Today's Reading
She turned, finding to her irritation that the little window behind the coachman was jammed.
'You are running away, and you believe I should assist you?'
The man's voice sounded incredulous, and Sylvia turned to him with her own surprise. Honestly, she was only asking for the tiniest bit of assistance. He was a gentleman, wasn't he? Wasn't a gentleman supposed to assist a woman in distress?
'Yes.' Honestly, was the man dense? 'I won't be a bother.'
Now she was looking at him, Sylvia took in the man's appearance, something she had given absolutely no thought to when she'd wrenched open the door and happily helped herself to a seat. And she saw—
Well. He was a pleasant surprise. She could have accosted anyone, really, and yet here was a man who was impressively handsome in the face. A sharp jaw, an imperious look, but a kindness around the eyes one rarely saw in any man wealthy enough to keep a chaise and four. A slight mark by his left eyebrow—a birthmark, perhaps—in the shape of a swallow in flight that was paler than his complexion. He was tall too, if the cramped way he was sitting was any indication.
Sylvia grinned. It seemed like a small reward for being so bold. Her adventure was going to begin with the most charming of companions.
And then her smile faltered.
Her gaze had been admiring—and as she was no true wallflower, whatever Miss Pike tried to tell her, she had been happily blatant in her appreciation.
Mr Featherstonehaugh, however, was staring with quite a different expression. His startling green eyes, now Sylvia came to look at them, were carefully skating over her skin. All her skin. The thin inch between her spencer and her hands, still hidden under her skirts, the skimming white lace in sharp contrast to the dark brown of her skin, revealed by her décolletage. The darkness of her throat, rising to burning pink cheeks.
Sylvia swallowed.
It was only when people stared like that did she remember just how different she must look. It was her skin, and her world. She belonged in both.
Until someone stared.
Rallying herself for the questions she knew would come, preparing the trite answers she trotted out for strangers whenever they enquired, Sylvia readied herself for—
'I must ask you to leave this carriage,' Mr Featherstonehaugh said, entirely ignoring the colour of her skin for, it appeared, a more pressing matter.
Sylvia's lips parted in curious astonishment. Well, he was a singular man indeed. 'Waiting for someone?'
Her enquiry garnered only a slight nod in response.
She had to frown. 'I cannot think who you could be waiting for—there is no one visiting the Wallflower Academy today, and you aren't courting anyone here. I'd know about it.'
She always found out. That was the trouble with being abandoned at a finishing school for ladies who were shy, quiet and retiring. When one was the complete opposite of those things, one had to go in search of conversation.
Goodness, the things that you were told when you truly listened to a shy person—Mr Featherstonehaugh was staring—and Sylvia had to admit the expression only increased the man's natural charms.
Goodness, she would have enjoyed Miss Pike's last dinner far more if this Mr Featherstonehaugh had been in attendance. The man was worth looking at, even if his conversation was lacking.
'Look, I just want to be taken to London,' Sylvia said brightly, rearranging her skirts as though that would somehow encourage the man to tell the coachman to depart.
Sylvia glanced up, taking in the slightly furrowed brow that brought a crease between the man's eyes—his green eyes.
Something lurched most unaccountably in her stomach.
There was no harm in disclosing her escape plan to her accomplice, was there?
'I have heard there are a great number of opportunities in London. I have made it there twice, though once I was discovered by the Pike—'
'A pike?' Mr Featherstonehaugh looked bewildered. 'You were accosted by a large fish?'
...
