Holmes didn’t look all that convinced either. “And you, Mr. Reyburn, sir. What are you doing out here?”
“Stargazing,” Jemmy told him. To prove his point, he reached inside his jacket and pulled out a small telescope. He held it up for Holmes to see. “A passion of mine.”
“Humph!” the constable said. “That may be well and good, but I’ll still have to take the lady in. I’m not about to risk her making another wrong turn and ending up on the mail coach to London.”
“I wouldn’t do that,” Amanda rushed to assure him. It wasn’t entirely a lie. She had no intention of going in the direction of London.
“Sorry, miss, but the law is the law.” He reached out to take her valise, when to her utter amazement, Jemmy stepped in front of her.
“Miss Smythe isn’t going anywhere, Holmes.”
Amanda’s breath stopped at his commanding words. First his kiss, now this possessive stance. All for her?
The constable’s jaw worked back and forth. “But sir, you know the law as well as I do. She was escaping, and that’s that.”
Jemmy remained rooted in place, feet firmly planted. “She has done no such thing. As long as she remains on Finch land, she hasn’t broken any laws.” He drew an imaginary line between the two lions with his walking stick. “Inside this threshold, she is under my family’s protection.”
Holmes’s eyes narrowed, and Amanda knew the man was caught in a wretched tangle. What could he do? Go against the word of the future baron?
“So be it, Mr. Reyburn,” he replied. “But if I catch her outside the gates, it’s to jail she goes until she can be properly wed. A bargain is a bargain, and my family’s been protecting Bramley Hollow for eight generations on that understanding. No one has broken a vow in all those years, and I mean to see her wed like she was promised.” He glanced over at Amanda. “And, miss, don’t fear for your possessions. I’ll be about. Nothing or no one will go astray before your match is made.”
“You are a credit to the village, Mr. Holmes,” Jemmy assured him, as he started to drag Amanda back up to the house.
“Mr. Reyburn, I—”
“Not another word, Miss Smythe, not until we are well out of earshot of our determined constable.”
She nodded and continued walking.
If it had been under any other circumstances, she would have thought she was dreaming, for the evening was made for romance, if not a poorly executed escape.
The moon shone bright and full of face, while the stars offered only a pale twinkling of secrets overhead. On either side of the drive, flowers lent their own fragrant air—the spice of early roses, the sweet scent of lilacs, the elusive air of peonies.
And beside her, through the magic of the moonlight and the romance of the stars, Jemmy walked along determinedly. Jemmy Reyburn. She couldn’t believe it. After so many years of wondering about him, now here was the man himself. All at once she wanted to ask him a bevy of questions. Did he like poetry? Had he ever dreamed of seeing the ruins at Pompeii? What had Spain been like?
And most importantly, had he ever loved someone?
As she had him…albeit from afar.
She continued along silently, her mind full of questions, her lips pressed together for fear of confessing too much to this man who unknowingly had been the hero of her lonely days and empty nights.
“You shouldn’t have tried to leave,” he said, breaking the silence.
Hardly the words of love she so longed to hear at least once in her dull and unremarkable life, but what did she expect from this man? He who kissed her senseless and called her “fetching” one moment, then barked at her the next with such dark passion.
“You needn’t concern yourself with my problems, Mr. Reyburn,” she said airily. “I won’t have you go to jail for my sake.”
“I don’t plan on going to jail for you, for I wouldn’t have been so foolhardy as to go out the front gates.”
So much for her knight errant. No braving the dragon or storming the walls in a blaze of fire on the promise of attaining her slender hand. “And what other route was I to take?” she asked. “I don’t know the countryside, as evidenced by my arrival at Mrs. Maguire’s cottage last night. But I do know the way to the nearest mail coach, and it is out those gates.” She jerked her thumb over her shoulder, where Holmes probably still remained encamped in his lonely and determined vigil.
Jemmy groaned and shook his head. “How did you intend to get to the coach? Walk?”
He needn’t sound so incredulous. Perhaps she hadn’t thought out all the details, just as she hadn’t when she’d fled her parents’ house. Certainly there were difficulties to face when one took hasty action—as evidenced by this matchmaker muddle—but this slight delay aside, she knew one thing for certain, she needed to be gone from Finch Manor—for without a doubt if this man kissed her again and, by some miracle of fate, asked her to stay, she would. And that would spell disaster.
For her, and more importantly, she sensed, for him. “Well, yes, I did intend to walk.”
Instead of going in the front door, he led her around the side of the house and stopped in a small garden. “Miss Smythe, you have amazing faith.”