“So, Mac,” he said, “it was Caroline’s idea to make you my guest on this expedition.” He shook his head. “It’s no wonder I was confused.” He guided the horses down the hill and onto Market. “I would hardly have recognized you dressed as a woman.”
“Oh, you mean this?” she said, plucking at her skirt. “Caroline was very generous in lending it to me.”
“Ah, yes. My ward. She seemed anxious to help you, and you were amenable enough to her little trick. So eager for my company—Rose?”
A stain of red darkened her ears. “I never did tell you my first name,” she said. “You never asked.”
“I prefer Mac. It suits you far better.” He steered the surrey along the vast cobbled river of Market Street, dodging other carriages, horsecars, hacks, wagons, pedestrians, and even the rare lopsided bicycle. Perry’s gig was still in clear view.
“And now,” he said, “perhaps you’ll explain to me what you were doing with Perry and Caroline.”
She clasped her gloved hands in her lap. “It’s simple. Perry offered his help, to enable me to make my way in the city. I took him up on his offer. He suggested that Caroline would help me find clothes and other things I needed.”
“And so you simply went with him. Without consulting me, without—”
“I didn’t know where you’d gone!” She turned in her seat to glare at him. “I knew you and Perry were rivals, but you didn’t leave me any choice. I wasn’t going to sit in that room and wait for you to decide my fate.”
Liam took a firmer grip on the reins. “I had plans for you, Mac. Plans to take care of you—”
“You never consulted me,” she interrupted. “You just left.”
“And you expect me to believe that was your only motive for coming here with Perry.”
“By now I know better than to expect you to believe anything.”
He remembered her stories of time travel back in the jungle, and his anger began to dissolve, softened by unanticipated worry. He kept forgetting that Mac was more than a little mad. Not able to look after herself in a place like this. A man like Perry would find it easy to take advantage of her.
It gave Liam surprisingly little pleasure to be at odds with her now. In the jungle it had been different, with just the two of them, but here… Something had changed.
He didn’t analyze the thought further. “Do you like animals, Mac?” he asked.
She started at his about-face. “Of course I like animals. If you mean the seals—”
“Not quite.” Liam whistled. A basso bark was the only warning of Norton’s flying leap from the floorboard onto the rear seat of the carriage. The vehicle rocked with the force of the wolfhound’s landing.
Liam reached back one-handed and undid the latch of the special traveling basket on the back seat. Bummer the Second squirmed out and began to bark, scrambling from one end of the seat to the other. Norton thrust his shaggy muzzle across Mac’s shoulder and gave her a great sweeping lick that caught her right across the cheek.
All at once the strained atmosphere of anger and suspicion was gone. Mac was laughing—not a quiet, feminine titter but a full-throated sound of genuine amusement.
“Friends of yours?” she asked. “I didn’t know you kept such good company.” She caught Bummer and lifted the terrier over the back of the seat and into her lap. Sometime in the last minute she’d managed to pull off her gloves; now she held the terrier down with one hand and patted Norton’s muzzle with the other. “What are their names?”
Of course she wouldn’t be discomposed, even with a pair of boisterous canines shedding and slobbering all over her carriage dress. Caroline would be outraged at the affront to her toilette, and he wouldn’t hear the end of her complaints that he’d brought the dogs along.
“How remiss of me not to offer introductions,” he said. “This is Bummer the Second, and”—he jerked his thumb toward the rear seat—”that’s Norton.”
“Norton—as in Emperor Norton? He just died a few years ago, didn’t he? And Bummer was one of his dogs. Did you name yours for his?”