Regency Rogues: Outrageous Scandal: In Bed with the Duke / A Mistress for Major Bartlett
Regency Rogues: Outrageous Scandal: In Bed with the Duke / A Mistress for Major Bartlett
ANNIE BURROWS
Secrets and Scandal In Bed With the Duke Placed in scandalous circumstances Gregory, Duke of Halstead must work with beautiful stranger, Prudence to unravel the plot to ruin them both. But soon they both discover the delicious consequences of working closely… A Mistress for Major Bartlett When Major Tom Bartlett discovers the angel who nursed his battle wounds is Lady Sarah Latymor he should ask for her hand in marriage. But Bartlett is considered an unrepentant rake by polite society and sweet Sarah would be spurned. But Sarah is just as determined, to stay by his side – and in his bed!
Regency Rogues
August 2019
Outrageous Scandal
September 2019
Rakes’ Redemption
October 2019
Wicked Seduction
November 2019
A Winter’s Night
December 2019
Unlacing the Forbidden
January 2020
Stolen Sins
February 2020
Candlelight Confessions
March 2020
Rescued by Temptation
April 2020
Wives Wanted
May 2020
Disgraceful Secrets
June 2020
Talk of the Ton
July 2020
Exotic Affairs
About the Authors (#u655ebb25-5855-5bd6-a04e-c82d52bab9e6)
ANNIE BURROWS’ love of stories meant that when she was old enough to go to university, she chose English literature. She wasn’t sure what she wanted to do beyond that, but one day, she began to wonder if all those daydreams that kept her mind occupied whilst carrying out mundane chores, would provide similar pleasure to other women. She was right…and Annie hasn’t looked back since.
Readers can sign up to Annie’s newsletter at www.annie-burrows.co.uk (http://www.annie-burrows.co.uk)
Regency Rogues: Outrageous Scandal
In Bed with the Duke
A Mistress for Major Bartlett
Annie Burrows
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ISBN: 978-1-474-09709-3
REGENCY ROGUES: OUTRAGEOUS SCANDAL
In Bed with the Duke © 2016 Annie Burrows A Mistress for Major Bartlett © 2015 Annie Burrows
Published in Great Britain 2019
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.
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www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Table of Contents
Cover (#u32b8f825-1a3a-5418-b363-49c5ba832857)
About the Authors (#uf6a5af31-8f5c-5ca7-a6e1-3ef939e0df51)
Title Page (#uc1b473bd-62b1-548c-b47e-c1aa92ae8002)
Copyright (#u4a3dce5b-c9c9-5528-aed4-cd3b95b5ec8f)
In Bed with the Duke (#u3748a705-5313-5984-ba38-be69c8fc19dd)
Dedication (#u04d3faef-1db7-55e6-b8a7-bd66b011843a)
Chapter One (#u6df3d48e-ed8c-585f-81ea-31aa70901491)
Chapter Two (#ue0906aef-7f52-57f5-a515-521910b520ae)
Chapter Three (#u945b41aa-e5a1-5a27-b49b-af7e2c0ebcbb)
Chapter Four (#u9f86e9f6-be10-5146-aa6e-def712b552ea)
Chapter Five (#u58cc0cfb-24d0-5013-89c9-1fe61ebea8ca)
Chapter Six (#ue97340ea-1d54-5156-85e9-12e49291db60)
Chapter Seven (#u705a62fb-cdc3-5ee7-b192-db5780c29ebf)
Chapter Eight (#u66c201f8-2f46-5b21-8ac3-d27e9ab1f12e)
Chapter Nine (#u1e746000-c832-5950-8514-6895ba1f202f)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)
A Mistress for Major Bartlett (#litres_trial_promo)
Dedication (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
In Bed with the Duke (#u655ebb25-5855-5bd6-a04e-c82d52bab9e6)
Annie Burrows
Once again, my thanks to the Novelistas
for constant support, brainstorming when
necessary, and cake.
Chapter One (#u655ebb25-5855-5bd6-a04e-c82d52bab9e6)
‘Vile seducer of women!’
Gregory winced and pulled the quilt up over his ears. What kind of inn was this? Surely even travellers to such a Godforsaken backwater shouldn’t have to put up with deranged females bursting into their rooms and screeching at them before breakfast?
‘Oh! What wickedness!’
Pulling the quilt up round his ears clearly wasn’t a strong enough hint that deranged females weren’t welcome in his room. For the voice was definitely getting louder. Coming closer.
‘What is the world coming to?’
Just what he’d like to know, he thought resentfully, dragging his eyelids open and seeing the owner of the strident voice standing right over him, jabbing a bony finger at his face.
‘How could you?’ the bony-fingered, screeching woman shouted into his face. Right into his face.
Enough was enough. He knew that public inns were of necessity frequented by...well, by the public. But surely even here a man was entitled to some privacy? At least in his own bedchamber?
‘Who,’ he said, in the arctic tone that normally caused minions to shake in their shoes, ‘let you into my room?’
‘Who let me into your room? Why, I let myself in, of course.’ She smote her breast theatrically. ‘Never have I been so shocked!’
‘Well, if you will invade a man’s chamber what can you expect?’
‘Oh!’ the woman cried again, this time laying the back of one hand across her brow. ‘Was ever there such a villain? Truly, your soul must be stained black with depravity if you can treat the seduction of innocence with such levity!’
Seduction of innocence? The woman must be fifty if she was a day. And she’d invaded his room. Nothing innocent about that.
‘And as for you!’ The screeching woman’s finger moved to a point somewhere to his left side. ‘You...you trollop!’
Trollop? There was a trollop in his bed as well as a hysterical woman standing next to it?
A brief foray with his left foot confirmed that, yes, indeed there was another pair of legs in his bed. A slender pair of legs. Belonging, he had to suppose, to the trollop in question.
He frowned. He wasn’t in the habit of taking trollops to his bed. Nor any other kind of woman. He always, but always, visited theirs. So that he could retire once he’d reduced them to a state of boneless satiation and get a peaceful night’s sleep at home. In his own bed. Where he heartily wished he was now. For there wouldn’t be a strange woman in his bed if he’d stayed at home. Nor, which was more to the point, would anybody be daring to stand over him screeching.
‘How could you repay me by behaving like this?’ The hysterical woman was still ranting. ‘After all I have done for you? All the sacrifices I have made?’
Her voice was rising higher and higher. And getting louder and louder. But even so there seemed to be a sort of fog shrouding his brain. He couldn’t for the life of him pierce through that fog to work out why there was a woman in his bed. He couldn’t believe he’d hired her. Because he had never needed to hire a woman. So how did she come to be here?
How, for that matter, did he come to be here?
And how was he to work it out with that harpy shrieking at him?
He put his hands over his ears.
‘You ingrate!’
No use. He could still hear her.
‘Madam,’ he said coldly, removing his hands from his ears, since ignoring her in the faint hope that she might go away wasn’t working. ‘Lower your voice.’
‘Lower my voice? Lower my voice? Oh, yes, that would suit you just fine, would it not? So that your vile misdeed might be covered up!’
‘I have never,’ he said in outrage, ‘committed any vile misdeed.’ Nor used the kind of language that more properly belonged on the stage.
He pressed the heels of his hands to his temples. His throbbing temples. How much must he have had to drink last night to wind up in bed with a trollop he couldn’t remember hiring and be parroting the vulgar phrases of a woman who seemed intent on dragging him into some kind of...scene?
‘Get out of my room,’ he growled.
‘How dare you order me about?’
‘How dare I?’ He opened his eyes. Glared at the screeching woman. Sat up. ‘No. How dare you? How dare you walk into my room and address me in that impudent manner? Fling accusations at me?’
‘Because you have seduced my own lamb! My—’
Indignation had him vaulting out of the bed.
‘I am no seducer of innocents!’
The woman shrieked even more loudly than before. Covered her eyes and stumbled towards the door. The open door. Where she had to push her way through a crowd of interested bystanders. Who were all peering into his room with a mixture of shock and disapproval.
Except in the case of a plump girl he recognised as the chambermaid. She was gazing at him round-eyed and slack-jawed.
At which point he realised he was stark naked.
With a low snarl he stalked across the room and slammed the door shut on the whole crowd of them.
Then shot the bolt home for good measure.
He had a brief flash of his nurse, clucking her tongue and quoting that proverb about shutting the stable door after the horse had bolted.
No horse. He shook his head. A horse was about the only thing that didn’t appear to have wandered into his room while he lay sleeping.
Sleeping like the dead. Which made no sense. How had he managed to get to sleep at all? When he’d decided to rack up here for the night he’d suspected he wouldn’t be getting a wink of sleep. Other, similar inns in which he’d stayed had made a restful night well-nigh impossible. If it wasn’t travellers in hobnailed boots tramping up and down the corridor at all hours, or coaches rattling into the inn yard with their guards blowing their horns as though it was the last trump, it was yokels with lusty voices bellowing at each other in the tap. Over which his room was always inevitably situated.
Although this chambermaid had brought him to a room right up in the eaves. So the noise wouldn’t have been an issue. Had he been so exhausted after the events of the past few days that he’d slipped into a state resembling a coma?
It wasn’t likely. And it didn’t explain the muzzy feeling in his head. That felt more as though he’d taken some kind of sleeping draught.
Except that he’d never taken a sleeping draught in his life. And he couldn’t believe he’d suddenly decided to do so now.
He rubbed his brow in a vain effort to clear his mind. If he could only recall the events of the previous night.
He concentrated. Ferociously.
He could remember having a brief wash and going down for dinner. And being served with a surprisingly good stew. The beef had melted in his mouth. And there had been cabbage and onions and a thick hunk of really good bread to mop up the rich gravy. He remembered congratulating himself as he’d come up the stairs on stumbling across an inn that served such good food.
After that—nothing.
Could the overseer and his accomplice have attacked him on the way upstairs? Had they followed him and sneaked up on him, intent on getting revenge? He felt the back of his head but didn’t find any lumps or cuts. No sign that anyone had struck him with a blunt instrument. It was about the only thing they hadn’t used. They certainly hadn’t hesitated to use their boots when they’d managed to knock him to the ground.
Not that he’d stayed down for long. A feeling of satisfaction warmed him. He flexed the fingers of his right hand, savouring the sting of grazed knuckles. It was one thing practising the science in a boxing saloon, where due deference was always given to regular customers, quite another to rise triumphant from an impromptu mill with a brace of bullies who had neither known who he was nor fought fair.
But, still, that didn’t answer the question of why this harridan had burst, shrieking, into his bedroom, nor the female he’d apparently taken to his bed without having any recollection of so much as meeting her.
He turned slowly, wondering just exactly what sort of female he had found in such a ramshackle inn, in such a dreary little town.
He took a good look at the girl, who was sitting up in the bed with the covers clutched up to her chin.
Contrary to what he’d half expected she was a pretty little thing, with a cloud of chestnut curls and a pair of huge brown eyes.
Which was an immense relief. He might have lost his memory, but at least he hadn’t lost his good taste.
* * *
Prudence rubbed her eyes. Shook her head. She’d never had a dream like this before. Not as bad as this, at any rate. She had sometimes had nightmares featuring her aunt Charity, for despite her name her mother’s sister was the kind of cold, harsh woman who was bound to give a girl the occasional nightmare, but never—not in even the most bizarre ones that had invaded her sleep when she’d been feverish—had her aunt spoken such gibberish. Nor had she ever had the kind of dream in which a naked man invaded her room. Her bed.
He’d stalked to the door and shut it, thankfully, though not before she’d realised that the landlord was staring at her chest. Her bare chest.
Why hadn’t she checked to see if she was naked before sitting up? And why was she naked? Where was her nightgown? Her nightcap? And why wasn’t her hair neatly braided? What was going on?
The naked man by the door was ruffling his closely cropped light brown hair repeatedly, as though his head hurt. And he was muttering something about horses and gravy.
Naked.
Man.
Her stomach lurched. She had a clear recollection of snuggling up against that man a few minutes ago. He’d had his arms round her. It had felt...lovely. But then she’d thought it was all part of a pleasant dream, in which someone was holding her, making her feel safe for once. Loved.
Instead he’d probably...
She swallowed. Heaven alone knew what he’d done to her.
And now he was standing between her and the door. The door he’d just bolted.
Don’t come near me. Don’t turn round. Don’t turn round.
He turned round.
Looked at her searchingly.
Appeared to like what he saw.
Started walking back to the bed.
She opened her mouth to scream for help. But the only sound that issued from her parched throat was a sort of indignant squeak.
She worked her tongue against the roof of her mouth, desperately trying to find some moisture so that she could call for help.
Though from whom? That landlord? The man who’d just taken a good look at her breasts?
Aunt Charity? Who’d come in here and called her a trollop?
Although...it didn’t look as though she needed to call for help just yet. The man was standing still. Fists on his hips. Glaring down at her.
Glaring down from a face she suddenly recognised. Now that she was actually looking at it. And not at those broad, bare shoulders. Or the bruised ribcage. Or the... Well, she’d never seen a naked man before. She couldn’t help looking at that. Even though she knew she shouldn’t.
But anyway, now that she was looking at his face she knew she’d seen it before. Last night. In the dining room.
He’d been sitting in the corner, at a table all on his own. Looking dangerous. And it hadn’t been just the bruise to his jaw, or the fact that one eye had been swelling and darkening, or that he’d had the grazed knuckles of a man who’d clearly just been in a fist fight. It had been the cold atmosphere that had surrounded him. The chill emanating from steel-grey eyes that had dared anyone to try and strike up a conversation, or walk too closely past his table, or serve him with anything that didn’t meet his expectations.
She hadn’t noticed him observing her. But he must have been doing so. He must have somehow known she was in a room on her own and followed her up here, and then...
But at that point her mind drew a blank.
He hadn’t handled her roughly—that much she knew. Because she didn’t feel the slightest bit sore anywhere. Though perhaps she hadn’t put up much of a struggle. Perhaps she’d known it would have been useless, given the size of the muscles bulging out all over that huge, great body...
‘It won’t work!’
‘Pardon?’ The word just managed to crawl over her teeth.
‘This—’ The big, dangerous, naked man waved his arm round the room. Ended up pointing at her. ‘This attempt to compromise me.’
Compromise? What an odd choice of word. Besides, if anyone was compromised it was her.
She tried clearing her throat, in order to point this out, but he’d whirled away from her. Was striding round the room, pouncing on various items of clothing that lay on the floor. He bundled them up and threw them at her.
‘Get dressed and get out,’ he snarled. And then, for good measure, he drew the hangings around the bed, as though to blot out the very sight of her.
Which at least gave her the privacy to scramble into what turned out to be the clothes she’d been wearing last night. Clothes which had been scattered all over the room as though they’d been torn off in a frenzy and dropped just anywhere.
Which wasn’t like her at all. She was always meticulous about folding her clothes and placing everything she might need upon rising close at hand. It was a habit ingrained during the first dozen years of her life, when the ability to move out of a billet at a moment’s notice might have meant the difference between life and death.
Still, she wasn’t going to dwell on that. If ever there was a time to make a swift exit then that time was now. She needed to get decently dressed, as fast as was humanly possible, and out of this room before the gigantic, angry, naked man changed his mind about letting her go.
She untangled her chemise and pulled it on over her head. Reached for her stays. And considered. It would take some time to wriggle it into a comfortable position and do up all the laces. Better just to get her gown on and get out of here.
When she peeped out through the bed hangings she saw that he was sitting on a chair, stamping his feet into a pair of scuffed, rather baggy boots.
Which reminded her. Shoes. Where were her shoes?
There. Right by the door. Next to each other, although one was lying on its side.
She grabbed her stays and waited until the man—the no longer naked man, since he’d pulled on some breeches and a shirt—reached for his second boot. He didn’t look like the kind of man who’d sacrifice his dignity by hopping after her. So as he started easing his foot down the leg of that boot she made a dash for the door.
As quickly as she could, she thrust her feet into her shoes, and went to open the door.
It wouldn’t budge.
She tugged and tugged at it, but no matter how hard she pulled, or how frantically she turned the handle, she simply couldn’t get it open.
And the man must have got his second boot on. Because she could hear him walking across the room. He was coming in her direction.
In panic, she dropped her stays so she could tug at the handle with both hands. But she wasn’t quick enough. He’d come right behind her. Was reaching up. Over her head.
And drawing the bolt free.
The bolt. In her panic to escape she’d forgotten all about the bolt.
‘Allow me,’ said the man, opening the door and making a mockingly courteous gesture with one hand.
Before putting the other on her back.
And shoving her out onto the landing.
The beast. The rude, nasty, horrible man! He hadn’t even let her pick up her stays! Not that she really wanted to be seen running round an inn with her stays in full view in her hands.
But still— Her lower lip trembled. If she’d had a drop of moisture in her parched body she was sure tears would have sprung to her eyes.
She rubbed at them, but got no relief. The gesture only made the landing spin, and then sort of ripple—the way the surface of a pond rippled when you threw in a pebble.
And there was something else odd about the landing. It all seemed to be the wrong way round. True, she hadn’t spent much time exploring the place when they’d arrived, but it had been such an odd little space, up under the eaves, that it was bound to have stuck in her mind. The owner of the inn had made clever use of his attics, fashioning three rooms around three sides at the top of his property, with the head of the stairwell and a broad landing taking up the fourth side. Last night, when she’d come up the stairs, she’d had to go right round the narrow gallery which bordered the stairwell to reach her room. But now she was standing right next to the staircase, which meant she hadn’t been in her room just now.
But his.
Why had she been in his room? Could she have stumbled, sleepily, into the wrong room last night?
No...no, that wasn’t it. She distinctly recalled starting to get ready for bed and her aunt coming in with a drink of hot milk.
A sound from inside the room she’d just shared with a total stranger made her jump out of her skin.
She shouldn’t be loitering here. Who was to say he wouldn’t change his mind and drag her back inside?
With legs that felt like cotton wool, she made her way round the gallery. She passed the door to the room where her aunt and her... She shook her head. She still couldn’t think of her aunt’s new husband as her uncle. He was no relation of hers. It was bad enough having to share her home with him, let alone address the old skinflint as though he was family.
She stumbled to a halt in the doorway that stood open. This was her room. She was sure this had been her room. The bed was just where it should be. And the washstand. And the little dormer window with the seat underneath on which she’d knelt to peer down at the view. She’d been able to see along the road that led to the market square. Even from this doorway she could just spy the top of the market cross.
But—where were her things? Her trunk should be just there, at the foot of the bed. Her hatbox beside it. Her toiletries, brush and comb should be on the washstand.
Confused, she tottered round the landing to the back of the house, to the room her aunt and the vile Mr Murgatroyd were sharing. There was nothing for it. She’d have to intrude, even though they might be—she shuddered—embracing, which they tended to do with revolting frequency.
She braced herself and knocked on the door. When there was no reply she knocked again, and then gingerly tried the handle. The door opened onto an empty room. No luggage. No personal clutter on the washstand or dresser.
As if they’d gone.
She blinked a couple of times and shook her head. This must all be part of the same nightmare. That was it. In a minute she’d wake up, back in... Back in...
She pinched her arm—hard.
But nothing changed. She was still standing on the landing at the top of an inn, in a little town whose name she couldn’t remember. After waking up in bed with a naked man.
It couldn’t be happening.
Her aunt and her new husband must be downstairs. Paying the bill. That was it. They couldn’t have abandoned her. They just couldn’t have.
Her heart fluttering like a butterfly trapped in a jam jar, she turned away from the empty room and ran down the stairs.
Chapter Two (#u655ebb25-5855-5bd6-a04e-c82d52bab9e6)
‘We run a respectable establishment,’ said the landlady, glaring at Gregory as she folded her arms over her ample bosom.
‘Really?’ If this was what passed for a ‘respectable’ establishment, he hated to think what she considered unrespectable. Disrespectable. He gave himself a mental shake. Why couldn’t he think of the word for the opposite of respectable?
‘So we’d be obliged if you’d pay your shot and leave.’
‘I haven’t had my breakfast.’
‘Nor will we be serving you any. We don’t hold with putting our guests through the kind of scene you caused this morning.’
‘I didn’t cause any kind of scene.’
Why was he bandying words with this woman? He never bandied words with anyone. People did as they were told or felt the force of his displeasure.
‘Well, that’s not what my Albert told me,’ said the landlady. ‘Came to me with tales of guests complaining they’d been woken up by screaming women in the halls, naked girls in rooms where they didn’t ought to be, and—’
He held up one imperious hand for silence. Very well, he conceded there had been a scene. In which he’d become embroiled. Now that he came to think of it, did he really want to break his fast here? The last meal he’d eaten under this roof, although palatable, had ended with him sinking into a state of oblivion so profound it appeared a band of criminals had attempted to perpetrate some kind of...of crime against him.
Dammit, he’d thought his mind was getting clearer. He’d managed to summon up words like palatable and perpetrate. Why, for heaven’s sake, had he been unable to come up with another word for crime?
It felt as though someone had broken into his head and stolen three-quarters of his brain. When he’d first awoken he’d likened it to the kind of haze that followed a night of heavy drinking. A state he disliked so much he’d only very rarely sought the form of release that alcohol promised. And then only when he’d been young enough to know no better.
And the landlady was still standing there, hands on her hips now, glaring past him at the state of his room as though expecting to see the naked girl he’d ejected the moment she’d put on her clothes. That sounded wrong. As though he’d only tolerated her in his room while she was naked. What he’d meant was that of course he wouldn’t have thrown her out until she was dressed. That would not have been a decent thing to do.
While he was standing there, wondering why his thoughts were in such a muddle when he was used to making incisive decisions about complex issues in the blink of an eye, the landlady’s eyes narrowed and her nostrils flared. He followed the direction of her fixed stare to see what had put that disgusted expression on her face. And spied a stocking. A lady’s stocking. Dangling from the mirror over the washstand. Looking for all the world as though it had been thrown there during an explosion of frenzied undressing.
He stalked across the room, wrenched it from the mirror and shoved it into his pocket, feeling...cheated. If he really had torn that girl’s clothing from her in a burst of passion so overwhelming he’d thrown her stockings clear across the room, then he ought to be able to remember it. Remember being so out of control that he’d not only scattered her clothing all over the room but his own, too.
He shivered in distaste at the recollection that his shirt had spent its night on the floor. A floor that was none too clean.
‘I will be down directly,’ he said, coming to a sudden decision to shake the dust of this place from his shoes. As he’d had to shake the dust from his shirt a short while ago.
The landlady gave him one last basilisk stare before very pointedly stepping over the stays that lay on the floor by the door through which she exited.
He strode to the door and slammed it shut after her. Picked up the stays. Glared at them. Wondered for a moment why he felt such reluctance to leave them lying exactly where they were.
Because he didn’t want any trace of himself, or whatever had happened here, lingering after he’d gone, he decided. Which was why he thrust them into the one meagre little valise he’d brought with him. Then he went to the washstand and rolled up his shaving kit, tossed it into the valise with the stays and the rest of his things.
Not that the stays were his.
And who was likely to look in his valise and imply that they were?
Nobody—that was who. Not once he’d returned to where he belonged. Which he planned to do as soon as possible.
He paid his bill downstairs at the bar, rather than calling for the landlord to come and attend to him. The sooner he’d done with this place, the better. He needed to get outside and breathe fresh air. Perhaps even find a pump under which to douse his head with cold water. He certainly needed something to clear his head.
Instead of calling for someone to bring his gig round to the front of the inn, he decided to go and fetch it himself. Because there was bound to be a pump in the yard at the back. Or at least a trough for the horses.
He had to pause on the threshold when the spring sunshine assaulted his eyes. It seemed incredibly bright after the darkness of the inn.
When his eyes adjusted to the daylight he saw that there was indeed a pump in the stable yard. And that next to it were two people. One was an ostler. The other was the girl. The girl from the night before—or rather this morning. Heaven alone knew what had happened the night before.
She was inching backwards, round the pump. While the greasy-haired ostler was stalking her. Leering at her.
He frowned. Surely if she was plying her trade at this inn she ought not to be taking evasive action. Or looking so scared. She should be smiling coyly, attempting to wheedle as high a price from the ostler as he could afford to pay.
Come to think of it, she shouldn’t have clutched the sheets to her chest, or dressed so hurriedly, or scrabbled at the door in what had looked like desperation to get away from him earlier, either.
‘Hi, there. You! Ostler!’
The ostler suspended his pursuit of the girl. Recognising him as a customer, he pushed his hat to the back of his head with a grubby forefinger and shambled over.
‘Leave that girl alone,’ Gregory found himself saying. When what he’d meant to say was, Harness up my gig.
The ostler gave him a look that was very much like a sneer. ‘Want to keep ’er to yerself, do yer?’
The girl was looking round the yard wildly, as though for a means of escape. The only way out of the yard was through an archway. To reach it she’d have to get past both him and the lecherous ostler.
‘That is none of your business,’ he replied. ‘I want my gig. And I want it now.’
‘Oh-ar,’ said the ostler, apparently remembering what his job here actually was. He shot the girl a look that made her shudder as he went past her and into the stable.
Once the ostler had gone into the stable Gregory turned to look at the girl. She was pressed up against the far wall of the stable yard, as though trying to disappear into the plaster.
It didn’t make sense. Well, nothing about this morning made sense. But the girl’s behaviour, above all, was perplexing.
He didn’t like it. He didn’t like not being in complete control of any situation. He didn’t like the feeling of stumbling about in the dark.
He’d thought all he wanted to do was get away from this inn and back to normality. But the mystery of this girl, and how she’d come to be in his bed when she clearly wasn’t a professional, was plaguing him.
He’d never be at rest until he knew what had really happened here last night. He wanted answers. And the girl would have those answers.
He stalked towards her. And as he did so she pressed even deeper into the plasterwork, her eyes widening with alarm. He supposed she must fear the consequences of having perpetrated—ah, there was that word again—whatever deception it was she’d attempted last night. As well she might. When she’d attempted to perpetrate whatever it was she’d been attempting to perpetrate she’d picked the wrong man.
He came to a halt a scant foot from her, wondering how best to make her abandon any loyalty she might feel towards her accomplices and put her faith in him, instead. Only then would she tell him what he wanted to know. Which was how the deuce had they managed to penetrate his disguise and what would be their next move?
The answer came to him when the ostler led his gig out of the stable, giving the girl a knowing, triumphant grin as he hitched the reins to a ring in the wall. If she wasn’t a whore yet she would be one by tonight, that look said. Willing or unwilling.
His whole being rejected the notion of abandoning any woman to such a fate. No matter what she’d tried to do to him.
Besides, he had his reputation to think of. Somehow the screeching woman with the bony fingers must have worked out who he was.
Or been informed.
Ah, yes, that would explain everything. Even the confusion and panic on the girl’s face. It would be just like Hugo to drag some unsuspecting third party into one of his pranks and leave them to pay the price.
And the devil of it was that Hugo knew he would do his utmost to hush it all up. That he would never let the family name be dragged through the mud.
‘Once I have left this inn yard in that gig...’ he pointed it out to the quaking girl ‘...you will be completely at that man’s mercy.’
Her eyes flicked wildly from the gig to the ostler, who was ambling in their direction, and to him. Only once she was looking at him did he continue.
‘You would do better to come with me. I will keep you safe.’
She didn’t look as though she believed him. Her inference that he might not be telling the truth was an insult so grave she might as well have spat at him.
Drawing himself to his full height, he bit out, ‘I give you my word.’
Something about his demeanour, or maybe the approach of the ostler, must finally have managed to convince her, because she nodded her head before shooting past him and clambering up into the gig.
The ostler’s face fell. And he actually did spit. At the pair of them as they swept past him and out into what passed for the high street in this scruffy little town.
The girl had wrapped her arms around herself in a protective gesture the moment he’d climbed into the driver’s seat. And he was so angry with her that for a while he didn’t bother to reassure her that she really was safe with him. How dared she insinuate that he was the kind of man who told lies?
Though, to be fair, these last few days he had been somewhat economical with the truth.
But never—not under any circumstances—would he harm a helpless woman. Not even an unhelpless woman. Oh, blast it all. There went his vocabulary again. There was no such word as unhelpless, was there?
The approach of a farm cart from the opposite direction caused him to abandon his vain attempt to find a suitable word to describe the girl sitting next to him. He needed all his concentration to get his vehicle past the cart in the narrow confines of the lane. Particularly since the farmer’s horse appeared to annoy the one harnessed to his own gig. What with preventing his bad-tempered nag from biting the gentle, rather stupid mare belonging to the farmer, and convincing it that it really did need to progress further down the lane, even though it looked as if it would be better sport to make the farmer’s horse back his cart into the wall, he had his hands—and his mind—completely full.
They were right out in the countryside, with the little town of Much Wapping far behind them, before he decided to speak to the girl again.
He found he was looking forward to coaxing her into speaking. The only word that had so far passed her lips had been huskily spoken. Like a velvet caress.
Velvet caress? Good grief, what was the matter with him that he was coming up with such bizarre ideas?
Anyway, he shouldn’t have to coax her into speaking again. Females, in his experience, were never silent. Not for as long as this anyway. Not unless they were planning something. He gave her a sharp look. She still had her arms wrapped around her middle. Her fingers tucked under her armpits. It struck him that she didn’t look merely defensive any longer. She looked cold.
Cold. Of course she was cold. She wasn’t wearing a coat. Or a bonnet. Her rust-coloured gown was made of good quality kerseymere, but a brief glance at her feet revealed an expanse of bare skin between the tops of her sturdy shoes and the hem of that gown. And it might be sunny, but this early in the year it wouldn’t be really warm until perhaps the middle of the afternoon. If then. She needed to put something else on. But she hadn’t any luggage, had she?
Frowning, he cast his mind over what to do for her. It would be pointless to offer her the one stocking he had in his jacket pocket. She needed more than one stocking. She needed a coat.
He could lend her his own coat... But, no. It would swamp her. Even his jacket would probably come down to her knees. Though that, actually, might not be such a bad thing. She could tuck her hands inside the sleeves.
He couldn’t just stop where they were and offer her his jacket, though. The lane was so narrow that if any other vehicle came from either direction they wouldn’t be able to pass. But from now on he’d look for a place where he could safely pull over.
Before very much longer he spied a gate leading into a field, which gave him the chance to pull the gig off the road a little. He put on the brake, removed his gloves and swiftly unbuttoned his coat.
Just as he was leaning forward, with his left arm out of one sleeve, about to remove his right arm from the other, the girl gave him a hefty shove in the side. She caught him so off balance that he tumbled right out of the seat, landing between the gig’s nearside wheel and the gatepost.
Dammit, why hadn’t he seen that coming? Women were never as defenceless as they looked. Obviously she was going to try and steal his horse and gig the moment he let down his guard.
And why had he let down his guard? All she’d had to do was shiver and look a bit pathetic and he’d promptly forgotten the way they’d met. All he’d been able to think of was shielding her. Just the way he’d wanted to shield her from that repulsive ostler.
Well, no longer. He surged to his feet on a wave of absolute fury. He might despise the bad-tempered nag harnessed to the ramshackle gig he normally wouldn’t have permitted in any of his stables, let alone take out onto a public road, but it was currently his only means of transport. And he was not going to relinquish it to a slip of a girl! He’d climb back into the driver’s seat and wrest the reins from her hands. And then—
And then nothing. Because she wasn’t in the driver’s seat, whipping the horse into a gallop and leaving him standing in the lane. On the contrary—she’d scrambled out of the gig while he’d been picking himself up and was currently running away as fast as she could.
Back towards Much Wapping.
Her accomplices must still be there. Hang it all, why hadn’t he thought of that? She must have been loitering in the stable yard awaiting them.
Well, he wasn’t going to let her get back to them and...and do whatever it was she was planning to do. He’d had enough of stumbling about in ignorance. Of being chivalrous, and merciful, and all the rest of it. He was going to drag her back and shake the truth out of her, if that was what it took. For only by discovering the truth would he stand any chance of regaining the upper hand.
* * *
Prudence ran as fast as her legs could carry her. Though her shoes chafed against her bare feet and her legs still didn’t feel as though they quite belonged to her.
But she wasn’t going to be fast enough. She could hear the man’s feet pounding down the road behind her. Getting closer and closer.
She wasn’t going to be able to outrun him. She had to find another way to stop him. But what?
Just then she stumbled and half fell to the ground, which was littered with large chunks of jagged rock. Chunks of rock which looked as though they had come away from the dry stone wall that flanked this side of the lane.
She grabbed one. Turned. Faced the big, angry man who was planning to... Well, she didn’t know what he planned to do with her once he caught her, but from the look on his face it wasn’t anything she’d like.
In a sort of wild desperation she flung the rock at him as hard as she could.
To her surprise—and his—it caught him on the forehead.
He went down like a... Well, like a stone. Prudence stood rooted to the spot. Stared in horror at the blood which was trickling down his face.
The ungainly sprawl of his limbs.
His total stillness.
What had she done? She’d only meant to show him she meant business. To stop him pursuing her.
Instead she’d...she’d killed him!
Chapter Three (#u655ebb25-5855-5bd6-a04e-c82d52bab9e6)
She ran to where he lay, sprawled on his back in the dirt, blood streaming across his forehead and into his hair. She dropped to her knees beside him. She couldn’t believe she’d felled him like that. With one little stone. Oh, very well then, with a large chunk of rock. She pressed her hands to her mouth. He was such a big man. So full of life and strength. It was unnatural to see him lying so still.
And then he groaned. She’d never heard such a welcome sound in her life.
‘Oh, thank God! You aren’t dead.’ She was almost sobbing.
He opened his eyes and shot her a cold, disbelieving look.
‘No thanks to you,’ he growled, then raised one hand to the cut and winced. He drew his hand away and held his fingers before his eyes, as though he couldn’t believe he really was bleeding without seeing the evidence as well as feeling it.
She reached into the pocket of her skirt for something to dab at the wound. But there was nothing. She had no handkerchief. Her chemise was of fine lawn, though. Its material would be as good. She hitched up her skirt and started tugging at her chemise.
‘What,’ asked the man warily—which wasn’t surprising since she’d well-nigh killed him, ‘are you doing?’
‘I’m trying to tear a piece from my chemise,’ she said, still desperately trying to rip the fabric that was proving more resilient than she’d expected.
‘Why?’ He looked baffled now, as well as wary.
‘To do something about that cut on your head,’ she said.
‘The cut you caused by throwing a rock at me?’
‘That’s the one.’
‘Wouldn’t you rather get another rock and finish what you started?’ he enquired mildly.
‘No! Oh, no—I never meant to hurt you. I didn’t think my aim was that good. Actually...’ She sat back on her heels. ‘My aim wasn’t that good. Because I wasn’t aiming at your head. I was just throwing the rock in your general direction, so you’d understand I wished you to leave me alone.’
‘Why?’
While she’d been attempting to explain he’d been fishing in his own pockets and found a large, pristine white silk square which he handed to her with a sort of flourish.
‘Thank you,’ she said, taking it from him and applying it to the cut. ‘Why what?’
