She spun around to see none other than Lord Gareth Armstrong, hovering in the doorway. "Where did you come from? How did you get in here? And up here? And—and, no, I don't want to go anywhere with him. I only wrote that to make you or my mother come over here. He wasn't even here at the time. But now he is—as if he knew what I wrote to you."

"So what would you like me to do?" He folded his arms across his chest and leaned casually against the door jamb. "Go downstairs and tell him that you're marrying me, instead?"

The words Would you? danced on the tip of her tongue. Instead, what came out was, "How did you even find your way up here?"

"I slipped in the back way. But for future reference, be aware that you need not threaten elopement with Kingsley to make me do your bidding. As for my brother and your mother, I doubt they're running away to Scotland."

"Oh, no? Well, only moments ago I received an express from my mother, in which she stated quite clearly that she and your brother are on their way north to FramptonCastle, and from there they plan to cross the border. Gretna Green is only a day's drive from there. That's how she eloped with Lord Milner."

Nothing should have satisfied Evie at this point. All the same, she was satisfied to see the look of dismay cross Lord Gareth's face. "Then she still means to marry Bradbury!"

"And he still means to marry her."

"Where is the express?"

She glanced around. "It must still be downstairs. In the drawing room."

"Then kindly retrieve it for me." He swept his green-eyed gaze from her bonnet, down to her spencer, and finally to the reticule in her hand. "'Twould appear you're planning to go downstairs anyway."

"Yes—the back way. How many times must I tell you I don't want to go with him?"

"It sounded from the note you sent that you wanted to. Very well, ring for a servant to go downstairs and fetch the express for you."

"That would take too long," Evie said. "Why don't you go down there and get it? It's not as if Kingsley has any plans to elope with you."

"You do have a point. Very well, I shall—" He stopped short and then stepped into the bedchamber, closing the door not quite all the way.

Evie should have been shocked by this, but she wasn't, and she knew why. She'd been in a bedchamber with him before. With the door closed. And on a chaise with him. With her skirts hitched up over her knees and her thighs parted as he—

"Don't be alarmed," he whispered. "Well, I see you're not. Splendid. But someone's coming up the main staircase."

Evie heard the footsteps. If it was Kingsley—and she didn't know who else it could be—then he was making no effort at stealth. "Emmeline?" he called out. "Emmeline!"

Lord Gareth darted a questioning glance at Evie and silently mouthed, "Who's Emmeline?"

With a sigh of exasperation she pointed to herself, wondering if Lord Gareth would now think her name was Emmeline. He'd never addressed her as anything other than "Miss Benedict."

"Emmeline!" Kingsley bellowed again, as Evie heard the click of a door opening down the hall, followed by a piercing scream.

"Lady Cranston!" Evie exclaimed in a hoarse whisper.

"Well, so you are sick, just as your daughter said," Kingsley snapped. "Now where is she?"

"Help! Evie! Someone!" Lady Cranston wailed.

"Stay here," Lord Gareth said tersely, as he rushed out the door, slamming it behind him.

While Evie understood perfectly that he meant to keep her safe, she still couldn't bring herself to just stand here while—while—she pulled off her bonnet and dashed out of the room, then down the hall to Lady Cranston's bedchamber.

Lord Gareth stood in the doorway, booted feet planted apart as he looked down at the floor. Evie gasped upon seeing a pistol in his hand.

"Did you shoot him?" she cried, just as it occurred to her that she never heard a gunshot.

He calmly glanced up at her, and just as calmly said, "I believe I told you to stay where you were. And no, of course I didn't shoot him. I merely coshed him over the head with the butt of this pistol. He'll have a nice lump in addition to the bigger one already on his neck, but he'll be fine. Summon your menservants to take him out of here and back into that hired carriage out there. Though with any luck, the screaming should already bring them running."

"But Lady Cranston! Is she all right?" Evie stepped past him, then over Kingsley's crumpled body on the floor. Lady Cranston sat up in bed, ashen and trembling.

