The Scoundrel and the Debutante Read Online Free PDF

there was nothing here but a change of horses. Yet he, for one, could not wait to be disgorged from this coach.
    They rolled into the village, and the coach swayed to one side as the coachman hopped down from the seats atop to open the door and release the step. Roan was always a gentleman, but today, he could not help himself from launching out of the interior of the crowded coach and taking several steps away to drag some much needed air into his lungs, and hopefully, erase the feel of Miss Cabot against him from his flesh. By the time he turned about, the coachman had helped all the passengers from the interior, and the boy was assisting the old man onto a bench. The two ladies, likewise regurgitated from the coach, stood in identical fashion, their hands on the small of their backs, bending backward...and still talking.
    Miss Cabot was standing apart from the others, holding a small wrapped package. She looked remarkably fresh, cheerful as a bluebell in her blue traveling gown.
    The driver strolled into their midst with the posture of a mayor in spite of his dirty breeches, worn shoes and a waistcoat that seemed two sizes too small. “Beggin’ yer pardon, ladies and gents!” he announced grandly. “The coach will depart at a quarter past two.”
    Roan glanced around him. There was a small public inn and a smithy, but very little else. He would very much like to drown the morning with a pint or two, but instead began striding down the road, needing to stretch his legs and shake off the exquisitely torturous feeling of having a lovely young woman pressed practically into his lap for the past hour and a half. It wouldn’t hurt him to find the last tattered remnants of his patience, either. He paused, searching for it. It was not available.
    Roan was not generally an impatient man. On the contrary—he thought most would say he could be depended upon to be the center of calm in the midst of a storm. But he was devilishly out of sorts—he’d been in England for all of two days and could still feel the sea swells beneath his legs after a month at sea. He’d been turned completely around by the fellows in Liverpool, who, he’d realized after some minutes of trying to understand them, were actually speaking English to him. Those lads had sent him on this fool’s errand, sent him south when he should have gone north.
    Moreover, Roan was a man accustomed to fine carriages and better steeds. Not stagecoaches on rutted roads, squashed in between a dirty squab and a woman with skin that felt as smooth as butter.
    He came to a full stop in the road and breathed deeply of the warm air. The short walk had not improved his mood as much as he would have liked. He turned his face up to a bright blue sky and roared his frustration with his missteps, with his sister, with everything in general.
    Now
he felt better.
    Roan pivoted about and strode back to the little hamlet.
    He spied Miss Cabot perched on top of a fence post. She had opened the package she’d held protectively in her lap and appeared to be eating something. Next to the fence, the sisters were seated side by side on a trunk, each with a pail in their lap. They, too, appeared to be eating.
    Roan strolled to Miss Cabot’s side. He tried not to ogle what was in her lap, but he couldn’t resist it, particularly as a quick review of the past twenty-four hours reminded him that he’d not eaten.
    Miss Cabot glanced up, turning her head so that he could see her hazel eyes from beneath the deep brim of her bonnet. “Oh. Mr. Matheson.”
    â€œMiss Cabot.”
    She held up the brown cheesecloth so that a variety of small bites were displayed just below his nose. “May I offer you a sweetmeat?”
    He peered more closely at the contents. They looked like the fried cakes that Nella, his family’s longtime cook, often made. “No, thank you.” He wasn’t so out of sorts as to take her