With her hood half-covering her eyes, Abigail could only see the lower half of hernew acquaintance. He wore a long purple driving coat over buckskins and tallboots. In his gloved hands he carried a walking stick with a plain silver knob atthe tip. A gentleman.“Dulwich, as I live and breathe,” he muttered angrily.Abigail shook her head until her hood fell backwards out of her eyes, then quicklyplanted her chin atop her packages again. “Was it Lord Dulwich who bumped intome?” she inquired.“Bumped into you, child? Pretty charitable,” he said scornfully. “I’d have said hemowed you down like summer corn. I knew the man was a common drain, but I neverthought him capable of knocking little girls down in the middle of a publicstreet.”He turned suddenly to smile at her, and Abigail caught her breath. She could onlystare. He was, quite simply, the most beautiful man she had ever seen outside of apainting. With his dark hair, pointed beard, and the tiny gold ring he wore in oneear, he looked like a gypsy prince. His skin was unusually brown for anEnglishman’s, which made his teeth look very white. She guessed his age atsomewhere between twenty and thirty, but if he had claimed to be immortal, shewould have believed him. He looked it.“Beg pardon, ma’am!” he said gravely, though his gray eyes were laughing. “Whenviewed from the other side, you look precisely aged eleven and three quarters, orI should never have presumed to touch you. But I see from this side that you arequite grown up. Clearly, I ought to have pretended not to see you, like everyoneelse in this beastly mob.”Abigail’s natural shyness rapidly transformed into terror. Handsome young men didnot usually single her out for their gallantry. They certainly never teased herabout her front or back sides. He made her so nervous that she almost wished hehadn’t stopped to help her at all. Beautiful gypsy princes, she quickly decided,were best enjoyed from a safe distance.“So thoughtless of me,” he continued, evidently amused by her inability to speak.“As a gentleman, I ought to have made sure you were aged eleven and three quartersbefore I plucked you out of the dirt. Do please forgive my insufferablepresumption. In future, I shall ask to see a baptismal certificate before I lendmy assistance to any foundering thing in a petticoat.”Abigail knew she ought to thank him, but her tongue was tied, and her mind hadgone blank. Her face was more expressive, though; it turned bright red,invigorating her freckles.She would have been quite surprised to learn that, despite an undeniableoveractivity of freckles, the gentleman had not excluded her from the ranks ofbeauty. Without being smitten by her in the least, he liked what he saw: curlyapricot-gold hair; big, light brown eyes; a wide, pink mouth under a straight,short nose. She looked to him like a good English girl, a credit to her parents,and someone who deserved better than a shove in the back, followed by a trampling.“Thank you, sir.” Abigail finally forced the words out.“That’s better; I thought you were going into shock.” With absolute falsehumility, he touched the brim of his hat. “Cary Wayborn, at your service, ma’am.”
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