"I'm only frightened out of my wits!" she said indignantly. "Is there nowhere safe anymore? I want to return to Yorkshire. It's always been safe there. Alas, it means having to travel on roads where it isn't safe!"

Evie reached for the bell pull next to the bed and yanked on it. "As soon as the servants remove that rogue on the floor, my lady, we will leave London at once."

"For where?" Lord Gareth inquired, as he crouched down next to a groaning Kingsley and went through his pockets.

"Why, north of course. Lady Cranston wishes to return to her home in Yorkshire, while I mean to go on to FramptonCastle and stop my mother from making another foolish elopement. You needn't rob him, my lord. I just want him out of here."

"He hasn't a sixpence to scratch with. That, I suspect, is why he is so keen to elope with you. He needs your dowry. Or rather, he wants it." He drew what appeared to be a letter from Kingsley's waistcoat pocket at the same moment Lumsden appeared along with the footman.

Also at the same moment it occurred to Evie that the letter might well be the same one she'd written to Kingsley the other day, pretending to accept his marriage proposal in exchange for his silence regarding their first meeting.

Somehow, she had to get that thing away from Lord Gareth before he could read it. He had no right!

"What happened here?" Lumsden demanded. "We heard screaming."

Lord Gareth rose to his feet and to Evie's dismay, he slid the letter into his own waistcoat pocket. "Lord Kingsley came in here uninvited. Remove him from the premises at once."

Lumsden blinked back in astonishment, and Evie chimed in, "Be assured Lord Gareth is here at my invitation. I sent the footman for him."

"That's right, she did," the footman assured the butler.

The two of them picked up Kingsley from either end, and carted him out of the bedchamber and down the hallway.

"C'mon, don't throw me out again," Kingsley raved. "She didn't do what I paid her t'do."

Lord Gareth remained in the doorway, his gaze shifting from Evie to Lady Cranston and back to Evie. "If you don't wish to be bothered any further by Lord Kingsley, then I would heartily recommend that you ladies do leave London at once."

"How I long to do so," Lady Cranston said. "But I'm also afraid of the long journey. We need a gentleman to escort us. Mr. Gerald Benedict, my niece's husband, accompanied us here, but he and my niece are now in Northamptonshire."

"And my brother and his bride are in Brighton for another week," Evie added. "My lord, won't you please escort us? Don't you wish to stop your brother from marrying my mother?"

"That's assuming they are indeed eloping," he replied.

"I tell you, they are!" Evie insisted. "And now that Kingsley is out of here, it should be safe for me to go downstairs and find the express my mother sent."

"Then go," he said. "You'll have time to pack while I bring my own carriage. Or rather, one of my brother's barouches. All I have is a phaeton, and that's hardly suitable for a long journey north with two ladies. He won't mind. Lady Cranston, are you certain you're up to the journey?"

"As long as we have a gentleman to escort us, I'm ready to leave at once. It's been well over a month now since I was shot in the shoulder, and last time the doctor visited, he said I was healing quite nicely and could resume my regular routine whenever I please. And it pleases me now."

"As you say, my lady." Lord Gareth bowed to her and then headed down the hallway with Evie on his heels. She could not let him out of her sight now. Not while he had that mysterious letter in his possession. Not until she was able to satisfy herself that it wasn't the message she'd sent to Kingsley.

"Why can't we take Kingsley's hired carriage?" she asked, as they reached the top of the staircase. "It's right there. And he won't need it now. It'll save extra time if we hope to catch up to your brother and my mother before they reach FramptonCastle—or even Scotland."

"They already have quite a head start on us," he replied, descending the staircase. "Our best hope of stopping them is if I go by myself on a mount. However, if my brother follows his usual routine of traveling on the Great North Road, then he will not stop at any coaching inns, but rather impose himself on any dukes or even earls who happen to have grand estates along the way." They reached the bottom of the staircase, and he gestured toward the drawing room. "Now do fetch that express from your mother, please."

She just stood there, staring at him.