‘Why were you running away? Why didn’t you just steal the gig? Or can you not drive?’
‘Yes, I can drive. Of course I can drive. It just never occurred to me to steal your gig. I’m not a thief!’
He quirked one eyebrow—the one that wasn’t bleeding—as though in disbelief. ‘Not a thief?’ he repeated dryly. ‘How fortunate I feel on receipt of that information.’
She put her hand around the back of his head to hold it still, so that she could press down hard on the cut. ‘Yes, you are fortunate,’ she said tartly. ‘I could have left you lying in the road for the...the next gang of thieves to come along and finish you off!’
‘Well, that would have made more sense than this,’ he said, making a vague gesture to his forehead.
She couldn’t be sure if he meant her trying to stanch the flow of blood, or the fact she’d caused his injury in the first place.
‘You had no reason to run off,’ he said, a touch petulantly for a man who looked so tough. ‘I told you I wouldn’t harm you. But,’ he said, drawing his brows down and narrowing his eyes with what looked like suspicion. ‘I suppose you were desperate to get back to Much Wapping to collect your fee.’
‘Fee?’ She withdrew the handkerchief, noting with some relief that the bleeding was slowing already. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘It’s no use playing the innocent with me. Hugo put you up to this, didn’t he?’
‘Hugo? I don’t know anyone by that name.’
‘A likely story. If you were not attempting to get back to Much Wapping and claiming your reward, why were you running away?’
‘You scared me,’ she admitted. ‘When you started undressing.’
‘Undressing? I was not undressing.’ He frowned. ‘Not precisely. That is, I was removing my coat, but only so that I could lend you my jacket. You looked cold.’
‘Your...your jacket?’ She sat back on her heels. The handkerchief slid from the man’s brow to the ground on which he was still lying, glaring up at her. ‘Because I looked cold? But... But...’
She pressed her hands to her mouth again for a moment. Looking back on his actions in the light of that explanation, it all looked very, very different.
‘I’m so sorry. I thought... I thought...’
‘Yes,’ he said grimly. ‘I can see what you thought.’
‘Well,’ she retorted, suddenly angered by the way he was managing to look down his nose at her even though he was flat on his back and she was kneeling over him. ‘What would you have thought? I woke up in bed naked, in a strange room, with no idea how I came to be there. Aunt Charity was screaming at me, you were wandering about the place naked, shouting at me, too, and then I went to my room and it was empty, and Aunt Charity had gone with all my things, and the landlady called me names and pushed me out into the yard, and that man...that man...’ She shuddered.
‘I told you,’ he said, reaching for the abandoned handkerchief and pressing it to his brow himself, ‘that I would keep you safe. Didn’t you believe me?’
‘Of course I didn’t believe you. I’m not an idiot. I only went with you because I was so desperate to get away from that dirty, greasy stable hand. And because at least you didn’t seem...amorous. Even this morning, when we woke up together, you didn’t seem amorous. Only angry. So I thought at least you’d spare me that. Except then you took me out into the middle of nowhere and started undressing. And I... I didn’t know what to think. It’s all like some kind of nightmare.’ She felt her lower lip tremble. ‘None of this seems real.’ Her eyes burned with tears that still wouldn’t quite form.
‘No,’ he said slowly. ‘None of this seems real.’
And then he sat up.
Her instinct was to flinch away. Only that would look terribly cowardly, wouldn’t it? So she made herself sit completely still and look him right in the eyes as he gazed into hers, searchingly.
‘Your eyes look strange,’ he said, reaching out to take hold of her chin. ‘I have never seen anyone with such tiny pupils.’
For such a large man his touch was remarkably gentle. Particularly since he had every right to be angry with her for throwing that rock. And actually hitting him with it.
‘My eyes feel strange,’ she admitted in a shaky voice. The touch of his fingers on her chin felt strange, too. Strange in the sense that she would have thought, given all that had passed between them so far, she would want to recoil. But she didn’t. Not in the slightest. Because for some strange reason his fingers felt pleasant. Comforting.
Which was absurd.
‘My head is full of fog. Nothing makes sense,’ she said, giving her head a little shake in a vain attempt to clear it of all the nonsense and start thinking sensibly again. It shook his fingers clear of her chin. Which was a pity.
No, it wasn’t! She didn’t want to take his hand and put it back on her face, against her cheek, so that she could lean into it. Not one bit.
‘It is the same for me,’ he said huskily.
‘Is it?’ That seemed very unlikely. But then so did everything else that had happened today.
‘Yes. From the moment I awoke I could not summon the words I needed.’
Words. He was talking about words. Not wanting to put his hand back on her face.
‘They seem to flit away out of reach, leaving me floundering.’
‘It is my aunt and uncle who’ve flitted out of my reach,’ she said bitterly. ‘Leaving me floundering. Literally. And my legs don’t seem as if they’ve properly woken up yet today.’
‘And you really haven’t heard of anyone called Hugo?’
Just as she shook her head in denial her stomach growled. Rather loudly.
He looked down at it with a quirk to his lips that looked suspiciously like the start of a smile.
‘Oh, how unladylike!’ She wrapped her arms around her middle.
‘You sound as hungry as I feel,’ he said, placing his hands on his own stomach. ‘I didn’t have any breakfast.’
‘Nor me. But until my stomach made that noise I hadn’t thought about being hungry,’ she found herself admitting. ‘I’m too thirsty.’
‘I’m thirsty, too. And foggy-headed. And I don’t feel as though my limbs want to do my bidding, either. I’m generally held to be a good whip, but I’m having real trouble controlling that broken-down hack that’s harnessed to the gig. And what’s more...’ He took a breath, as though coming to a decision. ‘I don’t recall a thing about last night. Not after dinner anyway. Do you?’
She thought for a bit. Today had been so bizarre that she hadn’t done anything more than try to work her way through it. And that had been hard enough, without trying to cast her mind back to the day before.
‘I went up to my room directly after dinner,’ she said. ‘I remember starting to get ready for bed, and Aunt Charity bringing me some hot milk which she said would help me sleep...’
A coldness took root in her stomach.
‘After that,’ she continued as a horrible suspicion began to form in her mind, ‘I don’t remember anything until I woke up next to you.’
‘Then it seems clear what happened,’ he said, getting to his feet and holding out his hand to her. ‘She drugged you and carried you to my room.’
‘No. No.’ She shook her head as he pulled her to her feet. ‘Why would she do such a horrid thing?’
‘I wonder if she knows Hugo,’ he mused. Then he fixed her with a stern look. ‘Because if Hugo isn’t behind this...’ he waved his free hand between the pair of them ‘...then we’re going to have to find another explanation. You will have to have a serious think about it on the way.’
‘On the way where?’
He hadn’t let go of her hand after helping her up, and she hadn’t made any attempt to tug it free. So when he turned and began to stride back to the gig she simply trotted along beside him.
‘On the way to Tadburne,’ he said, handing her up into the seat. ‘Where we are going to get something to eat in a respectable inn, in a private parlour, so that we can discuss what has happened and what we plan to do about it.’
She liked the sound of getting something to eat. And the discussing of plans. But not of the private parlour. Now that he’d let go of her hand she could remember that he was really a total stranger. A very disreputable-looking stranger, in whose bed she’d woken up naked that morning.
But what choice did she have? She was hungry, and cold, and she had not the means to do anything about either condition since Aunt Charity had vanished with all her possessions. She didn’t even have the small amount of pin money she was allowed. It had been in her purse. Which was in her reticule. The reticule she’d last seen the night before, when she’d tucked it under her pillow for safekeeping.
Oh, why hadn’t she thought to go to the bed in that empty room and see if her reticule was there? At least she’d have a few shillings with which to... But there her mind ran blank. What good would a few shillings be at a time like this?
But at least she would have had a clean handkerchief.
Though it wouldn’t have been clean now anyway. She’d have had to use it to mop up the blood. And then, if she’d needed one for herself later, she’d have had to borrow one from him anyway.
Just as she was now having to borrow his jacket, which he’d stripped off and sort of thrust at her, grim-faced.
‘Thank you,’ she said, with as much penitence as she could muster, and then pushed her arms gratefully into sleeves that were still warm from his body. Which reflection made her feel a bit peculiar. It was like having his arms around her again. The way they’d been before she’d woken up.
Fortunately he shot her a rather withering look, which brought her back to her senses, then bent to retrieve the coat that had fallen into the road when she’d pushed him off the seat just a short while since.
‘To think I was concerned about my name being dragged through the mud,’ he muttered, giving it a shake. ‘You managed to pitch me into the only puddle for miles around.’
She felt a pang of guilt. Just a small one. Because now not only was his eye turning black around the swelling he’d already had the night before, but he also had a nasty gash from the stone she’d thrown, spatters of blood on his neckcloth, and a damp, muddy smear down one side of his coat.
She braced herself for a stream of recrimination as he clambered back into the driving seat. But he merely released the brake, took up the reins, and set the gig in motion.
His face was set in a fierce scowl, but he didn’t take his foul mood out on her. At least she presumed he was in a foul mood. Any man who’d just been accused of indecency when he’d only been trying to see to a lady’s comfort, and then been cut over what must already be a sore eye, was bound to be in a foul mood.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, after they’d been going for a bit. Because she felt that one of them ought to say something.
‘For what, exactly?’
Oh. So he was the sort of man who sulked when he was angry, then, rather than one who ranted.
‘For throwing the rock. For hitting you when normally I couldn’t hit a barn door.’
‘You are in the habit of throwing rocks at barn doors?’
‘Of course not! I just meant... I was trying to apologise. Do you have to be so...so...?’
‘You cannot think of the word you want?’
‘No need to mock me.’
‘I didn’t mean to. It was an observation. I have already told you that I am struggling to find the words I want myself this morning. And, like you, none of this seems real. I suspect that when whatever drug we have both been given wears off I shall be rather more angry about the rock and your assumptions about me. But right now all I can think about is getting something to drink.’
‘A cup of tea...’ She sighed. ‘That would be heavenly.’
‘A pint of ale.’
‘Some bread and butter.’
‘A steak. With onions.’
‘At breakfast?’
‘Steak with onions is always good.’
She shuddered. ‘I don’t know about that. My stomach doesn’t usually wake up first thing. I don’t normally eat much before noon.’
‘I don’t bother with a break at noon. I’m usually out and about. Busy with estate business when I’m in the country. Or in my office with my secretary when I’m in town.’
‘You have a secretary? What kind of business are you in?’
Did she imagine it, or did he look a little hunted?
‘Never mind what business I’m in,’ he said, rather defensively.
Oh, dear. Last night Aunt Charity had remarked that he was just the kind of disreputable person she’d been afraid they might encounter in such an out-of-the-way tavern. That he was probably a highwayman. Or a housebreaker. Though surely housebreakers didn’t have secretaries? Still, the fact that he didn’t want to answer any questions about his background made it more than likely that he was some sort of scoundrel.
But not a complete scoundrel. A complete scoundrel wouldn’t have given her his jacket. Wouldn’t have rescued her from the ostler or offered to buy her breakfast, either. No—a complete scoundrel would have left her to fend for herself. Climbed into the gig and driven away. If not the first time then definitely the second time, after she’d thrown a rock at him.
She rubbed at her forehead. He looked so villainous, and yet he wasn’t acting like a villain. Whereas her aunt, who made a great display of piety at every opportunity... Oh, nothing made sense today! Nothing at all.
‘I have just realised,’ he said, ‘that I don’t even know your name. What is it?’
‘Prudence Carstairs,’ she said. ‘Miss.’
‘Prudence?’ He gave her one sidelong glance before bursting out laughing.
‘I don’t see what’s so funny about my being called Prudence,’ she objected.
‘P...Prudence?’ he repeated. ‘I cannot imagine a name less suited to a girl whom I met naked in bed, who gets chased around horse troughs by lecherous ostlers and throws rocks at her rescuer. Why on earth,’ he said, wiping what looked like a tear from one eye, ‘did they call you Prudence? Good God,’ he said, looking at her in sudden horror as a thought apparently struck him. ‘Are you a Quaker?’
‘No, a Methodist,’ she said, a touch belligerently. ‘Grandpapa went to a revival meeting and saw the light. After that he became a very strict parent, so naturally my mother named me for one of the virtues.’
‘Naturally,’ he said. ‘But why Prudence in particular?’
‘Because it was the one virtue it was impossible for her to attain in any other way,’ she retorted, without thinking.
‘And did she feel she had attained it, once you grew old enough for her to discern your personality? I suspect not,’ he observed. ‘I think you are just like her.’
‘No, I’m not! She ran off with a man she’d only known a week, because his unit was being shipped out and she was afraid she’d never see him again. Whereas I have never been dazzled by a scarlet jacket or a lot of gold braid. In fact I’ve never lost my head over any man.’
‘Good for you.’
‘There is no need to be sarcastic.’
‘No, no—I was congratulating you on your level head,’ he said solemnly, but his lips twitched as though he was trying to suppress a smile.
‘I don’t think so.’
‘So,’ he said, ignoring her retort. ‘Your mother ran off with a soldier, I take it, and regretted it so much that she gave you a name that would always remind her of her youthful folly?’
‘She did no such thing! I mean, yes, Papa was a soldier, but she never regretted eloping with him. Not even when her family cut her out of their lives. They were very happy together.’
‘Then why—?’
‘Well, doesn’t every parent want a better life for their child?’
‘I have no idea,’ he said.
He said it so bleakly that she stopped being angry with him at once.
‘And I have no patience with this sort of idle chatter.’
What? She’d hardly been chattering. All she’d done was answer the questions he’d put to her.
She’d taken a breath in order to point this out when he held up his hand to silence her.
‘I really do need to concentrate for a moment,’ he said brusquely. ‘Although I am familiar with the area, in a general sort of way, I have never travelled down this road.’
They had reached a junction to what looked like a high road.
‘I think we need to turn left,’ he muttered. ‘Yes, I’m almost sure of it.’
He looked to the right, to make sure nothing was coming, before urging the horse off the rutted, narrow lane and out onto a broad road that looked as though it saw a lot of traffic.
‘So how come,’ he said, once they were trotting along at a smart pace, ‘you ended up falling into such bad company? If your mother was so determined you would have a better life than she did how did you end up in the power of the termagant who invaded my room this morning?’
‘That termagant,’ she replied acidly, ‘happens to be my mother’s sister.’
‘You have my sincere condolences.’
‘She isn’t usually so—’ She flared up, only to subside almost at once. ‘Actually, that’s not true. Aunt Charity has never been exactly easy to get along with. I did my best. Well, at least at first I did my best,’ she confessed. ‘But eventually I realised that she was never going to be able to warm to me so it didn’t seem worth the effort.’
‘Why should she not warm to you?’
He looked surprised. As though there was no earthly reason why someone shouldn’t warm to her. Did that mean he had?
‘It was all to do with the way Mama ran off with Papa. The disgrace of it. I was the result of that disgrace. A constant reminder of it. Particularly while my father was still alive.’
‘He sent you back to your mother’s family while he was still alive?’
‘Well, not deliberately. I mean...’ Oh, why was it so hard to explain things clearly? She screwed up her face in concentration, determined to deliver the facts in a logical manner, without getting sidetracked. ‘First of all Mama died. And Papa said that the army was no place for a girl my age without a mother to protect her. I was getting on for twelve, you see.’
‘I do see,’ he grunted.
‘Yes... Well, he thought his family would take me in. Only they wouldn’t. They were as angry over him marrying a girl who “smelled of the shop” as Grandpapa Biddlestone was that his daughter had run off with a sinner. So they sent me north. At least Mama’s family took responsibility for me. Even though they did it grudgingly. Besides, by then Aunt Charity had also angered Grandpapa Biddlestone over her own choice of husband. Or at least the way he’d turned out. Even though he was of the Methodist persuasion he was, apparently, “a perpetual backslider”. Though that is neither here nor there. Not any more.’
‘By which you mean what?’
‘He’d been dead for years before I even reached England. I cannot think why I mentioned him at all.’
‘Nor can I believe I just said, By which you mean what.’
‘It doesn’t matter that your speech isn’t very elegant,’ she said consolingly. ‘I knew what you meant.’
The sort of snorting noise he made in response was very expressive, if not very polite.
‘Well anyway, Grandpapa decided I should live with Aunt Charity until my father could make alternative arrangements for me, since she was a woman and I was of an age to need female guidance. Or that was what he said. She told me that Grandpapa didn’t want the bother of raising a girl child who couldn’t be of any use to him in his business.’
‘And why didn’t your father make those alternative arrangements?’
‘Because he died as well. Only a couple of years later.’
‘That makes no more sense than what I originally thought,’ he said in disgust.
‘What did you originally think?’
‘Never mind that,’ he said tersely. ‘I need to concentrate on the traffic now that we’re approaching Tadburne. This wretched animal—’ he indicated the horse ‘—seems to wish to challenge anything coming in the other direction, and I need to keep my wits about me—what little I appear to have remaining this morning—if you don’t want to get pitched into the road.’
She could understand that. She’d already noted that he was having increasing difficulty managing his horse the nearer they drew to the town she could see nestling in the next valley.
‘However,’ he said, ‘I should like you to consider a few things.’
‘What things?’
‘Well, firstly, why would your own aunt—your own flesh and blood—drug you, undress you, and deposit you in my bed? And, worse, abandon you in that inn after removing all your possessions, leaving you completely at the mercy of strangers? Because, Miss Prudence Carstairs, since you deny having any knowledge of Hugo and you seem to me to be a truthful person, then I feel almost sure that is what happened.’
Chapter Four (#u655ebb25-5855-5bd6-a04e-c82d52bab9e6)
‘You are wrong,’ Prudence said. ‘Aunt Charity is a pillar of the community. Positively steeped in good works. She couldn’t have done anything like that.’
Though why could she recall nothing after drinking that warm milk?
He made no answer.
It must have been because he was negotiating a tricky turn before going under the archway of an inn. The inn was, moreover, right on a busy crossroads, so that traffic seemed to be coming at them from all directions. It was concentration that had put the frown between his brows and made his mouth pull into an uncompromising line.
It wasn’t because he disagreed with her.
Of course he was wrong. Aunt Charity couldn’t possibly have done what he said.
Yet how else could she have ended up in bed with a stranger? Naked? She would never, ever have gone to his room of her own accord, removed every stitch of clothing, flung it all over the place, and then got into bed with him.
And the man denied having lured her there.
He brought the gig to a halt and called over an ostler.
Well, no, he hadn’t exactly denied it, she reflected as he got down, came round to her side and helped her from the seat. Because she hadn’t accused him of doing any luring. But from the things he’d said he seemed to think she’d been in some kind of conspiracy against him. And he was also unclear about what had happened last night after dinner. Claimed to have no recollection of how they’d wound up in bed together, either.
So what he was saying was that someone else must be responsible. Since she wasn’t. And he wasn’t.
Which left only her aunt.
And uncle.
Or this Hugo person he kept mentioning.
‘Come on,’ he said a touch impatiently.
She blinked, and realised she’d been standing still in the bustling inn yard, in a kind of daze, while she struggled with the horrid notion he’d put in her head.
‘Well, I want some breakfast even if you don’t,’ he said, turning on his heel and stalking towards the inn door.
Beast!
She had no choice but to trot along in his wake. Well, no acceptable choice anyway. She certainly wasn’t going to loiter in another inn yard, populated by yet more greasy-haired ostlers with lecherous eyes. And she did want breakfast. And she had no money.
When she caught up with him he was standing in the doorway to what looked like the main bar. Which was full of men, talking and swigging tankards of ale. It must be a market day for the place to be so busy and for so many men to look so inebriated this early.
‘Stay here,’ he growled, before striding across to the bar. ‘I want a private parlour,’ he said to the burly man in a stained apron who was presiding over the bar. ‘For myself and...’ he waved a hand in her direction ‘...my niece.’
His niece? Why on earth was he telling the landlord she was his niece?
The answer came to her as soon as she looked at the burly tapster and saw the expression on his face as he eyed their appearance. Bad enough to have been called a trollop by the landlady of the last inn she’d been inside. At least if people thought she was this man’s niece it gave an acceptable explanation for them travelling together, if not for the way they were dressed.
‘And breakfast,’ her ‘uncle’ was saying, as though completely impervious to what the burly man might be thinking about his appearance—or hers. ‘Steak, onions, ale, bread and butter, and a pot of tea.’
The burly man behind the bar looked at her, looked over the rowdy market-day crowd, then gave a sort of shrug.
‘Well, there ain’t nobody in the coffee room at present, since the Birmingham stage has just gone out. You’re welcome to sit in there, if you like.’
‘The coffee room?’
Her muddy-coated, bloodstained companion looked affronted. He opened his mouth to make an objection, but as he did so the landlord’s attention was snagged by a group of men at a far table, all surging to their feet as though intending to leave. They were rather boisterous, so Prudence wasn’t all that surprised when the burly man came out from behind the bar to make sure they all paid before leaving. Her newly acquired ‘uncle’, however, looked far from pleased at being brushed aside as though his order for breakfast was of no account. He must be really hungry. Or spoiling for a fight. Things really hadn’t been going his way this morning, had they?
Some of the boisterous men looked as though they were spoiling for a fight, too. But the burly landlord dealt with them deftly, thrusting them through the doorway next to which she was standing one by one the moment he’d extracted some money from them. She wouldn’t be a bit surprised to learn that he’d been in the army. He had that look about him—that confidence and air of authority she’d seen fall like a mantle over men who had risen through the ranks to become sergeants. She’d heard such men talk about opening taverns when they got out, too...
Her suppositions were rudely interrupted by a couple of the boisterous men half falling against her on their way out, knocking her against the doorjamb. She decided enough was enough. It was all very well for her uncle to stand there looking indignant, but it wasn’t getting them anywhere. Ignoring his command to stay where she was, she threaded her way through the tables to his side and plucked at his sleeve to gain his attention over the uproar.
‘Can we go into the coffee room, please...er... Uncle?’ she said.
He frowned down at her with displeasure.
She lifted her chin. ‘I’m really not feeling all that well.’ In fact the hot, crowded room appeared to be contracting and then expanding around her, and her head swam unpleasantly.
The frown on his face turned to a look of concern. ‘You will feel better for something to eat and that cup of tea,’ he declared, slipping his arm round her waist. ‘I am only sorry we cannot have complete privacy, because what we have to discuss will of necessity be rather...’
‘It certainly will,’ she muttered, rather shocked at how good it felt to have him supporting her into the coffee room, when not half an hour since she’d been trying to escape him. ‘Perhaps,’ she suggested as he lowered her gently into a chair, ‘we should discuss things right now, before anyone comes in.’
‘We will be able to think more clearly once we’ve had something to eat and drink,’ he said.
‘How do you know? Have you ever been drugged before?’
He quirked one eyebrow at her as he drew up a chair next to her. Then leaned in so that he could speak quietly. ‘So you do accept that is the case?’
She clasped her hands in her lap. ‘Couldn’t there have been some sort of mistake? Perhaps I stumbled into your room by accident?’
‘And tore off all your clothes and flung them about in some sort of mad fit before leaping into my bed? It isn’t likely. Unless you are in the habit of sleepwalking?’
She flushed as he described the very scenario she’d already dismissed as being completely impossible. Shook her head at his question about sleepwalking.
‘Then what other explanation can there be?’
‘What about this Hugo person you keep asking if I know?’
‘Yes,’ he said grimly. ‘I still wonder if he could somehow be at the back of it. He has good reason to meddle in the business that brought me up here, you see. Only...’
He rubbed his hand over the back of his neck, looking troubled. Then shook his head.
‘Only he isn’t a bad lad—not really. Only selfish and thoughtless. Or so I’ve always thought.’
‘Always? You have known him a long time?’
‘Since his birth,’ said Gregory. ‘He is my cousin. My nearest male relative, in point of fact. Ever since he left school I have been attempting to teach him all he needs to know should he ever have to step into my shoes. He couldn’t have thought it through. If it was him.’
‘But how on earth could he have persuaded my aunt to do such a thing? Let alone my uncle?’
‘He might have put the case in such a way that your aunt would have thought she was acting for your benefit.’
‘My benefit? How could it be of any benefit to...to humiliate me and abandon me? Anything could have happened. If you were not the kind of man who...that is if you were not a... I mean...although you don’t look it... I think you are a gentleman. You could easily have taken advantage of me. And you haven’t. Unless... Oh! Are you married?’
‘No. Not any more.’
‘I am so sorry. I did not mean to make you uncomfortable by mentioning a topic that must surely cause you sorrow.’
‘It doesn’t.’ He gave a sort of grimace. Then explained, ‘My wife has been dead these eight years.’
‘Oh, that’s good. I mean...not that she’s dead, but that it is long enough ago that you are past the worst of your grief. But anyway, what I was going to say was that perhaps you are simply not the sort. To break your marriage vows. I know that even the most unlikely-looking men can be doggedly faithful...’
His gaze turned so icy she shivered.
‘Not that you look like the unfaithful sort,’ she hastily amended. ‘Or the sort that... And anyway you have been married, so... That is... Oh, dear, I do not know what I mean, precisely.’
She could feel her cheeks growing hotter and hotter the longer she continued to babble at him. But to her relief his gaze suddenly thawed.
‘I think I detected a sort of compliment amongst all those observations,’ he said with a wry smile.
‘Thank goodness.’ She heaved a sigh of relief. ‘I mean, it is not that I intended to compliment you, but...’
He held up his hand. ‘Just stop right there, before you say anything else to embarrass yourself. And let me bring you back to the point in question. Which is this: perhaps your aunt thought to put you in a compromising position so that she could arrange an advantageous match for you.’
‘An advantageous match? Are you mad?’ She looked at his muddy coat, his blackened eye, the grazes on his knuckles.
And he pokered up.
‘Although,’ she said hastily, in an attempt to smooth down the feathers she’d ruffled by implying that someone would have to be mad to consider marrying the likes of him, ‘of late she has been growing increasingly annoyed by my refusal to get married. On account of her wanting a particular member of her husband’s family to benefit from my inheritance.’
‘Your inheritance?’
Oh, dear. She shouldn’t have blurted that out. So far he had been behaving rather well, all things considered. But once he knew she would come into a great deal of money upon making a good marriage it was bound to bring out the worst in him. He had told her he was no longer married. And, whatever line of business he was in, acquiring a rich wife would be a definite asset.
Why hadn’t she kept quiet about it? Why was she blurting out the answers to all his questions at all?
She rubbed at the spot between her brows where once she’d thought her brain resided.
‘You don’t think,’ he persisted, ‘that your aunt chose to put you into my bed, out of the beds of all the single men who were at that inn last night, for a particular reason? Or that she chose to stay at that particular inn knowing that I would be there?’
She kept on rubbing at her forehead, willing her brain to wake up and come to her rescue. But it was no use.
‘I don’t know what you mean!’ she eventually cried out in frustration. ‘We only stopped there because one of the horses went lame. We were supposed to be pushing on to Mexworth. Uncle Murgatroyd was livid when the postilions said we’d have to put up at the next place we came to. And Aunt Charity said it was a miserable little hovel and she’d never set foot in it. And then the postilion said she could sleep in the stable if she liked, but didn’t she think she’d prefer a bed with sheets? And then they had a rare old set-to, right in the middle of the road...’
‘I can just picture it,’ he put in dryly.
‘The upshot was that we didn’t have any choice. It was sheer coincidence that we were staying at the same inn as you last night. And I’m sure my aunt wouldn’t have wanted to compromise you into marriage with me anyway. She made some very derogatory remarks about you last night at supper. Said you looked exactly the sort of ruffian she would expect to find in a dingy little tavern in a town she’d never heard of.’
He sat back then, a thoughtful expression on his face.
‘How much money, exactly, will you receive when you marry?’
Or was it a calculating expression, that look she’d seen?
She lowered her eyes, feeling absurdly disappointed. If he suddenly started paying her compliments and...and making up to her, the way so many men did when they found out about her dowry, then she would...she would...
The way she felt today, she’d probably burst into tears.
Fortunately he didn’t notice, since at that moment a serving girl came in with a tray bearing a teapot, a tankard and a jug. He was so keen on getting on the outside of his ale that she might have thrown a tantrum and she didn’t think he’d notice.
She snapped her cup onto its saucer and threw two sugar lumps into it before splashing a generous dollop of milk on top. She removed the lid from the teapot and stirred the brew vigorously.
‘What will happen,’ he asked, setting down his tankard once he’d drained it, ‘to the money if you don’t marry?’
‘I will gain control of it for myself when I am twenty-five,’ she replied dreamily as she poured out a stream of fragrant brown liquid. Oh, but she was counting the days until she need rely on nobody but herself.
She came back to the present with an unpleasant jerk the moment she noticed the pale, unappealing colour of the brew in her cup. She’d put far too much milk in first. Even once she stirred it it was going to be far too weak.
‘And in the meantime who manages it for you?’
‘My trustees. At least...’ She paused, the teaspoon poised in mid-air as yet another horrible thought popped into her head. ‘Oh. Oh, no.’
‘What? What is it you’ve thought of?’
‘Well, it is probably nothing. Only Aunt Charity remarried last year. Mr Murgatroyd.’
She couldn’t help saying the name with distaste. Nothing had been the same since he’d come into their lives. Well, he’d always been there—right from the first moment she’d gone to live with her aunt. But back then he’d just been one of the congregation into which her aunt had introduced her. She hadn’t disliked him any more than any other of the mealy-mouthed men who’d taken such delight in making her life as dreary as possible. It hadn’t been until he’d married her aunt that she’d discovered how nasty he really was.
‘He persuaded my trustees,’ she continued, ‘that he was a more proper person to take over the management of my money once he became the husband of my guardian.’
‘And they agreed?’
‘To be honest there was only one of them left. They were all older than my grandfather when he set up the trust in the first place. And the one who outlived him wasn’t all that...um...’
‘Capable?’
‘That’s a very good word for it.’
He looked into his tankard with a stunned expression. ‘I always thought drink addled a man’s brains. But this ale appears to have restored my intellect. That’s the first time since I awoke this morning that I have been able to come up with an appropriate word.’
‘Good for you,’ she said gloomily, then took a sip of the milky tea. Which wasn’t strong enough to produce any kind of restorative effect.
‘And your uncle—this man your aunt has married—is now in charge of handling your inheritance? Until such time as you marry? Do I have it correct?’
‘Yes.’
He set his tankard down on the table with a snap. ‘So when shall I expect him to come calling? Demanding I make an honest woman of you?’
She shrugged. ‘I would have thought he would have done so this morning, if he was going to do it at all. Instead of which he left the inn, taking all my luggage with him. You’d better pour yourself another tankard of ale and see if it will give you another brilliant idea, Mr—’ She stopped. ‘You never did tell me your name.’
‘You never asked me for it.’
‘I told you mine. It is only polite to reciprocate when a lady has introduced herself.’
He reared back, as though offended that she’d criticised his manners.
‘A lady,’ he replied cuttingly, ‘would never introduce herself.’
‘A gentleman,’ she snapped back, ‘would not make any kind of comment about any female’s station in life. And you still haven’t told me your name. I can only assume you must be ashamed of it.’
‘Ashamed of it? Never.’
‘Then why won’t you tell me what it is? Why are you being so evasive?’
He narrowed his eyes.
‘I am not being evasive. Last time we came to an introduction we veered off into a more pressing conversation about bread and butter I seem to recall. And this time I...’ He shifted uncomfortably in his chair. ‘I became distracted again.’ He set down his tankard and pressed the heels of his hands against his temples, closing his eyes as though in pain.
‘Oh, does your head hurt? I do beg your pardon. I am not usually so snappish. Or so insensitive.’
‘And I am not usually so clumsy,’ he said, lowering his hands and opening his eyes to regard her ruefully. ‘I fear we are not seeing each other at our best.’
He’d opened his mouth to say something else when the door swung open again, this time to permit two serving girls to come in, each bearing a tray of food.
Prudence looked at his steak, which was smothered in a mountain of onions, and then down at her plate of bread and butter with a touch of disappointment.
‘Wishing you’d ordered more? I can order you some eggs to go with that, if you like?’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t suppose I could eat them if you did order them, though it is very kind of you. It is just the smell of those onions...’ She half closed her eyes and breathed in deeply. ‘Ohhh...’ she couldn’t help moaning. ‘They are making my mouth water.’
He gave her a very strange look. Dropped his gaze as though he felt uncomfortable. Fumbled with his knife and fork.
‘Here,’ he said brusquely, cutting off a small piece of meat and depositing it on her plate. ‘Just a mouthful will do you no harm.’
And then he smiled at her. For the very first time. And something inside her sort of melted.
She’d never known a man with a black eye could smile with such charm.
Though was he deploying his charm on purpose? He certainly hadn’t bothered smiling at her before he’d heard she was an heiress.
‘Are you ever,’ she asked, reaching for a knife and fork, ‘going to tell me your name?’
His smile disappeared.
‘It is Willingale,’ he said quickly. Too quickly? ‘Gregory Willingale.’
Then he set about his steak with the air of a man who hadn’t eaten for a se’ennight.
Thank goodness she hadn’t been fooled by that charming smile into thinking he was a man she could trust. Which, she admitted, she had started to do. Why, she hadn’t talked to anyone so frankly and freely since her parents had died.
Which wouldn’t do. Because he had secrets, did her uncle Gregory. She’d seen a distinct flash of guilt when he’d spoken the name Willingale.
Which meant he was definitely hiding something.
Chapter Five (#u655ebb25-5855-5bd6-a04e-c82d52bab9e6)
Perhaps his real name wasn’t Gregory Willingale at all. Perhaps he was using an alias, for some reason. But what could she do about it anyway? Run to the burly bartender with a tale of being abandoned by her aunt and left to the mercy of a man she’d never clapped eyes on until the night before? What would that achieve? Nothing—that was what. She already knew precisely what people who worked in inns thought of girls who went to them with tales of that sort. They thought they were making them up. At least that was what the landlady of the last inn had said. Before lecturing her about her lack of morals and throwing her out.
Earlier this morning she’d thought the woman must be incredibly cruel to do such a thing. But if Prudence had been the landlady of an inn, with a business to run, would she have believed such a fantastic tale? Why, she was living through it and she hardly believed it herself.
She cleared her throat.
‘So, Mr Willingale,’ she said, but only after swallowing the last of the sirloin he’d shared with her. ‘Or should I call you Uncle Willingale? What do you propose we do next?’
Her own next step would depend very much on whatever his plans were. She’d only make up her mind what to do when she’d heard what they were.
‘I am not sure,’ he said through a mouthful of beef. ‘I do not think we are in possession of enough facts.’
Goodness. That was pretty much the same conclusion she’d just drawn.
‘Though I do think,’ he said, scooping up a forkful of onions and depositing it on her plate, ‘that in some way your guardians are attempting to defraud you of your inheritance.’
‘Thank you,’ she said meekly. ‘For the onions, I mean,’ she hastily explained, before spreading them on one of the remaining slices of bread and butter, then folding it into a sort of sandwich.
