“Rarely.” He then asked her if she wished to try the whip, but she shook her head, concentrating on the roadway. “We’re coming to a sharp bend to the left. Are you still game?”
“If you are,” Nicole said, her delight obvious. “Behind us, Lydia is probably having a small comeapart, you know.”
“Which will leave her in real peril if Fletcher topples off the seat in a dead faint,” Lucas remarked, his good humor running full force. “Ah, very nicely done, Lady Nicole. Although I must say that your off wheel came dangerously close to the verge.”
“It did? I’ll have to work on that. Do many ladies of the ton drive their own curricles?”
“A few, yes. None of them, sadly, debutantes.”
“Good. Then I’ll be the first,” she said as he pointed to a wide grassy area and indicated that she should pull the horses off and stop.
Lucas applied the brake as Fletcher’s curricle pulled up beside them. “Let me guess. You want me to tell your brother that you should have your own curricle.”
She frowned for a moment—delightful!—and then the dimple appeared in her cheek. “I hadn’t considered that. Would you do that for me?”
“Not if you held a cocked pistol to my head and had already counted to two,” he answered cheerfully. “But, if you consent to drive out with me again, I will allow you to drive my curricle. In the parks, that is. London streets are an entirely different matter.”
“Lucas?” Fletcher called out to him. “Did I mistake my eyes, or was Lady Nicole holding the reins a moment ago? Her brother would have your neck if, well, if she broke hers.”
“Yes, thank you, Fletcher,” Lucas told him, and then asked if anyone would like to stop for some refreshment at a small inn they’d passed, one just off the crossroads a mile closer to London.
Everyone agreed this would be a fine thing, and Lucas turned the team on the soft grass, aware that Nicole was watching his every move, probably committing each maneuver to memory. Clearly she was very serious about her fun.
“Thank you,” she said as they rode back the way they’d come. “Now if you could see your way clear to locate a place where I might put my Juliet to a good gallop I would most appreciate it. I imagine she is sulking most prodigiously, as I haven’t been able to exercise her thanks to this dreadful weather. And I have the most extraordinary riding habit meant to turn heads wherever I go.”
“Really? Is that to warn me or to be sure I am suitably complimentary when I see it?”
“My lord?” she asked, instead of answering him. “Do you mind that I’m being so honest with you? Honesty is rare for me, so I may not be doing it right.”
“Lady Nicole, I would be willing to wager that there is very little that you don’t do right. You’re most especially proficient in throwing a man who considers himself rather unshakable entirely out of balance.”
“Oh.” She bit her bottom lip between her teeth for an instant, and then nodded her head. “Good. That seems only fair.”
Lucas laughed out loud as they pulled into the small inn yard. “Then we’re even?” he asked her. “Leaving us only to ask ourselves what happens next between us.”
Nicole shot a quick look past him, to where her sister was being helped down from the curricle by the viscount.
“I think we should be friends, don’t you? I think it would be…it would be safer if we were to think of each other as a friend.”
“For how long?” Lucas asked before he could stop to think, because he certainly wouldn’t have said the words if he could think of anything save how much he wanted to kiss Nicole’s full, enticing mouth.
“Why, um, I suppose until we don’t wish to be friends anymore? Really, this has been the strangest conversation. I may be raw from the country, my lord, but I think you really should know better. And I’m starved. Do you think there will be ham? I adore ham.”
Somehow, Lucas restrained himself from saying, “And I fear I am beginning to adore you.”
THE INN BOASTED ONLY the single private dining room the marquess promptly engaged while Nicole and Lydia were shown to a small bedchamber beneath the eaves, where they could wash and refresh themselves.
Lydia was still stripping off her gloves as Nicole, her bonnet tossed onto the bed, was standing bent over the washbasin, splashing cold water onto her burning cheeks.
“How did you manage to convince his lordship to allow you to take the reins?” Lydia asked her as she untied the ribbons on her own bonnet. “And, more to the point, do I want to know?”
Nicole rubbed at her face with the rough towel and then smiled at her sister. “Probably not. It was wonderful, Lydia, except that I knew he’d take them away again if I gave the horses their heads, which I truly longed to do. They’re a fine pair, not all highbacked and showy like the viscount’s team.”
“I hadn’t noticed any deficiencies in the viscount’s horseflesh. We had another lovely talk, by the way. He has a gaggle of younger sisters and a widowed mother, which is why he could not risk himself in the late war, although he feels terrible that he stayed home when so many others risked life and limb for the Crown. So I told him a little about our late uncle and cousins, and how none of them went to war, but ended by perishing anyway. We agreed that safety is a matter of opinion, and that rash actions can lead to unfortunate consequences as easily as facing an acknowledged enemy.”
Nicole rolled her eyes. “I’m so sorry I missed that,” she said, turning away as she refolded the towel, to hide her amusement. “On the way back to Grosvenor Square you might wish to pass the time conjugating French verbs, which I’m sure would be equally delighting. But, please, while we’re at luncheon, do try to find a lighter topic.”
“But…but the viscount seemed entertained. What did you and the marquess discuss, then, if you’re so much the expert?”
While Lydia washed her hands and then carefully blotted her cheeks with a washcloth dipped in the basin, Nicole perched herself on the edge of the bed, watching her. Lydia, the perfect lady. And such grace and circumspection came so naturally to her, unlike Nicole’s less well-thought-out actions.
Lydia, always prudent, carefully dipped into life. Nicole unconcernedly splashed her way through it. That was as succinct an explanation of the difference between them as Nicole felt necessary.
“The marquess and I,” she said, for once watching her words, “have decided to cry friends. We’re very…comfortable with each other.”
“Really?”
Lord no, Nicole thought, her stomach doing an all-too-familiar small flip. “Oh, yes. He understands that I am in London to enjoy myself, and he is content with that arrangement. You see, I thought it only fair to tell him that, as he may be on the lookout for a wife and to set up his nursery, as are many who come to Town for the Season.”
“Nicole! Tell me you didn’t say any such thing. To…to simply assume that the marquess—any man—should look at you, pay you the least attention, and then have it most naturally follow that he should wish to marry you? I know you mean well, sweetheart, and, knowing you, you can’t see the enormous impropriety of so much as intimating that his lordship should be…should be…”
“Hot to wed me? Or, at the very least, bed me?” Nicole suppressed a shiver, praying it was one of horror and not anticipation. “Don’t tell me you didn’t sense that from the moment we first met. I’m not such a gudgeon that I don’t know what men think when they look at me. Consider Mr. Hugh Hobart. He—”