The Leopard Prince (Princes #2)(2)

She turned her head away to look at the hills. Servants—and really a land steward was just a superior sort of servant—should have no gender. Of course, one knew they were people with their own lives and all that, but it made things so much easier if one saw them as sexless. Like a chair. One wanted a chair to sit in when one was tired. No one ever thought about chairs much otherwise, and that was how it should be. How uncomfortable to go about wondering if the chair had noticed that one’s nose was running, wishing to know what it was thinking, or seeing that the chair had rather beautiful eyes. Not that chairs had eyes, beautiful or otherwise, but men did.

And Harry Pye did.

George faced him again. “What will we do with the third horse?”

“We’ll have to leave her here.”

“In the rain?”

“Yes.”

“That can’t be good for her.”

“No, my lady.” Harry Pye’s shoulders bunched again, a reaction that George found oddly fascinating. She wished she could make him do it more often.

“Perhaps we should take her with us?”

“Impossible, my lady.”

“Are you sure?”

The shoulders tensed and Mr. Pye slowly turned his head. In the flash of lightning that lit up the road in that instant, she saw his green eyes gleam and a thrill ran up her spine. Then the following thunder crashed like the heralding of the apocalypse.

George flinched.

Harry Pye straightened.

And the horses bolted.

“OH, DEAR,” SAID LADY GEORGINA, rain dripping from her narrow nose. “We seem to be in something of a fix.”

Something of a fix indeed. More like well and truly buggered. Harry squinted up the road where the horses had disappeared, running as if the Devil himself were chasing them. There was no sign of the daft beasts. At the rate they’d been galloping, they wouldn’t stop for half a mile or more. No use going after them in this downpour. He switched his gaze to his employer of less than six months. Lady Georgina’s aristocratic lips were blue, and the fur trimming the hood of her cloak had turned into a sopping mess. She looked more like an urchin in tattered finery than the daughter of an earl.

What was she doing here?

If not for Lady Georgina, he would’ve ridden a horse from London to her estates in Yorkshire. He would’ve arrived a day ago at Woldsly Manor. Right now he would be enjoying a hot meal in front of the fire in his own cottage. Not freezing his baubles off, standing in the middle of the high road in the rain with the light fading fast. But on his last trip to London to report on her holdings, Lady Georgina had decided to travel with him back to Woldsly Manor. Which had meant taking the carriage, now lying in a heap of broken wood in the ditch.

Harry swallowed a sigh. “Can you walk, my lady?”

Lady Georgina widened eyes that were as blue as a thrush’s egg. “Oh, yes. I’ve been doing it since I was eleven months old.”

“Good.” Harry shrugged on his waistcoat and coat, not bothering to button either. They were soaked through like the rest of him. He scrambled down the bank to retrieve the rugs from inside the carriage. Thankfully they were still dry. He rolled them together and snagged the still-lit carriage lantern; then he gripped Lady Georgina’s elbow, just in case she was wrong and fell on her aristocratic little arse, and started trudging up the gorse-covered hill.

At first, he’d thought her urge to travel to Yorkshire a childish fancy. The lark of a woman who never worried where the meat on her table or the jewels at her throat came from. To his mind, those who didn’t labor to make their living often had flighty ideas. But the more time he spent in her company, the more he began to doubt that she was such a woman. She said gormless things, true, but he’d seen almost at once that she did it for her own amusement. She was smarter than most society ladies. He had a feeling that Lady Georgina had a good reason for traveling with him to Yorkshire.

“Is it much farther?” The lady was panting, and her normally pale face sported two spots of red.

Harry scanned the sodden hills, looking for a landmark in the gloom. Was that twisted oak growing against an outcropping familiar? “Not far.”

At least he hoped not. It had been years since he’d last ridden these hills, and he might’ve mistaken where the cottage lay. Or it might have tumbled down since he last saw it.

“I trust you are skilled at starting fires, Mr. P-pye.” His name chattered on her lips.

She needed to get warm. If they didn’t find the cottage soon, he’d have to make a shelter from the carriage robes. “Oh, yes. I’ve been doing it since I was four, my lady.”

That earned him a cheeky grin. Their eyes met, and he wished—A sudden bolt of lightning interrupted his half-formed thought, and he saw a stone wall in the flash.

“There it is.” Thank God.

The tiny cottage still stood at least. Four stone walls with a thatched roof black from age and the rain. He put his shoulder to the slick door, and after one or two shoves, it gave. Harry stumbled in and held the lantern high to illuminate the interior. Small shapes scurried into the shadows. He checked a shudder.

“Gah! It does smell.” Lady Georgina walked in and waved her hand in front of her pink nose as if to shoo the stink of mildew.

He banged the door closed behind her. “I’m sorry, my lady.”

“Why don’t you just tell me to shut my mouth and be glad I’m out of the rain?” She smiled and pulled back her hood.