The Offer by Sara Portman

Author:Sara Portman
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 2017-10-24T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eighteen

“What is this?” Mrs. Maris asked. She hurried to a front-facing window and peered out. “Could your carriage be repaired already?”

Lucy’s eyes sent desperate inquiry to Bex. What do we do now?

Mrs. Maris turned back from the window. “It must be. How fortunate that the trouble could be repaired so quickly. I wonder, what was wrong with it?”

“Indeed,” Lucy said. What else was there to say? It appeared everything at Sunningham Park ran with rapid efficiency—carriage wheel reattachments included.

She cast another questioning glance at Bex.

“What luck,” Bex said flatly.

Mr. Maris simply looked annoyed.

At that moment, the tea tray arrived and Lucy’s sigh of relief must have been audible. Mrs. Maris crossed the room to attend to the arrival of the tea, and Mr. Maris took her place at the window, looking disapprovingly at the perfectly functional carriage that had just clattered up the drive.

Lucy looked to Bex. He mouthed something at her, but she couldn’t make it out and gave a little shake of her head. With a surreptitious glance toward their hosts, he tried again.

“Do you think you could faint?”

What? Faint? She could not have understood him correctly. No, she could not faint.

She shook her head again.

He must have mistaken her denial for continued misunderstanding because he exchanged silent words for playacting, tipping his head, rolling his eyes backward, and letting his tongue loll out of his mouth like a dog.

She released a sound before she could stop it and clapped a hand over her mouth. She didn’t know if it was a gasp or a laugh. Terrified, she cast a look first to Mr. Maris and then to his wife.

Thankfully, neither were looking her way. She turned to Bex and mouthed a firm “No!”

He lifted his shoulders as though to ask, What, then?

So it was her turn to be clever.

Drat.

She was awful at this. She required time to plan and consider, but Mrs. Maris was walking toward them. There was no time to consider. There was only time to act.

Lucy spun to face Bex, clutched both of his arms desperately, and cried, “Oh, darling, I’m so frightened. What if it happens again? How can we know it’s safe?” She put a hand to her heart. “I…I don’t think I could even get inside that hateful thing. We could have been…been”—she drove her voice up a full octave—“killed.”

Dramatics thus delivered, Lucy leaned heavily into Bex in her best emulation of a swoon. She had never actually swooned before. To that matter, she couldn’t recall ever witnessing a swooning, either, but she was certain it required the support of another person.

Thankfully, Bex agreed and his arms closed around her. She detested playing such a ridiculous ninny, but there were compensations, it seemed. She whimpered for effect and pressed closer—all for the cause, of course.

“There, there, darling,” Bex said soothingly. He lay a hand on her back and patted gently. “I promise, we shall not set a foot in that carriage until I have personally ensured it is sound and perfectly safe.

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