Gilded Lily (26 page)

“Do your parents know? Are they willing to fund your adventure?” He wasn't above offering to pay her way, though he knew without a doubt she would refuse that. Even Freddie had that much conventionality left in her.

“I've told them I'm going
with Sophie
. Another reason I'm glad she was the one who asked. For some reason they still think she's a respectable chaperone. Or perhaps it's just Father's guilt about Dan. In any case it's time I stopped looking for their permission or accepting their financial support. I'm an adult, and I have money of my own. I did sleep through breakfast, but after that I paid a visit to the jeweler who reset my diamonds. He knew their provenance, so he was surprised I wanted to sell them but was confident they were mine to sell. He gave me a decent price. I think he was too startled to haggle well. That, and he also took a very nice silver-backed hairbrush, though he was less generous about that. And then there's the money I'd saved from tinkering, of course. I've enough to pay for my passage and other expenses for quite some time, as long as I'm not too extravagant.” She selected a claw hammer from the remaining tools she'd laid out and found a place for it in the nearly full trunk. “And there's always the chance I'll find some work to help pay my way. Small jobs, in and out. I'm good at avoiding guild attention.”

Barnabas crouched beside her and anticipated her next selection, passing her the monkey wrench he'd fallen asleep with on that first mad midnight ride. It seemed a lifetime ago, looking back on all that had happened since. How amazing it was that they still had a lifetime before them.

“There's also the possibility you might . . . join forces with somebody from the Dominions. Do something official to pool your resources, something like that. Somebody you could have adventures with, if you didn't mind him being a little clumsy at times.”

“Someone who would eventually become an earl and have to be tied down to an estate?”

He shrugged. “My father's healthy enough for now. And anyway, I've been rethinking what all that means. Considering how the Hardisons manage their estate and business together, I'm starting to realize one is only as bound by expectations and conventions as one chooses to be. I'll be an earl. That means responsibility, yes, but also the means to do what I damn well please. Including having a makesmith countess if I so choose.”

“Supposing you met such a woman.”

“Yes, just supposing.” He nodded as somberly as he could manage.

Freddie giggled, breaking the pretense, and leaned over to press a quick kiss to his cheek, a moment of soft sweetness and the mingled fragrances of floral eau de cologne and engine grease. “We'll have plenty of time on the ship to decide on the particulars. As long as we begin with the adventures. Who knows, perhaps I'll tire of that after a time and be happy to settle down to something more conventional.”

Barnabas laughed aloud, and she joined him.

“Phin assumed he and I could share a cabin on the trip, to save expenses,” he mentioned, as if in passing, once they could speak again. “I told him I'd rather bunk alone, though.”

She blushed a charming shade of pink, which Barnabas found all the more charming because he knew she was very far from a being a maiden or feeling shame. No, it was a flush of remembered heat, inappropriate to a sunlit coach yard where servants might saunter by at any moment. A pink that said she was thinking of all the things they might find to occupy their time in a ship's cabin together. He wondered if ship captains charged for their wedding-officiant services, and wished he'd thought to ask his friend Matthew, who'd had cause to resort to that service on his recent voyage.

“That was probably a wise decision,” Freddie said softly, curling her hand around the wrench handle in a manner Barnabas found almost painfully suggestive. He wanted to kiss her again, to do a million lascivious things to her and have her do the same to him. But he could be patient, now that he knew they had a lifetime.

“Probably?”

She giggled again, a bright sound for a sunny day. “Likely.”

“It's certainly, or nothing. I have my pride, Miss Murcheson.”

When she turned the full force of her smile on him, it was almost too much to bear. “You can keep your pride, Lord Smith-Grenville. I know I already have your heart.”

“And I have yours.”

“Most certainly.”

Her heart, and the rest of their lives. He couldn't imagine a better future than that.