Read Amanda Scott - [Dangerous 02] for Free Online

toward the lads, but if you mean to be so kind as to see us home, I advise you to say nothing to my grandfather about your activities. He is a justice of the peace, and he takes his position seriously.”
    “As well he should,” her companion said, helping her onto the roadbed at last and making another odd clicking sound with his tongue as he climbed up after her. Then he whistled two notes, and Charley heard the quick clip-clop of a horse’s hooves on the road. A moment later Letty and the mare emerged from the gloom.
    The child was grinning from ear to ear. “Cousin Charley,” she exclaimed, “isn’t Annabelle clever? Jeremiah and I were just telling her some of the things you’ve taught your horses to do, and we’ve become good friends.”
    “Charley?”
    There was an odd note in her rescuer’s voice when he said her name, and she looked up at him in puzzlement. “Close friends and some members of my family call me so, monsieur. I am Charlotte Tarrant. Letty,” she added, “our rescuer is Monsieur Matois. This is my cousin, monsieur, Lady Letitia Deverill.”
    “Letitia Ophelia Deverill,” that damsel interjected. “Everyone calls me Letty. Why did you react like that to Charley’s name? Like you’d heard it before.”
    Off to the east, Charley could see a golden-red thread widening on the horizon. She could see his face more clearly, too. He was not as large as she had thought him, but he was of greater than medium height, perhaps six feet tall. Although his shoulders were broad, encouraging one to think him very large, his figure was slender. The only memorable features of his face were light eyes set deep beneath a jutting brow and a square, stubborn-looking chin. His nose was straight but ordinary. He had a two-day growth of beard, and thick brown hair hung untidily over his forehead to his eyebrows. In back it touched the collar of the drab frieze coat he wore. His expression was wide-eyed, nearly simple-minded. Altogether an unremarkable specimen, she thought.
    He did not answer Letty’s question, busying himself instead in coiling up his rope and fastening it to one of several rings stitched right onto his saddle. When Letty repeated the question in fluent French, he grinned at her. Charley found herself rapidly revising her first opinion of his looks. His eyes crinkled at the corners, as if he smiled frequently. A dimple danced high on his left cheek.
    He said, “Charley is a strange name for a female, is it not, ma petite? Even in England. One merely remarked upon that fact. How much farther must we go to reach your home from here, mademoiselle?”
    “About five miles inland from the next bay,” Charley said. “My grandfather owns most of the land this side of the River Fowey, from the bay to Bodmin Moor.”
    “The Earl of St. Merryn is your grandfather then,” he said evenly.
    “If you know of him, you must also know his reputation, monsieur.”
    “I do,” he agreed. “A right stiff-rumped old reprobate, by what I’ve been told. Fires up like a Guy Fawkes rocket, they say, when anyone crosses his will. Never crossed paths with him myself, though.”
    “Temper runs red in our family, I fear,” Charley said.
    The corners of his eyes crinkled again, and as light from the east touched them, she saw to her astonishment that they were as blue as the sea on a sunny April morning. He said lightly, “Surely, mon ange, you do not have a fiery temperament. You are far too small.”
    “She’s little, but she’s mighty,” Letty said. “That’s what my papa says of her, at all events.”
    “Your papa reads Shakespeare,” Matois said.
    “Is that from Shakespeare?” Letty asked.
    “Oui, ma petite, though you’ve got it wrong. It’s from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and the right way is, ‘though she be but little, she is fierce.’”
    Charley eyed him curiously. “How is it that a free trader comes to know Shakespeare, monsieur?”
    He shrugged. “One learns English from the