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me back?” she asked, staring down at the horse’s silky black mane, trying not to look at the well-shaped hands that held the reins.
    “My sister?” He sounded startled. “You mean Valerie? I’m sorry to say she’s my wife.”
    There was no logical reason why Juliette found that information distressing. But then, she’d grown accustomed to illogic. She turned to glance up at him again, ignoring the danger. “Why are you sorry?” she asked.
    “Forgetting your place again, Julian?”
    She jerked her head around again, staring straight ahead. “Beg pardon, sir,” she muttered.
    “Why don’t you pull your forelock while you’re at it?” he mocked. “I’m sorry she’s my wife because she’s a completely ramshackle female, wild and reckless, always gettingherself into trouble, and I’m a very staid gentleman indeed. It’s all I can do to keep her in line.”
    Juliette had met a great many gentlemen in her travels, both staid and otherwise, and the man sitting behind her, his long, strong arms lightly around her, was the furthest thing from those respectable and unexciting men she’d come to regard as staid. As a matter of fact, a little staidness, a little solemnity, would be welcome at the moment. Life had been far too harum-scarum in the past few months. Juliette would have given anything to be bored.
    “Odd,” she said. “I would have sworn you were related. You have the same eyes.”
    “Very observant. As a matter of fact, we are related, by blood as well as by the bonds of marriage. Valerie happens to be my second cousin. Most people don’t notice any resemblance. But then, you’re not most people, are you, my boy?”
    She didn’t like the faint drawl in his voice when he called her “my boy.” Not for a moment did she believe he could see through her disguise. She’d spent enough of her unorthodox lifetime in breeches to have become accustomed to them, and she knew she walked with just the right sort of diffident swagger. In the weeks since she’d landed in this benighted country and run away from Lemur, not one person had seen through her disguise. This tall gentleman with the mocking smile and the cool silver eyes would hardly be the first.
    “I try to keep my wits about me,” she said, pleased at the faint trace of London accent she was able to insert in her husky contralto. That was the one area where her years abroad had failed her. She could walk and act like no proper young lady, but her voice constantly gave awayher genteel background. And she wasn’t conversant enough with her fellow countrymen to pick up the proper working-class accent. The few times she’d attempted it, she’d almost risked exposure.
    “You
do
manage,” Ramsey drawled. “You might want to lean back against me. It’s a long ride, and a boy your age needs his rest. What is your age, by the way?”
    “Seventeen,” she lied, knowing full well she looked even younger. In fact, she was twenty-two.
    “Such a youth,” he murmured. “And where is your family, young Julian?”
    “Don’t got any.” She was getting quite adept with the accent, she thought. “Sir,” she added hastily.
    “You ‘don’t got any’?” he echoed, mocking. “Charming. Lean against me. Unlike our friend Pinworth, I promise I have no interest in molesting innocent young boys.”
    “You prefer jaded young boys?” she asked before she could control her unruly tongue. Her own gasp of horror followed her artless question, and she waited, holding herself very still, for him to dump her off the horse and into a nearby ditch.
    Instead, he laughed. It was a disturbing sound, soft, oddly sensual on the sea-laden breeze. “It’s a good thing you’re coming out to Sutter’s Head, Julian. With a tongue like that on you, you’d be bound to run into more trouble than you could deal with.” He took the reins in one hand, slid his arm around her waist, just beneath her breasts, and pulled her back against him, not gently. “And no,