Jennie Kissed Me Read Free

eerie sensation of another presence. I felt a shiver over my scalp. I stared at the dark hump, and as we turned a corner a wan moonbeam picked out the configuration of a human hand.
    I let out a shriek to wake the dead, and that is when Lady Victoria sat up straight. “Don’t be frightened. It’s only me,” she laughed. “You said I might go to London with you.”
    Mrs. Irvine awoke with a start. “What? What?” Her shrieks were added to mine.
    “It’s Lady Victoria,” I told her.
    “Good gracious. So it is. I thought we were being boarded by pirates at least.” She leaned forward eagerly. “Tell the truth now, missie. That man at the inn is not your papa, is he?”
    “Certainly he is,” she answered.
    “Why can he not take you to Brighton? He mentioned some relatives ...”
    “My great-aunts think I should still be in school— at my age!”
    “And what age is that, dear?”
    “Nearly seventeen.”
    I was the unwitting kidnapper of a noble sixteen-year-old lady, whose papa had the devil’s own temper.
    “There’ll be the father and mother of a row when he discovers you’ve slipped overboard. I’d stake my head on it,” Mrs. Irvine said with satisfaction. I knew she found life dull since parting company with pirates and wild Indians and shipwrecks.
    “We must get you back to him at once!” I declared weakly. Across the miles I could feel his dark eyes burn into me, and I felt a horrible presentiment of chaos to follow.
    “Did you not mean your kind offer to help me?” Lady Victoria pouted.
    “It was a misunderstanding. We thought you were his chère amie,” Mrs. Irvine confided. Lady Victoria laughed delightedly. I glared futilely in the darkness of the carriage.
    “Oh, here we are at Farnborough,” she said a moment later. “Papa won’t miss me till morning. He thinks I am asleep. I put some pillows under the blankets to fool him.
    “Aboard the Prometheus, we used to use the ship’s dog for that stunt,” Mrs. Irvine informed this innocent young schoolgirl. “Then you have a hairy head on the pillow if the husband comes looking. You want to be sure to feed the dog ale first, for dogs are so jumpy. Old Walsenby had the shock of his life when his ‘wife’ leapt up and started licking him one night.”
    Glancing out I saw the myriad lighted windows of the city spread before us. With our inn so close at hand, it seemed a good idea to continue on there and decide what was best to be done. Our team was winded, and to return our unwelcome guest we would have to hire fresh horses. Within five minutes the carriage was lumbering into the coaching yard of a half-timbered inn, and we three ladies alit. Lady Victoria smiled unconcernedly and hung onto my arm as though I were her escort.
    “You must be sure to tell your father this was your idea. We had no notion you were with us,” I pointed out firmly.
    “But it was your idea, Miss Robsjohn. You invited me.”
    She smiled blandly, and I, with great effort, suppressed the urge to box her noble ears.
     

Chapter Two
     
    Mrs. Irvine got her second meal after all. We retired to a private parlor to discuss what we should do, and as we were entertaining a noble lady, I asked for wine. Mrs. Irvine requested sandwiches to accompany it, and Lady Victoria thought she could eat a few macaroons and perhaps a cream bun.
    “We must get you back before your father misses you,” I said firmly to Lady Victoria. After insisting on the macaroons, she didn’t touch them but ploughed into the cream bun as if it were manna from heaven.
    “He won’t miss me till morning.”
    “I shall ask the inn to rent me a fresh team and take her back at once. I suppose we could not send her alone.” I spoke aside to Mrs. Irvine. “I must own, I do not relish the prospect of meeting Lord Marndale again.”
    “We cannot send a young lady pelting about the countryside without a chaperone at night. He’d never see a hair of her head. She’d head straight for London.