‘You’re welcome. Though how abandoning you in a small hostelry in the middle of nowhere will serve their purpose I cannot imagine. Surely the disappearance of a wealthy young woman will not go unnoticed wherever it is you come from?’
Since her mouth was full, she shook her head.
‘It might not be noticed,’ she admitted, as soon as her mouth was free to use it for anything other than eating. ‘Not for a very long time anyway. Because we were on our way to Bath.’
‘Bath?’
Why did he look as though he didn’t believe her?
‘Yes, Bath. Why not? I know it isn’t exactly fashionable any more, but we are far from fashionable people. And I did tell you, didn’t I, that Aunt Charity had been trying to get me to marry...? Well, someone I don’t much care for.’
‘A relative of her new husband?’ he said grimly.
‘Yes.’
‘And then she suddenly changed her tack, did she? Offered to take you somewhere you could meet a young man you might actually like?’
‘There’s no need to say it like that!’ Though she had been rather surprised by her aunt’s sudden volte-face. ‘She said she would rather see me married to anyone than have me create talk by moving out of her house to set up home on my own.’
‘My mental powers are growing stronger by the minute,’ Gregory said sarcastically, sawing off another piece of steak. ‘Do go on,’ he said, when she glowered at him over the rim of her teacup. ‘You were about to tell me why nobody will be raising a hue and cry.’
‘I have already told you. Aunt Charity finally saw that nothing on earth would induce me to marry...that toad. So she told everyone she was going to take me to Bath and keep me there until she’d found me a match, since I had turned up my nose at the best Stoketown had to offer.’
‘Stoketown? You hail from Stoketown?’
‘Yes.’
‘And your aunt claimed she was taking you to Bath?’
‘Yes.’
He laid down his knife and fork. ‘You are not very bright, are you?’
‘What? How dare you?’
‘I dare because you were headed in entirely the wrong direction ever to end up in Bath. You should have gone in a south-westerly direction from Stoketown. Instead you had been travelling in completely the opposite direction. Wherever it was your guardians were planning to take you, it most definitely wasn’t Bath.’
‘I don’t believe you. That cannot be true.’ Though why would he say such a thing if he didn’t think it?
‘Would you like me to ask the landlord to bring us a road map?’ he asked her calmly. ‘He probably has one, since this inn is on a staging route.’
‘I’ve had enough of landlords for one day,’ she said bitterly. ‘The less I have to do with the one of this tavern, the better.’
‘So you believe you were not headed in the direction of Bath?’
She turned her cup round and round on its saucer for a few moments, thinking as hard as she could. ‘I cannot think of any reason why you should say that if it weren’t true,’ she said pensively. ‘But then, I cannot think of any reason why Aunt Charity should claim to be taking me there and actually be taking me in the opposite direction, either.’
‘Nor why she should give you something that would make you sleep so soundly you wouldn’t even wake when she carried you to the room of the most disreputable person she could find, undressed you, and put you into bed with him? Aha!’ he cried, slapping the tabletop. ‘Disreputable. That was the word I was searching for.’
‘Do you have to sound so pleased about it?’
‘I can’t help it. You have no idea how irritating it has been, not being able to come up with the words I want,’ he said, wiping the gravy from his plate with the last slice of her bread.
Her bread. The bread she’d ordered.
Though, to be fair, he had shared some of his own meal with her. If he had taken the last slice of her bread, at least he’d made up for it by sharing his steak and onions.
‘I wasn’t talking about that,’ she protested.
‘What, then?’
‘I meant about the conclusions you have drawn.’
‘Well, I’m pleased about them, too. That is that things are becoming clear.’
‘Are they?’
‘Yes.’ He finished the bread, picked up his tankard, emptied that, and sat back with a satisfied sigh. ‘I have ruled Hugo out of the equation. You,’ he said, setting the tankard down on the tabletop with a sort of a flourish, ‘are an heiress. And villains are trying to swindle you out of your inheritance. First of all they told everyone they were going to take you to Bath, and then set off in the opposite direction. Where exactly they planned to take you, and what they planned to do when they got there, we may never know. Because one of the horses went lame and they were obliged to rack up at The Bull. Where they were shown to rooms on the very top floor.’
He leaned forward slightly.
‘There were only three rooms on that floor, if you recall. Yours, mine, and I presume theirs?’
She nodded.
‘Your aunt saw me, reached an unflattering conclusion about my integrity on account of my black eye and travel-stained clothing, and decided to make the most of what must have looked like a golden opportunity to dispose of you. You have already admitted that you believe your aunt gave you some sort of sleeping draught.’
‘Well, I suppose she might have done. I didn’t think it was anything more than hot milk at the time, but—’
‘How they managed to administer something similar to me is a bit of a puzzle,’ he said, cutting her off mid-sentence. ‘But let us assume they did. Once I lay sleeping heavily they carried you to my room, safe in the knowledge that there would be no witnesses to the deed since we were isolated up there.’
She shuddered. She couldn’t bear to think of Mr Murgatroyd touching her, doing who knew what to her while she was insensible. Oh, she hoped he’d left the room before her aunt had undressed her. At least she could be certain he hadn’t done that himself. Aunt Charity would never have permitted it.
‘Then, in the morning,’ Gregory continued, ‘they set up a bustle, pretending to search for you. They must have summoned the landlord and dragged him up all those stairs, attracting a crowd on the way so that they could all witness you waking up naked in my bed.’
‘There is no need to look so pleased about it. It was horrid!’
His expression sobered.
‘I beg your pardon,’ he said. ‘But you see I have led a very dull, regulated sort of existence until very recently. Suffocatingly boring, to be perfectly frank. And I had come to the conclusion that what I needed was a bit of a challenge. What could be more challenging than taking on a pair of villains trying to swindle an heiress out of her inheritance? Or solving the mystery of how we ended up naked in the same bed together?’
She wished he wouldn’t keep harping on about the naked part of it. How did he expect her to look him in the eye or hold a sensible conversation when he kept reminding her that she’d been naked?
She had to change the subject.
‘Pardon me for pointing it out,’ she said, indicating his black eye and then the grazes on his knuckles, ‘but you don’t look to me as though you have been leading what you call a dull sort of existence.’
‘Oh, this?’ He chuckled as he flexed his bruised hands. ‘This was the start of my adventure, actually. I’d gone up to Manchester to deal with a...ah...a situation that had come to my attention. I was on my way...er...to meet someone and report back when I...’ He looked a bit sheepish. ‘Well, to be perfectly honest I took a wrong turning. That’s why I ended up at that benighted inn last night. So Hugo couldn’t have done it!’ He slapped the table. ‘Of course he couldn’t.’ He smiled at her. ‘Well, that’s a relief. I shan’t have to hold him to account for what has happened to you. I don’t think I could have forgiven him this.’
His smile faded. He gave her a look she couldn’t interpret, then glared balefully at his empty tankard.
He took a deep breath. ‘I’m going to take you to the place where I’ve arranged to meet him. Straight away.’
She wasn’t at all sure she liked the sound of that.
‘Excuse me, but I’m not convinced that is the right thing to do.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ He looked completely stunned. ‘Why should you not wish to go there?’
‘I know nothing about it, that’s why.’ And precious little about him, except that he had recently been in a fight and was being downright shifty about what it had been about.
Oh, yes—and she knew what he looked like naked.
‘It is a very comfortable property in which a relative of mine lives,’ he snapped. ‘A sort of aunt.’
She gave an involuntary shiver.
‘You need not be afraid of her. Well...’ He rubbed his nose with his thumb. ‘I suppose some people do find her impossible, but she won’t behave the way your aunt did—I can promise you that.’
‘I would rather,’ she said tartly, ‘not have anything to do with any sort of aunt—particularly one you freely admit is impossible.’
‘Nevertheless,’ he said firmly, ‘she can provide you with clean clothes, and we will both enjoy good food and comfortable beds. In rooms that nobody will invade,’ he said with a sort of muted anger, ‘the way they did at The Bull. And then, once we are rested and recovered, I can contact people who will be able to get to the bottom of the crime being perpetrated against you.’
‘Will you? I mean...thank you very much,’ she added doubtfully.
If he really did mean to take her to the home of a female relative who lived in some comfort, even if she was a touch difficult to get on with, and contact people on her behalf to right the wrongs done her, then it was the best thing she could think of.
It was just that coming from a man with a black eye and bruised knuckles it sounded a bit too good to be true.
He shot her a piercing glance. ‘Don’t you believe me?’
‘I am sorry,’ she said, a touch defiantly. ‘But I am having trouble believing anything that has happened today. But if you say you mean to help me, then I shall...’ She paused, because she’d been brought up to be very truthful. ‘I shall try to believe you mean it.’
‘Of course I mean it. Your guardians picked the wrong man to use as their dupe when they deposited you in my bed. I will make them rue the day they attempted to cross swords with me.’ He flexed his bruised, grazed hands.
‘Did you make them rue the day as well?’
She’d blurted out the question before she’d even known she was wondering about it. She looked up at him in trepidation. Only to discover he was smiling. True, it wasn’t what she’d call a very nice sort of smile. In fact it looked more like the kind of expression she imagined a fox would have after devastating a henhouse.
‘Yes, I made a whole lot of people sorry yesterday,’ he said.
She swallowed. Reached for the teapot.
Something about the way she poured her second cup of tea must have betrayed her misgivings, because his satisfied smile froze.
‘I don’t generally go about getting into brawls, if that’s what you’re afraid of,’ he said.
‘I’m not afraid.’
He sighed. ‘I wouldn’t blame you if you were. Look...’ He folded his arms across his chest. ‘I’ll tell you what happened, and why it happened, and then you can judge for yourself.’
She shrugged one shoulder, as if she didn’t care, and took a sip of her tea. This time, thankfully, it had much more flavour.
‘It started with a letter from a man who worked in a...a manufactory. In it he described a lot of double-dealing, as well as some very unsavoury behaviour towards the female mill workers by the foreman, and he asked the owner of the mill whether he could bear having such things going on in his name. He couldn’t,’ he said, with a decisive lift to his chin. ‘And so I went to see if I could get evidence of the wrongdoing, and find a way to put a stop to it.’
So he was employed as a sort of investigator? Which explained why he had a secretary. Someone who would help him keep track of the paperwork while he went off doing the actual thief-taking. It also explained why he was reluctant to speak of his trade. He would have to keep a lot of what he did to himself. Or criminals would see him coming.
She took a sip of tea and suddenly saw that that couldn’t be the right conclusion. Because it sounded like rather an exciting sort of way to make a living. And he’d said he had lived a dull, ordered existence. She sighed. Why did nothing make any sense today?
‘I soon found out that it wouldn’t be possible to bring the foreman to trial for what he was doing to the women under his power, because not a one of them would stand up in court and testify. Well, you couldn’t expect it of them.’
‘No,’ she murmured, horrified. ‘So what did you do?’
‘Well, Bodkin—that’s the man who wrote the letter—said that maybe we’d be able to get the overseer dismissed for fraud if we could only find the false ledgers he kept. He sent one set of accounts to...to the mill owner, you see, and kept another to tally up what he was actually making for himself. We couldn’t simply walk in and demand to see the books, because he’d have just shown us the counterfeit ones. So we had to break in at night, and search for them.’
‘Aunt Charity said you looked like a housebreaker,’ she couldn’t help saying. Though she clapped her hand over her mouth as soon as she’d said it.
He frowned. ‘It’s funny, but I would never have thought I’d be keen to tell anyone about Wragley’s. But you blurting out things the way you just did... Perhaps it’s something to do with the drug we were given. We can’t help saying whatever is on our minds.’
‘I...suppose that might be it,’ she said, relieved that he wasn’t disposed to take her to task for being so rude. ‘Although...’ She paused.
‘What?’
‘Never mind,’ she said with a shake of her head. She didn’t want to admit that for some reason she felt as though she could say anything to him. ‘You were telling me about how you tried to find the second set of books?’
‘Oh, yes. Well, long story short, we found them. Only the night watchman saw the light from our lantern, called for help and came after us. It was touch and go for a while, but eventually we got clean away,’ he ended with a grin.
So even if he wasn’t a professional thief-taker, he certainly enjoyed investigating crime and seeing villains brought to book. A man who could speak of such an adventure with that look of relish on his face would be perfect for helping her untangle whatever it was that Aunt Charity and Uncle Murgatroyd thought they’d achieved last night.
Someone who could fight for her. Defend her. And he was certainly capable of that. She only had to think of all those bulging muscles. The ones she’d seen that morning as he’d gone stalking about the bedroom, stark naked and furious.
Oh, dear, there was that word again. The one that made her blush, since this time it wasn’t just her own nudity she was picturing but his.
She pushed it out of her mind. Instantly it was replaced by the memory of him handing her his jacket. And that after she’d almost brained him with a rock.
Which helped her come to a decision.
‘I should like you to make Aunt Charity and Uncle Murgatroyd sorry, too. Because I think you are right. I think they are trying to take my money. Trying to make me disappear altogether, actually. If it was them who put me in your room—’
‘Who else could it have been?’
‘I know, I know. You’re clearly very good at working out how criminals think. It still isn’t very pleasant to accept it. But...’ She drew a deep breath. ‘Very well, when they put me in your room,’ she said, although her stomach gave a little lurch, ‘they probably did take advantage of the way the rooms were isolated up there—particularly after they saw the way you looked and behaved at dinner. I do think they believed that of all the men in that place you looked the most likely to treat me the worst.’
‘For that alone I should break them. How dare they assume any such thing?’
And that was another thing. He had a vested interest in clearing his own name, too. Now that she’d heard the lengths to which he’d gone to right the wrongs being done to the women at that mill, she felt much better about going to the house of which he’d spoken. They would need somewhere to go and hatch their plans for...not revenge. Justice. Yes, it was only justice she wanted.
‘So you will help me track them down and make them pay?’
Make them pay? ‘I most certainly will,’ he said.
He would set his people on their trail. He would tell them it was their top priority. From what Prudence had told him so far, he wouldn’t be surprised to learn they’d actually been heading for Liverpool. Possibly with a view to leaving the country altogether, if her uncle had actually swindled her out of all her money. On the off-chance that the case was not as bad as all that, he’d make sure his staff found out everything about their business dealings, too, and gained control of any leases or mortgages they had. He would throw a cordon around them so tight that they wouldn’t be able to sneeze without his permission.
And if it turned out that they had stolen Prudence’s inheritance, and hadn’t had the sense to get out of the country while they could, then he would crush them. Utterly.
Just then the door opened and the landlord came in.
‘Next coach’s due in any time now,’ he said without preamble. ‘Time for you to make off.’
Gregory deliberately relaxed his hands, which he’d clenched into fists as he’d been considering all the ways he could make Prudence’s relatives pay for what they’d done. ‘Bring me the reckoning, then,’ he said. ‘I am ready to depart.’
He turned to see Prudence eyeing him warily.
‘Hand me my purse, would you, niece? It’s in my pocket.’
She continued to stare at him in that considering way until he was forced to speak to her more sternly.
‘Prudence, my purse.’
She jumped, but then dug her hand into one of the pockets of the jacket he’d lent her. And then the other one. And then, instead of handing over his purse, she pulled out the stocking he’d thrust in there and forgotten all about. She gazed at it in bewilderment.
Before she could start asking awkward questions he darted round the table, whipped it out of her hand and thrust it into his waistcoat. And then, because she appeared so stunned by the discovery of one of her undergarments that she’d forgotten to hand him his purse, he decided he might as well get it himself.
It wasn’t there. Not in the pocket where he could have sworn he’d put it. A cold, sick swirl of panic had him delving into all the jacket pockets, several times over. Even though it was obvious what had happened.
‘It’s gone,’ he said, tamping down the panic as he faced the truth. ‘We’ve been robbed.’
Chapter Six (#u655ebb25-5855-5bd6-a04e-c82d52bab9e6)
‘Ho, robbed, is it?’ The landlord planted his fists on his ample hips. ‘Sure, and you had such a fat purse between you when you come in.’
‘Not a fat purse, no,’ said Gregory, whirling round from his crouched position to glare at the landlord. ‘But sufficient. Do you think I would have asked for a private parlour if I hadn’t the means to pay for it?’
‘What I think is that there’s a lot of rogues wandering the highways of England these days. And one of them, or rather two,’ he said, eyeing Prudence, ‘have fetched up here.’
‘Now, look here...’
‘No, you look here. I don’t care what story you come up with, I won’t be fooled, see? So you just find the means to pay what you owe or I’m sending for the constable and you’ll be spending the night in the roundhouse.’
There was no point in arguing. The man’s mind was closed as tight as a drum. Besides, Gregory had seen the way he’d dealt with that bunch of customers in the tap. Ruthlessly and efficiently.
There was nothing for it. He stood up and reached for the watch he had in his waistcoat pocket. A gold hunter that was probably worth the same as the entire inn, never mind the rather basic meal they’d just consumed. The very gold hunter that Hugo had predicted he’d be obliged to pawn. His stomach contracted. He’d already decided to go straight to Bramley Park rather than wait until the end of the week. But that was his decision. Pawning the watch was not, and it felt like the bitterest kind of failure.
‘If you would care to point me in the direction of the nearest pawn shop,’ he said, giving the landlord a glimpse of his watch, ‘I shall soon have the means to pay what we owe.’
‘And what’s to stop you legging it the minute I let you out of my sight? You leave the watch with me and I’ll pawn it if you don’t return.’
Leave his watch in the possession of this barrel of lard? Let those greasy fingers leave smears all over the beautifully engraved casing? He’d rather spend the night in the roundhouse.
Only there was Prudence to consider. Spending a night in a roundhouse after the day she’d had... No, he couldn’t possibly condemn her to that.
‘I could go and pawn it,’ put in Prudence, startling them both.
‘That ain’t no better an idea than to let him go off and not come back,’ said the landlord scathingly.
He had to agree. She was sure to come to some harm if he let her out of his sight. He’d never met such a magnet for trouble in all his life.
‘You do realise,’ he said, folding his arms across his chest, and his gold watch to boot, ‘that I have a horse and gig in your stables which would act as surety no matter which of us goes to raise what we owe?’
The landlord gave an ironic laugh. ‘You expect me to believe you’d come back if I let either one of you out of my sight?’
‘Even if I didn’t return you’d still have the horse.’ Which would serve him right. ‘And the vehicle, too. I know the paint is flaking a bit, but the actual body isn’t in bad repair. You could sell them both for ten times what we owe for breakfast.’
‘And who’s to say you wouldn’t turn up the minute I’d sold ’em, with some tale of me swindling and cheating you, eh? Trouble—that’s what you are. Knew it the minute I clapped eyes on yer.’
‘Then you were mistaken. I am not trouble. I am just temporarily in a rather embarrassing state. Financially.’
Good grief, had he really uttered the very words he’d heard drop so many times from Hugo’s lips? The words he’d refused to believe any man with an ounce of intelligence or willpower could ever have any excuse for uttering?
‘What you got in that case of yours?’ asked the landlord abruptly, pointing to his valise.
Stays—that was the first thing that came to mind. And the landlord had already spied the stocking Prudence had extracted from his jacket pocket.
‘Nothing of any great value,’ he said hastily. ‘You really would be better accepting the horse and gig as surety for payment.’
The landlord scratched the lowest of his ample chins thoughtfully. ‘If you really do have a horse stabled here, I s’pose that’d do.’
Gregory sucked in a sharp stab of indignation as the landlord turned away from him with a measuring look and went to open one of the back windows.
‘Jem!’ the landlord yelled through the window. ‘Haul your hide over here and take a gander at this sharp.’
Gregory’s indignation swelled to new proportions at hearing himself being described as a ‘sharp’. He’d never cheated or swindled anyone in his life.
‘It’s horrid, isn’t it?’ said Prudence softly, coming to stand next to him. ‘Having persons like that—’ she jerked her head in the landlord’s direction ‘—doubt your word.’
‘It is indeed,’ he replied. It was especially so since, viewed dispassionately, everything he’d done since entering this inn had given the man just cause for doing so.
‘Though to be fair,’ she added philosophically, ‘we don’t look the sort of people I would trust if I was running this kind of business.’ She frowned. ‘I put that very clumsily, but you know what I mean.’ She waved a hand between them.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I do know exactly what you mean.’
He’d just thought it himself. Her aunt had marked him as a villain the night before just because of his black eye. Since then he’d acquired a gash, a day’s growth of beard, and a liberal smear of mud all down one side of his coat. He’d been unable to pay for his meal, and had then started waving ladies’ undergarments under the landlord’s nose.
As for Prudence—with her hair all over the place, and wearing the jacket she’d borrowed from him rather than a lady’s spencer over her rumpled gown—she, too, now looked thoroughly disreputable.
Admirably calm though, considering the things she’d been through. Calm enough to look at things from the landlord’s point of view.
‘You take it all on the chin, don’t you? Whatever life throws at you?’
‘Well, there’s never any point in weeping and wailing, is there? All that does is make everyone around you irritable.’
Was that what had happened to her? When first her mother and then her father had died, and one grandfather had refused to accept responsibility for her and the other had palmed her off on a cold, resentful aunt? He wouldn’t have blamed her for weeping in such circumstances. And he could easily see that bony woman becoming irritated.
He wished there had been someone there for her in those days. He wished there was something he could do for her now. Although it struck him now that she’d come to stand by his side, as though she was trying to help him.
To be honest, and much to his surprise, she had succeeded. He did feel better. Less insulted by the landlord’s mistrustfulness, at any rate.
‘We do look rather like a pair of desperate criminals,’ he admitted, leaning down so he could murmur into her ear. ‘In fact it is a wonder the landlord permitted us to enter his establishment at all.’
Just then a tow-headed individual poked his head through the open window.
‘What’s up, Sarge?’
‘This ’ere gent,’ said the landlord ironically, ‘claims he has a horse and gig in your stable. Know anything about it?’
As the stable lad squinted at him Gregory’s heart sped up. Incredible to feel nervous. Yet the prospect that Jem might fail to recognise him was very real. He’d only caught a glimpse of him as he’d handed over the reins, after all.
Prudence patted his hand, as though she knew exactly what he was thinking. Confirming his suspicions that she was trying to reassure him all would be well.
‘Bad-tempered nag,’ Jem pronounced after a second or two, much to Gregory’s relief. ‘And a Yarmouth coach.’
Yes, that was a close enough description of the rig he’d been driving.
‘Right,’ said the landlord decisively. ‘Back to work, then.’
Jem withdrew his head and the landlord slammed the window shut behind him.
Gregory resisted the peculiar fleeting urge to take hold of Prudence’s hand. Focussed on the landlord.
‘So, we have a deal?’ he said firmly.
‘I suppose,’ said the landlord grudgingly. ‘Except now I’m going to have your animal eating its head off at my expense for the Lord knows how long.’
‘Fair point. How about this? If I’m not back within the space of one week from today, with what we owe for the meal we’ve eaten, plus the cost of stabling the horse, you can sell the beast and the...er...Yarmouth coach.’
‘One week from today?’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘I s’pose that’d do. But only if you put something in writing first.’
‘Naturally. Bring me pen and paper and you may have my vowels.’
The landlord screwed up his face and shook his head, indicating his reluctance to let them out of his sight even for the length of time it would take to fetch writing implements. Instead, he rummaged in his apron pocket and produced what looked like a bill and a stub of pencil, then slapped both on the table.
As Gregory bent to write the necessary phrases on the back of the bill he heard the sound of a coaching horn. Closely followed by the noise of wheels rattling into the yard. Then two surprisingly smart waiters strode into the coffee room, bearing trays of cups and tankards.
The landlord swept Gregory’s note and the pencil back into his pocket without even glancing at them, his mind clearly on the next influx of customers.
‘Get out,’ he said brusquely. ‘Before I change my mind and send for the constable anyway.’
Gregory didn’t need telling twice. He snatched up the valise with the incriminating stays with one hand, and grabbed Prudence’s arm with the other. Then he dragged her from the room against the tide of people surging in, all demanding coffee or ale.
‘Come on,’ he growled at her. ‘Stop dragging your heels. We need to get out of here before that fat fool changes his mind.’
‘But...’ she panted. ‘How on earth are we going to get wherever it is you planned to take me without your gig?’
‘Never mind that now. The first thing to do is find a pawn shop.’
‘It will be in a back street somewhere,’ she said. ‘So that people can hope nobody will see them going in.’
‘It isn’t a very big town,’ he said, on a last flickering ray of hope. ‘There might not even be one.’
‘If there wasn’t the landlord would have said so,’ she pointed out with annoyingly faultless logic.
Condemning him to the humiliating prospect of sneaking into some back street pawn shop. After all the times he’d lectured Hugo about the evils of dealing with pawnbrokers and moneylenders.
‘And I don’t see why you have to walk so fast,’ she complained. ‘Not when we have a whole week to raise the money.’
‘We?’ He couldn’t believe she could speak of his possessions as though they were her own. As though she had some rights as to how he should dispose of them. ‘I am the one who is going to have to pawn my watch.’
‘I’m sorry. I can see how reluctant you are to part with it. But you know I don’t have anything of value.’
‘Not any more,’ he fumed. ‘Thanks to you.’
‘What do you mean, thanks to me?’
‘I mean that you had my purse. Which contained easily enough money to last until the end of the week. I can’t believe how careless you are.’
‘Careless? What do you mean? Are you implying it’s my fault you lost your purse?’
‘Well, you were wearing my jacket when those oafs jostled it out of the pocket.’
‘What oafs?’ She frowned. ‘Oh. You mean when we came in here?’
He could see her mind going over the scene, just as his own had done the moment he’d realised the purse wasn’t where he’d put it.
‘So,’ she added slowly. ‘You think that is when the purse went missing, do you?’
‘When else could it have gone?’
‘How about when you fell out of the gig?’
‘You mean when you pushed me out of the gig?’
They were no longer walking along the street but standing toe to toe, glaring at each other. Though what right she had to be angry, he couldn’t imagine. He was the one who was having to abandon every principle he held dear. She was the one whose fault it was.
Yet she was breathing heavy, indignant breaths. Which made her gown strain over her bosom.
Her unfettered bosom.
Since her stays were in his hand. At least they were in his valise, which was in his hand.
‘Right,’ she said, and drew herself up to her full height and lifted her chin.
He probably ought to warn her to pull his jacket closed. She could have no idea how touchable and tempting she looked right now.
Tempting? No. She wasn’t tempting. She was not.
No more than she’d been when she’d moaned in ecstasy at the flavour of his steak and onions. There was still something the matter with his brain—that was what it was. Some lingering after-effect from the drug. It explained why he’d spilled out almost the entire story of his adventure at Wragley’s. And why he kept on being afflicted by these inconvenient, inappropriate surges of lust.
Though part of it was down to her. The way she looked all wild and wanton in the grip of anger, so much more alive and vital than any other woman he’d ever known. The way she openly stood up to him in a way nobody had ever dared before.
Though he’d even found her appealing when she’d looked drugged and dazed and helpless. Helpless, she aroused his protective instincts. Angry she just aroused...more basic instincts.
‘Right,’ she said again. And with a toss of her head turned round and strode away from him.
‘Where do you think you are going?’ The insufferable wench was obliging him to follow her if he didn’t wish to lose sight of her.
‘I’m going,’ she tossed over her shoulder, ‘to sort out the mess you have plunged us into.’
‘Mess I have plunged us into? You were the one who got robbed—’
‘You were the one who left the purse in my pocket, though, once it became an outside pocket after you removed your coat.’
‘I—’ Dammit, she was correct. Again. He should have kept hold of the purse himself.
‘In my defence,’ he pointed out resentfully, ‘I had just suffered a stunning blow to the head.’
‘Trust you to bring that up,’ she said, rounding on him. And then, taking him completely by surprise, she reached up and snatched off his hat.
‘You don’t mind me borrowing this, do you?’
‘For what, pray?’
‘To collect the money.’
‘Collect the...what?’
She didn’t seriously mean to go begging through the streets, did she? That would be worse by far than anything that had happened to him yet.
‘Yes, I do mind,’ he said, reaching round her to retrieve his property.
But she twitched it out of his reach. And slapped his hand for good measure. And carried on walking down the street towards the market square.
‘Prudence,’ he warned her. ‘I cannot permit you to do this.’ It was unthinkable. If anyone ever found out that he’d been seen begging... The very thought sent cold chills down his spine.
‘Permit me?’
If he thought she’d looked angry before it was as nothing compared to the way she looked now. She came to an abrupt halt.
‘You have no say over anything I do,’ she said, poking him in the chest with her forefinger. A habit she’d no doubt picked up from that bony aunt of hers. ‘I shall do as I please.’
‘Not with my hat, you won’t.’
He made a move to get it back. But she was still too quick for him, nimbly leaping out of his reach with the agility of a professional fencing master.
‘Prudence,’ he snapped. ‘Don’t you realise you can be arrested for begging?’
‘Begging?’ She gave him a disbelieving look over her shoulder. ‘I have no intention of begging.’
Well, that was a relief. But still... ‘Then what do you plan to do? With my hat?’
‘It’s market day,’ she said, as though the statement should be self-explanatory. And then added for his benefit, as though he were a total simpleton, ‘People expect entertainers to come to town on market day.’
‘Yes. But you are not an entertainer. Are you?’
‘No,’ she said indignantly. ‘But I do have a very fine singing voice.’
‘Oh, no...’ he muttered as she made for the market cross with his hat clutched in her determined little fingers. ‘You cannot mean to perform in the street for pennies, surely?’
‘Well, do you have a better idea?’
‘Yes.’
‘Which is...?’ She planted her hands on her hips and pursed her lips again.
Dammit, nobody ever questioned his decisions. If he said he had an idea people always waited to hear what it was, with a view to carrying out his orders at once. They didn’t plant their hands on their hips and look up at him as though they didn’t believe he had ever had a plan in his life.
‘I see no reason,’ he said, affronted, ‘why I should tell you.’
‘Just as I thought,’ she scoffed. ‘You haven’t a plan. Except to pawn your watch and then go crawling back to that nasty landlord, with your tail between your legs, in order to retrieve a horse you despise and a gig that you have trouble steering.’
‘I do not!’
He was a notable whip.
Normally.
‘And I have no intention of crawling. I never crawl.’
‘Really?’
She raised one eyebrow in such a disdainful way it put him in mind of one of the patronesses of Almack’s, depressing the pretensions of a mushroom trying to gain entrance to their hallowed club.
‘Really,’ he insisted.
‘So, how do you propose to treat with the landlord?’
‘Once I’ve pawned my watch—’
‘Look,’ she said, in the kind of voice he imagined someone using on a rather dim-witted child. ‘There will be no need for you to pawn that watch. Because I intend to rectify the situation I have caused by being so careless as to lose the purse you entrusted to my keeping without informing me you had done so. If it was actually there when you draped your jacket around my shoulders,’ she said with an acid smile. ‘For all I know you dropped it at The Bull. A lot of things went missing there. Why not your purse?’
‘Because I distinctly recall paying my shot there—that’s why.’
‘Well, then. It’s clearly up to me to make amends,’ she flung at him, before mounting the steps of the market cross and setting his hat at her feet.
‘Not so fast,’ he said, striding after her and mounting the steps himself.
‘You cannot stop me,’ she said, raising one hand as though to ward him off. ‘I will scream,’ she added as he reached for the open edges of his jacket.
But she didn’t. Not even before she realised that all he was doing was buttoning it up.
‘There,’ he growled. ‘At least you no longer run the risk of being arrested for indecency.’
She clapped her hands to her front, glancing down in alarm. While he stalked away to seek a position near enough to keep watch over her, yet far enough away that nobody would immediately suspect him of being her accomplice.
Once he’d found a suitable vantage point he folded his arms across his chest with a glower. Short of wrestling her down from the steps, there was no way to prevent the stubborn minx from carrying out her ridiculous threat. Let her sing, then! Just for as long as it took her to realise she was wasting her time. They’d never get as much money from what amounted to begging as they would by pawning his watch.
And then she’d have to fall in with his plans, meek as a lamb. A chastened lamb. Yes, he’d wait until the citizens of Tadburne had brought her down a peg, and then he’d be...magnanimous.
He permitted himself a smile in anticipation of some of the ways in which he could be magnanimous to Miss High-and-Mighty Prudence Carstairs while she cleared her throat, lifted her chin, shifted from one foot to the other, and generally worked up the nerve to start her performance.
The first note that came from her throat wavered. He grimaced. If that was the best she could do they weren’t going to be here very long. He’d pull her down off the steps before the locals started pelting her with cabbages, naturally. He didn’t want a travelling companion who smelled of rotting vegetables.
Prudence cleared her throat and started again. This time running through a set of scales, the way he’d heard professional singers do to warm up.
By the time she’d finished her scales the notes coming from her throat no longer squeaked and wavered. They flowed like liquid honey.
Prudence hadn’t exaggerated. She did indeed have a fine singing voice. In keeping with the husky, rather sensuous way she spoke, she sang in a deep, rich, contralto voice that might have earned her a fortune in London.
Blast her.
Every time he looked forward to gaining the advantage she somehow managed to wrest it back.
So why did he still find her so damned attractive?
* * *
Oh, Lord, if Aunt Charity could see her now! She’d be shocked. Horrified. That a Biddlestone should resort to singing in a public street... Although, had Aunt Charity not abandoned her in The Bull, there would have been no need to do any such thing. Or if Mr Willingale hadn’t lost his purse and chosen to blame her instead of shouldering it like a gentleman.
No, she mustn’t get angry. Anger would come out in her voice and ruin her performance. One of the singing teachers she’d had intermittently over the years had told her always to think pleasant thoughts when singing, even if the ballad was a tragic one, or it would make her vocal cords tense and ruin her tone.
So she lost herself in the words, telling the story of a girl in love with a swain in the greenwood. She pictured the apple blossom, the rippling brook and the moss-covered pebbles about which she was singing.
She would not look at Mr Willingale, whose expression was enough to turn milk sour. Or at least not very often. Because, although it was extremely satisfying to see the astonishment on his face when she proved that not only could she sing, she could do so to a very high standard, it made her want to giggle. And nobody could sing in tune when they were giggling. It was worse than being angry, because it ruined the breath control.
Far better to look the other way, to where people were starting to take note of her. To draw near and listen. To pull out their hankies as she reached the tragic climax of the ballad and dab at their eyes.
And toss coppers into the hat she’d laid at her feet.
She did permit herself to dart just one triumphant glance in Mr Willingale’s direction before launching into her next song, but only one. There would be time enough to crow when she could tip the shower of pennies she was going to earn into his hands.
She’d show him—oh, yes, she would. It had been so insulting of him not to trust her to pawn his watch. He’d looked at her the way that landlord had just looked at him. How could he think she’d run off with his watch and leave him there?
He’d assumed she would steal his gig, too, earlier, and leave him stunned and bleeding in the lane.
He was the most distrustful, suspicious, insulting man she’d ever met, and why she was still trying to prove she wasn’t any of the things he thought, she couldn’t imagine.
Why, she had as much cause to distrust him—waking up naked in his bed like that.
