The Sweetest Dark by Shana Abe Page B

schoolgirls.
    ...
    It was impossible to hold a conversation while driving. That was one of the things he loved best about it, Armand decided. The raucous roar of the engine. The thick smell of grease and oil mixed with dust from the road, coating his face and the inside of his mouth.
    And the speed. It was speed without the pure galloping smoothness of a horse, true. Driving as fast as he liked meant jolts that could rattle apart bones. But it was speed, and control, and the knowledge that the speed was dangerous and the control a mere fine-edged illusion. A ruse of shiny knobs and grinding gears.
    He’d nicked the auto from the motor stable before Reginald had recovered enough from last night’s claret to notice. Armand wasn’t technically permitted to drive—it was one thing on a very long list of perilous things he wasn’t permitted to do—and so, when he could, he enjoyed driving very, very fast. He enjoyed that the Atalanta’s engine was so rough that neither girl next to him could politely shout over it. Chloe and her friend rode with their lips squeezed shut and their eyes narrowed and a hand each to their hats.
    He’d told Chloe repeatedly to wear something with less of a brim if she wanted to go out motoring with him. She never listened.
    What there was of road along this part of the mainland was dirt. Sometimes rocks and dirt. Sometimes ruts and rocks and dirt.
    He saw a deep groove in the way ahead and hit the accelerator for all he could. They smacked over it high and bumped back down hard. Both girls screamed: shrill, birdlike peeps.
    A pair of ewes stared at them, startled, from a patch of clover growing close to the road. The auto tore past them before the sheep even began their first running hops away.
    Under other circumstances, on another day, Armand would have steered right for the next rut. But his mind kept drifting elsewhere.
    To her.
    He’d had the worst night. If he’d slept at all, he couldn’t remember it. His memory had run like a mouse on a wheel, the same scene, the same face, over and over and over until he was exhausted with it, and still he’d not been able to block her from his thoughts.
    Perhaps he’d simply been too tired to sleep. Seeing Reginald again; dealing with the consequences of being sent home midterm from Eton. Again. It was all a right bloody mess. He’d been stewing, secretly sick with dread, the entire trip back, although Laurence and Chloe had eased matters somewhat.
    Well, Laurence had. He was out of school, likely forever, so why wouldn’t he be cheerful? But Lady Chloe Pemington, joining them at the last moment after attending some royal wedding or another in Norfolk, had been less than her usual carefully charming self.
    The water served aboard the train was not chilled enough. The wine was not French enough. The staff was not prompt enough. She’d desired roasted lamb for supper and was served ham croquettes instead, and she had been coolly and surgically tearing apart the sweating steward until at last she’d noticed Armand’s steady, interested gaze upon her.
    Then she’d shut right up. And smiled.
    They’d all dined upon the ham and frankly he’d thought it damned delicious. Or possibly he’d just been giddy with relief at her sudden lack of complaints.
    If her parents hadn’t already wired the duke to confirm she was to spend the night at the manor house, he would have taken her straight back to the school and been done with it.
    Yes. That was why he’d been so eager to get to Iverson. Not just to see if that girl, that girl with the remarkable gray eyes, was there yet. Not just that.
    She had been the specter haunting his night. Hers was the face that had burned behind his eyelids until the sun had risen, and cursed if Armand could figure out why. She wasn’t even pretty. Not really.
    From somewhere inside him, sly and surprising, came a response to that thought.
    Not