Stealing the Bride by Elizabeth Boyle Page A

asked, breaking the silence between them.
    “As a favor to Pymm,” Temple told him.
    “Harrumph,” Elton said, settling into his seat. “Don’t see why you don’t just marry her yerself. It’s not like you couldn’t use the money. Be nice to be paid regular-like.”
    Temple stared openmouthed at the man. All the years they’d traveled together, he’d never heard Elton utter a word about their lack of funds or the dangerous paths they trod.
    “I have no intention of getting married. To Lady Diana or otherwise.”
    Elton just shrugged. “Seems a shame to see a good fortune go to waste. Either way, let’s hope Lord Cordell sticks to his guns and stays on this road so we can find them right quick.”
    “Why wouldn’t he?”
    “Given what I’ve heard about Lady Diana, she’s as likely to take the ribbons herself if she doesn’t fancy his choice of route.”
    Temple glanced over at the man. He didn’t realize Elton was so familiar with the lady. “What makes you say that?”
    “Well, it being Lady Diana and all. Everyone knows she’s a brassy bit of baggage. Got more gall than my aunt’s tabby cat.”
    Temple couldn’t argue with that. Diana had sent quite a few suitors packing through the years and wasn’t known to do it with any measure of female delicacy or care.
    Elton shrugged. “If you ask me, she’s lived too long without a man. Makes a woman short a sheet, as me mum likes to say.”
    “Ah, your mother’s fabled eloquence,” Temple said. “And what would her remedy be for the lady’s malady?”
    “Marriage.” Elton nodded with an alarming assurance. “That’ll set her back on the straight and narrow. Once she’s wedded and well bedded, she’ll be right as rain. You mark my words.”
    First grumbles about his infrequent salary and now this ode to wedded bliss.
    “What do you know about marriage?” Temple crossed his arms over his chest and eyed his fellow crabbed bachelor.
    “I know enough that the right woman only comes once…hmm…mayhap twice in yer life. Only a fool lets her go.” Elton spit over the side of carriage.
    “I highly doubt marriage to the likes of Cordell will improve Lady Diana’s mental capacity.”
    Elton shrugged, a sort of time-will-tell gesture that left Temple all the more uncomfortable with Diana’s most recent escapade.
    To be honest, he’d always felt some measure of responsibility whenever he heard Diana’s name bandied about. It was foolish, truly, for he hadn’t been the cause of her broken engagement to Colin.
    So she was known to be a little eccentric, but dash it all, it wasn’t like she was a traitor to her country.
    Just a bit headstrong .
    Make that far too headstrong.
    He took a deep breath. Really, Diana’s problems weren’t anything that couldn’t be brought in line by the—
    Right man.
    Temple shifted in his seat, not at all comfortable with the direction of his thoughts. He was starting to sound like his cousin Colin. And Elton.
    Or worse yet, Elton’s harridan mother.
    “I just don’t know why she’d run off with the likes of Cordell,” he said aloud, without even thinking.
    The carriage rounded a curve, and Elton nodded at the sight before them.
    A coach sat haphazardly beside the road. A broken wheel lay to one side, and the horses were unhitched.
    “Looks like you can ask her yerself, my lord.”
    For just then, out from the shade of the carriage stepped a woman, her blond hair glinting in the sunshine like the golden hue of the cowslip blooming alongside the roadway.
    Diana .
    Lithe and lovely, she stepped into their path, a chip bonnet in her hand, the blue ribbons fluttering in the breeze. The London wits could laugh at her spinster state, but the sight of her sent an odd thrill racing through Temple’s blood.
    Gad’s sakes, she was a tempting minx. The rest of Society could have their mincing, fresh-faced, and doe-eyed beauties. In his estimation, there was something all too very tempting about Lady Diana Fordham,