Simply Unforgettable Read Free Page B

So had his sisters. So had his grandfather.
    So indeed had his own common sense.
    But since he rarely listened to advice—especially when offered by his family—and rarely heeded the dictates of common sense, here he was in the midst of a snowfall to end snowfalls and looking forward with less than eager zeal to spending the night at some obscure country inn in the middle of nowhere. At least he
hoped
he would spend it at some inn rather than in a hovel or—worse yet—inside his carriage.
    And he had been in a black mood even before this journey began!
    He looked hard at his woman passenger after he had climbed inside the carriage with her, everything that needed tending to having been accomplished. She was huddled beneath one of the woolen lap robes, the muff he had rescued from the other carriage and tossed in a couple of minutes ago under there with her, and he could see that her feet were resting on one of the bricks.
Huddled
was perhaps the wrong word to describe her posture, though. She was straight-backed and rigid with hostility and determined dignity and injured virtue. She did not even turn her head to look at him.
    Just like a dried-up prune, he thought. All he could see of her face around the brim of her hideous brown bonnet was the reddened tip of her nose. It was only surprising that it was not quivering with indignation—as if the predicament in which she found herself were
his
fault.
    â€œLucius Marshall at your service,” he said none too graciously.
    He thought for a moment that she was not going to return the compliment, and he seriously considered knocking on the roof panel for the carriage to stop again so that he could join Peters up on the box. Better to be attacked by snow outside than frozen by an icicle inside.
    â€œFrances Allard,” she said.
    â€œIt is to be hoped, Miss Allard,” he said, purely for the sake of making conversation, “that the landlord of the next inn we come to will have a full larder. I do believe I am going to be able to do justice to a beef pie and potatoes and vegetables and a tankard of ale, not to mention a good suet pudding and custard with which to finish off the meal. Make that several tankards of ale. How about you?”
    â€œA cup of tea is all I crave,” she said.
    He might have guessed it. But, good Lord—a cup of tea! And doubtless her knitting with which to occupy her hands between sips.
    â€œWhat is your destination?” he asked.
    â€œBath,” she said. “And yours?”
    â€œHampshire,” he said. “I expected to spend a night on the road, but I had hoped it would be somewhat closer to my destination than this. No matter, though. I would not have had the pleasure of making your acquaintance or you mine if the unexpected had not happened.”
    She turned her head then and looked steadily at him. It was quite obvious to him even before she spoke that she could recognize irony when she heard it.
    â€œI believe, Mr. Marshall,” she said, “I could have lived quite happily without any of the three of those experiences.”
    Tit for tat. Touché.
    Now that he had more leisure to look at her, he was surprised to realize that she was a great deal younger than he had thought earlier. His impression when his carriage passed hers and again on the road outside had been of a thin, dark lady of middle years. But he had been mistaken. Now that she had stopped frowning and grimacing and squinting against the glare of the snow, he could see that she was only perhaps in her middle twenties. She was almost certainly younger than his own twenty-eight years.
    She was a shrew, nevertheless.
    And she
was
thin. Or perhaps she was only very slender—it was hard to tell through her shapeless winter cloak. But her wrists were narrow and her fingers long and slim—he had noticed them when she took the muff from his hand. Her face was narrow too, with high cheekbones, her complexion slightly