All his reflexes set him to work bringing his panicked team under control and jumping from his seat before he could be pitched out of it and crushed beneath what was left of his curricle.

He had collided with a stagecoach.

His first coherent thought was that the driver of a stagecoach was supposed to blow his yard of tin before turning a sharp corner, not as he was doing it-at far too reckless a speed. The warning blast had been a mite useless at that point.

There was a driver, he suspected, who was overeager for his pint of ale.

Passengers spilled from the stagecoach as it tipped dangerously to one side, some of them involuntarily, most notably those who had been perched on the roof. The coachman, swearing horribly, was attempting to control his own horses and prevent the vehicle from tipping completely over while creating further catastrophe.

Men were yelling. Women were screaming. The taproom was emptying of its patrons, most of them still clutching their mugs. Villagers were appearing as if from nowhere.

Miraculously-it was Richard’s second coherent thought-there appeared to be no dead or mangled bodies lying around and no blood. He did a quick mental inventory of his own limbs and other body parts and discovered nothing more alarming than a sore ankle, which was very probably not broken or even badly sprained.

There was not a great deal of time for thought or recollection. A score of people-at least that many-were talking or yelling or shrieking at once, most of them claiming to have been eyewitnesses, and enough blame was being slung about to do justice to a mass riot. And since the occupants of his own vehicle were in a minority of one, most of the blame was coming his way.

His horses appeared unharmed, he noted at a quick glance. So were the stagecoach’s. Another miracle. His curricle had not fared nearly as well. It had an axle that was very probably broken, and the paintwork was horribly scratched. But nothing was beyond repair, if his guess was correct.

He turned his attention to defending himself. Not that anyone was throwing fists or using life-threatening weapons. But the air was fairly blue with damaging language, most of it issuing from the stagecoach driver’s mouth and most of it graphic and uncomplimentary about his pedigree and that of his mother. The man’s face was so purple, Richard feared he had apoplexy and was the only real casualty of this mishap.

Richard opened his own mouth and gave as good as he got. The first shock of the collision over with, he was beginning to feel angry. Furiously angry, actually. The curricle was no more than three months old and had been his pride and joy. He had been hoping to reach his grandmother’s tonight and was now stranded in the back of beyond-without his valet. And this stagecoach driver with his foul mouth was entirely to blame, as Richard informed him in no uncertain terms and without having to resort to inventing pedigrees.

The ire of the passengers began to turn against their own coachman, and a fierce discussion began on when exactly that horn had been sounded and how fast exactly the coach had been going as it turned into the inn yard. The taproom patrons, who had been grinning at the coachman’s colorful language, cheered Richard’s blistering tirade, and one of them raised his glass to him. The villagers added their own opinions, entirely uninformed as they were, since it was unlikely any of them had actually witnessed the mishap-though all would probably claim to have done so for the rest of the day.

Having had his say and noted that a couple of ostlers were freeing his horses and leading them away, Richard turned on his heel and stalked off into the inn, the innkeeper at his side assuring him that the best room in the house had already been set aside for the gentleman’s use tonight.

The stranded passengers crowded in behind him, having just realized that they, too, would need rooms and that there might not be enough to go around. A few were loudly indignant and warned no one in particular that someone was going to pay for this. Several others were quieter and apparently resigned to the unexpected delay.

One such person stood inside the door, making no effort to elbow her way forward to demand a room. She carried a valise and was decently dressed, but something about her drooped shoulders and downcast expression told Richard that finding a vacant room might not be her main problem.

How many of her fellow passengers, he wondered suddenly, might not be able to afford the extra expense the crash had caused them?

He lost sight of her for a moment as he nodded to acknowledge the innkeeper’s assurance that his bag had already been taken up to the best room in the house. He turned to follow it up. He would be glad to get out of this hubbub until everything had quieted down. He would go out later to have a good look at his curricle and see what arrangements he could make to have it repaired.

This was all one devil of an inconvenience, he thought almost viciously.

He glanced toward the doorway again as he turned. She was still there, that woman passenger. She must be traveling alone. She was turning her face toward the window, and the light shone on her profile.

It was something about the nose. It was not a particularly prominent feature and it was apparently straight when viewed from the front. But there was a slight bend in it just below the bridge that gave her face character and saved her from being just conventionally pretty.

Or so he had once told her when she had wished aloud that it was perfectly straight.

But it could not be…

He was forever seeing women who reminded him of her, but on closer inspection they were never anything like her at all. There was no one like her. Thank the Lord, he added silently with a tightening of the jaw.

But he took several steps away from the staircase, frowning as he did so. He had to take a closer look, as he always did.

She had turned her face back into the room and had raised her eyes to a waiter who was returning to the kitchen with a tray of empty glasses.

Oh, devil take it!

She was ten years older, and there was something very different about her. Many things, in fact. But there was no mistaking her.

She was Nora.

The waiter was speaking impatiently to her, telling her to leave.

Richard, not even pausing to wonder why that fact should so annoy him, took one more step forward.

“The lady already has a room,” he said. “She is with me.”

Too late he thought that it might have been wiser simply to have hurried away to his room. He had spoken without even knowing what he was about to say.

She looked startled and her eyebrows rose as she turned her gaze on him. He watched surprise turn slowly to shock as she recognized him.

She certainly had changed. Age-she must be twenty-eight now, three years his junior-had matured her face into a perfect oval, and it had taken some of the bloom of youth from her cheeks. Her eyes, though just as blue as he remembered them, looked larger and deeper, with less sparkle. Her flaxen hair was no longer dressed in curls and ringlets to bounce about her head and face at every movement. It was drawn back smoothly beneath her bonnet and coiled at her neck. The bonnet and the rest of her clothes were serviceable and respectable. All the remembered pastel-shaded frills and flounces were gone.

She looked like someone’s governess-and perhaps was.

They were thoughts and impressions that flashed through his head in a second or less.

“She is my wife,” he added.

That satisfied the waiter, who continued on his way to the kitchen.

There was a moment’s silence-if one discounted the din around them.

“I am not-” she said.

He held up a staying hand as he stepped even closer to her.