Only honesty compelled her to admit that it hadn’t been his doing. That was entirely down to Aunt Charity and her vile new husband. There really could be no other explanation.
She came to the end of her second ballad and smiled at the people dropping coins into Mr Willingale’s hat. How she wished she had a glass of water. Singing in the open air made the voice so dry, so quickly. Perhaps she could prevail upon Mr Willingale to fetch her some? She darted a hopeful glance in his direction. But he just grimaced, as though in disgust, then turned and strode off down a side street.
He had no intention of helping her—not when he was opposed to her plan. The beast was just going to leave her there. Probably hoping she’d become nervous once he was out of sight and run after him, begging him not to leave her alone.
Well, if he thought she would feel afraid of being alone in the middle of a strange town then he didn’t know her at all. Why, she’d been in far more dangerous places than an English town on market day.
Though then she’d been a child. With her parents to protect her. Not to mention the might of the English army at her back. Which was why she’d never felt this vulnerable before.
Not even when she’d realised her aunt had abandoned her at The Bull. Though that had probably been largely due to the fact that she’d been numb with shock and still dazed from the sleeping draught at that point this morning. But now she was starting to think clearly.
What was to become of her?
She had no money. Only the few clothes she stood up in. And no real idea where she was or where she was going. In just a few short hours she’d become almost totally reliant on Mr Willingale. Who’d just disappeared down that alley. For a second, panic gripped her by the throat.
But she was not some spineless milk-and-water miss who would go running after a man and beg him not to abandon her to the mercy of strangers. She was a Carstairs. And no Carstairs ever quailed in the face of adversity.
Defiantly, she lifted her chin and launched into her third ballad.
Chapter Seven (#u655ebb25-5855-5bd6-a04e-c82d52bab9e6)
Prudence had hardly got going when a trio of young men emerged from a side street and sauntered in her direction. She could tell they were trouble even before they pushed to the front of the crowd who’d gathered to hear her sing.
She did her best not to display any sign of nervousness. But it was difficult not to feel anxious when one of them pulled out a quizzing glass, raked her insolently from top to toe, and said, ‘Stap me, but I never thought to find such a prime article in such an out-of-the way place.’
She carried on singing as though she hadn’t heard him.
One of his companions, meanwhile, turned to look at the farmer standing next to him. With a supercilious sneer he pulled out a handkerchief and held it to his nose. The yokel turned a dull, angry shade of red and shuffled away.
The three young bucks had soon had the same effect on all her audience. By the time she’d reached the end of her song they’d all dispersed. Leaving her alone on the steps of the cross.
Time to leave. Her voice was past its best anyhow. What with having nobody to bring her a glass of water...
She darted the bucks a smile she hoped was nonchalant as she bent to pick up the hat.
‘Allow me,’ said the one with the quizzing glass, snatching it from the ground before she could get to it. He smirked at his companions, who chuckled and drew closer.
‘Thank you,’ she said, holding out her hand in the faint hope that he’d simply give her the hat. Though she could tell he had no intention of doing any such thing.
‘Not much to show for your performance,’ he said, glancing into the hat, then at her. ‘Hardly worth your trouble, really.’
The others sniggered.
‘It is to me,’ she said. ‘Please hand it over.’
He took a step closer, leering at her. ‘Only if you pay a forfeit. I think a hatful of coins is worth a kiss, don’t you?’
His friends found him terribly amusing, to judge from the way they all hooted with laughter.
He pressed forward, lips puckered as though to make her pay the forfeit.
She backed up a step. ‘Absolutely not,’ she protested.
‘A kiss for each of us,’ cried the one who’d driven the farmer away with his scented handkerchief.
All three were advancing on her now, forcing her to retreat up the steps until her back was pressed to the market cross.
‘Let me pass,’ she said, as firmly as she could considering her heart was banging against her ribs so hard.
‘If you are going to give my friends a kiss just for letting you pass,’ said the ringleader, ‘I should demand something more for the return of your takings, don’t you think?’
The look in his eyes put her forcibly in mind of the greasy ostler from The Bull. And when he leaned forward, as though to follow through on his thinly veiled threat, her whole being clenched so hard she was convinced she was about to be sick.
‘You will demand nothing, you damned insolent pup,’ said someone, in such a menacing growl that all three bucks spun round to see who was trying to spoil their fun.
It was Mr Willingale. Oh, thank heavens.
‘I will take that,’ he said, indicating the hat.
Miraculously, they didn’t argue, but meekly handed it over and melted away, muttering apologies.
Or perhaps it wasn’t such a miracle. He’d looked disreputable enough last night for her aunt to select him to act as the villain in her scheme. With the addition of a day’s growth of beard and a furious glare in those steely grey eyes he looked as though he might easily rip three slender young fops to ribbons and step over their lifeless corpses without experiencing a shred of remorse.
She forgot all about her determination to prove she didn’t need him to look after her as she stumbled down the steps and flung her arms round his neck.
‘I’ve never been so glad to see anyone in my life,’ she sobbed. ‘I thought you’d gone! Left me!’
‘Of course not,’ he snapped, standing completely rigid in the circle of her arms. As though he was highly embarrassed.
‘Oh, I do beg your pardon,’ she said, unwinding her arms from his neck and stepping hastily back.
‘That’s quite all right,’ he said gruffly, patting her shoulder in an avuncular manner. ‘You had a fright. Here,’ he said then, tipping the small change from the hat into her hands. ‘Your takings.’
Then he clapped the hat back onto his head and tipped it at an angle that somehow magnified the aura of leashed power already hanging round him.
A tide of completely feminine feelings surged through her. Feelings he’d made it very clear he found embarrassingly unwelcome. She bent her head to hide the blush heating her cheeks, pretending she was engrossed in counting her takings.
Fourpence three farthings. Better than she’d have thought, considering her audience hadn’t looked all that affluent.
‘Well?’
His dry, sarcastic tone robbed her of what little pleasure she might have felt at her success if he hadn’t already made her feel so very awkward, and foolish, and helpless, and...female.
‘Well, what?’
‘Do you have enough to pay the landlord for our breakfast?’
‘You know very well I haven’t.’
‘So we shall have to pop my watch after all.’ He grimaced. ‘I can’t believe I’m using such a vulgar term. I suppose I must have caught it from Hugo. He is always being obliged to “pop” something or other to “keep the dibs in tune”, or so he informs me.’
‘Not necessarily.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, we have this,’ she said, jingling her coins.
‘Oh, please,’ he huffed. ‘We’ve already established you’ve hardly made anything there.’
‘It’s enough to buy some bread and cheese,’ she pointed out. ‘Which will keep us going for the rest of the day. We have a week before we have to pay the landlord what we owe him. A week in which to raise the money some other way.’
‘That’s true,’ he said, with what looked suspiciously like relief.
‘And if all else fails, or if we run into any other difficulties, we will have your watch in reserve.’
‘And knowing you,’ he muttered, ‘we are bound to run into more difficulties.’
‘And what is that supposed to mean?’
‘Just that you seem to have a propensity for stumbling from one disaster to another.’
‘I never had any disasters until I met you.’
‘That is not true. We would not have met at all had you not already been neck-deep in trouble. And since then I have had to rescue you from that ostler, and your penury, and your foolish attempt to evade me, and now a pack of lecherous young fops.’
For a moment his pointing all this out robbed her of speech. But she soon made a recovery.
‘Oh? Well, I do not recall asking you to do any of those things!’
‘Nevertheless I have done them. And what’s more I fully intend to keep on doing them.’ He halted, frowning in a vexed way at the clumsiness of the words that had just tumbled from his lips. ‘That is,’ he continued, ‘I am going to stick to your side until I know you are safe.’
‘Well, until we reach wherever it is that your dragon of an aunt lives and you hand me over to her, I reserve the right to...to...’
‘Be mean and ungrateful?’
‘I’m not ungrateful.’ On the contrary, she’d been so grateful when he’d shown up just now and sent those horrible men packing that she’d fallen on his neck and embarrassed him. Embarrassed herself. In fact she suspected that half the reason she was suddenly so cross with him again was because she was ashamed of appearing clingy and weepy. Right after vowing she wasn’t going to rely so totally on him.
‘Of course I’m grateful for everything you’ve done,’ she said. ‘But that doesn’t give you the right to...to...dictate to me.’
‘Is that what I was doing? I rather thought,’ he said loftily, ‘I was making helpful decisions which would keep you from plunging into further disaster.’
‘Oh, did you indeed?’
All of a sudden his manner altered.
‘No, actually, I didn’t,’ he said, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand. ‘You are quite correct. I was being dictatorial.’
‘What?’
‘Ah. That took the wind out of your sails,’ he said with a—yes—with a positive smile on his face. ‘But, you see, I am rather used to everyone doing as I say without question. You are the first person in a very long while to argue with me.’
‘Then I expect I will do you a great deal of good,’ she retorted.
‘I shouldn’t be a bit surprised,’ he replied amiably. ‘Just as being in my company will be an improving experience for you. Because you,’ he said, taking her chin between his long, supple fingers, ‘are clearly used to having your every whim indulged.’
‘I am not,’ she objected, flinching away from a touch that she found far too familiar. And far too pleasant.
‘You behave as though you have been indulged all your life,’ he countered. ‘Pampered. Spoiled.’
‘That is so very far from true that...’ She floundered to a halt. ‘Actually, when my parents were alive they did cosset me. And Papa’s men treated me like a little princess. Which was what made it such a dreadful shock when Aunt Charity started treating me as though I was an unwelcome and rather embarrassing affliction.’
Just as Gregory had done when she had rushed up to him and hugged him. That was one of the reasons it had hurt so much. He’d made her feel just as she had when she’d first gone to live with Aunt Charity, when everything she’d done had been wrong. She’d already been devastated by having lost her mother, being parted from her father, and then being spurned by both grandfathers. But instead of receiving any comfort from Aunt Charity she’d been informed that she had the manners of a hoyden, which she’d no doubt inherited from her morally bankrupt father.
‘I suppose it must have been.’
They stood in silence for a short while, as though equally surprised by her confession. And equally bewildered as to how to proceed now they’d stopped quarrelling.
‘Look,’ said Prudence, eventually, ‘I can see how difficult you are finding the prospect of parting with your watch.’
‘You have no idea,’ he said grimly.
‘Well, then, let us consider other options.’
‘You really believe we have any?’
‘There are always other options. For example, do we really need to redeem your horse? I mean, how far is it, exactly, to your aunt’s house?’
‘Exactly?’ He frowned. ‘I couldn’t say.’
‘Guess, then,’ she snapped, barely managing to stop herself from stamping her foot. ‘One day’s march? Two?’
‘What are you suggesting? Marching?’
‘I don’t see why not. We are both young—relatively young,’ she added, glancing at him in what she hoped was a scathing way. ‘And healthy.’ He most certainly was. She’d never seen so many muscles on a man. Well, she’d never seen so much of a man’s muscles, to be honest, but that wasn’t the point. ‘And the weather is fine.’
He placed his hands on his hips and gave her back a look which told her he could rise to any challenge she set. And trump it.
‘We could cut across country,’ he admitted. ‘I don’t believe it is all that far as the crow flies.’
‘Well, then.’
‘There is no need to look so smug,’ he growled.
‘I beg your pardon,’ she said, although she couldn’t help smiling as she said it. ‘It is just that, having grown up in an army that always seemed to be on the move, I am perhaps more used than you to the thought of walking anywhere I wish to go, as well as having more experience of adapting to adversity than you seem to.’
There—that had been said in a conciliating manner, hadn’t it?
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘Well, you said yourself that your life has been rather dull and unpredictable up to now. Obviously I assume I am more used to thinking on my feet than you.’
‘Ah.’ He gave her a measured look. ‘Strange though it may seem, I do not regard my time with you as being one of unalloyed adversity, exactly. And thinking on my feet is...’ He paused. ‘Exactly the kind of challenge I was looking for when I set out. So, instead of regarding the loss of my horse as a problem, I agree—we could look upon it as the perfect excuse for taking a stroll through what looks to be a rather lovely part of the countryside.’
Now he was catching on.
‘And having a picnic?’ she suggested. ‘Instead of having to eat in yet another stuffy inn.’
‘A picnic...’ he said, his eyes sliding to her takings. ‘We would only need to purchase a bit of bread, some cheese, and an apple or two.’
‘And what with it being market day,’ she added, ‘there will be plenty of choice. Which generally means bargains.’
‘I shall take your word for it,’ he muttered.
‘You won’t have to. Until you have seen an army brat haggle over half a loaf and a rind of cheese you haven’t seen anything,’ she informed him cheerfully.
And then wished she hadn’t. For he was looked at her in a considering manner that had her bracing herself for some kind of criticism. Hadn’t Aunt Charity always said that her life in the army was not a suitable topic of conversation—indeed, forbidden her ever to mention it?
‘Then lead on,’ he said, picking up his valise in one hand and crooking his other arm for her to take. ‘And haggle to your heart’s content.’
She let out her breath in a whoosh of relief. And took his arm with pleasure. She couldn’t remember the last time anyone had allowed her to be herself, let alone appeared to approve of it.
It felt as if she were stepping out of an invisible prison.
* * *
Morals, Gregory decided some time later that day, could be damned inconvenient things to possess. For if he didn’t have so many of them he could be making love to Miss Prudence Carstairs instead of engaging only in stilted conversation.
He’d been thinking about making love to her ever since she’d flung back her head and started singing. That rich, melodious voice had stroked down his spine like rough velvet. And had made him see exactly why sailors leaped into the sea and swam to the rock on which the Sirens lived. Not that she’d been intentionally casting out lures, he was sure. For one thing she’d been covered from neck to knee by his jacket, whereas the Sirens were always depicted bare-breasted.
Ah, but he knew that her breasts were unfettered beneath his jacket and her gown. He had her stays in his valise to prove it. Which knowledge had given him no option but to take himself off for a brisk walk while reciting the thirteen times table. Fortunately he’d just about retained enough mental capacity to keep half an eye on her, and had made it to her side before those three drunken young fops had done more than give her a bit of a fright.
He’d have liked to have given them a fright. How dared they harass an innocent young woman? A woman under his protection? He could cheerfully have torn them limb from limb.
Though who, his darker self had kept asking, had appointed him her guardian? To which he had replied that he’d appointed himself. And he knew of no higher authority.
Besides, what else was he to do after the way she’d rushed to him and hugged him and said she’d never been so pleased to see anyone in her life? Nobody had ever been that pleased to see him. He hadn’t known how to react. And so he’d stood there, stunned, for so long that eventually she had flinched away, thinking he hadn’t liked the feel of her arms round him.
Whereas the truth was that he’d liked her innocent enthusiasm for him far too much. Only his response had been far from innocent. Which put him in something of a dilemma. She wasn’t the kind of girl a man could treat as a lightskirt. For one thing she came from the middling classes. Every man knew you didn’t bed girls from the middling classes. One could bed a lower class girl, for the right price. Or conduct a discreet affair with a woman from the upper classes, who’d think of it as sport.
But girls from the middling class were riddled with morals. Not that there was anything wrong with morals, as a rule. It was just that right now he wished one of them didn’t have so many. If only Prudence didn’t hail from a family with Methodist leanings, who called their daughters things like Prudence and Charity. Or if only he wasn’t fettered by his vow to protect her. Or hadn’t told her of his vow to protect her.
Or if only she hadn’t gone so damned quiet, leaving him to stew over his own principles to the extent that he was now practically boiling over.
What was the matter with her? Earlier on she’d been a most entertaining companion. He’d enjoyed watching her haggle her way through the market. She’d even induced many of the stallholders to let her sample their wares, so that they’d already eaten plenty, in tiny increments, by the time they’d left the town with what they’d actually purchased.
But for a while now she’d been trudging along beside him, her head down, her replies to his few attempts to make conversation monosyllabic.
Had he done something to offend her?
Well, if she thought he was going to coax her out of the sullens, she could think again. He didn’t pander to women’s moods. One never knew what caused them, and when they were in them nothing a man did was going to be right. So why bother?
‘How far?’ she suddenly said, jolting him from his preoccupation with morals and the vexing question of whether they were inconvenient encumbrances to a man getting what he wanted or necessary bars to descending into depravity. ‘How far is it to wherever you’re planning to take me?’
‘Somewhat further than I’d thought,’ he replied testily. When people talked about distances as the crow flies, the pertinent fact was that crows could fly. They didn’t have to tramp round the edges of muddy fields looking for gates or stiles to get through impenetrable hedges, or wander upstream and down until they could find a place to ford a swiftly running brook.
‘So when do you think we might arrive?’
He glanced at the sky. ‘It looks as though the weather is going to stay fair. It should be a clear night. If we keep going we might make it some time before dawn tomorrow.’
She made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a sob.
‘Prudence?’ He looked at her. Really looked at her for the first time since they’d left the outskirts of town. ‘Prudence, you aren’t crying, are you?’
She wiped her hand across her face and sniffed. ‘No, of course not,’ she said.
‘Of course not,’ he agreed, though she clearly was. Which gave him a strange, panicky sort of feeling.
There must be something seriously wrong for a woman like Prudence to start weeping. A woman who’d been abandoned by her guardians, left to the care of a total stranger, had thought up the notion of singing for pennies with which to buy provisions so he could keep back his gold watch for emergencies, and then gone toe to toe with him about how to spend money she was proud of having earned herself—no, that wasn’t the kind of person who burst into tears for no good reason.
Was it?
‘Look, there’s a barn over there,’ he said, pointing across the rise to the next field. ‘We can stop there for the night if you like,’ he offered, even though he’d vowed only two minutes earlier not to pander to her mood. After all, it wasn’t as if she was crying simply to get attention. On the contrary, she looked more as though she was ashamed of weeping, and was trying to conceal her tears behind sniffles and surreptitious face-wiping.
‘You will feel much more the thing in the morning.’
‘Oh.’
She lifted her head and pushed a handful of wayward curls from her forehead in a gesture that filled him with relief. Because when they’d first set out she’d done so at regular intervals. Without a bonnet, or a hairbrush to tame her curls, they rioted all over her face at the slightest provocation. But as the day had worn on she’d done so less and less. She’d been walking for the last hour with her head hanging down, watching her feet rather than looking around at the countryside through which they were trudging.
‘Well, I don’t mind stopping there if you wish to rest,’ she said.
She was drooping with exhaustion, but would rather suffer in silence than admit to weakness.
All of a sudden a wave of something very far from lust swept through him. It felt like...affection. No, no—not that! It was admiration—that was all. Coupled with a completely natural wish to put a smile back on that weary, woebegone face.
As they got nearer the barn he started casting about in a very exaggerated manner. Tired as she was, she couldn’t help noticing the way he veered from side to side, stooping to inspect the ground.
‘What are you looking for?’ She turned impatiently, as though getting inside that barn was crucial.
‘A rock,’ he said.
‘A rock?’ She frowned at him. ‘What on earth do you want a rock for? Aren’t there enough in your head already?’
‘Oh, very funny,’ he replied. ‘No, I was just thinking,’ he carried on, with what he hoped was an expression of complete innocence, ‘of giving you some practice.’
‘Practice?’
‘Yes. You claimed you weren’t able to hit a barn door when you threw that rock at me. I just thought that now we have a barn here for you to use as target practice you might like to...’
‘In the morning,’ she said, her lips pulling into a tight line, ‘I may just take you up on your generous offer of using this poor innocent building as target practice. For now, though, all I want to do is get inside, get my shoes off and lie down.’
So saying, she plunged through the door, which was hanging off its hinges, and disappeared into the gloomy interior. Leaving him to mull over the fact that, in spite of deciding that coaxing a female out of the sullens was beneath him, he’d just done precisely that.
With about as much success as he’d ever had.
Chapter Eight (#u655ebb25-5855-5bd6-a04e-c82d52bab9e6)
The barn was almost empty. It looked as though the farmer had used up most of last year’s crop of hay over the winter. Though there was enough, still, piled up against the far wall, to provide them with a reasonably soft bed for the night.
Clearly Prudence thought so, because she made straight for it, sat down, and eased off her shoes with a little moan of relief.
His own progress across the barn was much slower. She was too tempting—in so many ways.
‘Miss Carstairs...’ he said.
Yes, that was a good beginning. He must not call her Prudence. That had probably been where he’d gone wrong just now. He’d called her Prudence when he’d thought she was crying, and then he’d started trying to think of ways to make her smile, rather than ignoring her poor mood. He had to preserve a proper distance between them, now more than ever, or who knew how it would end? With him flinging himself down on top of her and ravishing her on that pile of hay, like as not. Because he was too aware that she had nothing on beneath her gown. That her breasts were easily accessible.
He’d tell her that he had her stays in his valise and beg her to put them back on in the morning—that was what he would do.
Though that would still leave her legs bare. From her ankles all the way up to her... Up to her... He swallowed. All the way up. Whenever he’d caught a brief glimpse of her ankles today that was all he’d been able to think of. Those bare legs. And what awaited at the top of them.
Now that she’d removed her shoes, her feet were bare, too. Whatever he did, he must not look at her toes. If thoughts of her breasts and glimpses of her ankles had managed to work him up into such a lather, then seeing her toes might well tip him over the edge. There was something incredibly improper about toes. A woman’s toes, at any rate. Probably because a man only ever saw them if he’d taken her to bed. And not always then. Some women preferred to keep their stockings on.
Just as he was thinking about the feel of a woman’s stockinged leg, rubbing up and down his bare calves, Prudence flung herself back in the hay with a little whimper. And shut her eyes.
All his good resolutions flew out of the door. He strode to her bed of hay. Ran his eyes along the whole length of her. Not stopping when he reached the hem of her gown. His heart pounding, and sweat breaking out on his forehead, he breached all the barriers he’d sworn he would stay rigidly behind. And looked at her naked toes.
‘Good God!’
Her feet—the very ones he’d been getting into such a lather about—were rubbed raw in several places. Bleeding. Oozing. He dropped to his knees. Stretched out a penitent hand.
‘Don’t touch them!’
He whipped his hand back.
‘No, no, of course I won’t. They must be agonisingly painful.’ Yet she hadn’t uttered one word of complaint. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were getting blisters, you foolish woman?’
‘Because...because...’ She covered her face with her hands and moaned. ‘I was too proud,’ she muttered from behind her fingers. ‘It was my idea to walk wherever it is we are going. When I haven’t walked further than a mile or so since I was sent to England. And I boasted about being young and healthy. And I taunted you for not thinking of it. So how could I admit I wasn’t coping?’
‘Prudence,’ he said gently, immediately forgetting his earlier vow to address her only as Miss Carstairs, and removing her hands so that he could look into her woebegone little face. ‘You would have struggled to get this far even if you’d had stockings to cushion your skin. Those shoes weren’t designed for walking across rough ground. It would have been different if you had been wearing stout boots and thick stockings, but you weren’t. You should have said something sooner. We could have...’
‘What? What could we possibly have done?’
He lowered his gaze to her poor abused feet again. And sucked in a sharp breath. ‘I don’t know, precisely. I...’ It seemed as good a time as any to explain about the stocking she’d found in his pocket. ‘If I’d had both your stockings I could have given them to you. But I didn’t. There was only the one this morning...’
She looked up at him as though she had no idea what he was talking about. He’d been trying to explain that he wasn’t the kind of man who kept women’s underthings about his person as some kind of trophy. It made him even more aware of the immense gulf separating them. Of his vast experience compared to her complete innocence.
Though not the kind of experience that would be of any use to her now. He had no experience of nursing anyone’s blisters. Of nursing anyone for any ailment. ‘They probably need ointment, or something,’ he mused.
‘Do you have any ointment?’ she asked dryly. ‘No, of course you don’t.’
‘We could at least bathe them,’ he said, suddenly struck by inspiration. ‘There was a stream in the dip between this field and the next. I noticed it before, and thought it would come in handy for drinking water. But if it is cool that might be soothing, might it not?’
‘I am not going to walk another step,’ she said in a voice that was half-sob. ‘Not even if the stream is running with ice-cold lemonade and the banks are decked with bowls of ointment and dishes of strawberries.’
He took her meaning. She was not only exhausted and in pain, but hungry, too.
‘I will go,’ he said.
‘And fetch water how?’
He put his hand to his neck. ‘My neckcloth. I can soak it in the water. Tear it in half,’ he said, ripping it from his throat. ‘Half for each foot.’
She shook her head. ‘No. If you’re going to rip your neckcloth in two, I’d much rather we used the halves to wrap round my feet tomorrow. To stop my shoes rubbing these sores even worse.’
She was so practical. So damned practical. He should have thought of that.
‘I have another neckcloth in my valise,’ he retorted. See? He could be practical, too. ‘And a shirt.’ Though it was blood-spattered and sweat-soaked from his exploits at Wragley’s. He shook his head. How he detested not having clean linen every day. ‘Plenty of things we can tear up to bind your feet.’
As well as her stays.
He swallowed.
‘Why on earth didn’t you say so earlier?’
‘I would have done if only you’d admitted you were having problems with your shoes. I could have bound your feet miles ago, and then they wouldn’t have ended up in that state,’ he snapped, furious that she’d been hurt so badly and he hadn’t even noticed when he was supposed to be protecting her.
Though how was he to have guessed, when she hadn’t said a word? She had to be the most provoking female it had ever been his misfortune to encounter.
‘You weren’t even limping,’ he said accusingly.
‘Well, both feet hurt equally badly. So it was hard to choose which one to favour.’
‘Prudence!’ He gazed for a moment into her brave, tortured little face. And then found himself pulling her into his arms and hugging her.
Hugging her? When had he ever wanted to hug anyone? Male or female?
Never. He wasn’t the kind of man who went in for hugging.
But people gained comfort from hugging, so he’d heard. And since he couldn’t strangle her, nor ease his frustration the only other way that occurred to him, he supposed hugging was the sensible, middling course to take. At least he could get his hands on her without either killing or debauching her.
Perhaps there was something to be said for hugging after all.
* * *
Prudence let her head fall wearily against his chest. Just for a moment she could let him take her weight, and with it all her woes—couldn’t she? Where was the harm in that?
‘You’ve been so brave,’ he murmured into her hair.
‘No, not brave,’ she protested into his shirtfront. ‘Stubborn and proud is what I’ve been. And stupid. And impractical—’
‘No! I won’t have you berate yourself this way. You may be a touch proud, but you are most definitely the bravest person I’ve ever met. I don’t know anyone who would have gone through what you have today without uttering a word of complaint.’
‘But—’
‘No. Listen to me. If anyone is guilty of being stupidly proud it is I. I should have swallowed my pride at the outset and pawned the watch. I should have done everything in my power to liberate that horse and gig from the stable so you wouldn’t have to walk. I will never forgive myself for putting you through this.’
‘It isn’t your fault.’
‘Yes, it is. Oh, good grief—this isn’t a contest, Prudence! Stop trying to outdo me.’
‘I’m not.’
‘Yes, you are. Even when I admit to a fault,’ he said, as though it was an immense concession to admit any such thing, ‘you have to insist your fault is greater.’
‘But I feel at fault,’ she confessed.
It was easy to maintain her pride when he was being grumpy and aloof, but so much harder when he was trying to be kind.
‘It was my fault you lost all your money.’ She’d known it from the start, but had been so angry when he hadn’t scrupled to accuse her of carelessness that she’d refused to admit it. ‘It was my fault you got into this...this escapade at all. If my aunt and her new husband, whom I refuse to call my uncle, hadn’t decided to steal my inheritance...or if you hadn’t had a room up on our landing...’
‘Then we would never have met,’ he said firmly. ‘And I’m glad we have met, Miss Prudence Carstairs.’
Her heart performed a somersault inside her ribcage. She became very aware of his arms enfolding her with such strength, and yet such gentleness. Remembered that he’d put them round her of his own volition.
And then he looked at her lips. In a way that put thoughts of kissing in her head.
‘Because before I met you,’ he said, with a sort of intensity that convinced her he meant every word, ‘I have never admired or respected any female—not really.’
What would she do if he tried to kiss her? She had to think of something to say—quickly! Before one of them gave in to the temptation to close the gap that separated their faces and taste the other.
What had he just said? Something about never admiring a female before? Well, that was just plain absurd.
‘But...you were married.’
He let go of her. Pulled away. All expression wiped from his face. Heavens, but the mention of his late wife had acted upon him like a dousing from a bucket of ice water. Which was a good thing. If she’d let him kiss her or, even worse, started kissing him, who knew how it would have ended? A girl couldn’t go kissing a man in a secluded barn, on a bed of sweet-smelling hay, without it ending badly.
‘Instead of sitting here debating irrelevancies, I would be better employed going to that stream and soaking my neckcloth in it,’ he said in a clipped voice. Then got to his feet and strode from the barn without looking back.
A little shiver ran down her spine as she watched him go. It was just as well she’d mentioned his wife. It had been as effective at cooling his ardour as slapping his face.
It was something to remember. If he ever did look as though he was going to cross the line again she need only mention his late wife and he’d pull away from her with a look on his face as though he’d been sucking a lemon.
Had he been very much in love? And was he still mourning her? No, that surely didn’t tie in with what he’d just said about not respecting or admiring any female before. It sounded more as though the marriage had been an unhappy one.
Gingerly, she wiggled her toes. Welcomed the pain of real, physical injury. Because thinking about him being unhappily married made her very sad. It was a shame if he hadn’t got on with his wife. He deserved a wife who made him happy. A wife who appreciated all his finer points. Because, villainous though he looked, he was the most decent man she’d ever met. He hadn’t once tried to take advantage of her. And he had been full of remorse when he’d seen what her pride had cost her toes. And when she thought of how swiftly he’d made those bucks who’d been about to torment her disperse...
She heaved a great sigh and sank back into the hay, her eyes closing. He might have admitted to breaking into a building, but that didn’t make him a burglar. On the contrary, he’d only broken the law in an attempt to redress a greater wrong. He might not have the strict moral code of the men of the congregation of Stoketown, and her aunt would most definitely stigmatise him as a villain because of it, but his kind of villainy suited her notion of how a real man should behave.
She must have dozed off, in spite of the pain in her feet, because the next thing she knew he was kneeling over her, shaking her shoulder gently.
‘You’re exhausted, I know,’ he said, with such gentle concern that she heaved another sigh while her insides went all gooey. ‘But I must tend to your feet before we turn in for the night. We should eat some supper, too.’
She struggled to sit up, pushing her hair from her face as it flopped into her eyes for the umpteenth time that day. He knelt at her feet, holding a wet handkerchief just above the surface of her skin, as though loath to cause her pain.
And though he looked nothing like a hero out of a fairytale, though he had no armour and had put his horse up for security, at that moment she had the strange fancy that he was very like a knight in shining armour, kneeling at the feet of his lady.
Which just went to show how tired and out of sorts she was.
‘Don’t worry about hurting me,’ she said. ‘I shall grit my teeth and think of— Oh! Ow!’
‘Sorry, sorry,’ he said, over and over again as he dabbed at her blisters.
‘I wish I had a comb,’ she said, through teeth suitably gritted. ‘Then I could tidy my hair.’
‘You are bothered about your hair? When your feet are in this state?’
‘I was trying to distract myself from my feet by thinking about something that would normally bother me. Trying to think of what my usual routine would be as I prepare for bed of a night. My maid would brush my hair out for me, then plait it out of the way...’
But not last night. No, last night she’d had to rely on Aunt Charity’s rather rough ministrations. Because she’d said there was no need to make her maid undergo the rigours of a journey as far as Bath. Even though Bessy had said to Aunt Charity that she wouldn’t mind at all, and had later admitted to Prudence that she thought it would be rather exciting to travel all that way and see a place that had once been so fashionable.
Why hadn’t she seen how suspicious it was for her aunt to appear suddenly so concerned over the welfare of a servant? Why hadn’t she smelled a rat when Aunt Charity had said it would be better to hire a new maid in Bath—one who’d know all about the local shops and so forth?
Because she couldn’t possibly have guessed that Aunt Charity had been determined to isolate her—that was why. So that there wouldn’t be any witnesses to the crime she was planning.
Prudence sucked in a sharp breath. It was worse than simply taking advantage of the opportunity that being housed in that funny little attic in The Bull last night had provided. Aunt Charity and that awful man she’d married had made sure there wouldn’t be any witnesses to what she now saw was a premeditated crime.
‘Did I hurt you?’
‘What? No. I was...’ She shivered. ‘I was thinking about my maid, Bessy.’ She paused. Up to now she’d been too busy just surviving to face what her aunt had tried to do. But her mind had been steadily clearing all day. Or perhaps the pain of Gregory tending to her feet was waking her up to the unpleasant truth.
‘I’m afraid you will have to make do with my clumsy efforts tonight,’ he said. Then reached up and twined a curl round one finger. ‘Though it seems a kind of sacrilege to confine all this russet glory in braids.’
‘Russet glory!’ She snorted derisively. ‘I never took you for a weaver of fustian.’
‘I am not. Not a weaver of anything.’ He leaned back on his heels. His eyes seemed to be glazed. ‘But surely you know that your hair is glorious?’
The look in his eyes made her breath hitch in her throat. Made her heart skip and dance and her tummy clench as though she was flying high on a garden swing.
Oh, Lord, but she wanted him to kiss her. Out of all the men who’d paid court to her—or rather to her money—none had ever made her want to throw propriety to the winds. And he hadn’t even been paying court to her. He’d been alternately grumpy and insulting and dictatorial all day. And yet... She sighed. He’d also rescued her from an ostler and a group of bucks, forgiven her for pushing him out of his gig and throwing a rock at him. Even made a clumsy sort of jest of the rock-throwing thing.
A smile tugged at her lips as she thought of that moment.
‘So you accept the compliment now?’
‘What? What compliment?’
‘The one I made about your hair,’ he breathed, raising the hank that he’d wound round his hand to his face and inhaling deeply.
‘My hair?’
Why was he so obsessed with her hair? It must look dreadful, rioting all down her back and all over her face. A visible reminder of her ‘wayward nature’, Aunt Charity had always said. It was why she had to plait it, and smooth it, and keep it hidden away.
He looked at her sharply. ‘If not that, then why were you smiling in that particular way?’
‘I didn’t know I was smiling in any particular way. And for your information I was thinking of something else entirely.’
‘Oh?’ His face sort of closed up. He let her hair fall from his fingers and bent to dab at her feet again.
Good heavens, she’d offended him. Who’d have thought that a man who looked so tough could have such delicate sensibilities? But then she hadn’t been very tactful, had she? To tell him she’d been thinking of something else when he’d been trying to pay her compliments.
‘I was thinking,’ she said hastily, in an effort to make amends, ‘of how funny you were, searching about for rocks for me to throw.’
He shrugged one shoulder, but didn’t raise his head.
‘How very forbearing you have been, considering the abuse you’ve suffered on my account.’
He laid her feet down gently in the hay. ‘That is all I can do for them for now,’ he said, and scooted back. Looked at his hands. Cleared his throat. Scooted another foot away.
