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prospects.’
    Isabella had tried to see this excellent
prospect a little more clearly but his face had been half turned
from her and she had merely glimpsed curling golden hair. ‘I would
have been more delighted to meet you under different
circumstances,’ she’d told him grimly. ‘As it is… take me
home!’
    He’d stared at her uncertainly. ‘But what am
I going to say to your people?’
    ‘You don’t have to say anything at all.
Just… put me down outside.’
    ‘I couldn’t do that!’ he’d appeared quite
shocked by the very idea, ‘I couldn’t leave you in the street.’
    The idea that his lordship
should baulk at something as innocuous as putting her down in the
street as opposed to the far greater sin of kidnapping her made
Isabella bridle all over again. ‘Oh for heaven’s sake! Pray, don’t
be such a ninny, sir. You have kidnapped me. I daresay that is a… a
hanging offence. What do you mean by it anyway? Who is this Miss
Piedmont that you should treat her so shabbily?’
    ‘I was going to elope with her!’
    ‘Well you have made a very poor job of it.
Did you not have any plan, the two of you? A place to meet or… or a
code word of some kind?’ How absurd this situation was. She
wondered what Miss Piedmont must be thinking, waiting for her
would-be groom who never turned up. But in this, she was
mistaken.
    ‘She didn’t actually know we were eloping,’
his lordship admitted, ‘It was a surprise.’
    ‘So… we are back to kidnapping, then.’
    The earl sighed and shook his head. ‘I have
to say, I’ve certainly made a mess of this. Wait until Harry
hears.’
    Isabella did not know who Harry was, nor did
she care. She was interested in one thing and one thing only. ‘Are
you going to take me home?’
    He had eyed her uneasily. ‘Are you going to
make a fuss if I do? I would rather do without a scandal.’
    Did he think she wanted one? What an
idiot the man was. ‘I am going to make a fuss if you don’t.’ she
had informed him grimly.
    Which had possibly been the wrong thing to
say. Perhaps it had been the anger kindling in her eyes or the look
on her face – an unfortunate manifestation of her unruly tongue –
that made Stornley decide that she was far too upset to be returned
home just yet. Besides, he was feeling rather poorly and so –
complete fool that he was – he decided that he should take Miss
Hathaway somewhere until she was ‘more the thing’. Which infuriated
her so much that she had told him exactly what she thought of him,
which had resulted in her having another scarf (one wondered where
the man obtained them for he seemed to have an unending supply)
placed firmly around her mouth. Why he had thought that getting
rooms at an inn was a good idea was not at all clear. She had tried
to tell him that it was absurd but naturally, the only sounds she
could make were unintelligible. Rooms obtained, she had been
hustled upstairs and into a small, rather shabby parlor and invited
to sit. Her decision to leave the room soon after she had entered
it had seen her gently, but firmly, thrust into a chair. He had
released her wrists only to secure them again to its arms, all the
while apologizing for such shabby treatment.
    ‘But you see,’ he’d assured her vaguely,
‘come morning and I’m sure we will have discovered the best way
around things. I’m a little under the weather at the moment, but I
shall be better directly, I assure you.’
    He had offered her wine, which she would
have refused, if she had been capable. He himself ordered a jug and
indulged liberally, further clouding his already befuddled judgment
while he had expounded on his plan to marry the fair Miss Piedmont.
After an hour or so, Isabella would have given much to have been
able to block her ears so that she did not have to listen anymore.
One thing was clear; Miss Piedmont had had a lucky escape!
    It must have been nearly
dawn when she had fallen asleep in the chair he had tied her to.
And now…