Ripe for Scandal by Isobel Carr

there was, and that it would end up here in her shop. “No,”
     Beau said, shaking her head. “Just a few gowns and fripperies.”
    “Oh,” Mrs. Chandler replied, clearly crestfallen. “Well then, not as terrible as it could have been.”
    “Not at all,” Beau agreed. “And if your husband can supply me with the essentials on my list, the worst of it will be the
     loss of my trunk itself.”
    Mrs. Chandler nodded, an avaricious gleam sparking in her eye. “So inconvenient. Shall I find you a portmanteau to see you
     home?”
    “Please,” Sandison interjected. He stepped forward and put his hand on the small of her back. Beau felt her skin flush, heat
     rising from his hand to flood her chest and face.
    The two hours she’d spent in his lap riding from the Pig and Whistle to Neville’s Cross this morning had been pure torture.
     She couldn’t stop thinking about what they’d done the night before… about what they hadn’t done, and how very much she’d wanted
     to do more.
    Wanton. There was no other word for it. Every time Sandison touched her, so much as looked at her, she could feel the desire
     for more welling up within her. The desire for Sandison. The fact that he had his own passions firmly under control ate at
     her.
    It was somehow unfair, almost humiliating. The urge to drive him to the point of no return was irresistible.
    Beau studied Sandison in the dim light of the shop. He was impossibly handsome. She’d have said beautiful except that it somehow
     implied a softness that Sandison utterly lacked. He was a collection of sharp angles and planes, lean in the way of a greyhound,
     strength and power tightly coiled over long lengths of bone.
    He smiled at her, and her stomach clenched and then turned over. If she could just hold on to him until they reached Scotland,
     he was hers.
    Gareth watched Beau shake one of the gowns and hold it up. The profusion of pink flowers blooming across the fabric was garish
     in the extreme, but it did look as though it might fit her.
    The shopkeeper’s wife folded everything carefully and stowed it inside a leather portmanteau with a shiny brass clasp. They’d
     had everything Beau had asked for except a hat, but they’d directed them to a milliner on the other side of the green.
    With the half-filled bag in tow, Gareth escorted Beau across the damp green and handed over an exorbitant amount of money
     for a simple hat of chip straw with a jaunty confection of ribbons and feathers jutting forth from it.
    His consternation at the expense melted away as she set it on her head and grinned up at him. “Come on, brat. We’ve miles
     to go before we sleep. And I’m sure you’ll want to change before we set off.”
    Beau nodded, setting the feathers on her new hat dancing. “I’d burn every stitch I’m wearing if I didn’t think I’d be ruing
     the decision long before we reached Scotland.”
    Padrig Nowlin patted his pockets as a riotous group of urchins burst past him. Then he suddenly remembered that he had nothing
     left for them to steal. His purse had been taken by Lady Boudicea and the highwayman. His watch, ring, and every bit of clothing
     that he wasn’t currently wearing had all been pawned in order to fund his frantic search for the damned runaway heiress. He
     had to find her. Granby would accept nothing else.
    For the thousandth time that day, Padrig found himselfwishing that he could abandon the entire project and simply return to Belfast. Wishing that he’d never met Granby, never played
     so deeply at the man’s faro table, and that he’d stayed sober enough not to sign marker after marker, all for funds he didn’t
     have.
    But he had, and if he failed, Granby would call in those markers, take the house and the farm, and turn Padrig’s mother and
     sisters out into the street. All except Maeve, whom he’d promised to take special care of.
    Padrig swallowed his rising anger, stopping in his tracks as he spied a familiar figure across