It Takes a Hero Read Online Free PDF

the directions, then I can be gone and leave you ladies to your… uh, conversation."
    Miss Tate crossed the room, her steps direct and full of purpose, so very unlike her sleek and smooth counterparts in London. As she passed him, her skirt brushed his leg, and if he'd been in town he would have been of half a mind to check his wallet and watch fob after coming so close to such a wily wench, but as he looked at her again, smiling up from beneath her simple straw bonnet, he wondered if he was just being foolish.
    Miss Rebecca Tate and her charming and unsullied village of Bramley Hollow were about as far from Seven Dials or the Rookeries as one could get in England. Obviously he was becoming as jaded as his brothers claimed, especially when he viewed a country spinster to be as disingenuous as a London abbess. Miss Tate was most likely just being as congenial as most people from the country tended to be.
    That's it, she was just being generous and kind.
    He shot one more glance at her blue eyes and went with his original instincts about the lady.
    She was trouble.
    "There is no problem, sir," she was saying. "I am more than happy to assist someone who is so generous with his time." And he would have believed her innocent then if not for the bemused mockery in her eyes that said only too clearly that she knew as well as he that he was lying about his connection to Miss Briggs. "Are you coming along? Or do you have other packets you need directions for?"
    Rafe cringed, but decided he'd trust her for now to take him to Miss Briggs. Once they got there, he'd leave her on the lady's doorstep to go seek her gossip elsewhere.
    She made her way out the door but stopped on the steps, her gaze fixed on Cochrane. "Quite a procession just to deliver a packet." She looked from him to Cochrane then back to him, as if she expected an introduction.
    She wasn't getting one.
    Rafe shot his assistant a black look, a warning as it were, before he asked Miss Tate, "Is Miss Briggs far? For I see you don't have a ready mount." He was hoping she'd take the hint and just give him the directions.
    "And why would I need one?" she asked. "Bramley Hollow isn't that grand, sir. Everything I could possibly need is merely a stone's throw." She shied another glance at Cochrane, who'd now doffed his cap and was smoothing down his hair. "Unless you need your friend, why don't you just follow me? Miss Briggs isn't far." With that, she turned and strolled down a narrow path, market basket swinging in her hand.
    "Wait here," he told a disappointed Cochrane, before striding after his newfound and unwanted helpmate.
    When he caught up with Miss Tate, she was stopped before the gate to the churchyard.
    "You seem rather an odd sort to be looking for the author of the
Miss Darby
novels."
    This stopped him. Did everyone in Bramley Hollow know that Miss Briggs spent her time penning these scandalous tales?
    She must have noted his surprise. She leaned forward, cupping her hand to her mouth. "You aren't the first to come here seeking her out," she whispered.
    There was a wicked light in her blue gaze that teased him and once again he found himself staring at her, unsure whether or not to trust his own eyes.
    "I'm not?" he managed to ask, still trying to reconcile the spinster before him with the siren who seemed to lurk beneath the lady's plain exterior.
    "Oh, no," Miss Tate said, leaning back against the gate, her market basket plopped by her feet. "I think she had three visitors just last week."
    So much for the bundle of coins he'd wasted on those worthless clerks. Obviously Mr. Ahey's apprentices were making a small fortune selling the directions to the popular author.
    "I actually do have business with her," he said, finding some gratification in the truth.
    Those damn, infuriating eyes of hers held a bemused air, but she hardly appeared impressed—with him or his assertion.
    "Ah, yes. The packet to be delivered."
    "You don't believe me?" Rafe wasn't used to people