Which was both a good thing and a bad. Good in that he was determined to prevent another scene from developing in which their mouths ended up scant inches apart. Bad in that... Well, in that he was determined to prevent another scene from developing in which they would be tempted to kiss.
No, no, it was a good thing he wasn’t the kind of man to attempt to take advantage of the situation. They were going to have to spend the night together in this barn, after all. And if they started kissing, who knew how it would end?
Yes, it was a jolly good job he was maintaining some distance between them.
It would have been even better if she’d been the one to do so.
‘We had better eat our supper before the light grows too dim to see what we’re putting in our mouths,’ he said, opening his valise and taking out what was left of the provisions they’d bought in Tadburne Market.
‘We know exactly what we have for supper,’ she said wearily. ‘About two ounces of cheese and the heel of a loaf. Between the two of us.’
‘If it were only a few months later,’ he said, spreading the brown paper in which their meagre rations had been wrapped on the hay at her side, ‘I might have found strawberries growing by the stream.’
‘Strawberries don’t grow by streams,’ she retorted as he flicked open a penknife and cut both the cheese and the crust precisely in half. ‘They only grow in carefully tended beds. Where they have to be protected from frosts over winter with heaps of straw. Which is why they’re called strawberries.’
He raised his head and gave her a level look. ‘Blackberries, then. You cannot deny that blackberries thrive in the wild.’ He picked up the sheet of brown paper and its neatly divided contents and placed them on her lap.
From which he’d have to pluck his own meal. One morsel at a time.
She felt her cheeks heating at the prospect of his hand straying over her lap. Felt very conscious that her legs were totally bare beneath her skirts.
She picked up her slice of cheese and nibbled at it. What had they been talking about? Oh, yes...blackberries.
‘Some form of fruit would certainly be welcome with this cheese.’
‘And with the bread,’ he added. ‘It’s very dry.’
‘Stale, I think is the word for which you are searching,’ she said, having tried it. ‘But then, what can you expect for what we paid?’
No wonder the baker had let them have so much for so little. She’d been so proud of her skills at haggling. But they weren’t so great, were they? This bread was clearly left over from the day before.
‘I had a drink at the stream,’ he said, after swallowing the last of his share of their supper. ‘So I am not too thirsty. But what about you?’
‘I think I can just about manage to get the bread down. Though what we really need is a pat of butter to put on it. And then about a gallon of tea to wash it down.’
‘This will not do,’ he growled. And then, before she had any inkling of what he meant to do, he’d swept the brown paper to one side, hauled her up into his arms and was carrying her across the barn.
‘What are you doing?’
And what was she doing? She should by rights be struggling. Or at least demanding that he put her down. Not sort of sagging into him and marvelling at the strength of his muscular arms.
‘I’m taking you down to the stream so that you can have a drink. And dip your feet into the water. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before,’ he said crossly. ‘I must be all about in my head. Dipping a handkerchief in the stream and then dabbing at your blisters...’ he sneered.
‘I daresay you were attempting to observe the proprieties,’ she said kindly. ‘For this isn’t at all proper, is it? Carting me about like a sack of grain?’
‘Proper? There has been nothing “proper” about our relationship from the moment I stretched my foot out in bed this morning and found you at the other end of it.’
Naked, at that, he could have added.
In the gathering dusk he strode down the field in the direction of the water she could hear babbling along its channel. Without giving the slightest indication that he was doing anything out of the ordinary. He wasn’t even getting out of breath.
Whereas her own lungs were behaving most erratically. As was her heart.
‘And what we’re about to do is highly improper, Prudence, in case you need reminding.’
She looked at his face, and then at the stream, in bewilderment.
‘Watching me bathe my feet in the stream? You think that is improper conduct?’
‘No,’ he said abruptly, and then set her down on a low part of the bank, from where she could dangle her feet into the water with ease. ‘It’s not the bathing that’s improper. It’s what is going to happen after I carry you back to the barn.’
‘What?’ she asked, breathless with excitement.
No, not excitement. At least it shouldn’t be excitement. It should be maidenly modesty. Outraged virtue. Anything but excitement.
‘What is going to happen after you carry me back to the barn?’
‘We are going to have to spend the night together,’ he bit out. He rubbed his hand over the crown of his head. ‘All night. And, since it promises to be a cold one, probably clinging to each other for warmth.’
‘We don’t need to cling,’ she pointed out, since the prospect appeared to be disturbing him so much. ‘Hay is very good at keeping a body warm. I can remember sleeping in a barn a couple of times when I was very little and we were on the march. Papa made me a sort of little nest of it.’
He gave her a hard look. ‘If you were still a little girl that might work. But you are a full-grown woman. And there isn’t all that much hay, Prudence. It is more than likely we will end up seeking each other’s warmth. And, unlike last night, which neither of us can remember, I have a feeling we are going to recall every single minute of tonight. You will know you have slept with a man. You will never be able to look anyone in the eye and claim to be innocent. Tonight, Prudence, is the night that your reputation really will be well and truly ruined.’
Chapter Nine (#u655ebb25-5855-5bd6-a04e-c82d52bab9e6)
‘Oh, my goodness!’ said Prudence as her feet slid into the ice-cold water. She didn’t know whether it was the shock of it, or something else, but suddenly everything had become clear. ‘That was what they were after.’
‘What who was after? What was it they were after?’
‘You know,’ she said, shuddering at the sting of the water on her raw feet. ‘My aunt and that man she married.’
‘I don’t follow,’ he said, sitting down on the bank beside her.
‘No, well...’ she said wearily. ‘That’s because I haven’t told you everything.’ But there wasn’t any point in keeping her revelation to herself. He was in it with her now—or would be after tonight—up to his neck.
‘I told you I was due to come into an inheritance?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, it is not totally without stipulations. The money comes from my grandfather, you see, and he was livid, apparently, when Mama ran off with Papa. He’d already refused consent to their marriage—not only because they hadn’t known each other for five minutes, but also because Papa was a soldier. A man who saw nothing wrong with drinking alcohol, or gambling, or any number of things that Grandpapa regarded as dreadful sins.
‘Not that Papa was a dreadful sinner—I won’t have you thinking that,’ she explained hastily. ‘It was just Grandpapa was so terribly rigid in his views. Anyway, he cut Mama out of his will. But then when I was born, and Mama wrote to inform him of the event, he put me in it instead. She was still disinherited, but he said that it wasn’t right to visit the sins of the fathers on the children. And just in case I turned out to be as great a sinner as either of them, there was this...stipulation.
‘The money wasn’t to come direct to me upon his death but was to be held in trust. Either until I married “a man of standing”, I think was the exact term. Or, if I hadn’t married such a paragon by the time I was twenty-five, then I could have it without strings, to use however I wish, but only if I am found to be “of spotless reputation”.’
‘In other words,’ he said slowly, ‘all your aunt had to do was blacken your name and...’
‘Yes. Mama’s portion—or rather mine, since Mama didn’t feature in the will at all, and I never had any brothers or sisters who lived more than a few days—would go directly to Aunt Charity.’
‘Villainous,’ he hissed.
‘Yes,’ she agreed, drawing her feet out of the water and pulling her knees up to her chin.
Wrapping her arms round her lower legs, she gazed across the stream to the ploughed fields on the opposite bank, blinking determinedly whenever the chill breeze stung her raw flesh.
‘And it isn’t just what happened this morning. Or last night. Aunt Charity and I have been at war, subtly, for years. I can see it all now...’
She shook her head, the furrows blurring as tears misted her vision.
‘I thought she was just a cold, strict sort of woman, and I made allowances for the way she was because I could sort of understand how she might resent me for being thrust upon her when she obviously hadn’t a maternal bone in her body. But I think it was worse than that. Of late I’ve felt as though she has been doubling her efforts to make me feel bad about myself. Always harping on about my “falling short”, as she termed it. And punishing me for the slightest fault.’
She turned to him and searched his face for his reaction.
‘But what if it wasn’t that at all? What if she was trying to make everyone think I was a terrible sinner? So that she’d have the excuse to say I didn’t fulfil the terms of the will?’
He opened his mouth to say something, but thoughts were tumbling into her head so fast she simply had to let them out.
‘It’s true that at one time—about the time Papa died and I knew I was never going to get away from her—I was...well, a bit of a handful. No, I must be honest. I was downright rebellious for a while. I told her I hated her and everything she stood for. But as it drew nearer to my birthday nothing seemed to bother me so much. Only a few more months, I thought, and then I will be free. Only a few more weeks, now...’
She shook her head.
‘But she still looked at me as though I was a problem she had to work out rather than a real person... Oh, I’m not explaining it terribly well, am I?’
‘No,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘I think I see only too well.’ He sighed. ‘For I have been guilty of seeing my young cousin Hugo in that light,’ he said.
He plucked at some strands of grass. Tossed them into the stream and watched them float downstream.
‘I have shown him scant sympathy whenever he comes to me with his troubles. The last time I refused to bail him out of his difficulties he accused me of having a mind like a ledger. Of not understanding what ordinary people have to go through. And he was right. I did regard him as nothing more than a financial drain. And an intolerable nuisance.’
‘Yes, but you wouldn’t have gone out of your way to destroy him, would you? You’re not that kind of man.’
He reached out and touched her arm, just briefly, as though her declaration of faith in him had meant something to him.
‘I didn’t think my aunt was that kind of person, either. But her husband...’ She shuddered. ‘I wouldn’t put anything past him. As soon as they married there stopped being any money for the things I’d taken for granted before. It started with fewer trips to the dressmaker. When I questioned him he accused me of vanity. And since I already thought he was a terribly pious and unpleasant sort of man I just thought he was trying to improve me. But then there were things like... Oh, he wouldn’t let me have a fire in my room unless it was actually snowing outside. That sort of thing. And I’m sure there isn’t anywhere in the Bible that says you have to go cold to prove how virtuous you are.’
He drew in a sharp breath. ‘It is possible that he has squandered your inheritance—have you thought of that? And this is his attempt to cover it up?’
She thought for a bit. Then shook her head. ‘If it is, he’s gone a very strange way about covering anything up. Surely my disappearance will eventually cause no end of talk? Especially since it looks as though they mean to explain it away by accusing me of improper conduct,’ she finished bitterly.
‘And me,’ he growled. ‘If anyone asks where you have gone, they will drag my name into it.’
‘I don’t see how they can. They don’t know it,’ she pointed out.
‘I will know it,’ he growled. ‘I will know that somewhere people are accusing me of...debauching an innocent. Well, your aunt and uncle picked the wrong man to play the villain of the piece. I won’t let them get away with it.’
‘Good,’ she said, turning to gaze up at him. ‘Because you are not a villain. Not at all.’
He might look like one, with his bruised face, his harsh expression, and his dishevelled and muddied clothing. But she knew how he’d come by the mud, and the bruises. At the time he’d told her about his adventure in the mill she’d half suspected he might have made some of it up, to try and impress her. But that was before he’d rescued her from those drunken bucks simply by looking at them with that murderous gleam in his eyes. Before he’d carried her to this stream just so she could soothe her feet in its ice-cold water. And had listened to her as though her opinions had merit.
‘So far as I’m concerned,’ she said, reaching up to touch the deep groove between his brows, ‘they picked the right man.’
‘What?’ His eyes, which had been glaring off into the distance as though he was plotting a fitting revenge on her guardians, focussed on her in bewilderment.
‘I know that you will put all to rights, somehow—won’t you?’ For that was what he did. ‘Or at least you will do your very best.’
‘How can you possibly know that?’ He fidgeted and turned his head away.
‘Because that is the kind of man you are. Completely upright.’ And not in the way the male members of Stoketown Chapel were upright. Not one of them would break into a warehouse at dead of night to steal a set of false ledgers in order to uncover a fraud. They’d be too scared of what other people would think of their actions.
She might have been mistaken, because it was growing too dark now to see clearly, but she rather thought her last comment might have caused him to blush.
‘Time to turn in for the night,’ he said gruffly. Then bent to put his arms around her and got to his feet.
Just as before, the ease with which he carried her filled her with admiration. Admiration spiced with a series of totally feminine responses. Because this time he was carrying her to a bed they were going to be sharing.
As though he shared the tenor of her thoughts, he came to a complete halt just before entering the barn and stared into the gloom at the far end. Where they were about to make a bed in the pile of hay.
‘This is going to be damned awkward,’ he grated, before turning sideways to slide through the drunken excuse for a barn door.
And then he stopped again.
And cleared his throat.
Though she could scarcely hear it over the thunder of her heartbeat.
‘Right, this is what we’re going to do,’ he said. ‘I’m going to use my valise for a pillow, then spread my jacket over some of the hay. That is if you don’t mind taking it off.’ He glanced down at the row of buttons, then at her face, then into the gloom again, his jaw tightening.
‘I don’t mind at all,’ she said. In fact excitement fizzed through her at the prospect of undressing in front of him. Even if it was only his jacket he’d asked her to remove. And she would still be wearing her modest kerseymere gown. ‘Hay is very prickly,’ she added hastily. ‘It is a very sensible notion to use your jacket as a barrier.’
‘Sensible,’ he repeated, suddenly breaking into a stride that took them all the way to the back of the barn. ‘I will use my coat to cover us, as another barrier against the hay. I shall pull it over the top of us both.’
‘A very practical notion,’ she said.
One of his eyebrows shot up. ‘Really?’ He pulled it down. ‘I mean, naturally. Eminently practical. So,’ he said, ‘you will remove my jacket while I will divide up the hay, and so forth, to make our bed.’
Our bed. The words sent a flush to her cheeks. And, by the feel of it, to other parts she ought never to mention.
‘I give you fair warning,’ he said gruffly, ‘that if it gets really cold, in spite of all the hay, I shall put my arms around you and hold you close.’
Her heart skipped a beat. But that beat sank to her pelvis, where it set up a low, insistent throb.
‘Will you?’ Was that really her voice? All low and husky and breathy?
‘Yes. But I swear, on my honour, that I shall do nothing more.’
‘I know.’ She sighed.
‘How can you possibly know?’
‘I have told you already—I know what kind of man you are.’ And she wasn’t sure why she’d forgotten it, even for those few exhilarating seconds when he’d been standing there talking about taking her to bed. Wishful thinking, she supposed.
‘How can you? We only met this morning. Can you stand for a few moments if I set you down?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘And that question only goes to prove what I was saying. You are still going out of your way to tend to my comfort. A lot of men wouldn’t bother. They wouldn’t try to reassure me that my virtue would remain unsullied, either. In fact, I think a lot of men—’ most men, from what she’d seen of masculine conduct so far ‘—would turn this situation to their own advantage.’
‘Oh?’ He bent to pick up his valise and held it before him like a shield while she unbuttoned the jacket he’d lent her. As she slid it from her arms he turned swiftly and buried the valise under a mound of hay.
‘Yes, indeed,’ she said as he turned back and took the jacket from her outstretched hand. He dropped it onto the makeshift mattress quickly, as though it was burning his fingers.
‘I have told you all about my fortune,’ she said. ‘Other men have paid court to me to get their hands on it. You could, at any time today, have started to pressure me into marrying you under the pretext of saving my reputation, and then the money would have been yours. As my husband. But you haven’t.’
‘Perhaps I am not a marrying kind of man—had you thought of that?’
‘No. For one thing you have looked at me once or twice as though you were thinking about kissing me. And you said that thing about my hair.’
‘Hmmph,’ he said, swinging her into his arms again and setting her down gently onto the makeshift bed.
‘For another,’ she said as he reared back and began stripping off his coat. ‘You have already been married.’
‘Perhaps that is what has put me off ever getting married again,’ he said bitterly, before coming down beside her and whisking the coat over them both.
‘Is it?’ She watched through lazily lowered lids as he reached for the hay, pulling bunches of it up and over them until it really did feel as though they were lying in a sort of nest. ‘You looked so unhappy when you mentioned your wife. I wondered...’
‘Wondered what?’ He lay down, finally, next to her, though he kept his arms rigidly at his side.
‘Well, why you looked so unhappy. You pulled a sort of face.’
‘Pulled a face? I never pull faces.’
‘Well, you did. And it wasn’t the sort of expression a widower makes who loved his wife and misses her. It looked as though...’
He made a low growling kind of noise, as though warning her not to proceed any further. She ignored it.
‘And anyway, now you have as good as admitted that you weren’t happy. What went wrong?’
He sighed. ‘I never speak of my wife,’ he grunted. ‘She and I... We...’
Somewhere close by an owl hooted.
Gregory folded his arms across his chest.
She rolled onto her side and curled up a bit. Just until her knee touched his leg.
Which was warm. And solid.
‘There was never any we,’ he said, with evident irritation. ‘The match was arranged by our families. I thought she was happy with it. She seemed happy with it. And I was...content to go along with the arrangement. She was pretty. Very pretty, if you must know. Which I thought was better than being saddled with a woman I would struggle to bed.’
Somehow it seemed rather brazen to be snuggling up to him, hoping he might snuggle up to her, while he was talking about having marital relations. She stealthily straightened her leg so that her knee was no longer nudging his thigh.
But she hadn’t been stealthy enough.
‘If you didn’t want the sordid details,’ he snapped, ‘you shouldn’t have pressed me for the confession.’
She hadn’t pressed. Not really. But perhaps it was the strangeness of the day, the enforced intimacy they’d shared and were still sharing, that made him feel compelled to tell her all about it. Or the fact that they were lying in the dark, in a barn, feeling extremely awkward, and it was better to talk of something completely unrelated to themselves.
Besides, if he truly hadn’t spoken of his miserable marriage ever, to anyone, he probably needed to unburden himself. He’d obviously never felt close enough, or safe enough, with anyone to do so.
She reached out until she found his hand in the dark, and clasped her fingers round it.
‘I didn’t mean to pry,’ she said. ‘But if you want to talk about it...’
He gripped her hand hard.
‘She didn’t like me touching her in bed,’ he grated. ‘She would never have curled into me the way you have just done, or held my hand, or smoothed my brow when I frowned. Or hugged me because she was pleased to see me.’
The poor man. She ran the fingers of her other hand over his. Squeezed it. The poor, lonely man. No wonder his face had settled into a permanently severe expression. No wonder he glowered at people in such a way that they kept their distance. He must find it easier to keep people away than let them get close enough to hurt him. As his wife had done.
‘I was only seventeen when I married her. Not very experienced. And she, of course, was a virgin. It wasn’t... The consummation wasn’t entirely a pleasant experience for her. When she was reluctant to allow me to return to her bed I tried to be understanding. I thought I ought to give her time to become accustomed.’ He gave a bitter laugh. ‘And then she confessed she was with child.’
It sounded as though he was grinding his teeth.
‘My father congratulated me for ensuring the succession so swiftly. It was about the only time he ever seemed pleased with me. But the irony was that it wasn’t mine. The baby she was carrying. It couldn’t possibly have been mine. And I was furious. All those months, while I’d been trying to be considerate, she’d been...’
‘Oh.’ It sounded such a feeble thing to say. But, really, what could she say to a confession like that?
‘When she died I struggled to feel anything apart from relief. You think that was wicked, don’t you? That I was relieved I wasn’t going to have to bring up some other man’s get as my own? Or to face mockery by admitting she’d cuckolded me within six months of marriage?’
‘She... Oh, no. The baby died as well?’
‘The pregnancy killed her. That’s what the doctor said. Something to do with her heart. I wasn’t exactly in a frame of mind to take it in. My father had not long since died as well, you see. I’d just...stepped into his shoes.’
She heard him swallow.
‘Later, I did feel sorry about the baby. And that was when the guilt started to creep in. I kept remembering standing by her graveside, feeling as though a huge burden had rolled off my shoulders. How all the problems I’d thought I had were being buried with her. How could I regard a child as a burden? As a problem? That wasn’t right. It wouldn’t have been the child’s fault. You, of all people, must know it isn’t right to inflict upon a child the feelings you have for its parents.’
‘No,’ she whispered. ‘It isn’t. But you wouldn’t have done. I know you wouldn’t.’
‘You can’t possibly know that,’ he grated. ‘Hell, I certainly couldn’t.’
‘I do know,’ she said, raising his clenched fist to her mouth and kissing the grazed knuckles. ‘You might have struggled to be kind to the child, but you would have tried. Otherwise you wouldn’t have experienced any guilt over the way you felt when it died. You would have just shrugged your shoulders and walked away. You are a good man,’ she said. ‘And you deserved to have a wife who appreciated just how good and kind you are. A wife who would have at least tried to make you happy. A wife who wanted you to touch her. Give her children. None of what happened was your fault.’
He shifted in the hay beside her and gave a sort of disgruntled huff. Then he rolled onto his side, so that he was facing away from her. She might have thought he was putting an end to their conversation and establishing some distance between them if it hadn’t been for the fact that he kept tight hold of her hand, so that as he rolled the movement tugged her up against his back. Just as though he wanted to drape her over himself like a human blanket.
She snuggled closer. For he’d made it clear he hadn’t been rejecting her. It had been pride that had made him turn away, she was sure. Men didn’t like appearing weak, and he probably regretted spilling all those secrets he’d kept hidden for years. He’d made himself vulnerable to her. Because he trusted her. Or thought she’d understand what rejection of that sort felt like after the way her own aunt had betrayed her.
Yes, if any two people knew what betrayal felt like it was them.
She hugged his waist, wishing there was something she could do to ease his pain. To let him know that she didn’t think any less of him for struggling the way he had in the coldness of his arranged marriage, and with his feelings about the way it had ended.
And suddenly it occurred to her that there was one obvious way to do both.
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ANNIE BURROWS
Secrets and Scandal In Bed With the Duke Placed in scandalous circumstances Gregory, Duke of Halstead must work with beautiful stranger, Prudence to unravel the plot to ruin them both. But soon they both discover the delicious consequences of working closely… A Mistress for Major Bartlett When Major Tom Bartlett discovers the angel who nursed his battle wounds is Lady Sarah Latymor he should ask for her hand in marriage. But Bartlett is considered an unrepentant rake by polite society and sweet Sarah would be spurned. But Sarah is just as determined, to stay by his side – and in his bed!
Regency Rogues
August 2019
Outrageous Scandal
September 2019
Rakes’ Redemption
October 2019
Wicked Seduction
November 2019
A Winter’s Night
December 2019
Unlacing the Forbidden
January 2020
Stolen Sins
February 2020
Candlelight Confessions
March 2020
Rescued by Temptation
April 2020
Wives Wanted
May 2020
Disgraceful Secrets
June 2020
Talk of the Ton
July 2020
Exotic Affairs
About the Authors (#u655ebb25-5855-5bd6-a04e-c82d52bab9e6)
ANNIE BURROWS’ love of stories meant that when she was old enough to go to university, she chose English literature. She wasn’t sure what she wanted to do beyond that, but one day, she began to wonder if all those daydreams that kept her mind occupied whilst carrying out mundane chores, would provide similar pleasure to other women. She was right…and Annie hasn’t looked back since.
Readers can sign up to Annie’s newsletter at www.annie-burrows.co.uk (http://www.annie-burrows.co.uk)
Regency Rogues: Outrageous Scandal
In Bed with the Duke
A Mistress for Major Bartlett
Annie Burrows
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ISBN: 978-1-474-09709-3
REGENCY ROGUES: OUTRAGEOUS SCANDAL
In Bed with the Duke © 2016 Annie Burrows A Mistress for Major Bartlett © 2015 Annie Burrows
Published in Great Britain 2019
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.
By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.
® and ™ are trademarks owned and used by the trademark owner and/or its licensee. Trademarks marked with ® are registered with the United Kingdom Patent Office and/or the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market and in other countries.
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Table of Contents
Cover (#u32b8f825-1a3a-5418-b363-49c5ba832857)
About the Authors (#uf6a5af31-8f5c-5ca7-a6e1-3ef939e0df51)
Title Page (#uc1b473bd-62b1-548c-b47e-c1aa92ae8002)
Copyright (#u4a3dce5b-c9c9-5528-aed4-cd3b95b5ec8f)
In Bed with the Duke (#u3748a705-5313-5984-ba38-be69c8fc19dd)
Dedication (#u04d3faef-1db7-55e6-b8a7-bd66b011843a)
Chapter One (#u6df3d48e-ed8c-585f-81ea-31aa70901491)
Chapter Two (#ue0906aef-7f52-57f5-a515-521910b520ae)
Chapter Three (#u945b41aa-e5a1-5a27-b49b-af7e2c0ebcbb)
Chapter Four (#u9f86e9f6-be10-5146-aa6e-def712b552ea)
Chapter Five (#u58cc0cfb-24d0-5013-89c9-1fe61ebea8ca)
Chapter Six (#ue97340ea-1d54-5156-85e9-12e49291db60)
Chapter Seven (#u705a62fb-cdc3-5ee7-b192-db5780c29ebf)
Chapter Eight (#u66c201f8-2f46-5b21-8ac3-d27e9ab1f12e)
Chapter Nine (#u1e746000-c832-5950-8514-6895ba1f202f)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)
A Mistress for Major Bartlett (#litres_trial_promo)
Dedication (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
In Bed with the Duke (#u655ebb25-5855-5bd6-a04e-c82d52bab9e6)
Annie Burrows
Once again, my thanks to the Novelistas
for constant support, brainstorming when
necessary, and cake.
Chapter One (#u655ebb25-5855-5bd6-a04e-c82d52bab9e6)
‘Vile seducer of women!’
Gregory winced and pulled the quilt up over his ears. What kind of inn was this? Surely even travellers to such a Godforsaken backwater shouldn’t have to put up with deranged females bursting into their rooms and screeching at them before breakfast?
‘Oh! What wickedness!’
Pulling the quilt up round his ears clearly wasn’t a strong enough hint that deranged females weren’t welcome in his room. For the voice was definitely getting louder. Coming closer.
‘What is the world coming to?’
Just what he’d like to know, he thought resentfully, dragging his eyelids open and seeing the owner of the strident voice standing right over him, jabbing a bony finger at his face.
‘How could you?’ the bony-fingered, screeching woman shouted into his face. Right into his face.
Enough was enough. He knew that public inns were of necessity frequented by...well, by the public. But surely even here a man was entitled to some privacy? At least in his own bedchamber?
‘Who,’ he said, in the arctic tone that normally caused minions to shake in their shoes, ‘let you into my room?’
‘Who let me into your room? Why, I let myself in, of course.’ She smote her breast theatrically. ‘Never have I been so shocked!’
‘Well, if you will invade a man’s chamber what can you expect?’
‘Oh!’ the woman cried again, this time laying the back of one hand across her brow. ‘Was ever there such a villain? Truly, your soul must be stained black with depravity if you can treat the seduction of innocence with such levity!’
Seduction of innocence? The woman must be fifty if she was a day. And she’d invaded his room. Nothing innocent about that.
‘And as for you!’ The screeching woman’s finger moved to a point somewhere to his left side. ‘You...you trollop!’
Trollop? There was a trollop in his bed as well as a hysterical woman standing next to it?
A brief foray with his left foot confirmed that, yes, indeed there was another pair of legs in his bed. A slender pair of legs. Belonging, he had to suppose, to the trollop in question.
He frowned. He wasn’t in the habit of taking trollops to his bed. Nor any other kind of woman. He always, but always, visited theirs. So that he could retire once he’d reduced them to a state of boneless satiation and get a peaceful night’s sleep at home. In his own bed. Where he heartily wished he was now. For there wouldn’t be a strange woman in his bed if he’d stayed at home. Nor, which was more to the point, would anybody be daring to stand over him screeching.
‘How could you repay me by behaving like this?’ The hysterical woman was still ranting. ‘After all I have done for you? All the sacrifices I have made?’
Her voice was rising higher and higher. And getting louder and louder. But even so there seemed to be a sort of fog shrouding his brain. He couldn’t for the life of him pierce through that fog to work out why there was a woman in his bed. He couldn’t believe he’d hired her. Because he had never needed to hire a woman. So how did she come to be here?
How, for that matter, did he come to be here?
And how was he to work it out with that harpy shrieking at him?
He put his hands over his ears.
‘You ingrate!’
No use. He could still hear her.
‘Madam,’ he said coldly, removing his hands from his ears, since ignoring her in the faint hope that she might go away wasn’t working. ‘Lower your voice.’
‘Lower my voice? Lower my voice? Oh, yes, that would suit you just fine, would it not? So that your vile misdeed might be covered up!’
‘I have never,’ he said in outrage, ‘committed any vile misdeed.’ Nor used the kind of language that more properly belonged on the stage.
He pressed the heels of his hands to his temples. His throbbing temples. How much must he have had to drink last night to wind up in bed with a trollop he couldn’t remember hiring and be parroting the vulgar phrases of a woman who seemed intent on dragging him into some kind of...scene?
‘Get out of my room,’ he growled.
‘How dare you order me about?’
‘How dare I?’ He opened his eyes. Glared at the screeching woman. Sat up. ‘No. How dare you? How dare you walk into my room and address me in that impudent manner? Fling accusations at me?’
‘Because you have seduced my own lamb! My—’
Indignation had him vaulting out of the bed.
‘I am no seducer of innocents!’
The woman shrieked even more loudly than before. Covered her eyes and stumbled towards the door. The open door. Where she had to push her way through a crowd of interested bystanders. Who were all peering into his room with a mixture of shock and disapproval.
Except in the case of a plump girl he recognised as the chambermaid. She was gazing at him round-eyed and slack-jawed.
At which point he realised he was stark naked.
With a low snarl he stalked across the room and slammed the door shut on the whole crowd of them.
Then shot the bolt home for good measure.
He had a brief flash of his nurse, clucking her tongue and quoting that proverb about shutting the stable door after the horse had bolted.
No horse. He shook his head. A horse was about the only thing that didn’t appear to have wandered into his room while he lay sleeping.
Sleeping like the dead. Which made no sense. How had he managed to get to sleep at all? When he’d decided to rack up here for the night he’d suspected he wouldn’t be getting a wink of sleep. Other, similar inns in which he’d stayed had made a restful night well-nigh impossible. If it wasn’t travellers in hobnailed boots tramping up and down the corridor at all hours, or coaches rattling into the inn yard with their guards blowing their horns as though it was the last trump, it was yokels with lusty voices bellowing at each other in the tap. Over which his room was always inevitably situated.
Although this chambermaid had brought him to a room right up in the eaves. So the noise wouldn’t have been an issue. Had he been so exhausted after the events of the past few days that he’d slipped into a state resembling a coma?
It wasn’t likely. And it didn’t explain the muzzy feeling in his head. That felt more as though he’d taken some kind of sleeping draught.
Except that he’d never taken a sleeping draught in his life. And he couldn’t believe he’d suddenly decided to do so now.
He rubbed his brow in a vain effort to clear his mind. If he could only recall the events of the previous night.
He concentrated. Ferociously.
He could remember having a brief wash and going down for dinner. And being served with a surprisingly good stew. The beef had melted in his mouth. And there had been cabbage and onions and a thick hunk of really good bread to mop up the rich gravy. He remembered congratulating himself as he’d come up the stairs on stumbling across an inn that served such good food.
After that—nothing.
Could the overseer and his accomplice have attacked him on the way upstairs? Had they followed him and sneaked up on him, intent on getting revenge? He felt the back of his head but didn’t find any lumps or cuts. No sign that anyone had struck him with a blunt instrument. It was about the only thing they hadn’t used. They certainly hadn’t hesitated to use their boots when they’d managed to knock him to the ground.
Not that he’d stayed down for long. A feeling of satisfaction warmed him. He flexed the fingers of his right hand, savouring the sting of grazed knuckles. It was one thing practising the science in a boxing saloon, where due deference was always given to regular customers, quite another to rise triumphant from an impromptu mill with a brace of bullies who had neither known who he was nor fought fair.
But, still, that didn’t answer the question of why this harridan had burst, shrieking, into his bedroom, nor the female he’d apparently taken to his bed without having any recollection of so much as meeting her.
He turned slowly, wondering just exactly what sort of female he had found in such a ramshackle inn, in such a dreary little town.
He took a good look at the girl, who was sitting up in the bed with the covers clutched up to her chin.
Contrary to what he’d half expected she was a pretty little thing, with a cloud of chestnut curls and a pair of huge brown eyes.
Which was an immense relief. He might have lost his memory, but at least he hadn’t lost his good taste.
* * *
Prudence rubbed her eyes. Shook her head. She’d never had a dream like this before. Not as bad as this, at any rate. She had sometimes had nightmares featuring her aunt Charity, for despite her name her mother’s sister was the kind of cold, harsh woman who was bound to give a girl the occasional nightmare, but never—not in even the most bizarre ones that had invaded her sleep when she’d been feverish—had her aunt spoken such gibberish. Nor had she ever had the kind of dream in which a naked man invaded her room. Her bed.
He’d stalked to the door and shut it, thankfully, though not before she’d realised that the landlord was staring at her chest. Her bare chest.
Why hadn’t she checked to see if she was naked before sitting up? And why was she naked? Where was her nightgown? Her nightcap? And why wasn’t her hair neatly braided? What was going on?
The naked man by the door was ruffling his closely cropped light brown hair repeatedly, as though his head hurt. And he was muttering something about horses and gravy.
Naked.
Man.
Her stomach lurched. She had a clear recollection of snuggling up against that man a few minutes ago. He’d had his arms round her. It had felt...lovely. But then she’d thought it was all part of a pleasant dream, in which someone was holding her, making her feel safe for once. Loved.
Instead he’d probably...
She swallowed. Heaven alone knew what he’d done to her.
And now he was standing between her and the door. The door he’d just bolted.
Don’t come near me. Don’t turn round. Don’t turn round.
He turned round.
Looked at her searchingly.
Appeared to like what he saw.
Started walking back to the bed.
She opened her mouth to scream for help. But the only sound that issued from her parched throat was a sort of indignant squeak.
She worked her tongue against the roof of her mouth, desperately trying to find some moisture so that she could call for help.
Though from whom? That landlord? The man who’d just taken a good look at her breasts?
Aunt Charity? Who’d come in here and called her a trollop?
Although...it didn’t look as though she needed to call for help just yet. The man was standing still. Fists on his hips. Glaring down at her.
Glaring down from a face she suddenly recognised. Now that she was actually looking at it. And not at those broad, bare shoulders. Or the bruised ribcage. Or the... Well, she’d never seen a naked man before. She couldn’t help looking at that. Even though she knew she shouldn’t.
But anyway, now that she was looking at his face she knew she’d seen it before. Last night. In the dining room.
He’d been sitting in the corner, at a table all on his own. Looking dangerous. And it hadn’t been just the bruise to his jaw, or the fact that one eye had been swelling and darkening, or that he’d had the grazed knuckles of a man who’d clearly just been in a fist fight. It had been the cold atmosphere that had surrounded him. The chill emanating from steel-grey eyes that had dared anyone to try and strike up a conversation, or walk too closely past his table, or serve him with anything that didn’t meet his expectations.
She hadn’t noticed him observing her. But he must have been doing so. He must have somehow known she was in a room on her own and followed her up here, and then...
But at that point her mind drew a blank.
