Love's Reward Read Free Page A

unholy team of yours won’t overset you. I was terrified coming here, perched up there above those huge wheels like a crow in a tree.”
    Fitzroy leaned down and kissed his sister with real tenderness.
    “Bless you, my child, for your bravery, sense, and foresight. With my bays in harness, it’s the fastest thing on the turnpike.”
    He opened the bag and pulled out a driving coat, buckskin breeches, and tall boots. While Lady Mary modestly averted her eyes, Fitzroy changed rapidly from his evening clothes and stuffed them into the bag.
    “Oh, Fitzroy! What if her family finds out? Will one of her brothers call Quentin out?”
    He pulled on the black boots. “Very likely, dear sister. And I have no doubt that it will be her brother Richard, which adds some considerable irony to the whole situation.”
    “Why?”
    “Like Montague and Capulet, ‘Who set this ancient quarrel new abroach?’ I’m decent now. You may look up.”
    She glanced into his face, alarmed. “What ancient quarrel?”
    “Lady Joanna’s eldest brother is Captain Richard Acton—more correctly known now as Lord Lenwood—my erstwhile comrade in the Peninsula, who now resides, so I hear, in domestic bliss at Acton Mead. He has a wife I’ve never met and a baby daughter. And he has hated me ever since those last days in Spain.”
    “Hated you? Good Lord! Why?”
    His heart contracted a little, but his voice still held an undertone of raillery.
    “Lord Lenwood has a regrettably old-fashioned idea of the gallantry due to the female sex. I had the misfortune to trample on his tender sensibilities.”
    “What on earth do you mean? Oh, Fitzroy, what really happened in Spain?”
    “Hush! That’s not our present problem. Just know that Lenwood has his reasons. And now, it seems, my rakehell brother has run away with his little sister, and probably ravished her under a hedge. Add this family mishap to my other transgressions, and Richard Acton, Viscount Lenwood, will doubtless shoot me on sight.”
    * * *
    Ten minutes later, the phaeton thundered north out of London. Once clear of the city streets, Fitzroy gave his team their unsteady heads. The horses lunged into the harness, excited at being allowed to gallop into the night. He was leaving behind all of his business in town. He hadn’t even made his report to Lord Grantley, a serious breach of both duty and manners.
    Ruthlessly, Fitzroy thrust aside every other concern but the tyranny of this immediate crisis. Richard Acton’s little sister Joanna, for God’s sake, and his own prodigal brother, Quentin!
    He supposed she must be a beauty. Quentin would never bother with a plain miss. Yet his usual entanglements were with opulent opera singers or bad but beautiful actresses.
    Why the devil had Quentin decided to elope with an English schoolgirl, for God’s sake, and an earl’s daughter to boot? And why the hell this particular earl’s daughter?
    The last time Fitzroy had seen the chit’s brother, he had been known simply as Captain Richard Acton. Although the courtesy title, Lord Lenwood, was his then, he rarely used it. But he was a splendid soldier and a man of infinite integrity. He and Fitzroy had served together on more than one dangerous, dirty mission against Napoleon, and forged the kind of friendship that only shared combat could bring.
    Yet on that last day in the camp outside Orthez, Captain Richard Acton had threatened to shoot down Captain Lord Tarrant if their paths ever crossed again—and for good cause.
    If their roles had been reversed, Fitzroy doubted that he would have been as forbearing.
    He concentrated on the flying manes of his horses and the singing cadence of their hooves. Acton and Mountfitchet. Montague and Capulet.
    The devil was determined to pile difficulties onto his head. He didn’t have time for one of Quentin’s foolhardy escapades just now.
    Yet Fitzroy hoped to God that word of this latest misadventure wouldn’t reach the ears of his father, the Black