“A cup of tea is all I crave,” she said.

He might have guessed it. But, good Lord—a cup of tea! And doubtless her knitting with which to occupy her hands between sips.

“What is your destination?” he asked.

“Bath,” she said. “And yours?”

“Hampshire,” he said. “I expected to spend a night on the road, but I had hoped it would be somewhat closer to my destination than this. No matter, though. I would not have had the pleasure of making your acquaintance or you mine if the unexpected had not happened.”

She turned her head then and looked steadily at him. It was quite obvious to him even before she spoke that she could recognize irony when she heard it.

“I believe, Mr. Marshall,” she said, “I could have lived quite happily without any of the three of those experiences.”

Tit for tat. Touché.

Now that he had more leisure to look at her, he was surprised to realize that she was a great deal younger than he had thought earlier. His impression when his carriage passed hers and again on the road outside had been of a thin, dark lady of middle years. But he had been mistaken. Now that she had stopped frowning and grimacing and squinting against the glare of the snow, he could see that she was only perhaps in her middle twenties. She was almost certainly younger than his own twenty-eight years.

She was a shrew, nevertheless.

And she was thin. Or perhaps she was only very slender—it was hard to tell through her shapeless winter cloak. But her wrists were narrow and her fingers long and slim—he had noticed them when she took the muff from his hand. Her face was narrow too, with high cheekbones, her complexion slightly olive-hued, apart from the red-tipped nose. Put together with her very dark eyes, lashes, and hair, her face invited the conclusion that she had some foreign blood flowing through her veins—Italian, perhaps, Mediterranean certainly. That fact would account for her temper. Beneath her bonnet he could see the beginnings of a severe center part with smooth bands of hair combed to either side and disappearing beneath the bonnet brim.