed deeply to regulate himself. “Why don’t we simply turn this carriage around, announce our whirlwind engagement, and then, after a passionate month, you might jilt me and we’ll be unscathed?”
“A month of you courting me?” Harriet replied with a sharp, humorless laugh.
“Well, yes …?” Alexander said, his rum-soaked brain admittedly a little puzzled as to why it wasn’t a perfect solution.
“You couldn’t even be bothered to remember my name. No one will believe it.”
“One hates to be crass, but I am known to be rather skilled at seduction.”
“You and I both know I am not the sort of woman you seek out. The rest of the ton knows it too.”
“Except I did.” Alexander clasped his hands together as if that ended the argument. He was quite hopeful it had. He could barely keep up with this woman’s mad rantings while sober; in his current state, he felt hopeless.
God, he wished he could undo it all: the library, the touching her, most certainly the gallons of brandy that had come afterward.
She was blessedly quiet for a moment. Alexander believed he’d had the last word when she all but whispered, “Because you thought I was Philippa.”
Good God! Alexander took a deep breath in and decided to be done with this.
“How insulting of me to mistake you for another gorgeous woman, one whom I was to meet in the very room you were in—one you happen to look remarkably like! Especially from behind! That must really sting!”
“You seem to be under the mistaken impression I suffer from the lack of your attention. I was merely pointing out the incredulity of you courting me!”
“You’re correct, I would not go after you—I will readily admit that. Not because you’re lacking something, or because you’re a wallflower—believe me, the quiet ones often hold the best surprises—but because you’re an unmarried innocent and I don’t make a habit of entertaining those types of women.”
His little speech made him feel more nauseated than before.
Harriet was silent for a moment, although not still. Truly the sound of her fidgeting was irritating beyond belief, and her movements seemed to send the erotic scent of sweet oranges throughout the entire carriage, which Alexander promised his cock he’d think about later.
“Cicisbeo. Cavalier servente. Paramour. Gallant.”
Oh god, how much had he drunk? What was she saying?
“It’s just that … earlier you … well, you asked if there was a word for a ‘mister’ and there are a few, just not very good ones. No one uses them. Though I believe that’s the fault of society rather than language.”
Alexander stared at her in wonder. She bit her full, lush lip and blushed with embarrassment, which was really quite a shame because he’d have preferred her to do those things for a whole different reason entirely.
He was, unprecedentedly, too hungover to be fully aroused, or to do anything about it even if he were. Instead, he closed his eyes once more and tried to fall back asleep. He could reason with this clever termagant later.
Blessedly, the carriage began to slow as they approached The Red Lion, a small but busy posting inn.
Alexander exited the carriage, his stomach grateful to be on terra firma again.
He reached to help Lady Harriet down, but she ignored his outstretched hand.
Their driver, Charleston, was already down and talking to the stable boy about fresh horses, but Alexander had no intention of continuing to Gretna Green.
He was here to freshen up, perhaps cast up his accounts, and then convince the chit to go back to London with him.
Harriet knew she ought to be thinking of how to convince the man to elope to Gretna Green now that he was awake.
Only, she was alone in a room with a man for the second time in her life.
In an inn! She’d never been to an inn. Alexander himself did not seem to be similarly affected by the situation.
In fact, he was still quite cross. Since casting up his accounts behind the stables—something she wasn’t supposed to know he’d done—he appeared noticeably haler, if not happier with her presence.