She pinched the bridge of her nose. “Oh dear. We’ll have to go to Scotland now. If anyone notices we’ve disappeared together this morning . . . if anyone saw us kiss last night . . . if your lover decides to gossip . . .” She lowered her hand. “Separately, those things might go unobserved, but all three of them? In all likelihood, I’m already ruined.”
“That’s an extreme conclusion,” he said, ignoring that each separate event looked rather damning. “Let’s take this one crisis at a time. How many candles do you have?
“This, and one other.”
Colin did a swift mental estimate. Three, four hours of light, perhaps. More than enough. A violent shiver wracked his body. “Are you chilled?” He could think of worse ways to pass a few hours than huddling with a woman for warmth.
She reached into a rocky niche. “I keep a blanket here.” Crouching beside him, she shook it out and draped it over them both. She kept a buffer of several inches between their bodies.
The warmth seeped through his wet clothing. “I don’t suppose you keep any whiskey here?”
“No.”
“Pity. But still—candles, blanket. You must spend a great deal of time in this . . . place,” he said, after fumbling several moments for a more diplomatic word than “hellhole.”
He felt her shoulders lift in a shrug. “Geology is my life’s work. Some scientists have a laboratory. I have a cave.”
A dozen mocking rejoinders jostled for prominence in Colin’s mind, but he sensed that teasing her on this point would leave him too vulnerable. She was a scientist. She had a cave. And he was an aimless aristocrat who had . . . nothing.
She said, “I had it all sorted out. There’s a stagecoach that runs between Eastbourne and Rye. It passes by on Tuesdays and Fridays, just around six. If we walked to the main road, we could flag the coach down. Take it to the next town, and from there go north. We’d reach London tomorrow night.”
Ah, to be in London tomorrow night. Bustle. Commerce. Society. Clubs. Glittering balls and gilded opera houses. Skies choked with coal dust. Lamps shining in the darkened streets.
“From there,” she said, “we’d catch the mail coach.”
“No, no, no. I told you the other night, a viscount doesn’t travel on the mail coach. And this particular viscount doesn’t travel in any coach.”
“Hold a moment.” The candle bobbed. “How did you think we’d be traveling to Edinburgh, if not by public coach?”
He shrugged. “We’re not traveling to Edinburgh at all. But if we were, we’d have find some other conveyance.”
“Such as what? A magic carpet?”
“Such as a private post-chaise, with hired postilions. You’d ride in, and I’d ride out on horseback.”
“That would cost a fortune.”
He shrugged. “When it comes to travel, I have conditions. I don’t ride in coaches, and I don’t travel by night.”
“No night travel either? But the fastest coaches all travel by night. The journey would take us twice as long.”
“Then it’s a good thing we’re not going, isn’t it?”
She lifted the candle and peered into his face. “You’re just making excuses. You want out of our agreement—”
“What agreement? There was never any agreement.”
“—so you’re plucking these ridiculous ‘conditions’ out of the air.” She ticked items off on one hand. “No closed carriages. No travel by night. What kind of grown man has such rules?”
“One who narrowly survived a carriage accident,” he said testily. “At night. That’s what kind.”
Her face softened. So did her voice. “Oh.”
Colin drummed his fingers on the stone. He’d forgotten that she wouldn’t know this. In London, everyone knew. The story passed around ballrooms and gaming hells every season. Skipped from matron to debutante, gambler to opera singer—always in mournful whispers. Have you heard about poor Lord Payne. . . .
“Was this recent?” she asked.
“No, long ago.”
“What happened?”
Sighing roughly, he rested his head against the uneven, clammy stone. “I was a boy, traveling with my parents. An axle snapped, and the coach overturned. I survived the accident largely unharmed. But my mother and father weren’t so fortunate.”
“They were injured?”
“They died. There, in the carriage, right in front of me. My father went almost instantly. My mother, slowly and in tremendous agony.” He paused. “I couldn’t get out, you see. The way the carriage had landed on its side, the door was barred shut. I couldn’t run for help, couldn’t escape. I lay trapped there, all night long. Alone. A passing farmer found me the next morning.”
There. That would teach her to press him for honesty.
“Oh.” She gripped his arm. “Oh God. I’m so sorry. I can see why you’d be afra— er, why you would dislike dark, enclosed spaces. How dreadful.”
“It was. Exceedingly.” He rubbed his temple. “Suffice it to say, I’ve no desire to relive such a situation. So I have a few simple rules. I don’t travel at night. I don’t ride in enclosed carriages. Oh, and I don’t sleep alone.” A grimace tugged his mouth sideways. “That last is less of a rule and more a statement of fact.”
“How do you mean?”
Colin hesitated briefly. He’d revealed this much. There seemed no point in denying the rest. “I simply don’t sleep alone. If I don’t have a bed companion, I lie awake all night.”
He nudged toward the soft heat of her body and gathered the blanket close around them. “So you may want to rethink your plans, pet. If we did undertake this journey . . . I’d need you in my bed.”
Chapter Five
Somewhere in the back of the cave, a drip counted out Minerva’s stunned silence.
One, two, three . . .
. . . ten, eleven, twelve . . .
He needed her? In his bed? It was too much to be believed. She reminded herself it wasn’t her he needed. Apparently, any woman would do.
“So you’re telling me that this accident . . . this tragic night in your youth . . . is the reason for your libertine ways?”
“Yes. This is my curse.” He gave a deep, resonant sigh. A sigh clearly meant to pluck at her heartstrings.
And it worked. It really worked.
“Sweet heaven.” She swallowed back a lump in her throat. “You must do this all the time. Night after night, you tell women your tale of woe . . .”