Balthazar: The Spare: A witty and steamy opposites attract Victorian Romance. (The Hale Saga Series: Americans in London Book 1) by S.M. LaViolette

Author:S.M. LaViolette [LaViolette, S.M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Crooked Sixpence Press
Published: 2023-05-17T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

Yet again, Mrs. Dryden was avoiding him. Balthazar felt as if every single time he had any contact with the woman—no matter how tame—she turned into a ghost afterward.

They’d had such a lovely day in Northampton—so he’d thought—but he’d not seen hide nor hair of her in the days since. It was annoying that he couldn’t simply seek her out and speak to her as if they were two normal people. This skulking and lurking did not suit him at all. He needed to do something to rectify the situation, but he’d not yet decided what. The fact that it was her livelihood that he would jeopardize if he behaved precipitately kept him from doing anything rash.

Balthazar was determined to come up with an idea on this journey to London. There was nothing like a train ride for stimulating one’s thoughts.

He strode from the livery to the train station, all but trotting to catch the train because Eva had handed him a lengthy, complicated shopping list at the last minute and made him dreadfully late.

Today he had a full slate of errands in London, beginning with a trip to the boarding school, Harrow, to investigate the mysterious tuition the Hastings dukedom had been paying for the last three years.

Bal was heading toward the first-class compartment when he glanced up and saw a familiar profile in the window of the third-class car.

Well, well, well.

Instead of continuing to the first-class railcar, he turned around and boarded the one he’d just passed.

Mrs. Dryden’s eyes went comically round when she saw Balthazar striding toward her.

“Is this seat taken?” he asked when he got to her bench.

She blinked up at him, her large blue eyes looking wary and catlike. “No, it’s not.” She scooted as far over as possible and he sat, their bodies still touching because the wooden benches were narrow and bloody hard, to boot. Still, he couldn’t complain about having to be mashed up against her. Indeed, he would have paid extra for the experience, although her anxiously knitted eyebrows said she did not feel quite the same.

“Did you follow me?” she asked him in a low voice while an older couple settled into the seat in front of them.

“Would you like it if I had?” he countered.

She sighed.

“No, I didn’t follow you. I have business in London. What about you?”

“It is my day off.”

“And you didn’t want to spend it with me?” he asked in an injured tone that was only partly feigned.

“I am going to visit my son.”

“Ah, you are excused, then. If it had been anyone else you were going to visit then I would been crushed.”

She snorted.

Balthazar glanced around the car. “There is quite a difference between first and third class.”

“I am surprised you are on this car.”

“I have my reason,” he said, giving her a pointed look that should have left no doubt in her mind that she was his reason. She didn’t respond, but Bal thought she was trying not to smile. “Do you only

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