The Dangerous Debutante

Just once before in his twenty years had he been anywhere interesting, when he’d been taken to Dymchurch to have a tooth drawn. Traveling up to Londontown had come to him unexpectedly, like a special treat from Father Christmas, and traveling there with Morgan Becket was like all of Christmas and his birthday combined.

And now, not even two days into his grand adventure, Morgie was ruining everything and he wished himself back at Becket Hall, or snug in his bed above The Last Voyage in the small village Ainsley had built for everyone, listening to the old sailors telling tall tales as they drank their rum in the tap room below him.

“Morgie—that is, Miss Morgan, please. Your papa will have my head on a pike if anything happens to you.”

Morgan Becket frowned at Jacob, who was proving unusually uncooperative, not to mention melodramatic. She was much more used to having him twisted neatly around her finger, as he had been from the first day he’d laid eyes on her, more than a dozen years ago.

But this time, smiling hadn’t worked. Teasing hadn’t worked, either. Her papa must have truly put the fear of God in the poor fellow. “Very well then, timid-toes. I’ll saddle her myself. I can do that, you know.”

“No!” Jacob protested, then quickly ran after Morgan, who was grinning as she marched, chin held high, across the dusty inn yard toward the stables. She’d been waiting for this moment, when the outriders her papa had sent along with them had been dispatched back to Becket Hall, and only Jacob stood between her and adventure.

“Please, Miss Morgan,” he repeated, fairly dancing along beside her as she ate up ground easily with long, fluid strides that might look distressingly mannish on some females…females with less curves, that is. “You can’t be riding into Londontown on Berengaria, you just can’t.”

And then Jacob winced, because he knew immediately that he had made a fatal mistake.

“Can’t, Jacob?” Morgan asked, turning to include him in her grin. “Well now, that fairly settles the matter for us, doesn’t it?”

She put her gloved hand on his upper arm, and Jacob’s country-fresh complexion turned beet-red as he felt his resolve fleeing out the back door of his brain-box.

“Morgie, don’t. Please?”

“Think about it, my friend. The entire world goes to London for the Season. Am I to be just one more country bumpkin sent off to snare a husband? I don’t think so. I don’t think I’d be able to countenance that. Besides,” she added, when her childhood friend seemed ready to weep, “Chance and Julia will be expecting something outrageous. We wouldn’t want to disappoint them, now would we?”

“Odette said you’d behave, just like a little lamb.” He reached inside his shirt and pulled out a small brown bag tied up with multicolored ribbons, looked at it in some disgust. “This is what I think of her voodoo!”

“Stop!” Morgan, genuinely alarmed, caught his wrist before he could throw the bag to the ground. “Are you out of your mind? Odette made that for you.”

Jacob nodded, wide-eyed as he wondered if Morgan had just saved him from having a lightning bolt reach out of the sky to explode his intestines. “She said I could control you with it. I didn’t believe her, not really. I’ve heard the stories. About how she’s been wrong before, how she promised safety all those years ago when you all were on some island, and—”

“Jacob Whiting, shut your mouth,” Morgan warned tersely, then looked about to see if anyone was watching, had overheard. She moved closer and continued, “God gave you a brain, or at least one could hope so. Use it. And use your mouth less, or you’ll be on your way back to Becket Hall before you can so much as plant a foot on the cobbles of Upper Brook Street—and you’ll be walking all the way, my friend, still with the feel of my boot on your backside.”

“I’m sorry, Morgie. I know I shouldn’t have thought to throw…And I shouldn’t have said what I said about,” he lowered his voice to a whisper, “the you-know-what. You’ve got me so I don’t know if I’m on my head or on my heels. I thought we’d be just fine for these last few miles. Only two more hours, after all, and in the light of day, with plenty of other folks on the road to keep us company. I wasn’t counting on trouble from you the moment the others left us. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

Jacob knew as well as she did that the outriders had been sent back to Becket Hall because tempting fate by allowing any of their faces to be seen so far from Romney Marsh would be foolish in the extreme. It would mean certain destruction, allowing any of them who had been fully grown and fully formed when they had all “died” and come to England, to be recognized.

Morgan and her siblings were safe, except perhaps for Courtland, who had already gone ten and seven when they’d arrived in Romney Marsh. Chance had also been older, but he’d changed so from who he had been that no one had yet made the connection between the gentleman he’d become and the man he’d been.

No, there was little fear that the child Morgan had been would be remembered, or recognized in the young woman she was now.

“It’s all right, Jacob,” Morgan assured him quickly. How could they be nearly the same age—with Jacob the elder by two full years—and yet him still so much the child? “But no talk of times past, remember?”

“It…it’s not like I know anything, anyway, is it?” Jacob’s complexion, a moment before so colorful, had paled dangerously. “You won’t…you won’t tell anybody?”

“Not a soul, I promise.” And then, to take the look of worry from his face, she asked, “Did Odette actually promise that little bag would give you control over me?”

He shook his head. “She said it would keep me from being trampled.” And then he smiled, his humor restored. “And, thinking on it, if I stand back out of the way when you have the bit between your teeth, I suppose she might be right. But you will be wanting the new saddle? I don’t think my heart could take anything else.”

Morgan laughed, and the two of them headed toward the stables once more. She’d been in the coach all day yesterday, acting the lady, and for most of today, and she didn’t believe she could stand another moment of being so confined. Especially now, when they were so close to London.

Which was why she had asked Jacob to bring her second largest trunk into the inn while she dined in a private room that had been arranged for her, then quickly dressed herself in one of her new riding habits. The marvelous dark green creation, with its tight-fitting, short velvet jacket held closed with braided frogs, and the shako hat with the dyed green feather, seemed perfect for the day and her mood.