"Why do you hesitate, Miss Benedict?"

She had no choice but to take the direct route. She made a show of knitting her brow. "I saw you take something from Lord Kingsley's waistcoat pocket and place it in your own. And I have reason to believe it's the express my mother sent." She wasn't about to tell him that on his brother's advice, she'd written a letter to Kingsley agreeing to marry him, because it might well be that very letter.

Lord Gareth did not so much as make the slightest twitch toward his own waistcoat pocket. "What makes you say that?"

"I think he took it and placed it in his own pocket before he came upstairs."

Lord Gareth did not even blink, nor did his expression change as his green eyes bored into hers. "And what makes you say that?"

Evie's mind had never raced so fast.

Lord Gareth's face had never been so like stone.

"I told him I couldn't go because my mother was ill. You saw what happened upstairs. He mistook Lady Cranston for my mother, which is a first. Most people mistake me for her." Including you!

He blinked, as if he might have heard that thought. "Then who's Emmeline? I know it's not your mother's name."

And Evie knew exactly how he knew it wasn't her mother's name, and not because his brother told him. "No, and it's not Lady Cranston's, either."

"Well, it certainly isn't yours. Your first name is Evangeline."

Her heart did a little leap at that, and she broke into a smile. "You know my name! But he doesn't. Last week he thought I was Eveline. This week he thinks I'm Emmeline. Heaven only knows what he'll be calling me next week. I'd rather not find out. Yet he thinks to marry me!"

But you don't, Lord Gareth!

"Why do you think I'm standing here right now?" he inquired. "You sent me an urgent message little more than an hour ago, signed with your name. Evangeline Benedict. Perhaps Kingsley doesn't know your name because you've never sent him any messages."

Only she had. And he still didn't know her name.

He went on, "Now, do tell me why you think the message he was carrying is the express your mother sent? Why don't you just go into the drawing room and look?"

Blast him! He'd broken her train of thought with that tangent about Emmeline. She'd been about to explain why Kingsley must have stolen the express when he simply had to ask about the nonexistent Emmeline.

He stalked past her to the drawing room. "I'll look."

Panic forced the words out of her in a swift torrent as she hastened after him. "I was afraid he'd see it and keep it as proof that my mother isn't ill, and he'd use it as an excuse to insist we—that is, he and I—elope, too."

Lord Gareth stood in the middle of the drawing room and glanced all around. "I don't see any piece of paper anywhere."

"Then he did take it! It is in your waistcoat pocket!" It took all of Evie's strength not to thrust her fingers inside his coat. It would be so improper to do so.

But not as improper as what she did That Fateful and Scandalous Night She Could Never Forget.

He kept his gaze riveted on her as he drew the letter from his waistcoat pocket and held it up, out of her reach, as he read the direction.

"It's not the express your mother sent," he said. "It's addressed to someone else."

The message Evie had sent Kingsley?

"Then you mustn't read it! You must return it to him." She jumped up in a vain attempt to snatch it away, but he was as tall as her brother, with arms just as long. He had no trouble keeping it out of her reach.

"Why are you trying to take it away from me, Miss Benedict?" he asked calmly. "If it's addressed to him, then you mustn't read it, either. But something tells me you will not return it to him if given the chance."

Tears pricked Evie's eyes as she jumped again, this time lunging against Lord Gareth. He swiftly twined an arm around her and locked her against him, his green eyes impaling her.

"It's something you wrote to him, isn't it?" His voice was low, sounding more terrible than if he shouted. "What did you write to him, Evangeline?"

Up to this moment, Lord Gareth had always addressed her as Miss Benedict. Now, of all times, he decided to call her by her first name.

It had warmed her heart and set it dancing to learn that he knew her name, and she would have liked nothing more than for him to use it.

But not now.

"Tell me, Evangeline." His voice was still low, but firm and unyielding. Like his body against hers.

She had to tell him. She wanted to tell him, but didn't know how.

"Open it and read it," she quavered. "And then I'll explain."