Ranelaw must have recognized her much earlier than she recognized him. He already drew the smart little carriage to a halt with a flourish that made her want to murder him.
Right now, everything made her want to murder him.
She tamped down her rage although her belly clenched with the impulse to hurt him as he’d hurt her. She needed control. Above all, she needed to win.
“Lady Antonia,” he said with a nonchalance designed to irk. He doffed his hat and bowed as if they met in Hyde Park instead of on this deserted stretch of road. “What a pleasant surprise.”
Lady Antonia.
He’d discovered who she was. Dismay gripped her. Although it hardly mattered now, she supposed. As Miss Smith or as the aristocratic if tarnished Lady Antonia Hilliard, she was capable of foiling his plans.
Ignoring Ranelaw, she glanced across to where her cousin huddled against the seat. “Are you unharmed, Cassie?”
The girl managed a shaky smile that conveyed relief and gratitude in equal parts. “Yes.”
Briefly Antonia closed her eyes. “Thank God.” She slid to the ground and looped the reins over her arm.
“You must have ridden like the devil,” Ranelaw remarked in a conversational manner that made her skin prickle with temper. He clearly intended to carry this off in high style. “But of course you’re an accomplished horsewoman. Old Aveson’s daughter would hardly be anything else.”
He sought the advantage by revealing he knew everything. It was too late. After today, he was nothing to her. If he lay bleeding in the street, she’d kick him in the teeth, then walk on.
Without turning her back on the gig, she reached into her saddlebag and drew out the pair of pistols she’d loaded before leaving London.
“I see you’re taking the melodramatic route,” Ranelaw said dryly.
He didn’t betray a morsel of fear. Of course he wouldn’t. She’d been mistaken in so much, but she’d never mistaken his overweening pride. She could shoot him where he sat and he wouldn’t utter one word in his own defense.
“Get down,” she said in a hard voice, pointing the guns at him.
“Toni, I’m so glad you—” Cassie shifted but Antonia waved her back into her seat.
“Not you. The toad next to you.”
Ranelaw’s lips curled in a derisive smile, as if she behaved like a troublesome child. “And if I don’t, you’ll shoot me? Doing it too brown, Antonia.”
She cocked the right pistol, her aim perfectly steady on his head. “No court in the land would convict me of your murder.”
He didn’t budge an inch. “You’re taking your woman scorned act to an extreme, my love.”
Cassie’s gaze sharpened on her. No chance now of hiding that she and Lord Ranelaw had indulged at the least in a flirtation. He’d used her Christian name and the my love emerged too naturally. For all that it was a foul lie.
What matter? Let him expose her sins. She didn’t care as long as Cassie was safe. “Get down,” she repeated.
“Or what?”
“Or I blow your lying face off,” she said stonily.
Her heart should be flint when she looked at Ranelaw. That’s what she wanted. Why couldn’t she achieve it? Anger still twisted her belly and blocked her throat. But as she stared at this tall, powerful man with his glinting dark eyes and ruffled gold hair, her principal emotion was regret.
Not regret that he’d misled her, however much that rankled.
Instead a new, chilling emotion turned her blood to icy sludge. Briefly he’d made her believe in everything vivid and sweet. Passion and tenderness and laughter.
And it was all false.
Under that beauty lurked vast ugliness. He turned the world to night.
At this moment, she could kill him without a moment’s remorse. She regretted that too. Because four days ago, she’d almost convinced herself she loved him.