“Are you cold?” She wore a scarf and gloves in addition to her cape, and remained swaddled in the lot of it.

“It’s winter, Your Grace, and we are traveling. Ergo, I am cold.”

Rex hadn’t stopped by Dorset House to procure a brazier of coals, nor had he had the bricks fitted into the floor heated. Daylight was precious, and his need to vacate London urgent, once he’d made the decision to bolt.

“You are traveling with a duke of some means,” he said, lifting the seat of the opposite bench. “We do not like to be cold. Share a lap robe with me.”

She gave him a look presaging the predictable arguments.

Rex extracted a wool blanket of blue and black plaid from the chest built into the coach seat. “Do you choose lung fever over pride, Mrs. Hatfield? I’d thought you more sensible than that.”

“Are there two blankets?”

“Yes, and if you are under both of them, sitting next to me, you will be warmer than if you try to make do with one. Honestly, madam, what do you think I’ll attempt in a moving coach with a woman whose financial expertise is all that stands between me and impending scandal? You could ruin me with a word.”

Rex reminded himself of that fact regularly, though it did nothing to drum the memory of her kisses out of his idiot mind. In a curious reversal of status, she had the power to ruin him every bit as effectively as he could ruin her.

Not that he would. Ever. For any reason.

She scooted two feet to the right, so she was sitting next to Rex but not touching him.

“Your imagination is prodigiously overactive,” she said, as Rex draped the first blanket over their knees. “Minor irregularities with your books won’t occasion scandal.”

“Last week it was fraud and embezzlement. Now it’s minor irregularities?”

He draped the second blanket atop the first, the wool carrying the scent of the cedar panels lining the chest in which it had been stored.

“I tell you in strictest confidence, Your Grace, that the Walden ducal finances were in a state of utter chaos when the current titleholder inherited. Nary a property was managed honestly. Those not plundered outright were being slowly bled to death by the crooks and charlatans in His Grace’s employ. We will set your situation to rights with nobody the wiser, but you must be patient.”

“I cannot afford to be patient.”

The coach halted at one of the many turnpike gates encircling London. Rex pulled down the shade on his side of the vehicle, Mrs. Hatfield having already done so on hers.

“I’m glad you understand that time is of the essence, Your Grace. The longer you turn a blind eye to the swindlers picking your pocket, the bolder they become. That a fraud was perpetrated on your bank is most discouraging.”