He hadn’t handled her roughly—that much she knew. Because she didn’t feel the slightest bit sore anywhere. Though perhaps she hadn’t put up much of a struggle. Perhaps she’d known it would have been useless, given the size of the muscles bulging out all over that huge, great body...
‘It won’t work!’
‘Pardon?’ The word just managed to crawl over her teeth.
‘This—’ The big, dangerous, naked man waved his arm round the room. Ended up pointing at her. ‘This attempt to compromise me.’
Compromise? What an odd choice of word. Besides, if anyone was compromised it was her.
She tried clearing her throat, in order to point this out, but he’d whirled away from her. Was striding round the room, pouncing on various items of clothing that lay on the floor. He bundled them up and threw them at her.
‘Get dressed and get out,’ he snarled. And then, for good measure, he drew the hangings around the bed, as though to blot out the very sight of her.
Which at least gave her the privacy to scramble into what turned out to be the clothes she’d been wearing last night. Clothes which had been scattered all over the room as though they’d been torn off in a frenzy and dropped just anywhere.
Which wasn’t like her at all. She was always meticulous about folding her clothes and placing everything she might need upon rising close at hand. It was a habit ingrained during the first dozen years of her life, when the ability to move out of a billet at a moment’s notice might have meant the difference between life and death.
Still, she wasn’t going to dwell on that. If ever there was a time to make a swift exit then that time was now. She needed to get decently dressed, as fast as was humanly possible, and out of this room before the gigantic, angry, naked man changed his mind about letting her go.
She untangled her chemise and pulled it on over her head. Reached for her stays. And considered. It would take some time to wriggle it into a comfortable position and do up all the laces. Better just to get her gown on and get out of here.
When she peeped out through the bed hangings she saw that he was sitting on a chair, stamping his feet into a pair of scuffed, rather baggy boots.
Which reminded her. Shoes. Where were her shoes?
There. Right by the door. Next to each other, although one was lying on its side.
She grabbed her stays and waited until the man—the no longer naked man, since he’d pulled on some breeches and a shirt—reached for his second boot. He didn’t look like the kind of man who’d sacrifice his dignity by hopping after her. So as he started easing his foot down the leg of that boot she made a dash for the door.
As quickly as she could, she thrust her feet into her shoes, and went to open the door.
It wouldn’t budge.
She tugged and tugged at it, but no matter how hard she pulled, or how frantically she turned the handle, she simply couldn’t get it open.
And the man must have got his second boot on. Because she could hear him walking across the room. He was coming in her direction.
In panic, she dropped her stays so she could tug at the handle with both hands. But she wasn’t quick enough. He’d come right behind her. Was reaching up. Over her head.
And drawing the bolt free.
The bolt. In her panic to escape she’d forgotten all about the bolt.
‘Allow me,’ said the man, opening the door and making a mockingly courteous gesture with one hand.
Before putting the other on her back.
And shoving her out onto the landing.
The beast. The rude, nasty, horrible man! He hadn’t even let her pick up her stays! Not that she really wanted to be seen running round an inn with her stays in full view in her hands.
But still— Her lower lip trembled. If she’d had a drop of moisture in her parched body she was sure tears would have sprung to her eyes.
She rubbed at them, but got no relief. The gesture only made the landing spin, and then sort of ripple—the way the surface of a pond rippled when you threw in a pebble.
And there was something else odd about the landing. It all seemed to be the wrong way round. True, she hadn’t spent much time exploring the place when they’d arrived, but it had been such an odd little space, up under the eaves, that it was bound to have stuck in her mind. The owner of the inn had made clever use of his attics, fashioning three rooms around three sides at the top of his property, with the head of the stairwell and a broad landing taking up the fourth side. Last night, when she’d come up the stairs, she’d had to go right round the narrow gallery which bordered the stairwell to reach her room. But now she was standing right next to the staircase, which meant she hadn’t been in her room just now.
But his.
Why had she been in his room? Could she have stumbled, sleepily, into the wrong room last night?
No...no, that wasn’t it. She distinctly recalled starting to get ready for bed and her aunt coming in with a drink of hot milk.
A sound from inside the room she’d just shared with a total stranger made her jump out of her skin.
She shouldn’t be loitering here. Who was to say he wouldn’t change his mind and drag her back inside?
With legs that felt like cotton wool, she made her way round the gallery. She passed the door to the room where her aunt and her... She shook her head. She still couldn’t think of her aunt’s new husband as her uncle. He was no relation of hers. It was bad enough having to share her home with him, let alone address the old skinflint as though he was family.
She stumbled to a halt in the doorway that stood open. This was her room. She was sure this had been her room. The bed was just where it should be. And the washstand. And the little dormer window with the seat underneath on which she’d knelt to peer down at the view. She’d been able to see along the road that led to the market square. Even from this doorway she could just spy the top of the market cross.
But—where were her things? Her trunk should be just there, at the foot of the bed. Her hatbox beside it. Her toiletries, brush and comb should be on the washstand.
Confused, she tottered round the landing to the back of the house, to the room her aunt and the vile Mr Murgatroyd were sharing. There was nothing for it. She’d have to intrude, even though they might be—she shuddered—embracing, which they tended to do with revolting frequency.
She braced herself and knocked on the door. When there was no reply she knocked again, and then gingerly tried the handle. The door opened onto an empty room. No luggage. No personal clutter on the washstand or dresser.
As if they’d gone.
She blinked a couple of times and shook her head. This must all be part of the same nightmare. That was it. In a minute she’d wake up, back in... Back in...
She pinched her arm—hard.
But nothing changed. She was still standing on the landing at the top of an inn, in a little town whose name she couldn’t remember. After waking up in bed with a naked man.
It couldn’t be happening.
Her aunt and her new husband must be downstairs. Paying the bill. That was it. They couldn’t have abandoned her. They just couldn’t have.
Her heart fluttering like a butterfly trapped in a jam jar, she turned away from the empty room and ran down the stairs.
Chapter Two (#u655ebb25-5855-5bd6-a04e-c82d52bab9e6)
‘We run a respectable establishment,’ said the landlady, glaring at Gregory as she folded her arms over her ample bosom.
‘Really?’ If this was what passed for a ‘respectable’ establishment, he hated to think what she considered unrespectable. Disrespectable. He gave himself a mental shake. Why couldn’t he think of the word for the opposite of respectable?
‘So we’d be obliged if you’d pay your shot and leave.’
‘I haven’t had my breakfast.’
‘Nor will we be serving you any. We don’t hold with putting our guests through the kind of scene you caused this morning.’
‘I didn’t cause any kind of scene.’
Why was he bandying words with this woman? He never bandied words with anyone. People did as they were told or felt the force of his displeasure.
‘Well, that’s not what my Albert told me,’ said the landlady. ‘Came to me with tales of guests complaining they’d been woken up by screaming women in the halls, naked girls in rooms where they didn’t ought to be, and—’
He held up one imperious hand for silence. Very well, he conceded there had been a scene. In which he’d become embroiled. Now that he came to think of it, did he really want to break his fast here? The last meal he’d eaten under this roof, although palatable, had ended with him sinking into a state of oblivion so profound it appeared a band of criminals had attempted to perpetrate some kind of...of crime against him.
Dammit, he’d thought his mind was getting clearer. He’d managed to summon up words like palatable and perpetrate. Why, for heaven’s sake, had he been unable to come up with another word for crime?
It felt as though someone had broken into his head and stolen three-quarters of his brain. When he’d first awoken he’d likened it to the kind of haze that followed a night of heavy drinking. A state he disliked so much he’d only very rarely sought the form of release that alcohol promised. And then only when he’d been young enough to know no better.
And the landlady was still standing there, hands on her hips now, glaring past him at the state of his room as though expecting to see the naked girl he’d ejected the moment she’d put on her clothes. That sounded wrong. As though he’d only tolerated her in his room while she was naked. What he’d meant was that of course he wouldn’t have thrown her out until she was dressed. That would not have been a decent thing to do.
While he was standing there, wondering why his thoughts were in such a muddle when he was used to making incisive decisions about complex issues in the blink of an eye, the landlady’s eyes narrowed and her nostrils flared. He followed the direction of her fixed stare to see what had put that disgusted expression on her face. And spied a stocking. A lady’s stocking. Dangling from the mirror over the washstand. Looking for all the world as though it had been thrown there during an explosion of frenzied undressing.
He stalked across the room, wrenched it from the mirror and shoved it into his pocket, feeling...cheated. If he really had torn that girl’s clothing from her in a burst of passion so overwhelming he’d thrown her stockings clear across the room, then he ought to be able to remember it. Remember being so out of control that he’d not only scattered her clothing all over the room but his own, too.
He shivered in distaste at the recollection that his shirt had spent its night on the floor. A floor that was none too clean.
‘I will be down directly,’ he said, coming to a sudden decision to shake the dust of this place from his shoes. As he’d had to shake the dust from his shirt a short while ago.
The landlady gave him one last basilisk stare before very pointedly stepping over the stays that lay on the floor by the door through which she exited.
He strode to the door and slammed it shut after her. Picked up the stays. Glared at them. Wondered for a moment why he felt such reluctance to leave them lying exactly where they were.
Because he didn’t want any trace of himself, or whatever had happened here, lingering after he’d gone, he decided. Which was why he thrust them into the one meagre little valise he’d brought with him. Then he went to the washstand and rolled up his shaving kit, tossed it into the valise with the stays and the rest of his things.
Not that the stays were his.
And who was likely to look in his valise and imply that they were?
Nobody—that was who. Not once he’d returned to where he belonged. Which he planned to do as soon as possible.
He paid his bill downstairs at the bar, rather than calling for the landlord to come and attend to him. The sooner he’d done with this place, the better. He needed to get outside and breathe fresh air. Perhaps even find a pump under which to douse his head with cold water. He certainly needed something to clear his head.
Instead of calling for someone to bring his gig round to the front of the inn, he decided to go and fetch it himself. Because there was bound to be a pump in the yard at the back. Or at least a trough for the horses.
He had to pause on the threshold when the spring sunshine assaulted his eyes. It seemed incredibly bright after the darkness of the inn.
When his eyes adjusted to the daylight he saw that there was indeed a pump in the stable yard. And that next to it were two people. One was an ostler. The other was the girl. The girl from the night before—or rather this morning. Heaven alone knew what had happened the night before.
She was inching backwards, round the pump. While the greasy-haired ostler was stalking her. Leering at her.
He frowned. Surely if she was plying her trade at this inn she ought not to be taking evasive action. Or looking so scared. She should be smiling coyly, attempting to wheedle as high a price from the ostler as he could afford to pay.
Come to think of it, she shouldn’t have clutched the sheets to her chest, or dressed so hurriedly, or scrabbled at the door in what had looked like desperation to get away from him earlier, either.
‘Hi, there. You! Ostler!’
The ostler suspended his pursuit of the girl. Recognising him as a customer, he pushed his hat to the back of his head with a grubby forefinger and shambled over.
‘Leave that girl alone,’ Gregory found himself saying. When what he’d meant to say was, Harness up my gig.
The ostler gave him a look that was very much like a sneer. ‘Want to keep ’er to yerself, do yer?’
The girl was looking round the yard wildly, as though for a means of escape. The only way out of the yard was through an archway. To reach it she’d have to get past both him and the lecherous ostler.
‘That is none of your business,’ he replied. ‘I want my gig. And I want it now.’
‘Oh-ar,’ said the ostler, apparently remembering what his job here actually was. He shot the girl a look that made her shudder as he went past her and into the stable.
Once the ostler had gone into the stable Gregory turned to look at the girl. She was pressed up against the far wall of the stable yard, as though trying to disappear into the plaster.
It didn’t make sense. Well, nothing about this morning made sense. But the girl’s behaviour, above all, was perplexing.
He didn’t like it. He didn’t like not being in complete control of any situation. He didn’t like the feeling of stumbling about in the dark.
He’d thought all he wanted to do was get away from this inn and back to normality. But the mystery of this girl, and how she’d come to be in his bed when she clearly wasn’t a professional, was plaguing him.
He’d never be at rest until he knew what had really happened here last night. He wanted answers. And the girl would have those answers.
He stalked towards her. And as he did so she pressed even deeper into the plasterwork, her eyes widening with alarm. He supposed she must fear the consequences of having perpetrated—ah, there was that word again—whatever deception it was she’d attempted last night. As well she might. When she’d attempted to perpetrate whatever it was she’d been attempting to perpetrate she’d picked the wrong man.
He came to a halt a scant foot from her, wondering how best to make her abandon any loyalty she might feel towards her accomplices and put her faith in him, instead. Only then would she tell him what he wanted to know. Which was how the deuce had they managed to penetrate his disguise and what would be their next move?
The answer came to him when the ostler led his gig out of the stable, giving the girl a knowing, triumphant grin as he hitched the reins to a ring in the wall. If she wasn’t a whore yet she would be one by tonight, that look said. Willing or unwilling.
His whole being rejected the notion of abandoning any woman to such a fate. No matter what she’d tried to do to him.
Besides, he had his reputation to think of. Somehow the screeching woman with the bony fingers must have worked out who he was.
Or been informed.
Ah, yes, that would explain everything. Even the confusion and panic on the girl’s face. It would be just like Hugo to drag some unsuspecting third party into one of his pranks and leave them to pay the price.
And the devil of it was that Hugo knew he would do his utmost to hush it all up. That he would never let the family name be dragged through the mud.
‘Once I have left this inn yard in that gig...’ he pointed it out to the quaking girl ‘...you will be completely at that man’s mercy.’
Her eyes flicked wildly from the gig to the ostler, who was ambling in their direction, and to him. Only once she was looking at him did he continue.
‘You would do better to come with me. I will keep you safe.’
She didn’t look as though she believed him. Her inference that he might not be telling the truth was an insult so grave she might as well have spat at him.
Drawing himself to his full height, he bit out, ‘I give you my word.’
Something about his demeanour, or maybe the approach of the ostler, must finally have managed to convince her, because she nodded her head before shooting past him and clambering up into the gig.
The ostler’s face fell. And he actually did spit. At the pair of them as they swept past him and out into what passed for the high street in this scruffy little town.
The girl had wrapped her arms around herself in a protective gesture the moment he’d climbed into the driver’s seat. And he was so angry with her that for a while he didn’t bother to reassure her that she really was safe with him. How dared she insinuate that he was the kind of man who told lies?
Though, to be fair, these last few days he had been somewhat economical with the truth.
But never—not under any circumstances—would he harm a helpless woman. Not even an unhelpless woman. Oh, blast it all. There went his vocabulary again. There was no such word as unhelpless, was there?
The approach of a farm cart from the opposite direction caused him to abandon his vain attempt to find a suitable word to describe the girl sitting next to him. He needed all his concentration to get his vehicle past the cart in the narrow confines of the lane. Particularly since the farmer’s horse appeared to annoy the one harnessed to his own gig. What with preventing his bad-tempered nag from biting the gentle, rather stupid mare belonging to the farmer, and convincing it that it really did need to progress further down the lane, even though it looked as if it would be better sport to make the farmer’s horse back his cart into the wall, he had his hands—and his mind—completely full.
They were right out in the countryside, with the little town of Much Wapping far behind them, before he decided to speak to the girl again.
He found he was looking forward to coaxing her into speaking. The only word that had so far passed her lips had been huskily spoken. Like a velvet caress.
Velvet caress? Good grief, what was the matter with him that he was coming up with such bizarre ideas?
Anyway, he shouldn’t have to coax her into speaking again. Females, in his experience, were never silent. Not for as long as this anyway. Not unless they were planning something. He gave her a sharp look. She still had her arms wrapped around her middle. Her fingers tucked under her armpits. It struck him that she didn’t look merely defensive any longer. She looked cold.
Cold. Of course she was cold. She wasn’t wearing a coat. Or a bonnet. Her rust-coloured gown was made of good quality kerseymere, but a brief glance at her feet revealed an expanse of bare skin between the tops of her sturdy shoes and the hem of that gown. And it might be sunny, but this early in the year it wouldn’t be really warm until perhaps the middle of the afternoon. If then. She needed to put something else on. But she hadn’t any luggage, had she?
Frowning, he cast his mind over what to do for her. It would be pointless to offer her the one stocking he had in his jacket pocket. She needed more than one stocking. She needed a coat.
He could lend her his own coat... But, no. It would swamp her. Even his jacket would probably come down to her knees. Though that, actually, might not be such a bad thing. She could tuck her hands inside the sleeves.
He couldn’t just stop where they were and offer her his jacket, though. The lane was so narrow that if any other vehicle came from either direction they wouldn’t be able to pass. But from now on he’d look for a place where he could safely pull over.
Before very much longer he spied a gate leading into a field, which gave him the chance to pull the gig off the road a little. He put on the brake, removed his gloves and swiftly unbuttoned his coat.
Just as he was leaning forward, with his left arm out of one sleeve, about to remove his right arm from the other, the girl gave him a hefty shove in the side. She caught him so off balance that he tumbled right out of the seat, landing between the gig’s nearside wheel and the gatepost.
Dammit, why hadn’t he seen that coming? Women were never as defenceless as they looked. Obviously she was going to try and steal his horse and gig the moment he let down his guard.
And why had he let down his guard? All she’d had to do was shiver and look a bit pathetic and he’d promptly forgotten the way they’d met. All he’d been able to think of was shielding her. Just the way he’d wanted to shield her from that repulsive ostler.
Well, no longer. He surged to his feet on a wave of absolute fury. He might despise the bad-tempered nag harnessed to the ramshackle gig he normally wouldn’t have permitted in any of his stables, let alone take out onto a public road, but it was currently his only means of transport. And he was not going to relinquish it to a slip of a girl! He’d climb back into the driver’s seat and wrest the reins from her hands. And then—
And then nothing. Because she wasn’t in the driver’s seat, whipping the horse into a gallop and leaving him standing in the lane. On the contrary—she’d scrambled out of the gig while he’d been picking himself up and was currently running away as fast as she could.
Back towards Much Wapping.
Her accomplices must still be there. Hang it all, why hadn’t he thought of that? She must have been loitering in the stable yard awaiting them.
Well, he wasn’t going to let her get back to them and...and do whatever it was she was planning to do. He’d had enough of stumbling about in ignorance. Of being chivalrous, and merciful, and all the rest of it. He was going to drag her back and shake the truth out of her, if that was what it took. For only by discovering the truth would he stand any chance of regaining the upper hand.
* * *
Prudence ran as fast as her legs could carry her. Though her shoes chafed against her bare feet and her legs still didn’t feel as though they quite belonged to her.
But she wasn’t going to be fast enough. She could hear the man’s feet pounding down the road behind her. Getting closer and closer.
She wasn’t going to be able to outrun him. She had to find another way to stop him. But what?
Just then she stumbled and half fell to the ground, which was littered with large chunks of jagged rock. Chunks of rock which looked as though they had come away from the dry stone wall that flanked this side of the lane.
She grabbed one. Turned. Faced the big, angry man who was planning to... Well, she didn’t know what he planned to do with her once he caught her, but from the look on his face it wasn’t anything she’d like.
In a sort of wild desperation she flung the rock at him as hard as she could.
To her surprise—and his—it caught him on the forehead.
He went down like a... Well, like a stone. Prudence stood rooted to the spot. Stared in horror at the blood which was trickling down his face.
The ungainly sprawl of his limbs.
His total stillness.
What had she done? She’d only meant to show him she meant business. To stop him pursuing her.
Instead she’d...she’d killed him!
Chapter Three (#u655ebb25-5855-5bd6-a04e-c82d52bab9e6)
She ran to where he lay, sprawled on his back in the dirt, blood streaming across his forehead and into his hair. She dropped to her knees beside him. She couldn’t believe she’d felled him like that. With one little stone. Oh, very well then, with a large chunk of rock. She pressed her hands to her mouth. He was such a big man. So full of life and strength. It was unnatural to see him lying so still.
And then he groaned. She’d never heard such a welcome sound in her life.
‘Oh, thank God! You aren’t dead.’ She was almost sobbing.
He opened his eyes and shot her a cold, disbelieving look.
‘No thanks to you,’ he growled, then raised one hand to the cut and winced. He drew his hand away and held his fingers before his eyes, as though he couldn’t believe he really was bleeding without seeing the evidence as well as feeling it.
She reached into the pocket of her skirt for something to dab at the wound. But there was nothing. She had no handkerchief. Her chemise was of fine lawn, though. Its material would be as good. She hitched up her skirt and started tugging at her chemise.
‘What,’ asked the man warily—which wasn’t surprising since she’d well-nigh killed him, ‘are you doing?’
‘I’m trying to tear a piece from my chemise,’ she said, still desperately trying to rip the fabric that was proving more resilient than she’d expected.
‘Why?’ He looked baffled now, as well as wary.
‘To do something about that cut on your head,’ she said.
‘The cut you caused by throwing a rock at me?’
‘That’s the one.’
‘Wouldn’t you rather get another rock and finish what you started?’ he enquired mildly.
‘No! Oh, no—I never meant to hurt you. I didn’t think my aim was that good. Actually...’ She sat back on her heels. ‘My aim wasn’t that good. Because I wasn’t aiming at your head. I was just throwing the rock in your general direction, so you’d understand I wished you to leave me alone.’
‘Why?’
While she’d been attempting to explain he’d been fishing in his own pockets and found a large, pristine white silk square which he handed to her with a sort of flourish.
‘Thank you,’ she said, taking it from him and applying it to the cut. ‘Why what?’
‘Why were you running away? Why didn’t you just steal the gig? Or can you not drive?’
‘Yes, I can drive. Of course I can drive. It just never occurred to me to steal your gig. I’m not a thief!’
He quirked one eyebrow—the one that wasn’t bleeding—as though in disbelief. ‘Not a thief?’ he repeated dryly. ‘How fortunate I feel on receipt of that information.’
She put her hand around the back of his head to hold it still, so that she could press down hard on the cut. ‘Yes, you are fortunate,’ she said tartly. ‘I could have left you lying in the road for the...the next gang of thieves to come along and finish you off!’
‘Well, that would have made more sense than this,’ he said, making a vague gesture to his forehead.
She couldn’t be sure if he meant her trying to stanch the flow of blood, or the fact she’d caused his injury in the first place.
‘You had no reason to run off,’ he said, a touch petulantly for a man who looked so tough. ‘I told you I wouldn’t harm you. But,’ he said, drawing his brows down and narrowing his eyes with what looked like suspicion. ‘I suppose you were desperate to get back to Much Wapping to collect your fee.’
‘Fee?’ She withdrew the handkerchief, noting with some relief that the bleeding was slowing already. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘It’s no use playing the innocent with me. Hugo put you up to this, didn’t he?’
‘Hugo? I don’t know anyone by that name.’
‘A likely story. If you were not attempting to get back to Much Wapping and claiming your reward, why were you running away?’
‘You scared me,’ she admitted. ‘When you started undressing.’
‘Undressing? I was not undressing.’ He frowned. ‘Not precisely. That is, I was removing my coat, but only so that I could lend you my jacket. You looked cold.’
‘Your...your jacket?’ She sat back on her heels. The handkerchief slid from the man’s brow to the ground on which he was still lying, glaring up at her. ‘Because I looked cold? But... But...’
She pressed her hands to her mouth again for a moment. Looking back on his actions in the light of that explanation, it all looked very, very different.
‘I’m so sorry. I thought... I thought...’
‘Yes,’ he said grimly. ‘I can see what you thought.’
‘Well,’ she retorted, suddenly angered by the way he was managing to look down his nose at her even though he was flat on his back and she was kneeling over him. ‘What would you have thought? I woke up in bed naked, in a strange room, with no idea how I came to be there. Aunt Charity was screaming at me, you were wandering about the place naked, shouting at me, too, and then I went to my room and it was empty, and Aunt Charity had gone with all my things, and the landlady called me names and pushed me out into the yard, and that man...that man...’ She shuddered.
‘I told you,’ he said, reaching for the abandoned handkerchief and pressing it to his brow himself, ‘that I would keep you safe. Didn’t you believe me?’
‘Of course I didn’t believe you. I’m not an idiot. I only went with you because I was so desperate to get away from that dirty, greasy stable hand. And because at least you didn’t seem...amorous. Even this morning, when we woke up together, you didn’t seem amorous. Only angry. So I thought at least you’d spare me that. Except then you took me out into the middle of nowhere and started undressing. And I... I didn’t know what to think. It’s all like some kind of nightmare.’ She felt her lower lip tremble. ‘None of this seems real.’ Her eyes burned with tears that still wouldn’t quite form.
‘No,’ he said slowly. ‘None of this seems real.’
And then he sat up.
Her instinct was to flinch away. Only that would look terribly cowardly, wouldn’t it? So she made herself sit completely still and look him right in the eyes as he gazed into hers, searchingly.
‘Your eyes look strange,’ he said, reaching out to take hold of her chin. ‘I have never seen anyone with such tiny pupils.’
For such a large man his touch was remarkably gentle. Particularly since he had every right to be angry with her for throwing that rock. And actually hitting him with it.
‘My eyes feel strange,’ she admitted in a shaky voice. The touch of his fingers on her chin felt strange, too. Strange in the sense that she would have thought, given all that had passed between them so far, she would want to recoil. But she didn’t. Not in the slightest. Because for some strange reason his fingers felt pleasant. Comforting.
Which was absurd.
‘My head is full of fog. Nothing makes sense,’ she said, giving her head a little shake in a vain attempt to clear it of all the nonsense and start thinking sensibly again. It shook his fingers clear of her chin. Which was a pity.
No, it wasn’t! She didn’t want to take his hand and put it back on her face, against her cheek, so that she could lean into it. Not one bit.
‘It is the same for me,’ he said huskily.
‘Is it?’ That seemed very unlikely. But then so did everything else that had happened today.
‘Yes. From the moment I awoke I could not summon the words I needed.’
Words. He was talking about words. Not wanting to put his hand back on her face.
‘They seem to flit away out of reach, leaving me floundering.’
‘It is my aunt and uncle who’ve flitted out of my reach,’ she said bitterly. ‘Leaving me floundering. Literally. And my legs don’t seem as if they’ve properly woken up yet today.’
‘And you really haven’t heard of anyone called Hugo?’
Just as she shook her head in denial her stomach growled. Rather loudly.
He looked down at it with a quirk to his lips that looked suspiciously like the start of a smile.
‘Oh, how unladylike!’ She wrapped her arms around her middle.
‘You sound as hungry as I feel,’ he said, placing his hands on his own stomach. ‘I didn’t have any breakfast.’
‘Nor me. But until my stomach made that noise I hadn’t thought about being hungry,’ she found herself admitting. ‘I’m too thirsty.’
‘I’m thirsty, too. And foggy-headed. And I don’t feel as though my limbs want to do my bidding, either. I’m generally held to be a good whip, but I’m having real trouble controlling that broken-down hack that’s harnessed to the gig. And what’s more...’ He took a breath, as though coming to a decision. ‘I don’t recall a thing about last night. Not after dinner anyway. Do you?’
She thought for a bit. Today had been so bizarre that she hadn’t done anything more than try to work her way through it. And that had been hard enough, without trying to cast her mind back to the day before.
‘I went up to my room directly after dinner,’ she said. ‘I remember starting to get ready for bed, and Aunt Charity bringing me some hot milk which she said would help me sleep...’
A coldness took root in her stomach.
‘After that,’ she continued as a horrible suspicion began to form in her mind, ‘I don’t remember anything until I woke up next to you.’
‘Then it seems clear what happened,’ he said, getting to his feet and holding out his hand to her. ‘She drugged you and carried you to my room.’
‘No. No.’ She shook her head as he pulled her to her feet. ‘Why would she do such a horrid thing?’
‘I wonder if she knows Hugo,’ he mused. Then he fixed her with a stern look. ‘Because if Hugo isn’t behind this...’ he waved his free hand between the pair of them ‘...then we’re going to have to find another explanation. You will have to have a serious think about it on the way.’
‘On the way where?’
He hadn’t let go of her hand after helping her up, and she hadn’t made any attempt to tug it free. So when he turned and began to stride back to the gig she simply trotted along beside him.
‘On the way to Tadburne,’ he said, handing her up into the seat. ‘Where we are going to get something to eat in a respectable inn, in a private parlour, so that we can discuss what has happened and what we plan to do about it.’
She liked the sound of getting something to eat. And the discussing of plans. But not of the private parlour. Now that he’d let go of her hand she could remember that he was really a total stranger. A very disreputable-looking stranger, in whose bed she’d woken up naked that morning.
But what choice did she have? She was hungry, and cold, and she had not the means to do anything about either condition since Aunt Charity had vanished with all her possessions. She didn’t even have the small amount of pin money she was allowed. It had been in her purse. Which was in her reticule. The reticule she’d last seen the night before, when she’d tucked it under her pillow for safekeeping.
Oh, why hadn’t she thought to go to the bed in that empty room and see if her reticule was there? At least she’d have a few shillings with which to... But there her mind ran blank. What good would a few shillings be at a time like this?
But at least she would have had a clean handkerchief.
Though it wouldn’t have been clean now anyway. She’d have had to use it to mop up the blood. And then, if she’d needed one for herself later, she’d have had to borrow one from him anyway.
Just as she was now having to borrow his jacket, which he’d stripped off and sort of thrust at her, grim-faced.
‘Thank you,’ she said, with as much penitence as she could muster, and then pushed her arms gratefully into sleeves that were still warm from his body. Which reflection made her feel a bit peculiar. It was like having his arms around her again. The way they’d been before she’d woken up.
Fortunately he shot her a rather withering look, which brought her back to her senses, then bent to retrieve the coat that had fallen into the road when she’d pushed him off the seat just a short while since.
‘To think I was concerned about my name being dragged through the mud,’ he muttered, giving it a shake. ‘You managed to pitch me into the only puddle for miles around.’
She felt a pang of guilt. Just a small one. Because now not only was his eye turning black around the swelling he’d already had the night before, but he also had a nasty gash from the stone she’d thrown, spatters of blood on his neckcloth, and a damp, muddy smear down one side of his coat.
She braced herself for a stream of recrimination as he clambered back into the driving seat. But he merely released the brake, took up the reins, and set the gig in motion.
His face was set in a fierce scowl, but he didn’t take his foul mood out on her. At least she presumed he was in a foul mood. Any man who’d just been accused of indecency when he’d only been trying to see to a lady’s comfort, and then been cut over what must already be a sore eye, was bound to be in a foul mood.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, after they’d been going for a bit. Because she felt that one of them ought to say something.
‘For what, exactly?’
Oh. So he was the sort of man who sulked when he was angry, then, rather than one who ranted.
‘For throwing the rock. For hitting you when normally I couldn’t hit a barn door.’
‘You are in the habit of throwing rocks at barn doors?’
‘Of course not! I just meant... I was trying to apologise. Do you have to be so...so...?’
‘You cannot think of the word you want?’
‘No need to mock me.’
‘I didn’t mean to. It was an observation. I have already told you that I am struggling to find the words I want myself this morning. And, like you, none of this seems real. I suspect that when whatever drug we have both been given wears off I shall be rather more angry about the rock and your assumptions about me. But right now all I can think about is getting something to drink.’
‘A cup of tea...’ She sighed. ‘That would be heavenly.’
‘A pint of ale.’
‘Some bread and butter.’
‘A steak. With onions.’
‘At breakfast?’
‘Steak with onions is always good.’
She shuddered. ‘I don’t know about that. My stomach doesn’t usually wake up first thing. I don’t normally eat much before noon.’
‘I don’t bother with a break at noon. I’m usually out and about. Busy with estate business when I’m in the country. Or in my office with my secretary when I’m in town.’
‘You have a secretary? What kind of business are you in?’
Did she imagine it, or did he look a little hunted?
‘Never mind what business I’m in,’ he said, rather defensively.
Oh, dear. Last night Aunt Charity had remarked that he was just the kind of disreputable person she’d been afraid they might encounter in such an out-of-the-way tavern. That he was probably a highwayman. Or a housebreaker. Though surely housebreakers didn’t have secretaries? Still, the fact that he didn’t want to answer any questions about his background made it more than likely that he was some sort of scoundrel.
But not a complete scoundrel. A complete scoundrel wouldn’t have given her his jacket. Wouldn’t have rescued her from the ostler or offered to buy her breakfast, either. No—a complete scoundrel would have left her to fend for herself. Climbed into the gig and driven away. If not the first time then definitely the second time, after she’d thrown a rock at him.
She rubbed at her forehead. He looked so villainous, and yet he wasn’t acting like a villain. Whereas her aunt, who made a great display of piety at every opportunity... Oh, nothing made sense today! Nothing at all.
‘I have just realised,’ he said, ‘that I don’t even know your name. What is it?’
‘Prudence Carstairs,’ she said. ‘Miss.’
‘Prudence?’ He gave her one sidelong glance before bursting out laughing.
‘I don’t see what’s so funny about my being called Prudence,’ she objected.
‘P...Prudence?’ he repeated. ‘I cannot imagine a name less suited to a girl whom I met naked in bed, who gets chased around horse troughs by lecherous ostlers and throws rocks at her rescuer. Why on earth,’ he said, wiping what looked like a tear from one eye, ‘did they call you Prudence? Good God,’ he said, looking at her in sudden horror as a thought apparently struck him. ‘Are you a Quaker?’
‘No, a Methodist,’ she said, a touch belligerently. ‘Grandpapa went to a revival meeting and saw the light. After that he became a very strict parent, so naturally my mother named me for one of the virtues.’
‘Naturally,’ he said. ‘But why Prudence in particular?’
‘Because it was the one virtue it was impossible for her to attain in any other way,’ she retorted, without thinking.
‘And did she feel she had attained it, once you grew old enough for her to discern your personality? I suspect not,’ he observed. ‘I think you are just like her.’
‘No, I’m not! She ran off with a man she’d only known a week, because his unit was being shipped out and she was afraid she’d never see him again. Whereas I have never been dazzled by a scarlet jacket or a lot of gold braid. In fact I’ve never lost my head over any man.’
‘Good for you.’
‘There is no need to be sarcastic.’
‘No, no—I was congratulating you on your level head,’ he said solemnly, but his lips twitched as though he was trying to suppress a smile.
‘I don’t think so.’
‘So,’ he said, ignoring her retort. ‘Your mother ran off with a soldier, I take it, and regretted it so much that she gave you a name that would always remind her of her youthful folly?’
‘She did no such thing! I mean, yes, Papa was a soldier, but she never regretted eloping with him. Not even when her family cut her out of their lives. They were very happy together.’
‘Then why—?’
‘Well, doesn’t every parent want a better life for their child?’
‘I have no idea,’ he said.
He said it so bleakly that she stopped being angry with him at once.
‘And I have no patience with this sort of idle chatter.’
What? She’d hardly been chattering. All she’d done was answer the questions he’d put to her.
She’d taken a breath in order to point this out when he held up his hand to silence her.
‘I really do need to concentrate for a moment,’ he said brusquely. ‘Although I am familiar with the area, in a general sort of way, I have never travelled down this road.’
