LITMIR.BIZ

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man as she could about her brother, and let herself enjoy the warm glow of knowing that he was concerned about her.

      The disconcerting pang of physical attraction she felt for him had not diminished, she realised, then smiled faintly. She could hardly be more chaperoned than she was now, rattling along, jammed in with five strangers while Max was stuck on the roof. They might exchange a few words at the stops along the way, then she’d be off in a hired chaise to the farm and he would be left to find lodgings in Aylesbury. Tomorrow morning the whole exercise was be repeated.

      What did he think he was protecting her against? Highwaymen? It was hardly likely that a full stage, in daylight and with a guard up, would attract an attack.

      ‘Do we stop at Stanmore?’ the stout woman opposite her demanded.

      ‘Yes. The second stop,’ Bree answered automatically, earning herself affronted looks from the four men in the coach who all obviously thought they were better fitted than a woman to respond. ‘The Bell. Then we stop at Watford, Hemel Hempstead, Berkhamsted and Tring. This is a slow coach,’ she added.

      ‘I consider it perfectly acceptable,’ a thin man Bree decided was a clerk huffed.

      ‘At under six miles an hour?’ she retorted.

      By the time they pulled into the Blue Anchor in Edgware, Bree felt it politic to step down for a few minutes. She had won a comprehensive argument about speeds, distances and change-times and was well aware that the male occupants of the coach were regarding her with disfavour for her unfeminine assertiveness.

      Max swung down beside her. ‘Are you all right?’

      ‘Oh, yes. I just wanted the air. How are you? Have you persuaded the driver to give you the ribbons yet?’

      ‘No. He is deaf to my pleas. Shall I offer to kiss him? That worked with the last stagecoach driver I encountered.’

      ‘It did not!’ she retorted. ‘You did not kiss me until—oh! Stop it, people will hear.’ She scrambled back into the coach with a singular lack of dignity and stayed put firmly until Berkhamsted, when need drove her into the King’s Arms in search of the privy. Max was standing at the taproom door, a tankard in one hand, when she emerged. Bree marched past with her nose in the air and was mortified by his chuckle.

      What with the undercurrent of anxiety about Uncle George, Max’s behaviour and her own irritation with herself for caring what he did or thought, Bree was unable to doze and arrived in Aylesbury yawning, stiff and in no mood to deal with importunate gentlemen.

      Then she saw Max climbing down from the roof of the coach. He seemed awkward somehow, and when he got down she saw him sway and put out one hand to steady himself. He closed his eyes for a moment and straightened up with an obvious effort. When he saw her watching him, he smiled. ‘I’m amazed I can stand up straight after seven hours on that roof.’

      ‘I told you,’ she scolded, hastening to his side. ‘Honestly, you are as thoughtless as Piers, travelling all that way in discomfort with a bad shoulder, just on a whim.’ She glanced round. It was dark, it was becoming chilly, there was a hint of wet in the air and, if he could not secure a room here at the busy Eagle and Child, he would be left scouring the town for lodgings.

      ‘You had better come with me,’ she said resignedly, picking up her portmanteau and walking towards the office to secure a chaise for the short drive out to the farm. ‘Uncle George has plenty of spare room.’

      ‘Miss Mallory, I assure you I am perfectly all right.’ He made to take the bag from her and she wrestled it back, noticing the sudden tightening of his mouth as her action jerked his arm.

      ‘Humour me, my lord. Shall we say I feel the need for some protection for the last leg of the journey?’ Honestly, men! They are so transparent. His shoulder is obviously paining him, but he thinks I haven’t noticed. But how am I ever going to persuade him?

      Chapter Twelve

      Max bit the inside of his lip to control the grin of triumph that was threatening to give him away. That had been almost too easy. He had hardly needed to do more than flinch a little and move stiffly and Bree had leaped to the conclusion that he needed looking after. ‘Thank you,’ he said, attempting to sound as though he was having to struggle with his pride to accept, and was rewarded with a sharp nod.

      So now they were on their way to her uncle’s farm, and Bree thought it was all her own idea.

      The notion had come to him out of the blue as she explained her anxieties. It gave him time in her company and it enabled him to find out more about her family. Max might feel more and more sure that Bree would make a wife who would suit him admirably, but he was not about to make the same mistake twice and plunge another woman into a world that was totally alien.

      A postilion came out and mounted up; Bree did her best to lift the bag into the carriage herself, but this time Max won and did it himself, helping her up and settling back on to the worn squabs with a quite genuine sigh of relief. He was conscious of her directing a sidelong look at him from under her lashes, an entirely feminine trick that made his lips twitch with appreciation.

      ‘Tell me about your uncle,’ he suggested. ‘How will he take you turning up on his doorstep, unchaperoned and with a strange man?’

      ‘Uncle George?’ Bree bit her lip in thought. ‘Do you know the old tale about the two mice? Well, Uncle George is the Country Mouse and Papa was the Town Mouse. George is quiet, unmarried, a little bit reticent and very hardworking. I do not think for a moment that he will remember that he ought to be worried about my travelling unescorted with a man, although I expect Betsy, his housekeeper, will give me a scold and will watch you like a hawk for signs of decadent London propensities.’

      ‘Such as?’ Max demanded, intrigued.

      ‘Getting drunk, pinching the kitchen maid—I don’t know what goes on in her imagination, but she always seems amazed when we visit and haven’t sunk into some slough of moral turpitude as a result of London’s corrupting influence.’ She brooded a little. ‘What exactly is turpitude?’

      ‘Let me show you, my pretty.’ Max produced a convincing leer and laughed as Bree batted him with her reticule.

      ‘Idiot!’ She smiled, reminding him all over again, as if he needed it, that she had a mouth that was made for kissing. ‘You are much nicer tonight. You were so stuffy when you called the other day.’

      ‘Was I?’ He knew perfectly well he had been. He had bored himself, let alone the two women. ‘I expect I was trying to behave with propriety.’

      Bree produced a noise that he assumed was the ladylike equivalent of a snort. ‘It does not suit you. How is your shoulder now?’

      ‘Much better,’ he assured her truthfully. ‘Are we there? That was a short journey.’

      ‘Yes, this is it, only a mile of lane to the farmhouse now. There is just the one large house, for both farms. In my great-grandparents’ time the land was split into two for two brothers, but they shared the house. It came back together and was split again for my father and uncle. Uncle George will leave his farm to Piers and it will all come back together again.’

      ‘Unconventional,’ Max commented. He peered out of the window as the chaise turned right, through high gateposts and into a wide courtyard. The house that stood there was illuminated poorly, but he could see enough to send his eyebrows up. ‘That’s not so much a farmhouse, more a medium-size manor house!’

      ‘I know. Despite what the Farleighs think, we are really quite respectable, despite having to work for a living. Thank you.’ Max jumped down, flipped the folding step out and handed Bree from the carriage as the front door opened.

      ‘Miss Bree! Why, I didn’t look to see you for a few weeks yet.’ A comfortably rounded, middle-aged woman held up a lantern and peered at Max. Her expression changed from beaming surprise to suspicion. ‘And who might this be, Miss Bree? I don’t see your maid.’

      ‘This

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