The skirt was split, but daring as she was, she was not foolish enough to believe riding astride to be an option. Besides, she rather enjoyed the sidesaddle, which had been a parting gift from her brother Spencer. He’d told her he doubted he could sit a horse half so well if he were forced to ride in skirts and with both legs dangling over the same side of the animal.

She’d known her brother’s compliment had been meant to cajole her into not arguing about the sidesaddle, but she’d allowed herself to be flattered.

She’d also made sure Jacob had sneaked out to the traveling coach before dawn yesterday, to hide her usual saddle in the boot.

“I thought Papa’s guard would never leave us, you know. Berengaria must be itching for a run as much as I am,” she commented as she stopped outside the stables, allowing Jacob the face-saving gesture of ordering one of the ostlers to fetch the mare.

“Not a run, Miss Morgan,” Jacob said, for once looking as if he meant what he said. “You said you wanted to ride right out in front of the coach for a ways where we could see you, that’s all. There’ll be no runs, or else—”

“Don’t say any more, Jacob,” Morgan warned cheerfully, “because we both know how difficult it would be for you to carry through on any threat.”

Not caring who saw, because Morgan never cared a snap for what anyone else thought of her as long as she was happy with herself, she raised her arm and draped it around Jacob’s shoulder, then leaned her head against him. “Ah, Jacob, we aren’t children anymore, are we? Isn’t that incredibly sad?”

He turned adoring blue eyes on her for a moment, then quickly put some distance between them, his heart aching. “We could go back, Morgie. We don’t have to go on. You don’t need no London gentlemen to be looking at you, pawing over you. You know I—” He stopped, appalled at himself for almost saying the words. “That is…you shouldn’t have to do anything makes you unhappy, Miss Morgan, so if you want to turn back to Becket Hall, I—”

“Oh, Jacob,” Morgan said, hating herself for upsetting her friend, who only meant the best for her. But now, almost overnight, she was Miss Morgan, not his playmate, his cheerful nemesis, and the sudden transition was proving troublesome for both of them.

She would be a terrible person, indeed, to make the situation even more difficult. “Please stop apologizing, Jacob. I’m the one who’s sorry. I’m horribly selfish, and I’m mean. What’s worse is that I know I am, and I still behave so badly to people who certainly don’t deserve such treatment. But, truth to tell, and only between us, I’m nervous, too. I don’t want to disappoint everyone who believes I’m going to have such a brilliant Season.”

Jacob’s slow smile was Morgan’s first warning that she’d almost talked herself into behaving. “Then you’ll ride into London in the coach?”

She jammed her gloved fists against her hips and glared at him. “Jacob Whiting, when did you get so smart? What do you think you just did?”

“I handled you? Well, almost,” Jacob said, his smile fading as he realized perhaps he’d been just a tad too proud of himself. “At least that’s what Mr. Courtland called it. ‘She seems heartless, but she wouldn’t hurt a fly, not on purpose,’ he told me, ‘so just fold on under like a blanket on a bed, and she’ll come around and stop her nonsense.’”

Morgan tried to raise a wave of anger, but found that, try as she would, humor was winning out. “I’ll kill that stick of a brother of mine,” she declared without heat, and then began to laugh. “Oh, Jacob, I don’t know which of us is the worse. You for being so truthful, or me for being so bad. And here I am, going from worrying Papa and my meddling brothers to yet another meddling brother. Why do men think they are here to protect us fragile females? How I long to be in charge of my own life.”

“There’s many who’d say you already are,” Jacob said, his smile wide as he felt that, just this once, he’d had the final word with her.

“Not really, Jacob, but I soon will be, I promise you that. Starting now. That ostler’s taking forever. What do you say we saddle Berengaria together?”

Jacob shook his head. “No, Miss Morgan,” he said, suddenly very serious. “I know my place, and you have to be learning to know yours. You just stand yourself there and be a lady while I go take care of Berengaria.”

“Yes, Jacob,” Morgan said with mocking obedience, lowering her head so that she could look up at him from beneath her dark lashes. “I’ll be very good, I promise.”

Jacob sniffed. “And I’ll be very quick, because you won’t be very good for very long.”

Morgan watched him go, idly tapping the riding crop against her gloved hand, and wondered if perhaps it was time to stop teasing Jacob as if they were still children. He’d almost said something they would both regret forever. He didn’t love her, not really. But he might think he did, and that would be too bad, because her affection for him was real, but quite different in nature. She could never be in love with Jacob. It was much too easy to control him.

Feeling rather ashamed of herself—yet unable to help rejoicing that she would get to ride Berengaria into London, which had been, after all, the point of the entire exercise—she turned on her heel and began to stroll around the yard of the country inn. Perhaps someone would see her in her lovely new riding habit and be impressed all hollow. She’d like that, and it would be a good omen perhaps, a hint of how she and her wonderful new wardrobe would be received in London society.

Except, she realized, frowning, she was very much alone, save for a man just now leading his mount into the yard. No, not leading the stallion, for the reins were loosely tied up on the saddle. The horse was following him like a faithful hound, not looking at all subservient, but more as if he accompanied the man only because it pleased him to do so.

Morgan laughed out loud at the sight, then concentrated her attention on the animal.

The stallion was magnificent. Beyond magnificent. Nearly white in the sunlight, its hindquarters dappled-gray, with a thick silvery mane that flowed to its shoulder, and a proud tail that nearly skimmed the ground.