Miss Marcie's Mischief (4 page)

"Lower your head," he instructed into the shell of her right ear. "That's it. Now breathe. No, not like that," he whispered when Marcie breathed too fast and too shallowly "Like this."

Marcie listened to the even, deep sounds of his breath swooshing into her ear. She followed his lead, doing exactly as he instructed.

"Ah, you are a quick learner. Very good. Now, I want you to close your eyes," he said, his voice husky and reassuring. "Close your eyes and think of the crisp, country air filling your senses...."

The ringing in Marcie's ears ceased. By degrees, she felt herself calming. Gone was the queasiness that had so quickly surfaced.

Cole Coachman obviously sensed her ease. To Nan, he said, "Go to the coach and get my pack from the box. There's some ginger root there. Fetch it for me, will you, Nan?" As Nan hurried away to do Cole's bidding, he returned his attention to Marcie.

"Feeling better?" he asked. "No, don't get up, and don't open your eyes. Not yet. Just nod if you're feeling better."

Marcie stayed where she was. She nodded.

The clean scent of the man enveloped her in a warm and wondrous cocoon. She found herself resting ever so gently against the lean length of him. Feeling no need to be on her manners lest the man move away and she become violently sick again, Marcie allowed herself a moment of pure pleasure in just remaining within his sturdy embrace, no matter how indecent it might be to do so.

Said the handsome coachman, "I fear someone should have warned you about Nan and her penchant for devouring an unholy amount of sweets. She seems to have a stomach made of stone in that respect."

Marcie shook her head. "I fear I am the one to blame. I should have known better than to eat so many confections."

"And I," said Cole Coachman, "should have taken more care when rounding the bends along this winding road. Though it is my duty to deliver the parcels of this coach, I should have given more thought to you and Nan."

Marcie thought him sweet to say such a thing, but his words also reminded her that she was hindering his Mail run.

"I dareswear I've quite made a mess of your schedule," she said.

"I won't argue that point."

Marcie lifted her lashes, turning her face to meet his look. "Do you think you will be able to make up the time I've caused you to lose?"

"Rest assured, I will certainly try. Barring, of course, any quick turns along the road that might cause you to be ill again."

"Please," said Marcie, chagrined. "I am quite over being sick for the night. I feel right as rain. Truly, I do."

"Glad I am of that."

He grinned then; a handsome grin that tugged at the corners of his chiseled mouth and chased away the clouds in those gray eyes she'd heretofore found so stormy.

Perhaps the man wasn't so beastly as she'd first thought him to be....

Nan came trudging through the snow then, carrying a small square of folded linen. Cole Coachman took the pack from her hands. He made quick work of unfolding the linen and offering to Marcie what looked to be a chip of hard candy.

"It is ginger root," he assured her. "It will help settle your stomach. Now be a good miss and open your mouth."

Marcie did as he instructed, all the while keeping her gaze locked with his. She felt the smoothness of his gloved fingers as he placed the chip of ginger root between her lips, then brushed those same fingers across her cheek and down her jawline. All thoughts of ever again being sick quickly fled. Heavens, but she found herself quite mesmerized by the man's touch, his nearness, his grin.

Ginger root or not, she was feeling much better. Quite alive, in fact. And far too aware of the man's presence.

"Think you can stand up now?" asked Cole Coachman.

His question forced Marcie out of her trancelike state. Blast! she thought, but she was acting like some moon-eyed schoolgirl. What a ninnyhammer she was being to think that the coachman's haunting grin might be a prelude to some sort of courtship. As Nan had stated, Cole Coachman had many admirers... and perhaps several lovers as well. As for Marcie, though she was an heiress in her own right, she remained at heart a wild West Country girl, innocent of the ways of roguish coachmen who kept a mistress at every post. For Marcie to fashion any romantic notions out of this bizarre meeting was nothing but pure folly—even if he
was
the first gentleman she'd spied on Saint Valentine's Day.

Marcie chewed on the ginger root even as she pulled away from the man's heated embrace and got to her feet. "I am quite ready to continue our travels," she announced, "that is, if you are not averse to my joining you."

Marcie fully expected the coachman to inform her he would deposit her at the nearest inn, all else be damned.

Thank goodness, he did no such thing.

Instead, he stood up, brushed the snow from his coat, then gave her a grin—one that instantly dazzled her. "My team awaits," he said, indicating the coach and its horses with one sweep of his right arm.

Marcie couldn't help but smile. For the first time since her father's death, all seemed right in the world. She lifted her skirts and headed for the coach, all the while thinking her madcap dash from Mistress Cheltenham's School for Young Ladies was indeed shaping up to be nothing short of a smashing success. How easy it had been!

Marcie was feeling quite pleased with herself as Cole Coachman moved beside her to help her alight into the carriage.

Of a sudden, though, there came to her ears a terrible screech of fast-moving wheels. She looked up to behold a private carriage rounding the bend—and heading straight for their stilled coach.

"Lord have mercy!" screeched a wide-eyed Nan.

"God save us!" added the guard, Reeve.

"Oh, bother," muttered Cole Coachman.

He expertly grabbed for Marcie, yanking her out of harm's way. But Marcie, sensing danger, had already commenced to jump back. The two of them crashed into each other, the combined momentum of their movements throwing them off balance.

