“From St. Just.” Thorn patted his pocket. “I’ve got blunt, too. Won it in a card game.”
If Thorn had confessed to stealing the money, Felicity could not have been more surprised. “I thought you never gambled.”
“Never did till tonight.” His words had the slurred, dreamy quality Felicity had heard so often in the past weeks when he’d held her close after their lovemaking. “Don’t know the devil about cards. It may have helped that I was the only sober fellow at the table.”
“Perhaps a little beginner’s luck?” Knowing full well she shouldn’t do it, Felicity could not stop herself reaching up to brush her knuckles against Thorn’s side whiskers.
“Perhaps.” He whispered the word as if it was the sweetest of endearments.
Then, before Felicity could withdraw her hand, he tilted his head to catch her fingers between his shoulder and his cheek, nuzzling them in a chaste gesture of affection that brought a lump to her throat.
She forced her question out past the obstruction. “How could you possibly stake yourself in the sort of bankrupting card game Weston St. Just favors?”
Thorn’s head snapped up again, flinching from her touch in a way he had not flinched from her earlier attack. “I’m not a complete pauper, you know.”
His fortune—or rather his lack of it. Even as she regretted her question, Felicity could not stifle a twinge of annoyance. How many years had she tread with bated breath around the subject of her late husband’s want of prosperity?
At least Thorn Greenwood was making an effort to repair his family’s fortune. And by a more principled means than simply marrying the first available heiress.
“I didn’t say you were a pauper. Most men don’t carry a great deal of ready money around in the middle of the night, that’s all.”
Thorn did not answer at once. Had he fallen asleep, Felicity wondered, or was he too offended to reply?
“I have an old watch and a signet ring,” he said at last, as if confessing to a crime. “St. Just managed to convince the other players they were worth something.”
His admission stung Felicity in a vulnerable spot, just as her question about his gambling stakes must have done to Thorn. She knew very well the watch and ring to which he’d alluded. What price they might fetch from a jeweller, she could not guess. Yet they were priceless to Thorn—a reminder that he belonged to an old family of good breeding.
Despite her fortune and the title for which she’d paid so dear a price, Felicity knew many people still scorned her as an upstart tradesman’s daughter. Suitable only as a mistress for a respectable gentleman like Thorn Greenwood, but never a wife.
Such a union would cause no end of talk. And respectable gentlemen abhorred being a topic of gossip among tattles like Weston St. Just.
Thorn’s arms relaxed their grip on Felicity, and his breath warmed her hair in slow, rhythmic gusts. As she steeled herself to put a great deal more distance between them on the morrow, a further significance of his gambling stakes struck her.
He had gone to a great deal of trouble on her account. First, gambling his most valued possessions, then riding through the night to overtake her carriage. Finally, risking his life to rescue her from danger. Thorn Greenwood was not a man given to pretty speeches, but his actions spoke eloquently of his feelings for her.
Percy Lyte had never valued her as anything more than a source of hard cash and heirs. And when she’d proven deficient in the latter capacity, her husband’s thinly veiled contempt had eroded something vital within her. Something that Thorn’s honest, unconditional affection promised to nourish.
He had put aside his natural prudence to take a gamble for her sake, Felicity mused as the first feeble glimmer of daybreak gilded his strong, agreeable features. She, on the other hand, would need to curb her own daring impulses, lest they induce her to take a reckless gamble on Thorn Greenwood.
And risk losing far more than she could afford.
Thorn woke with such a violent start he might have dumped Felicity onto the floor of the carriage, if her arms had not been clasped so firmly around his neck.
The jolt did succeed in rousing her from her own sleep, though.
“What’s the matter, my dear?” she asked. “Did you dream about that awful highwayman?”
“Ah…something like that.” Thorn struggled to curb the sensation of panic that galloped within his chest.
He could scarcely recall his dream, now, though it had seemed so real and urgent only a moment ago.
He’d been playing some curious game of cards for stakes that had grown larger and larger. Until he could no longer fold his hand without being ruined. Fear and reckless confidence had warred within him when he’d finally lain down his promising handful of hearts, only to be soundly trumped by strange cards that looked like miniature banknotes.
As the winner raked in the pot, Thorn had realized that he’d risked both his honor and his heart. And lost.
“Where do you reckon we are now?” He concentrated on slowing his breath as he disengaged himself from Felicity.
Something about the unsparing light of day made it impossible for him to continue holding her in his arms, even within the privacy of her carriage. No matter how much he wanted to.
Felicity made an unsuccessful effort to smother a yawn as she peered out the window. She seemed no more anxious than Thorn to continue their awkward embrace. Perhaps he had only imagined the wistful warmth in her voice last night and that delicious brush of her fingers against his side whiskers.
“We’re coming to a small bridge,” she said. “I believe Newport lies just the other side of it, and I have good reason to hope we may catch up with our runaways there.”
As she told Thorn about her custom of stopping in that village when coming and going from Bath, Felicity shifted onto the seat opposite him. “Do you know the hour?”
He fished the venerable timepiece from his watch pocket and consulted it.
“After seven.” Thorn shook his head. “Your poor driver and footmen will be done in, to say nothing of the horses.”
“I hope we catch Oliver and your sister before they’ve had a chance to stir.” Felicity stared out the window, ignoring Thorn’s gaze. Or, perhaps, avoiding it. “Then we can all take a day’s rest before returning to Bath at our leisure.”
Thorn nodded and made vague noises of agreement, though with scant conviction.
Of course, he wanted to recover his scapegrace little sister before she mangled her reputation beyond repair. But that would mean parting from Felicity again. This time, with no chance of reprieve.
In spite of his disquieting dream, Thorn had trouble working up the least enthusiasm for that.
Chapter Five
Six hours after it had left Bath, Lady Lyte’s carriage rolled to a halt in front of a prosperous-looking inn. It stopped beneath a sign emblazoned with some royal coat of arms from years long past.
Felicity made herself look Thorn Greenwood in the face as she strove to keep her tone casual. “Surely Oliver and your sister won’t have gotten on the road yet.”
She was thoroughly ashamed of the way she’d lost her nerve last night. Screaming like a lunatic when Thorn and the highwayman had landed in the carriage, then pummeling her poor rescuer within an inch of his life. As if those weren’t bad enough, she’d further humiliated herself by bursting into tears, and clinging to Thorn like a frightened child.
That