They had reached a junction to what looked like a high road.
‘I think we need to turn left,’ he muttered. ‘Yes, I’m almost sure of it.’
He looked to the right, to make sure nothing was coming, before urging the horse off the rutted, narrow lane and out onto a broad road that looked as though it saw a lot of traffic.
‘So how come,’ he said, once they were trotting along at a smart pace, ‘you ended up falling into such bad company? If your mother was so determined you would have a better life than she did how did you end up in the power of the termagant who invaded my room this morning?’
‘That termagant,’ she replied acidly, ‘happens to be my mother’s sister.’
‘You have my sincere condolences.’
‘She isn’t usually so—’ She flared up, only to subside almost at once. ‘Actually, that’s not true. Aunt Charity has never been exactly easy to get along with. I did my best. Well, at least at first I did my best,’ she confessed. ‘But eventually I realised that she was never going to be able to warm to me so it didn’t seem worth the effort.’
‘Why should she not warm to you?’
He looked surprised. As though there was no earthly reason why someone shouldn’t warm to her. Did that mean he had?
‘It was all to do with the way Mama ran off with Papa. The disgrace of it. I was the result of that disgrace. A constant reminder of it. Particularly while my father was still alive.’
‘He sent you back to your mother’s family while he was still alive?’
‘Well, not deliberately. I mean...’ Oh, why was it so hard to explain things clearly? She screwed up her face in concentration, determined to deliver the facts in a logical manner, without getting sidetracked. ‘First of all Mama died. And Papa said that the army was no place for a girl my age without a mother to protect her. I was getting on for twelve, you see.’
‘I do see,’ he grunted.
‘Yes... Well, he thought his family would take me in. Only they wouldn’t. They were as angry over him marrying a girl who “smelled of the shop” as Grandpapa Biddlestone was that his daughter had run off with a sinner. So they sent me north. At least Mama’s family took responsibility for me. Even though they did it grudgingly. Besides, by then Aunt Charity had also angered Grandpapa Biddlestone over her own choice of husband. Or at least the way he’d turned out. Even though he was of the Methodist persuasion he was, apparently, “a perpetual backslider”. Though that is neither here nor there. Not any more.’
‘By which you mean what?’
‘He’d been dead for years before I even reached England. I cannot think why I mentioned him at all.’
‘Nor can I believe I just said, By which you mean what.’
‘It doesn’t matter that your speech isn’t very elegant,’ she said consolingly. ‘I knew what you meant.’
The sort of snorting noise he made in response was very expressive, if not very polite.
‘Well anyway, Grandpapa decided I should live with Aunt Charity until my father could make alternative arrangements for me, since she was a woman and I was of an age to need female guidance. Or that was what he said. She told me that Grandpapa didn’t want the bother of raising a girl child who couldn’t be of any use to him in his business.’
‘And why didn’t your father make those alternative arrangements?’
‘Because he died as well. Only a couple of years later.’
‘That makes no more sense than what I originally thought,’ he said in disgust.
‘What did you originally think?’
‘Never mind that,’ he said tersely. ‘I need to concentrate on the traffic now that we’re approaching Tadburne. This wretched animal—’ he indicated the horse ‘—seems to wish to challenge anything coming in the other direction, and I need to keep my wits about me—what little I appear to have remaining this morning—if you don’t want to get pitched into the road.’
She could understand that. She’d already noted that he was having increasing difficulty managing his horse the nearer they drew to the town she could see nestling in the next valley.
‘However,’ he said, ‘I should like you to consider a few things.’
‘What things?’
‘Well, firstly, why would your own aunt—your own flesh and blood—drug you, undress you, and deposit you in my bed? And, worse, abandon you in that inn after removing all your possessions, leaving you completely at the mercy of strangers? Because, Miss Prudence Carstairs, since you deny having any knowledge of Hugo and you seem to me to be a truthful person, then I feel almost sure that is what happened.’
Chapter Four (#u655ebb25-5855-5bd6-a04e-c82d52bab9e6)
‘You are wrong,’ Prudence said. ‘Aunt Charity is a pillar of the community. Positively steeped in good works. She couldn’t have done anything like that.’
Though why could she recall nothing after drinking that warm milk?
He made no answer.
It must have been because he was negotiating a tricky turn before going under the archway of an inn. The inn was, moreover, right on a busy crossroads, so that traffic seemed to be coming at them from all directions. It was concentration that had put the frown between his brows and made his mouth pull into an uncompromising line.
It wasn’t because he disagreed with her.
Of course he was wrong. Aunt Charity couldn’t possibly have done what he said.
Yet how else could she have ended up in bed with a stranger? Naked? She would never, ever have gone to his room of her own accord, removed every stitch of clothing, flung it all over the place, and then got into bed with him.
And the man denied having lured her there.
He brought the gig to a halt and called over an ostler.
Well, no, he hadn’t exactly denied it, she reflected as he got down, came round to her side and helped her from the seat. Because she hadn’t accused him of doing any luring. But from the things he’d said he seemed to think she’d been in some kind of conspiracy against him. And he was also unclear about what had happened last night after dinner. Claimed to have no recollection of how they’d wound up in bed together, either.
So what he was saying was that someone else must be responsible. Since she wasn’t. And he wasn’t.
Which left only her aunt.
And uncle.
Or this Hugo person he kept mentioning.
‘Come on,’ he said a touch impatiently.
She blinked, and realised she’d been standing still in the bustling inn yard, in a kind of daze, while she struggled with the horrid notion he’d put in her head.
‘Well, I want some breakfast even if you don’t,’ he said, turning on his heel and stalking towards the inn door.
Beast!
She had no choice but to trot along in his wake. Well, no acceptable choice anyway. She certainly wasn’t going to loiter in another inn yard, populated by yet more greasy-haired ostlers with lecherous eyes. And she did want breakfast. And she had no money.
When she caught up with him he was standing in the doorway to what looked like the main bar. Which was full of men, talking and swigging tankards of ale. It must be a market day for the place to be so busy and for so many men to look so inebriated this early.
‘Stay here,’ he growled, before striding across to the bar. ‘I want a private parlour,’ he said to the burly man in a stained apron who was presiding over the bar. ‘For myself and...’ he waved a hand in her direction ‘...my niece.’
His niece? Why on earth was he telling the landlord she was his niece?
The answer came to her as soon as she looked at the burly tapster and saw the expression on his face as he eyed their appearance. Bad enough to have been called a trollop by the landlady of the last inn she’d been inside. At least if people thought she was this man’s niece it gave an acceptable explanation for them travelling together, if not for the way they were dressed.
‘And breakfast,’ her ‘uncle’ was saying, as though completely impervious to what the burly man might be thinking about his appearance—or hers. ‘Steak, onions, ale, bread and butter, and a pot of tea.’
The burly man behind the bar looked at her, looked over the rowdy market-day crowd, then gave a sort of shrug.
‘Well, there ain’t nobody in the coffee room at present, since the Birmingham stage has just gone out. You’re welcome to sit in there, if you like.’
‘The coffee room?’
Her muddy-coated, bloodstained companion looked affronted. He opened his mouth to make an objection, but as he did so the landlord’s attention was snagged by a group of men at a far table, all surging to their feet as though intending to leave. They were rather boisterous, so Prudence wasn’t all that surprised when the burly man came out from behind the bar to make sure they all paid before leaving. Her newly acquired ‘uncle’, however, looked far from pleased at being brushed aside as though his order for breakfast was of no account. He must be really hungry. Or spoiling for a fight. Things really hadn’t been going his way this morning, had they?
Some of the boisterous men looked as though they were spoiling for a fight, too. But the burly landlord dealt with them deftly, thrusting them through the doorway next to which she was standing one by one the moment he’d extracted some money from them. She wouldn’t be a bit surprised to learn that he’d been in the army. He had that look about him—that confidence and air of authority she’d seen fall like a mantle over men who had risen through the ranks to become sergeants. She’d heard such men talk about opening taverns when they got out, too...
Her suppositions were rudely interrupted by a couple of the boisterous men half falling against her on their way out, knocking her against the doorjamb. She decided enough was enough. It was all very well for her uncle to stand there looking indignant, but it wasn’t getting them anywhere. Ignoring his command to stay where she was, she threaded her way through the tables to his side and plucked at his sleeve to gain his attention over the uproar.
‘Can we go into the coffee room, please...er... Uncle?’ she said.
He frowned down at her with displeasure.
She lifted her chin. ‘I’m really not feeling all that well.’ In fact the hot, crowded room appeared to be contracting and then expanding around her, and her head swam unpleasantly.
The frown on his face turned to a look of concern. ‘You will feel better for something to eat and that cup of tea,’ he declared, slipping his arm round her waist. ‘I am only sorry we cannot have complete privacy, because what we have to discuss will of necessity be rather...’
‘It certainly will,’ she muttered, rather shocked at how good it felt to have him supporting her into the coffee room, when not half an hour since she’d been trying to escape him. ‘Perhaps,’ she suggested as he lowered her gently into a chair, ‘we should discuss things right now, before anyone comes in.’
‘We will be able to think more clearly once we’ve had something to eat and drink,’ he said.
‘How do you know? Have you ever been drugged before?’
He quirked one eyebrow at her as he drew up a chair next to her. Then leaned in so that he could speak quietly. ‘So you do accept that is the case?’
She clasped her hands in her lap. ‘Couldn’t there have been some sort of mistake? Perhaps I stumbled into your room by accident?’
‘And tore off all your clothes and flung them about in some sort of mad fit before leaping into my bed? It isn’t likely. Unless you are in the habit of sleepwalking?’
She flushed as he described the very scenario she’d already dismissed as being completely impossible. Shook her head at his question about sleepwalking.
‘Then what other explanation can there be?’
‘What about this Hugo person you keep asking if I know?’
‘Yes,’ he said grimly. ‘I still wonder if he could somehow be at the back of it. He has good reason to meddle in the business that brought me up here, you see. Only...’
He rubbed his hand over the back of his neck, looking troubled. Then shook his head.
‘Only he isn’t a bad lad—not really. Only selfish and thoughtless. Or so I’ve always thought.’
‘Always? You have known him a long time?’
‘Since his birth,’ said Gregory. ‘He is my cousin. My nearest male relative, in point of fact. Ever since he left school I have been attempting to teach him all he needs to know should he ever have to step into my shoes. He couldn’t have thought it through. If it was him.’
‘But how on earth could he have persuaded my aunt to do such a thing? Let alone my uncle?’
‘He might have put the case in such a way that your aunt would have thought she was acting for your benefit.’
‘My benefit? How could it be of any benefit to...to humiliate me and abandon me? Anything could have happened. If you were not the kind of man who...that is if you were not a... I mean...although you don’t look it... I think you are a gentleman. You could easily have taken advantage of me. And you haven’t. Unless... Oh! Are you married?’
‘No. Not any more.’
‘I am so sorry. I did not mean to make you uncomfortable by mentioning a topic that must surely cause you sorrow.’
‘It doesn’t.’ He gave a sort of grimace. Then explained, ‘My wife has been dead these eight years.’
‘Oh, that’s good. I mean...not that she’s dead, but that it is long enough ago that you are past the worst of your grief. But anyway, what I was going to say was that perhaps you are simply not the sort. To break your marriage vows. I know that even the most unlikely-looking men can be doggedly faithful...’
His gaze turned so icy she shivered.
‘Not that you look like the unfaithful sort,’ she hastily amended. ‘Or the sort that... And anyway you have been married, so... That is... Oh, dear, I do not know what I mean, precisely.’
She could feel her cheeks growing hotter and hotter the longer she continued to babble at him. But to her relief his gaze suddenly thawed.
‘I think I detected a sort of compliment amongst all those observations,’ he said with a wry smile.
‘Thank goodness.’ She heaved a sigh of relief. ‘I mean, it is not that I intended to compliment you, but...’
He held up his hand. ‘Just stop right there, before you say anything else to embarrass yourself. And let me bring you back to the point in question. Which is this: perhaps your aunt thought to put you in a compromising position so that she could arrange an advantageous match for you.’
‘An advantageous match? Are you mad?’ She looked at his muddy coat, his blackened eye, the grazes on his knuckles.
And he pokered up.
‘Although,’ she said hastily, in an attempt to smooth down the feathers she’d ruffled by implying that someone would have to be mad to consider marrying the likes of him, ‘of late she has been growing increasingly annoyed by my refusal to get married. On account of her wanting a particular member of her husband’s family to benefit from my inheritance.’
‘Your inheritance?’
Oh, dear. She shouldn’t have blurted that out. So far he had been behaving rather well, all things considered. But once he knew she would come into a great deal of money upon making a good marriage it was bound to bring out the worst in him. He had told her he was no longer married. And, whatever line of business he was in, acquiring a rich wife would be a definite asset.
Why hadn’t she kept quiet about it? Why was she blurting out the answers to all his questions at all?
She rubbed at the spot between her brows where once she’d thought her brain resided.
‘You don’t think,’ he persisted, ‘that your aunt chose to put you into my bed, out of the beds of all the single men who were at that inn last night, for a particular reason? Or that she chose to stay at that particular inn knowing that I would be there?’
She kept on rubbing at her forehead, willing her brain to wake up and come to her rescue. But it was no use.
‘I don’t know what you mean!’ she eventually cried out in frustration. ‘We only stopped there because one of the horses went lame. We were supposed to be pushing on to Mexworth. Uncle Murgatroyd was livid when the postilions said we’d have to put up at the next place we came to. And Aunt Charity said it was a miserable little hovel and she’d never set foot in it. And then the postilion said she could sleep in the stable if she liked, but didn’t she think she’d prefer a bed with sheets? And then they had a rare old set-to, right in the middle of the road...’
‘I can just picture it,’ he put in dryly.
‘The upshot was that we didn’t have any choice. It was sheer coincidence that we were staying at the same inn as you last night. And I’m sure my aunt wouldn’t have wanted to compromise you into marriage with me anyway. She made some very derogatory remarks about you last night at supper. Said you looked exactly the sort of ruffian she would expect to find in a dingy little tavern in a town she’d never heard of.’
He sat back then, a thoughtful expression on his face.
‘How much money, exactly, will you receive when you marry?’
Or was it a calculating expression, that look she’d seen?
She lowered her eyes, feeling absurdly disappointed. If he suddenly started paying her compliments and...and making up to her, the way so many men did when they found out about her dowry, then she would...she would...
The way she felt today, she’d probably burst into tears.
Fortunately he didn’t notice, since at that moment a serving girl came in with a tray bearing a teapot, a tankard and a jug. He was so keen on getting on the outside of his ale that she might have thrown a tantrum and she didn’t think he’d notice.
She snapped her cup onto its saucer and threw two sugar lumps into it before splashing a generous dollop of milk on top. She removed the lid from the teapot and stirred the brew vigorously.
‘What will happen,’ he asked, setting down his tankard once he’d drained it, ‘to the money if you don’t marry?’
‘I will gain control of it for myself when I am twenty-five,’ she replied dreamily as she poured out a stream of fragrant brown liquid. Oh, but she was counting the days until she need rely on nobody but herself.
She came back to the present with an unpleasant jerk the moment she noticed the pale, unappealing colour of the brew in her cup. She’d put far too much milk in first. Even once she stirred it it was going to be far too weak.
‘And in the meantime who manages it for you?’
‘My trustees. At least...’ She paused, the teaspoon poised in mid-air as yet another horrible thought popped into her head. ‘Oh. Oh, no.’
‘What? What is it you’ve thought of?’
‘Well, it is probably nothing. Only Aunt Charity remarried last year. Mr Murgatroyd.’
She couldn’t help saying the name with distaste. Nothing had been the same since he’d come into their lives. Well, he’d always been there—right from the first moment she’d gone to live with her aunt. But back then he’d just been one of the congregation into which her aunt had introduced her. She hadn’t disliked him any more than any other of the mealy-mouthed men who’d taken such delight in making her life as dreary as possible. It hadn’t been until he’d married her aunt that she’d discovered how nasty he really was.
‘He persuaded my trustees,’ she continued, ‘that he was a more proper person to take over the management of my money once he became the husband of my guardian.’
‘And they agreed?’
‘To be honest there was only one of them left. They were all older than my grandfather when he set up the trust in the first place. And the one who outlived him wasn’t all that...um...’
‘Capable?’
‘That’s a very good word for it.’
He looked into his tankard with a stunned expression. ‘I always thought drink addled a man’s brains. But this ale appears to have restored my intellect. That’s the first time since I awoke this morning that I have been able to come up with an appropriate word.’
‘Good for you,’ she said gloomily, then took a sip of the milky tea. Which wasn’t strong enough to produce any kind of restorative effect.
‘And your uncle—this man your aunt has married—is now in charge of handling your inheritance? Until such time as you marry? Do I have it correct?’
‘Yes.’
He set his tankard down on the table with a snap. ‘So when shall I expect him to come calling? Demanding I make an honest woman of you?’
She shrugged. ‘I would have thought he would have done so this morning, if he was going to do it at all. Instead of which he left the inn, taking all my luggage with him. You’d better pour yourself another tankard of ale and see if it will give you another brilliant idea, Mr—’ She stopped. ‘You never did tell me your name.’
‘You never asked me for it.’
‘I told you mine. It is only polite to reciprocate when a lady has introduced herself.’
He reared back, as though offended that she’d criticised his manners.
‘A lady,’ he replied cuttingly, ‘would never introduce herself.’
‘A gentleman,’ she snapped back, ‘would not make any kind of comment about any female’s station in life. And you still haven’t told me your name. I can only assume you must be ashamed of it.’
‘Ashamed of it? Never.’
‘Then why won’t you tell me what it is? Why are you being so evasive?’
He narrowed his eyes.
‘I am not being evasive. Last time we came to an introduction we veered off into a more pressing conversation about bread and butter I seem to recall. And this time I...’ He shifted uncomfortably in his chair. ‘I became distracted again.’ He set down his tankard and pressed the heels of his hands against his temples, closing his eyes as though in pain.
‘Oh, does your head hurt? I do beg your pardon. I am not usually so snappish. Or so insensitive.’
‘And I am not usually so clumsy,’ he said, lowering his hands and opening his eyes to regard her ruefully. ‘I fear we are not seeing each other at our best.’
He’d opened his mouth to say something else when the door swung open again, this time to permit two serving girls to come in, each bearing a tray of food.
Prudence looked at his steak, which was smothered in a mountain of onions, and then down at her plate of bread and butter with a touch of disappointment.
‘Wishing you’d ordered more? I can order you some eggs to go with that, if you like?’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t suppose I could eat them if you did order them, though it is very kind of you. It is just the smell of those onions...’ She half closed her eyes and breathed in deeply. ‘Ohhh...’ she couldn’t help moaning. ‘They are making my mouth water.’
He gave her a very strange look. Dropped his gaze as though he felt uncomfortable. Fumbled with his knife and fork.
‘Here,’ he said brusquely, cutting off a small piece of meat and depositing it on her plate. ‘Just a mouthful will do you no harm.’
And then he smiled at her. For the very first time. And something inside her sort of melted.
She’d never known a man with a black eye could smile with such charm.
Though was he deploying his charm on purpose? He certainly hadn’t bothered smiling at her before he’d heard she was an heiress.
‘Are you ever,’ she asked, reaching for a knife and fork, ‘going to tell me your name?’
His smile disappeared.
‘It is Willingale,’ he said quickly. Too quickly? ‘Gregory Willingale.’
Then he set about his steak with the air of a man who hadn’t eaten for a se’ennight.
Thank goodness she hadn’t been fooled by that charming smile into thinking he was a man she could trust. Which, she admitted, she had started to do. Why, she hadn’t talked to anyone so frankly and freely since her parents had died.
Which wouldn’t do. Because he had secrets, did her uncle Gregory. She’d seen a distinct flash of guilt when he’d spoken the name Willingale.
Which meant he was definitely hiding something.
Chapter Five (#u655ebb25-5855-5bd6-a04e-c82d52bab9e6)
Perhaps his real name wasn’t Gregory Willingale at all. Perhaps he was using an alias, for some reason. But what could she do about it anyway? Run to the burly bartender with a tale of being abandoned by her aunt and left to the mercy of a man she’d never clapped eyes on until the night before? What would that achieve? Nothing—that was what. She already knew precisely what people who worked in inns thought of girls who went to them with tales of that sort. They thought they were making them up. At least that was what the landlady of the last inn had said. Before lecturing her about her lack of morals and throwing her out.
Earlier this morning she’d thought the woman must be incredibly cruel to do such a thing. But if Prudence had been the landlady of an inn, with a business to run, would she have believed such a fantastic tale? Why, she was living through it and she hardly believed it herself.
She cleared her throat.
‘So, Mr Willingale,’ she said, but only after swallowing the last of the sirloin he’d shared with her. ‘Or should I call you Uncle Willingale? What do you propose we do next?’
Her own next step would depend very much on whatever his plans were. She’d only make up her mind what to do when she’d heard what they were.
‘I am not sure,’ he said through a mouthful of beef. ‘I do not think we are in possession of enough facts.’
Goodness. That was pretty much the same conclusion she’d just drawn.
‘Though I do think,’ he said, scooping up a forkful of onions and depositing it on her plate, ‘that in some way your guardians are attempting to defraud you of your inheritance.’
‘Thank you,’ she said meekly. ‘For the onions, I mean,’ she hastily explained, before spreading them on one of the remaining slices of bread and butter, then folding it into a sort of sandwich.
‘You’re welcome. Though how abandoning you in a small hostelry in the middle of nowhere will serve their purpose I cannot imagine. Surely the disappearance of a wealthy young woman will not go unnoticed wherever it is you come from?’
Since her mouth was full, she shook her head.
‘It might not be noticed,’ she admitted, as soon as her mouth was free to use it for anything other than eating. ‘Not for a very long time anyway. Because we were on our way to Bath.’
‘Bath?’
Why did he look as though he didn’t believe her?
‘Yes, Bath. Why not? I know it isn’t exactly fashionable any more, but we are far from fashionable people. And I did tell you, didn’t I, that Aunt Charity had been trying to get me to marry...? Well, someone I don’t much care for.’
‘A relative of her new husband?’ he said grimly.
‘Yes.’
‘And then she suddenly changed her tack, did she? Offered to take you somewhere you could meet a young man you might actually like?’
‘There’s no need to say it like that!’ Though she had been rather surprised by her aunt’s sudden volte-face. ‘She said she would rather see me married to anyone than have me create talk by moving out of her house to set up home on my own.’
‘My mental powers are growing stronger by the minute,’ Gregory said sarcastically, sawing off another piece of steak. ‘Do go on,’ he said, when she glowered at him over the rim of her teacup. ‘You were about to tell me why nobody will be raising a hue and cry.’
‘I have already told you. Aunt Charity finally saw that nothing on earth would induce me to marry...that toad. So she told everyone she was going to take me to Bath and keep me there until she’d found me a match, since I had turned up my nose at the best Stoketown had to offer.’
‘Stoketown? You hail from Stoketown?’
‘Yes.’
‘And your aunt claimed she was taking you to Bath?’
‘Yes.’
He laid down his knife and fork. ‘You are not very bright, are you?’
‘What? How dare you?’
‘I dare because you were headed in entirely the wrong direction ever to end up in Bath. You should have gone in a south-westerly direction from Stoketown. Instead you had been travelling in completely the opposite direction. Wherever it was your guardians were planning to take you, it most definitely wasn’t Bath.’
‘I don’t believe you. That cannot be true.’ Though why would he say such a thing if he didn’t think it?
‘Would you like me to ask the landlord to bring us a road map?’ he asked her calmly. ‘He probably has one, since this inn is on a staging route.’
‘I’ve had enough of landlords for one day,’ she said bitterly. ‘The less I have to do with the one of this tavern, the better.’
‘So you believe you were not headed in the direction of Bath?’
She turned her cup round and round on its saucer for a few moments, thinking as hard as she could. ‘I cannot think of any reason why you should say that if it weren’t true,’ she said pensively. ‘But then, I cannot think of any reason why Aunt Charity should claim to be taking me there and actually be taking me in the opposite direction, either.’
‘Nor why she should give you something that would make you sleep so soundly you wouldn’t even wake when she carried you to the room of the most disreputable person she could find, undressed you, and put you into bed with him? Aha!’ he cried, slapping the tabletop. ‘Disreputable. That was the word I was searching for.’
‘Do you have to sound so pleased about it?’
‘I can’t help it. You have no idea how irritating it has been, not being able to come up with the words I want,’ he said, wiping the gravy from his plate with the last slice of her bread.
Her bread. The bread she’d ordered.
Though, to be fair, he had shared some of his own meal with her. If he had taken the last slice of her bread, at least he’d made up for it by sharing his steak and onions.
‘I wasn’t talking about that,’ she protested.
‘What, then?’
‘I meant about the conclusions you have drawn.’
‘Well, I’m pleased about them, too. That is that things are becoming clear.’
‘Are they?’
‘Yes.’ He finished the bread, picked up his tankard, emptied that, and sat back with a satisfied sigh. ‘I have ruled Hugo out of the equation. You,’ he said, setting the tankard down on the tabletop with a sort of a flourish, ‘are an heiress. And villains are trying to swindle you out of your inheritance. First of all they told everyone they were going to take you to Bath, and then set off in the opposite direction. Where exactly they planned to take you, and what they planned to do when they got there, we may never know. Because one of the horses went lame and they were obliged to rack up at The Bull. Where they were shown to rooms on the very top floor.’
He leaned forward slightly.
‘There were only three rooms on that floor, if you recall. Yours, mine, and I presume theirs?’
She nodded.
‘Your aunt saw me, reached an unflattering conclusion about my integrity on account of my black eye and travel-stained clothing, and decided to make the most of what must have looked like a golden opportunity to dispose of you. You have already admitted that you believe your aunt gave you some sort of sleeping draught.’
‘Well, I suppose she might have done. I didn’t think it was anything more than hot milk at the time, but—’
‘How they managed to administer something similar to me is a bit of a puzzle,’ he said, cutting her off mid-sentence. ‘But let us assume they did. Once I lay sleeping heavily they carried you to my room, safe in the knowledge that there would be no witnesses to the deed since we were isolated up there.’
She shuddered. She couldn’t bear to think of Mr Murgatroyd touching her, doing who knew what to her while she was insensible. Oh, she hoped he’d left the room before her aunt had undressed her. At least she could be certain he hadn’t done that himself. Aunt Charity would never have permitted it.
‘Then, in the morning,’ Gregory continued, ‘they set up a bustle, pretending to search for you. They must have summoned the landlord and dragged him up all those stairs, attracting a crowd on the way so that they could all witness you waking up naked in my bed.’
‘There is no need to look so pleased about it. It was horrid!’
His expression sobered.
‘I beg your pardon,’ he said. ‘But you see I have led a very dull, regulated sort of existence until very recently. Suffocatingly boring, to be perfectly frank. And I had come to the conclusion that what I needed was a bit of a challenge. What could be more challenging than taking on a pair of villains trying to swindle an heiress out of her inheritance? Or solving the mystery of how we ended up naked in the same bed together?’
She wished he wouldn’t keep harping on about the naked part of it. How did he expect her to look him in the eye or hold a sensible conversation when he kept reminding her that she’d been naked?
She had to change the subject.
‘Pardon me for pointing it out,’ she said, indicating his black eye and then the grazes on his knuckles, ‘but you don’t look to me as though you have been leading what you call a dull sort of existence.’
‘Oh, this?’ He chuckled as he flexed his bruised hands. ‘This was the start of my adventure, actually. I’d gone up to Manchester to deal with a...ah...a situation that had come to my attention. I was on my way...er...to meet someone and report back when I...’ He looked a bit sheepish. ‘Well, to be perfectly honest I took a wrong turning. That’s why I ended up at that benighted inn last night. So Hugo couldn’t have done it!’ He slapped the table. ‘Of course he couldn’t.’ He smiled at her. ‘Well, that’s a relief. I shan’t have to hold him to account for what has happened to you. I don’t think I could have forgiven him this.’
His smile faded. He gave her a look she couldn’t interpret, then glared balefully at his empty tankard.
He took a deep breath. ‘I’m going to take you to the place where I’ve arranged to meet him. Straight away.’
She wasn’t at all sure she liked the sound of that.
‘Excuse me, but I’m not convinced that is the right thing to do.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ He looked completely stunned. ‘Why should you not wish to go there?’
‘I know nothing about it, that’s why.’ And precious little about him, except that he had recently been in a fight and was being downright shifty about what it had been about.
Oh, yes—and she knew what he looked like naked.
‘It is a very comfortable property in which a relative of mine lives,’ he snapped. ‘A sort of aunt.’
She gave an involuntary shiver.
‘You need not be afraid of her. Well...’ He rubbed his nose with his thumb. ‘I suppose some people do find her impossible, but she won’t behave the way your aunt did—I can promise you that.’
‘I would rather,’ she said tartly, ‘not have anything to do with any sort of aunt—particularly one you freely admit is impossible.’
‘Nevertheless,’ he said firmly, ‘she can provide you with clean clothes, and we will both enjoy good food and comfortable beds. In rooms that nobody will invade,’ he said with a sort of muted anger, ‘the way they did at The Bull. And then, once we are rested and recovered, I can contact people who will be able to get to the bottom of the crime being perpetrated against you.’
‘Will you? I mean...thank you very much,’ she added doubtfully.
If he really did mean to take her to the home of a female relative who lived in some comfort, even if she was a touch difficult to get on with, and contact people on her behalf to right the wrongs done her, then it was the best thing she could think of.
It was just that coming from a man with a black eye and bruised knuckles it sounded a bit too good to be true.
He shot her a piercing glance. ‘Don’t you believe me?’
‘I am sorry,’ she said, a touch defiantly. ‘But I am having trouble believing anything that has happened today. But if you say you mean to help me, then I shall...’ She paused, because she’d been brought up to be very truthful. ‘I shall try to believe you mean it.’
‘Of course I mean it. Your guardians picked the wrong man to use as their dupe when they deposited you in my bed. I will make them rue the day they attempted to cross swords with me.’ He flexed his bruised, grazed hands.
‘Did you make them rue the day as well?’
She’d blurted out the question before she’d even known she was wondering about it. She looked up at him in trepidation. Only to discover he was smiling. True, it wasn’t what she’d call a very nice sort of smile. In fact it looked more like the kind of expression she imagined a fox would have after devastating a henhouse.
‘Yes, I made a whole lot of people sorry yesterday,’ he said.
She swallowed. Reached for the teapot.
Something about the way she poured her second cup of tea must have betrayed her misgivings, because his satisfied smile froze.
‘I don’t generally go about getting into brawls, if that’s what you’re afraid of,’ he said.
‘I’m not afraid.’
He sighed. ‘I wouldn’t blame you if you were. Look...’ He folded his arms across his chest. ‘I’ll tell you what happened, and why it happened, and then you can judge for yourself.’
She shrugged one shoulder, as if she didn’t care, and took a sip of her tea. This time, thankfully, it had much more flavour.
‘It started with a letter from a man who worked in a...a manufactory. In it he described a lot of double-dealing, as well as some very unsavoury behaviour towards the female mill workers by the foreman, and he asked the owner of the mill whether he could bear having such things going on in his name. He couldn’t,’ he said, with a decisive lift to his chin. ‘And so I went to see if I could get evidence of the wrongdoing, and find a way to put a stop to it.’
So he was employed as a sort of investigator? Which explained why he had a secretary. Someone who would help him keep track of the paperwork while he went off doing the actual thief-taking. It also explained why he was reluctant to speak of his trade. He would have to keep a lot of what he did to himself. Or criminals would see him coming.
She took a sip of tea and suddenly saw that that couldn’t be the right conclusion. Because it sounded like rather an exciting sort of way to make a living. And he’d said he had lived a dull, ordered existence. She sighed. Why did nothing make any sense today?
‘I soon found out that it wouldn’t be possible to bring the foreman to trial for what he was doing to the women under his power, because not a one of them would stand up in court and testify. Well, you couldn’t expect it of them.’
‘No,’ she murmured, horrified. ‘So what did you do?’
‘Well, Bodkin—that’s the man who wrote the letter—said that maybe we’d be able to get the overseer dismissed for fraud if we could only find the false ledgers he kept. He sent one set of accounts to...to the mill owner, you see, and kept another to tally up what he was actually making for himself. We couldn’t simply walk in and demand to see the books, because he’d have just shown us the counterfeit ones. So we had to break in at night, and search for them.’
‘Aunt Charity said you looked like a housebreaker,’ she couldn’t help saying. Though she clapped her hand over her mouth as soon as she’d said it.
He frowned. ‘It’s funny, but I would never have thought I’d be keen to tell anyone about Wragley’s. But you blurting out things the way you just did... Perhaps it’s something to do with the drug we were given. We can’t help saying whatever is on our minds.’
‘I...suppose that might be it,’ she said, relieved that he wasn’t disposed to take her to task for being so rude. ‘Although...’ She paused.
‘What?’
‘Never mind,’ she said with a shake of her head. She didn’t want to admit that for some reason she felt as though she could say anything to him. ‘You were telling me about how you tried to find the second set of books?’
‘Oh, yes. Well, long story short, we found them. Only the night watchman saw the light from our lantern, called for help and came after us. It was touch and go for a while, but eventually we got clean away,’ he ended with a grin.
So even if he wasn’t a professional thief-taker, he certainly enjoyed investigating crime and seeing villains brought to book. A man who could speak of such an adventure with that look of relish on his face would be perfect for helping her untangle whatever it was that Aunt Charity and Uncle Murgatroyd thought they’d achieved last night.
Someone who could fight for her. Defend her. And he was certainly capable of that. She only had to think of all those bulging muscles. The ones she’d seen that morning as he’d gone stalking about the bedroom, stark naked and furious.
Oh, dear, there was that word again. The one that made her blush, since this time it wasn’t just her own nudity she was picturing but his.
She pushed it out of her mind. Instantly it was replaced by the memory of him handing her his jacket. And that after she’d almost brained him with a rock.
Which helped her come to a decision.
‘I should like you to make Aunt Charity and Uncle Murgatroyd sorry, too. Because I think you are right. I think they are trying to take my money. Trying to make me disappear altogether, actually. If it was them who put me in your room—’
‘Who else could it have been?’
‘I know, I know. You’re clearly very good at working out how criminals think. It still isn’t very pleasant to accept it. But...’ She drew a deep breath. ‘Very well, when they put me in your room,’ she said, although her stomach gave a little lurch, ‘they probably did take advantage of the way the rooms were isolated up there—particularly after they saw the way you looked and behaved at dinner. I do think they believed that of all the men in that place you looked the most likely to treat me the worst.’
‘For that alone I should break them. How dare they assume any such thing?’
And that was another thing. He had a vested interest in clearing his own name, too. Now that she’d heard the lengths to which he’d gone to right the wrongs being done to the women at that mill, she felt much better about going to the house of which he’d spoken. They would need somewhere to go and hatch their plans for...not revenge. Justice. Yes, it was only justice she wanted.
