Page 55 of Miss Determined
All the better if he limited his outings to escort duty for the lovely Miss DeWitt.
“Thank you, Jerome,” he murmured as Amaryllis brought Jacques to a halt at the foot of the inn’s steps. She wore no hat, and the sun caught every fiery highlight in her hair. She apparently perceived that Sycamore had not returned to Crosspatch on a frivolous errand. Her expression as she mounted the steps was nearly solemn.
Trevor longed to sweep her into his arms and hold her, but had to settle for doffing his hat and making a stupid bow.
“Miss DeWitt. Your arrival is fortuitous.”
She curtseyed as if they were at some damned Venetian breakfast. “Mr. Dorning, and Mr. Dorning. Are you preparing to depart?”
“We are,” Sycamore said when he ought to have kept his mouth shut. “Urgent business. No time for delay. Urgentfamilybusiness.”
Amaryllis flicked an annoyed gaze at Sycamore. “Familybusiness? Dorningfamilybusiness?”
This was Crosspatch, so of course some youthful Pevinger of the female persuasion was making a great production of scrubbing the inn’s spotless steps. A groom had materialized to hold Jacques’s reins, though Jacques would stand on command until Kingdom Come.
The vicar and his honor guard had taken up a bench directly across the road, and several older women had congregated near the cross.
“There’s been a death in the family,” Trevor said quietly. “In my family.”
“My condolences.”
Amaryllis had lost her father and grandfather, she feared her brother had followed them to the grave, and those two words, uttered with the next thing to detachment, were all wrong.
“A cousin,” Trevor said. “One entangled with my expectations. I’ll have to settle the resulting affairs and…”
The maid on the steps was frankly gawking, as were Vicar and his housekeeper.
Amaryllis cocked her head. “You were saying?”
“This is not the time or the place to go into details, but my return to Town has become urgent. I’ve left a note for you with Mrs. Pevinger, though the message is brief in the interests of discretion. The livery will send Roland to you later today, and I will dispatch a groom to retrieve Jacques by the first of the week.”
Amaryllis’s features still showed no relenting, no warmth, but then, she was likely as shocked by Trevor’s sudden demise as he was.
“You could keep Jacques for me,” he said, taking a step closer to her. “Bring him with you when you remove to Town at the end of the month?” He needed for her to approve that plan, to light upon it as a means of staying connected through a silly, sentimental gesture. Jacques had been one of their chaperones, along with Roland and the placid waters of the Twid.
“Why don’t you take him now?” Amaryllis said. “Your saddle and bridle are on him, and he was at grass all night. That will simplify matters.”
“Worthy suggestion,” Sycamore said when he again ought to have kept his rubbishing mouth shut. “One less detail to tidy up. Miss Dewitt can ride the other gelding home.”
Trevor felt as if the reins of his situation were slipping through his fingers, and he was powerless to gain them back. The separation from Amaryllis would be temporary, but the parting was going badly.
The coach chose that inopportune moment to lumber around the corner, four matched grays in the traces.
“Let’s be off,” Sycamore said, a shade too brightly. “Tempus fugitand all that.” He passed a pair of saddlebags to a groom, who stowed them inside the coach.
“Is that the Dorning crest?” Amaryllis asked, giving the coach a baleful inspection.
“Sycamore wanted to ride out here hotfoot with the sad news,” Trevor said. “My step-mother made him pack properly and take one of our traveling coaches. The crest is mine.”
Amaryllis nodded as if Trevor had confirmed a suspicion. “Then I will wish you safe journey, my lord, and offer repeated condolences on your loss.” For the first time, she looked at him with something approaching warmth, or hope, or longing.
Trevor did not care for the milording from her, but he’d told her himself of his title. “You will come to Town, Amaryllis?”
Sycamore stood by the coach, all but pawing the earth and wringing his tail with impatience, about which Trevor cared not one French profanity.
“Yes,” she said very calmly. “Yes, I shall. Safe journey, and thank you for some interesting memories.” She kissed his cheek, and Trevor felt as if she’d kicked him in the cods.
“Amaryllis, are you well?”
