More Than a Lover Read Online Free

chance. What man wanted his mistake thrust under his nose on a daily basis?
    Thank God and Charlie, he didn’t have to return to his father like the beggar he’d always been.
    He hunched deeper into the folds of his scarf, but it didn’t prevent a trickle of rainwater finding its way down the back of his neck. And that didn’t take his mind off the water splashing up from his horse’s hooves and soaking his breeches. Pretty soon his backside would be soaking wet, too.
    While the dry and warm Mrs Falkner, when he caught up to her, would not be the slightest bit pleased with him or his news.
    The woman certainly offered a challenge to a man known for his charm when it came to lonely widows. A reputation he’d worked hard to acquire. Pleasurably hard. Those words in conjunction with thoughts of Caro Falkner had him shifting uncomfortably in the saddle. Was it her obvious disapproval that had him thinking of seduction each time he saw her or the beauty she tried so hard to hide behind her severe demeanour and dress? Or was it the mystery behind her facade of unbending respectability? The picture she painted of the vicar’s perfect daughter, when he remembered her so very differently. Was she hiding something that might prove dangerous to his friend and his friend’s wife?
    An intriguing question.
    He rounded a bend to a scene of utter disaster. A carriage tilted crazily on the verge. A shattered wheel some distance off. A team—Tonbridge’s team, for goodness’ sake—trembling and shifting in the harness, ready to bolt. His heart rose in his throat.
    He galloped the intervening hundred yards and leaped down. His gut clenched at the sight of the coachman sprawled face up in the ditch. Blade had seen enough death to recognise a broken neck. Why had he not caught them up sooner? Had the woman’s distaste for him made him deliberately hang back? Idiot.
    â€˜Mrs Falkner?’ His shout was met by a resounding silence. Heart in his mouth, he approached the carriage door swinging free on its hinges and peered inside. The sight of her pale face, her closed eyes and the way she lay on the floor in a heap brought bile to his throat. He leaped aboard. She groaned softly and her eyelids fluttered.
    Alive, then. Relief flooded through him.
    He rubbed her cold hands. ‘Mrs Falkner?’ he repeated. ‘Come on, let’s get you out of here.’ It would be cold in the wind and rain, but he could feel the carriage shifting as the horses moved restlessly. At any moment the animals might take it into their foolish heads to run.
    â€˜Mrs Falkner,’ he said again, more demanding this time. Louder.
    She opened her eyes and put a hand to her head. For a moment she stared at him blankly, then frowned. ‘Mr Read? Where is Josiah? Mr Garge?’
    He thought about lying, but she was going to see how matters lay the moment he got her out of the carriage. ‘Dead, I am afraid. Broken neck. Here, let me help you up. Put your arm over my shoulder and hang on.’ With only one hand, he had to get her to help herself. Fortunately, her eyes cleared and, with his aid, she pushed to her feet. He helped her to the ground, where she swayed slightly, then found her feet and her balance.
    Out in the grey light of the morning, his blood chilled as he saw the red lump on her forehead, already turning blue, and the blood streaked across her chin. ‘You are hurt.’
    She stared at him blankly, then glanced down at her hand where more blood welled. ‘A scratch, I think.’
    He guided her to a boulder and sat her facing away from the coachman. ‘I must see to the horses and then we will see what we can do about that injury.’ He’d seen men die from less on the battlefields of Europe.
    A quick check of the horses confirmed his impression that while nervous, they were unharmed. He found a length of rope beneath the coachman’s box and used it to hobble the