Marcie found herself tumbling backward in the snow, Cole Coachman beneath her. There came the horrid sounds of horses nickering in fright and carriage wheels screeching to a halt on the icy roadway as Marcie and Cole Coachman hit solid ground and began to roll.

"Oof!"

Marcie wasn't certain if that sound came from Cole Coachman's lips, or her own. No doubt from both of them, she surmised, for they tumbled against a stout tree trunk, Cole hitting first, and Marcie following to land with a thump against his solid form.

"Oh, heavens!" Marcie said, trying to disentangle her limbs from his. "I
am
sorry. You are not hurt, are you?"

Her skirts were woefully tangled with his legs. And her left hand was pressing against a part of his anatomy no lady would ever in her right mind even think about. Marcie felt her face redden as she struggled frantically to be free.

Cole Coachman swore in exasperation. "Just stay still, will you?" he demanded.

Marcie, however, was far too embarrassed to stay put. She jumped up, backed against the tree, and in doing so managed to jar a clump of snow from the branches above. The clump came down with a
kerplop
atop Cole Coachman's head, causing him to look like a half finished snowman.

Unfortunately for Marcie, she found she had a hysterical desire to giggle.

Cole Coachman said nothing for a full minute; time enough for Marcie to discern the stormy orbs of his eyes amidst all that wet, clinging snow.

Oh, my, she thought, but she'd be fortunate if the man didn't see her strung by her toes before the night was finished!

Marcie, her urge to giggle sufficiently suppressed, immediately dropped to her knees and tried to brush the snow from him.

"Really, sir," she said in a most serious tone, "but you should have known better than to roll us into this tree."

He glared at her through a fringe of snow. "I can only pray you will forgive me," he managed through gritted teeth.

"Well of course I shall, but—"

Marcie's words stuck in her throat as she glanced up to spy a carriage listing dangerously to the opposite side of the roadway and implanted firmly in a snow bank there. The driver, obviously uninjured, was hopping mad and spouting a stream of expletives. He demanded to know what caused a Mail coach to be stopped in the middle of such an oft-used roadway, then yelled for a meeting with the coachman of the carriage.

"Oh, dear," whispered Marcie to Cole Coachman. "I fear the man wants your head upon a platter."

"My
head?" sputtered Cole Coachman.
"My head?"

Marcie blinked and sat back on her heels.

"Well, yes, yours," she said, quite perplexed at his quicksilver moods. "You did, after all, leave your carriage in a most inconvenient spot."

Why the man let forth a clearly long-held breath of frustration, Marcie could not fathom. Cole Coachman, she surmised, could be deuced temperamental!

Chapter 3

Cole Coachman righted himself, then peered at Marcie intently. "You are all right, aren't you?" he all but barked at her. "No broken bones? No scraped knees?"

"Only my pride has been wounded," Marcie answered, noting the anger in his wintry gaze.

In truth, his knee had slammed against her ankle during their tumble and Marcie feared she would have quite a goose egg on it before too long. But she would rather walk barefoot on a bed of nails than admit this to the angry Cole Coachman. She'd done quite enough damage for one night.

In any event, he was turning away from her and heading for the livid driver. The two met in the middle of the road, whereupon they engaged in a heated conversation for several minutes.

Marcie moved toward Nan and John Reeve.

"This is all my fault," she said.

No one bothered to argue that point.

Marcie swallowed her embarrassment, then continued, "I see no reason why Cole Coachman should be forced to have his ears bent by the driver when, in fact, it was my stupidity that brought us to this unfortunate incident."

"Don't you worry about Cole Coachman, mistress," said John Reeve. "He can hold his own, he can, with any driver along these roads."

Nan nodded in agreement.

"Still," Marcie replied, "he should not be expected to take a scolding on my account."

With that, Marcie headed for Cole Coachman and the sputtering driver. The expletives that streamed from the portly man's mouth were enough to make Marcie's ears burn.

"How very rude!" Marcie admonished.

Both Cole Coachman and the driver turned to gape at her; the pot-bellied driver with a look of murderous intent, Cole Coachman with barely concealed agitation.

"I have things well in hand," said Cole Coachman.

Marcie chose to ignore his warning, instead fixing her sights on the disheveled driver who could doubtless turn the air blue with his broad knowledge of gutter talk.

"You sir," she said, "have no right whatsoever to speak to this fine coachman in such a crude fashion. I take total responsibility for this most unfortunate accident. I am the reason Cole Coachman stopped his coach so suddenly. And it is because of me that he ignored his precious cargo and tarried too long near this dangerous turn."

The gap-toothed driver tipped back his broad-brimmed hat even as he spat a stream of tobacco juice down onto the snowy road. He eyed her but good.

"So she be the one, eh, mate?" he demanded.

"The one and only," said Cole Coachman.

Cole Coachman spoke the words through gritted teeth, Marcie noted, but why he should do so was quite beyond her. She'd only come to his aid, after all. There was no need for him to be so stiff-lipped, nor for him to peer at her as though he wished she were in any other country but the one in which he stood. Heavens, but the man was temperamental; fussing over her welfare one minute, then chilling her with his gray and piercing gaze the next. There was no accounting for some people's moods! she thought.

Marcie straightened her shoulders, focusing her attention on the problem at hand, and on the ugly-voiced driver standing before her.