‘So you will help me track them down and make them pay?’
Make them pay? ‘I most certainly will,’ he said.
He would set his people on their trail. He would tell them it was their top priority. From what Prudence had told him so far, he wouldn’t be surprised to learn they’d actually been heading for Liverpool. Possibly with a view to leaving the country altogether, if her uncle had actually swindled her out of all her money. On the off-chance that the case was not as bad as all that, he’d make sure his staff found out everything about their business dealings, too, and gained control of any leases or mortgages they had. He would throw a cordon around them so tight that they wouldn’t be able to sneeze without his permission.
And if it turned out that they had stolen Prudence’s inheritance, and hadn’t had the sense to get out of the country while they could, then he would crush them. Utterly.
Just then the door opened and the landlord came in.
‘Next coach’s due in any time now,’ he said without preamble. ‘Time for you to make off.’
Gregory deliberately relaxed his hands, which he’d clenched into fists as he’d been considering all the ways he could make Prudence’s relatives pay for what they’d done. ‘Bring me the reckoning, then,’ he said. ‘I am ready to depart.’
He turned to see Prudence eyeing him warily.
‘Hand me my purse, would you, niece? It’s in my pocket.’
She continued to stare at him in that considering way until he was forced to speak to her more sternly.
‘Prudence, my purse.’
She jumped, but then dug her hand into one of the pockets of the jacket he’d lent her. And then the other one. And then, instead of handing over his purse, she pulled out the stocking he’d thrust in there and forgotten all about. She gazed at it in bewilderment.
Before she could start asking awkward questions he darted round the table, whipped it out of her hand and thrust it into his waistcoat. And then, because she appeared so stunned by the discovery of one of her undergarments that she’d forgotten to hand him his purse, he decided he might as well get it himself.
It wasn’t there. Not in the pocket where he could have sworn he’d put it. A cold, sick swirl of panic had him delving into all the jacket pockets, several times over. Even though it was obvious what had happened.
‘It’s gone,’ he said, tamping down the panic as he faced the truth. ‘We’ve been robbed.’
Chapter Six (#u655ebb25-5855-5bd6-a04e-c82d52bab9e6)
‘Ho, robbed, is it?’ The landlord planted his fists on his ample hips. ‘Sure, and you had such a fat purse between you when you come in.’
‘Not a fat purse, no,’ said Gregory, whirling round from his crouched position to glare at the landlord. ‘But sufficient. Do you think I would have asked for a private parlour if I hadn’t the means to pay for it?’
‘What I think is that there’s a lot of rogues wandering the highways of England these days. And one of them, or rather two,’ he said, eyeing Prudence, ‘have fetched up here.’
‘Now, look here...’
‘No, you look here. I don’t care what story you come up with, I won’t be fooled, see? So you just find the means to pay what you owe or I’m sending for the constable and you’ll be spending the night in the roundhouse.’
There was no point in arguing. The man’s mind was closed as tight as a drum. Besides, Gregory had seen the way he’d dealt with that bunch of customers in the tap. Ruthlessly and efficiently.
There was nothing for it. He stood up and reached for the watch he had in his waistcoat pocket. A gold hunter that was probably worth the same as the entire inn, never mind the rather basic meal they’d just consumed. The very gold hunter that Hugo had predicted he’d be obliged to pawn. His stomach contracted. He’d already decided to go straight to Bramley Park rather than wait until the end of the week. But that was his decision. Pawning the watch was not, and it felt like the bitterest kind of failure.
‘If you would care to point me in the direction of the nearest pawn shop,’ he said, giving the landlord a glimpse of his watch, ‘I shall soon have the means to pay what we owe.’
‘And what’s to stop you legging it the minute I let you out of my sight? You leave the watch with me and I’ll pawn it if you don’t return.’
Leave his watch in the possession of this barrel of lard? Let those greasy fingers leave smears all over the beautifully engraved casing? He’d rather spend the night in the roundhouse.
Only there was Prudence to consider. Spending a night in a roundhouse after the day she’d had... No, he couldn’t possibly condemn her to that.
‘I could go and pawn it,’ put in Prudence, startling them both.
‘That ain’t no better an idea than to let him go off and not come back,’ said the landlord scathingly.
He had to agree. She was sure to come to some harm if he let her out of his sight. He’d never met such a magnet for trouble in all his life.
‘You do realise,’ he said, folding his arms across his chest, and his gold watch to boot, ‘that I have a horse and gig in your stables which would act as surety no matter which of us goes to raise what we owe?’
The landlord gave an ironic laugh. ‘You expect me to believe you’d come back if I let either one of you out of my sight?’
‘Even if I didn’t return you’d still have the horse.’ Which would serve him right. ‘And the vehicle, too. I know the paint is flaking a bit, but the actual body isn’t in bad repair. You could sell them both for ten times what we owe for breakfast.’
‘And who’s to say you wouldn’t turn up the minute I’d sold ’em, with some tale of me swindling and cheating you, eh? Trouble—that’s what you are. Knew it the minute I clapped eyes on yer.’
‘Then you were mistaken. I am not trouble. I am just temporarily in a rather embarrassing state. Financially.’
Good grief, had he really uttered the very words he’d heard drop so many times from Hugo’s lips? The words he’d refused to believe any man with an ounce of intelligence or willpower could ever have any excuse for uttering?
‘What you got in that case of yours?’ asked the landlord abruptly, pointing to his valise.
Stays—that was the first thing that came to mind. And the landlord had already spied the stocking Prudence had extracted from his jacket pocket.
‘Nothing of any great value,’ he said hastily. ‘You really would be better accepting the horse and gig as surety for payment.’
The landlord scratched the lowest of his ample chins thoughtfully. ‘If you really do have a horse stabled here, I s’pose that’d do.’
Gregory sucked in a sharp stab of indignation as the landlord turned away from him with a measuring look and went to open one of the back windows.
‘Jem!’ the landlord yelled through the window. ‘Haul your hide over here and take a gander at this sharp.’
Gregory’s indignation swelled to new proportions at hearing himself being described as a ‘sharp’. He’d never cheated or swindled anyone in his life.
‘It’s horrid, isn’t it?’ said Prudence softly, coming to stand next to him. ‘Having persons like that—’ she jerked her head in the landlord’s direction ‘—doubt your word.’
‘It is indeed,’ he replied. It was especially so since, viewed dispassionately, everything he’d done since entering this inn had given the man just cause for doing so.
‘Though to be fair,’ she added philosophically, ‘we don’t look the sort of people I would trust if I was running this kind of business.’ She frowned. ‘I put that very clumsily, but you know what I mean.’ She waved a hand between them.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I do know exactly what you mean.’
He’d just thought it himself. Her aunt had marked him as a villain the night before just because of his black eye. Since then he’d acquired a gash, a day’s growth of beard, and a liberal smear of mud all down one side of his coat. He’d been unable to pay for his meal, and had then started waving ladies’ undergarments under the landlord’s nose.
As for Prudence—with her hair all over the place, and wearing the jacket she’d borrowed from him rather than a lady’s spencer over her rumpled gown—she, too, now looked thoroughly disreputable.
Admirably calm though, considering the things she’d been through. Calm enough to look at things from the landlord’s point of view.
‘You take it all on the chin, don’t you? Whatever life throws at you?’
‘Well, there’s never any point in weeping and wailing, is there? All that does is make everyone around you irritable.’
Was that what had happened to her? When first her mother and then her father had died, and one grandfather had refused to accept responsibility for her and the other had palmed her off on a cold, resentful aunt? He wouldn’t have blamed her for weeping in such circumstances. And he could easily see that bony woman becoming irritated.
He wished there had been someone there for her in those days. He wished there was something he could do for her now. Although it struck him now that she’d come to stand by his side, as though she was trying to help him.
To be honest, and much to his surprise, she had succeeded. He did feel better. Less insulted by the landlord’s mistrustfulness, at any rate.
‘We do look rather like a pair of desperate criminals,’ he admitted, leaning down so he could murmur into her ear. ‘In fact it is a wonder the landlord permitted us to enter his establishment at all.’
Just then a tow-headed individual poked his head through the open window.
‘What’s up, Sarge?’
‘This ’ere gent,’ said the landlord ironically, ‘claims he has a horse and gig in your stable. Know anything about it?’
As the stable lad squinted at him Gregory’s heart sped up. Incredible to feel nervous. Yet the prospect that Jem might fail to recognise him was very real. He’d only caught a glimpse of him as he’d handed over the reins, after all.
Prudence patted his hand, as though she knew exactly what he was thinking. Confirming his suspicions that she was trying to reassure him all would be well.
‘Bad-tempered nag,’ Jem pronounced after a second or two, much to Gregory’s relief. ‘And a Yarmouth coach.’
Yes, that was a close enough description of the rig he’d been driving.
‘Right,’ said the landlord decisively. ‘Back to work, then.’
Jem withdrew his head and the landlord slammed the window shut behind him.
Gregory resisted the peculiar fleeting urge to take hold of Prudence’s hand. Focussed on the landlord.
‘So, we have a deal?’ he said firmly.
‘I suppose,’ said the landlord grudgingly. ‘Except now I’m going to have your animal eating its head off at my expense for the Lord knows how long.’
‘Fair point. How about this? If I’m not back within the space of one week from today, with what we owe for the meal we’ve eaten, plus the cost of stabling the horse, you can sell the beast and the...er...Yarmouth coach.’
‘One week from today?’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘I s’pose that’d do. But only if you put something in writing first.’
‘Naturally. Bring me pen and paper and you may have my vowels.’
The landlord screwed up his face and shook his head, indicating his reluctance to let them out of his sight even for the length of time it would take to fetch writing implements. Instead, he rummaged in his apron pocket and produced what looked like a bill and a stub of pencil, then slapped both on the table.
As Gregory bent to write the necessary phrases on the back of the bill he heard the sound of a coaching horn. Closely followed by the noise of wheels rattling into the yard. Then two surprisingly smart waiters strode into the coffee room, bearing trays of cups and tankards.
The landlord swept Gregory’s note and the pencil back into his pocket without even glancing at them, his mind clearly on the next influx of customers.
‘Get out,’ he said brusquely. ‘Before I change my mind and send for the constable anyway.’
Gregory didn’t need telling twice. He snatched up the valise with the incriminating stays with one hand, and grabbed Prudence’s arm with the other. Then he dragged her from the room against the tide of people surging in, all demanding coffee or ale.
‘Come on,’ he growled at her. ‘Stop dragging your heels. We need to get out of here before that fat fool changes his mind.’
‘But...’ she panted. ‘How on earth are we going to get wherever it is you planned to take me without your gig?’
‘Never mind that now. The first thing to do is find a pawn shop.’
‘It will be in a back street somewhere,’ she said. ‘So that people can hope nobody will see them going in.’
‘It isn’t a very big town,’ he said, on a last flickering ray of hope. ‘There might not even be one.’
‘If there wasn’t the landlord would have said so,’ she pointed out with annoyingly faultless logic.
Condemning him to the humiliating prospect of sneaking into some back street pawn shop. After all the times he’d lectured Hugo about the evils of dealing with pawnbrokers and moneylenders.
‘And I don’t see why you have to walk so fast,’ she complained. ‘Not when we have a whole week to raise the money.’
‘We?’ He couldn’t believe she could speak of his possessions as though they were her own. As though she had some rights as to how he should dispose of them. ‘I am the one who is going to have to pawn my watch.’
‘I’m sorry. I can see how reluctant you are to part with it. But you know I don’t have anything of value.’
‘Not any more,’ he fumed. ‘Thanks to you.’
‘What do you mean, thanks to me?’
‘I mean that you had my purse. Which contained easily enough money to last until the end of the week. I can’t believe how careless you are.’
‘Careless? What do you mean? Are you implying it’s my fault you lost your purse?’
‘Well, you were wearing my jacket when those oafs jostled it out of the pocket.’
‘What oafs?’ She frowned. ‘Oh. You mean when we came in here?’
He could see her mind going over the scene, just as his own had done the moment he’d realised the purse wasn’t where he’d put it.
‘So,’ she added slowly. ‘You think that is when the purse went missing, do you?’
‘When else could it have gone?’
‘How about when you fell out of the gig?’
‘You mean when you pushed me out of the gig?’
They were no longer walking along the street but standing toe to toe, glaring at each other. Though what right she had to be angry, he couldn’t imagine. He was the one who was having to abandon every principle he held dear. She was the one whose fault it was.
Yet she was breathing heavy, indignant breaths. Which made her gown strain over her bosom.
Her unfettered bosom.
Since her stays were in his hand. At least they were in his valise, which was in his hand.
‘Right,’ she said, and drew herself up to her full height and lifted her chin.
He probably ought to warn her to pull his jacket closed. She could have no idea how touchable and tempting she looked right now.
Tempting? No. She wasn’t tempting. She was not.
No more than she’d been when she’d moaned in ecstasy at the flavour of his steak and onions. There was still something the matter with his brain—that was what it was. Some lingering after-effect from the drug. It explained why he’d spilled out almost the entire story of his adventure at Wragley’s. And why he kept on being afflicted by these inconvenient, inappropriate surges of lust.
Though part of it was down to her. The way she looked all wild and wanton in the grip of anger, so much more alive and vital than any other woman he’d ever known. The way she openly stood up to him in a way nobody had ever dared before.
Though he’d even found her appealing when she’d looked drugged and dazed and helpless. Helpless, she aroused his protective instincts. Angry she just aroused...more basic instincts.
‘Right,’ she said again. And with a toss of her head turned round and strode away from him.
‘Where do you think you are going?’ The insufferable wench was obliging him to follow her if he didn’t wish to lose sight of her.
‘I’m going,’ she tossed over her shoulder, ‘to sort out the mess you have plunged us into.’
‘Mess I have plunged us into? You were the one who got robbed—’
‘You were the one who left the purse in my pocket, though, once it became an outside pocket after you removed your coat.’
‘I—’ Dammit, she was correct. Again. He should have kept hold of the purse himself.
‘In my defence,’ he pointed out resentfully, ‘I had just suffered a stunning blow to the head.’
‘Trust you to bring that up,’ she said, rounding on him. And then, taking him completely by surprise, she reached up and snatched off his hat.
‘You don’t mind me borrowing this, do you?’
‘For what, pray?’
‘To collect the money.’
‘Collect the...what?’
She didn’t seriously mean to go begging through the streets, did she? That would be worse by far than anything that had happened to him yet.
‘Yes, I do mind,’ he said, reaching round her to retrieve his property.
But she twitched it out of his reach. And slapped his hand for good measure. And carried on walking down the street towards the market square.
‘Prudence,’ he warned her. ‘I cannot permit you to do this.’ It was unthinkable. If anyone ever found out that he’d been seen begging... The very thought sent cold chills down his spine.
‘Permit me?’
If he thought she’d looked angry before it was as nothing compared to the way she looked now. She came to an abrupt halt.
‘You have no say over anything I do,’ she said, poking him in the chest with her forefinger. A habit she’d no doubt picked up from that bony aunt of hers. ‘I shall do as I please.’
‘Not with my hat, you won’t.’
He made a move to get it back. But she was still too quick for him, nimbly leaping out of his reach with the agility of a professional fencing master.
‘Prudence,’ he snapped. ‘Don’t you realise you can be arrested for begging?’
‘Begging?’ She gave him a disbelieving look over her shoulder. ‘I have no intention of begging.’
Well, that was a relief. But still... ‘Then what do you plan to do? With my hat?’
‘It’s market day,’ she said, as though the statement should be self-explanatory. And then added for his benefit, as though he were a total simpleton, ‘People expect entertainers to come to town on market day.’
‘Yes. But you are not an entertainer. Are you?’
‘No,’ she said indignantly. ‘But I do have a very fine singing voice.’
‘Oh, no...’ he muttered as she made for the market cross with his hat clutched in her determined little fingers. ‘You cannot mean to perform in the street for pennies, surely?’
‘Well, do you have a better idea?’
‘Yes.’
‘Which is...?’ She planted her hands on her hips and pursed her lips again.
Dammit, nobody ever questioned his decisions. If he said he had an idea people always waited to hear what it was, with a view to carrying out his orders at once. They didn’t plant their hands on their hips and look up at him as though they didn’t believe he had ever had a plan in his life.
‘I see no reason,’ he said, affronted, ‘why I should tell you.’
‘Just as I thought,’ she scoffed. ‘You haven’t a plan. Except to pawn your watch and then go crawling back to that nasty landlord, with your tail between your legs, in order to retrieve a horse you despise and a gig that you have trouble steering.’
‘I do not!’
He was a notable whip.
Normally.
‘And I have no intention of crawling. I never crawl.’
‘Really?’
She raised one eyebrow in such a disdainful way it put him in mind of one of the patronesses of Almack’s, depressing the pretensions of a mushroom trying to gain entrance to their hallowed club.
‘Really,’ he insisted.
‘So, how do you propose to treat with the landlord?’
‘Once I’ve pawned my watch—’
‘Look,’ she said, in the kind of voice he imagined someone using on a rather dim-witted child. ‘There will be no need for you to pawn that watch. Because I intend to rectify the situation I have caused by being so careless as to lose the purse you entrusted to my keeping without informing me you had done so. If it was actually there when you draped your jacket around my shoulders,’ she said with an acid smile. ‘For all I know you dropped it at The Bull. A lot of things went missing there. Why not your purse?’
‘Because I distinctly recall paying my shot there—that’s why.’
‘Well, then. It’s clearly up to me to make amends,’ she flung at him, before mounting the steps of the market cross and setting his hat at her feet.
‘Not so fast,’ he said, striding after her and mounting the steps himself.
‘You cannot stop me,’ she said, raising one hand as though to ward him off. ‘I will scream,’ she added as he reached for the open edges of his jacket.
But she didn’t. Not even before she realised that all he was doing was buttoning it up.
‘There,’ he growled. ‘At least you no longer run the risk of being arrested for indecency.’
She clapped her hands to her front, glancing down in alarm. While he stalked away to seek a position near enough to keep watch over her, yet far enough away that nobody would immediately suspect him of being her accomplice.
Once he’d found a suitable vantage point he folded his arms across his chest with a glower. Short of wrestling her down from the steps, there was no way to prevent the stubborn minx from carrying out her ridiculous threat. Let her sing, then! Just for as long as it took her to realise she was wasting her time. They’d never get as much money from what amounted to begging as they would by pawning his watch.
And then she’d have to fall in with his plans, meek as a lamb. A chastened lamb. Yes, he’d wait until the citizens of Tadburne had brought her down a peg, and then he’d be...magnanimous.
He permitted himself a smile in anticipation of some of the ways in which he could be magnanimous to Miss High-and-Mighty Prudence Carstairs while she cleared her throat, lifted her chin, shifted from one foot to the other, and generally worked up the nerve to start her performance.
The first note that came from her throat wavered. He grimaced. If that was the best she could do they weren’t going to be here very long. He’d pull her down off the steps before the locals started pelting her with cabbages, naturally. He didn’t want a travelling companion who smelled of rotting vegetables.
Prudence cleared her throat and started again. This time running through a set of scales, the way he’d heard professional singers do to warm up.
By the time she’d finished her scales the notes coming from her throat no longer squeaked and wavered. They flowed like liquid honey.
Prudence hadn’t exaggerated. She did indeed have a fine singing voice. In keeping with the husky, rather sensuous way she spoke, she sang in a deep, rich, contralto voice that might have earned her a fortune in London.
Blast her.
Every time he looked forward to gaining the advantage she somehow managed to wrest it back.
So why did he still find her so damned attractive?
* * *
Oh, Lord, if Aunt Charity could see her now! She’d be shocked. Horrified. That a Biddlestone should resort to singing in a public street... Although, had Aunt Charity not abandoned her in The Bull, there would have been no need to do any such thing. Or if Mr Willingale hadn’t lost his purse and chosen to blame her instead of shouldering it like a gentleman.
No, she mustn’t get angry. Anger would come out in her voice and ruin her performance. One of the singing teachers she’d had intermittently over the years had told her always to think pleasant thoughts when singing, even if the ballad was a tragic one, or it would make her vocal cords tense and ruin her tone.
So she lost herself in the words, telling the story of a girl in love with a swain in the greenwood. She pictured the apple blossom, the rippling brook and the moss-covered pebbles about which she was singing.
She would not look at Mr Willingale, whose expression was enough to turn milk sour. Or at least not very often. Because, although it was extremely satisfying to see the astonishment on his face when she proved that not only could she sing, she could do so to a very high standard, it made her want to giggle. And nobody could sing in tune when they were giggling. It was worse than being angry, because it ruined the breath control.
Far better to look the other way, to where people were starting to take note of her. To draw near and listen. To pull out their hankies as she reached the tragic climax of the ballad and dab at their eyes.
And toss coppers into the hat she’d laid at her feet.
She did permit herself to dart just one triumphant glance in Mr Willingale’s direction before launching into her next song, but only one. There would be time enough to crow when she could tip the shower of pennies she was going to earn into his hands.
She’d show him—oh, yes, she would. It had been so insulting of him not to trust her to pawn his watch. He’d looked at her the way that landlord had just looked at him. How could he think she’d run off with his watch and leave him there?
He’d assumed she would steal his gig, too, earlier, and leave him stunned and bleeding in the lane.
He was the most distrustful, suspicious, insulting man she’d ever met, and why she was still trying to prove she wasn’t any of the things he thought, she couldn’t imagine.
Why, she had as much cause to distrust him—waking up naked in his bed like that.
Only honesty compelled her to admit that it hadn’t been his doing. That was entirely down to Aunt Charity and her vile new husband. There really could be no other explanation.
She came to the end of her second ballad and smiled at the people dropping coins into Mr Willingale’s hat. How she wished she had a glass of water. Singing in the open air made the voice so dry, so quickly. Perhaps she could prevail upon Mr Willingale to fetch her some? She darted a hopeful glance in his direction. But he just grimaced, as though in disgust, then turned and strode off down a side street.
He had no intention of helping her—not when he was opposed to her plan. The beast was just going to leave her there. Probably hoping she’d become nervous once he was out of sight and run after him, begging him not to leave her alone.
Well, if he thought she would feel afraid of being alone in the middle of a strange town then he didn’t know her at all. Why, she’d been in far more dangerous places than an English town on market day.
Though then she’d been a child. With her parents to protect her. Not to mention the might of the English army at her back. Which was why she’d never felt this vulnerable before.
Not even when she’d realised her aunt had abandoned her at The Bull. Though that had probably been largely due to the fact that she’d been numb with shock and still dazed from the sleeping draught at that point this morning. But now she was starting to think clearly.
What was to become of her?
She had no money. Only the few clothes she stood up in. And no real idea where she was or where she was going. In just a few short hours she’d become almost totally reliant on Mr Willingale. Who’d just disappeared down that alley. For a second, panic gripped her by the throat.
But she was not some spineless milk-and-water miss who would go running after a man and beg him not to abandon her to the mercy of strangers. She was a Carstairs. And no Carstairs ever quailed in the face of adversity.
Defiantly, she lifted her chin and launched into her third ballad.
Chapter Seven (#u655ebb25-5855-5bd6-a04e-c82d52bab9e6)
Prudence had hardly got going when a trio of young men emerged from a side street and sauntered in her direction. She could tell they were trouble even before they pushed to the front of the crowd who’d gathered to hear her sing.
She did her best not to display any sign of nervousness. But it was difficult not to feel anxious when one of them pulled out a quizzing glass, raked her insolently from top to toe, and said, ‘Stap me, but I never thought to find such a prime article in such an out-of-the way place.’
She carried on singing as though she hadn’t heard him.
One of his companions, meanwhile, turned to look at the farmer standing next to him. With a supercilious sneer he pulled out a handkerchief and held it to his nose. The yokel turned a dull, angry shade of red and shuffled away.
The three young bucks had soon had the same effect on all her audience. By the time she’d reached the end of her song they’d all dispersed. Leaving her alone on the steps of the cross.
Time to leave. Her voice was past its best anyhow. What with having nobody to bring her a glass of water...
She darted the bucks a smile she hoped was nonchalant as she bent to pick up the hat.
‘Allow me,’ said the one with the quizzing glass, snatching it from the ground before she could get to it. He smirked at his companions, who chuckled and drew closer.
‘Thank you,’ she said, holding out her hand in the faint hope that he’d simply give her the hat. Though she could tell he had no intention of doing any such thing.
‘Not much to show for your performance,’ he said, glancing into the hat, then at her. ‘Hardly worth your trouble, really.’
The others sniggered.
‘It is to me,’ she said. ‘Please hand it over.’
He took a step closer, leering at her. ‘Only if you pay a forfeit. I think a hatful of coins is worth a kiss, don’t you?’
His friends found him terribly amusing, to judge from the way they all hooted with laughter.
He pressed forward, lips puckered as though to make her pay the forfeit.
She backed up a step. ‘Absolutely not,’ she protested.
‘A kiss for each of us,’ cried the one who’d driven the farmer away with his scented handkerchief.
All three were advancing on her now, forcing her to retreat up the steps until her back was pressed to the market cross.
‘Let me pass,’ she said, as firmly as she could considering her heart was banging against her ribs so hard.
‘If you are going to give my friends a kiss just for letting you pass,’ said the ringleader, ‘I should demand something more for the return of your takings, don’t you think?’
The look in his eyes put her forcibly in mind of the greasy ostler from The Bull. And when he leaned forward, as though to follow through on his thinly veiled threat, her whole being clenched so hard she was convinced she was about to be sick.
‘You will demand nothing, you damned insolent pup,’ said someone, in such a menacing growl that all three bucks spun round to see who was trying to spoil their fun.
It was Mr Willingale. Oh, thank heavens.
‘I will take that,’ he said, indicating the hat.
Miraculously, they didn’t argue, but meekly handed it over and melted away, muttering apologies.
Or perhaps it wasn’t such a miracle. He’d looked disreputable enough last night for her aunt to select him to act as the villain in her scheme. With the addition of a day’s growth of beard and a furious glare in those steely grey eyes he looked as though he might easily rip three slender young fops to ribbons and step over their lifeless corpses without experiencing a shred of remorse.
She forgot all about her determination to prove she didn’t need him to look after her as she stumbled down the steps and flung her arms round his neck.
‘I’ve never been so glad to see anyone in my life,’ she sobbed. ‘I thought you’d gone! Left me!’
‘Of course not,’ he snapped, standing completely rigid in the circle of her arms. As though he was highly embarrassed.
‘Oh, I do beg your pardon,’ she said, unwinding her arms from his neck and stepping hastily back.
‘That’s quite all right,’ he said gruffly, patting her shoulder in an avuncular manner. ‘You had a fright. Here,’ he said then, tipping the small change from the hat into her hands. ‘Your takings.’
Then he clapped the hat back onto his head and tipped it at an angle that somehow magnified the aura of leashed power already hanging round him.
A tide of completely feminine feelings surged through her. Feelings he’d made it very clear he found embarrassingly unwelcome. She bent her head to hide the blush heating her cheeks, pretending she was engrossed in counting her takings.
Fourpence three farthings. Better than she’d have thought, considering her audience hadn’t looked all that affluent.
‘Well?’
His dry, sarcastic tone robbed her of what little pleasure she might have felt at her success if he hadn’t already made her feel so very awkward, and foolish, and helpless, and...female.
‘Well, what?’
‘Do you have enough to pay the landlord for our breakfast?’
‘You know very well I haven’t.’
‘So we shall have to pop my watch after all.’ He grimaced. ‘I can’t believe I’m using such a vulgar term. I suppose I must have caught it from Hugo. He is always being obliged to “pop” something or other to “keep the dibs in tune”, or so he informs me.’
‘Not necessarily.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, we have this,’ she said, jingling her coins.
‘Oh, please,’ he huffed. ‘We’ve already established you’ve hardly made anything there.’
‘It’s enough to buy some bread and cheese,’ she pointed out. ‘Which will keep us going for the rest of the day. We have a week before we have to pay the landlord what we owe him. A week in which to raise the money some other way.’
‘That’s true,’ he said, with what looked suspiciously like relief.
‘And if all else fails, or if we run into any other difficulties, we will have your watch in reserve.’
‘And knowing you,’ he muttered, ‘we are bound to run into more difficulties.’
‘And what is that supposed to mean?’
‘Just that you seem to have a propensity for stumbling from one disaster to another.’
‘I never had any disasters until I met you.’
‘That is not true. We would not have met at all had you not already been neck-deep in trouble. And since then I have had to rescue you from that ostler, and your penury, and your foolish attempt to evade me, and now a pack of lecherous young fops.’
For a moment his pointing all this out robbed her of speech. But she soon made a recovery.
‘Oh? Well, I do not recall asking you to do any of those things!’
‘Nevertheless I have done them. And what’s more I fully intend to keep on doing them.’ He halted, frowning in a vexed way at the clumsiness of the words that had just tumbled from his lips. ‘That is,’ he continued, ‘I am going to stick to your side until I know you are safe.’
‘Well, until we reach wherever it is that your dragon of an aunt lives and you hand me over to her, I reserve the right to...to...’
‘Be mean and ungrateful?’
‘I’m not ungrateful.’ On the contrary, she’d been so grateful when he’d shown up just now and sent those horrible men packing that she’d fallen on his neck and embarrassed him. Embarrassed herself. In fact she suspected that half the reason she was suddenly so cross with him again was because she was ashamed of appearing clingy and weepy. Right after vowing she wasn’t going to rely so totally on him.
‘Of course I’m grateful for everything you’ve done,’ she said. ‘But that doesn’t give you the right to...to...dictate to me.’
‘Is that what I was doing? I rather thought,’ he said loftily, ‘I was making helpful decisions which would keep you from plunging into further disaster.’
‘Oh, did you indeed?’
All of a sudden his manner altered.
‘No, actually, I didn’t,’ he said, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand. ‘You are quite correct. I was being dictatorial.’
‘What?’
‘Ah. That took the wind out of your sails,’ he said with a—yes—with a positive smile on his face. ‘But, you see, I am rather used to everyone doing as I say without question. You are the first person in a very long while to argue with me.’
‘Then I expect I will do you a great deal of good,’ she retorted.
‘I shouldn’t be a bit surprised,’ he replied amiably. ‘Just as being in my company will be an improving experience for you. Because you,’ he said, taking her chin between his long, supple fingers, ‘are clearly used to having your every whim indulged.’
‘I am not,’ she objected, flinching away from a touch that she found far too familiar. And far too pleasant.
‘You behave as though you have been indulged all your life,’ he countered. ‘Pampered. Spoiled.’
‘That is so very far from true that...’ She floundered to a halt. ‘Actually, when my parents were alive they did cosset me. And Papa’s men treated me like a little princess. Which was what made it such a dreadful shock when Aunt Charity started treating me as though I was an unwelcome and rather embarrassing affliction.’
Just as Gregory had done when she had rushed up to him and hugged him. That was one of the reasons it had hurt so much. He’d made her feel just as she had when she’d first gone to live with Aunt Charity, when everything she’d done had been wrong. She’d already been devastated by having lost her mother, being parted from her father, and then being spurned by both grandfathers. But instead of receiving any comfort from Aunt Charity she’d been informed that she had the manners of a hoyden, which she’d no doubt inherited from her morally bankrupt father.
‘I suppose it must have been.’
They stood in silence for a short while, as though equally surprised by her confession. And equally bewildered as to how to proceed now they’d stopped quarrelling.
‘Look,’ said Prudence, eventually, ‘I can see how difficult you are finding the prospect of parting with your watch.’
‘You have no idea,’ he said grimly.
‘Well, then, let us consider other options.’
‘You really believe we have any?’
‘There are always other options. For example, do we really need to redeem your horse? I mean, how far is it, exactly, to your aunt’s house?’
‘Exactly?’ He frowned. ‘I couldn’t say.’
‘Guess, then,’ she snapped, barely managing to stop herself from stamping her foot. ‘One day’s march? Two?’
‘What are you suggesting? Marching?’
‘I don’t see why not. We are both young—relatively young,’ she added, glancing at him in what she hoped was a scathing way. ‘And healthy.’ He most certainly was. She’d never seen so many muscles on a man. Well, she’d never seen so much of a man’s muscles, to be honest, but that wasn’t the point. ‘And the weather is fine.’
He placed his hands on his hips and gave her back a look which told her he could rise to any challenge she set. And trump it.
‘We could cut across country,’ he admitted. ‘I don’t believe it is all that far as the crow flies.’
‘Well, then.’
‘There is no need to look so smug,’ he growled.
‘I beg your pardon,’ she said, although she couldn’t help smiling as she said it. ‘It is just that, having grown up in an army that always seemed to be on the move, I am perhaps more used than you to the thought of walking anywhere I wish to go, as well as having more experience of adapting to adversity than you seem to.’
There—that had been said in a conciliating manner, hadn’t it?
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘Well, you said yourself that your life has been rather dull and unpredictable up to now. Obviously I assume I am more used to thinking on my feet than you.’
‘Ah.’ He gave her a measured look. ‘Strange though it may seem, I do not regard my time with you as being one of unalloyed adversity, exactly. And thinking on my feet is...’ He paused. ‘Exactly the kind of challenge I was looking for when I set out. So, instead of regarding the loss of my horse as a problem, I agree—we could look upon it as the perfect excuse for taking a stroll through what looks to be a rather lovely part of the countryside.’
Now he was catching on.
‘And having a picnic?’ she suggested. ‘Instead of having to eat in yet another stuffy inn.’
‘A picnic...’ he said, his eyes sliding to her takings. ‘We would only need to purchase a bit of bread, some cheese, and an apple or two.’
‘And what with it being market day,’ she added, ‘there will be plenty of choice. Which generally means bargains.’
‘I shall take your word for it,’ he muttered.
‘You won’t have to. Until you have seen an army brat haggle over half a loaf and a rind of cheese you haven’t seen anything,’ she informed him cheerfully.
And then wished she hadn’t. For he was looked at her in a considering manner that had her bracing herself for some kind of criticism. Hadn’t Aunt Charity always said that her life in the army was not a suitable topic of conversation—indeed, forbidden her ever to mention it?
‘Then lead on,’ he said, picking up his valise in one hand and crooking his other arm for her to take. ‘And haggle to your heart’s content.’
She let out her breath in a whoosh of relief. And took his arm with pleasure. She couldn’t remember the last time anyone had allowed her to be herself, let alone appeared to approve of it.
It felt as if she were stepping out of an invisible prison.
* * *
Morals, Gregory decided some time later that day, could be damned inconvenient things to possess. For if he didn’t have so many of them he could be making love to Miss Prudence Carstairs instead of engaging only in stilted conversation.
He’d been thinking about making love to her ever since she’d flung back her head and started singing. That rich, melodious voice had stroked down his spine like rough velvet. And had made him see exactly why sailors leaped into the sea and swam to the rock on which the Sirens lived. Not that she’d been intentionally casting out lures, he was sure. For one thing she’d been covered from neck to knee by his jacket, whereas the Sirens were always depicted bare-breasted.
Ah, but he knew that her breasts were unfettered beneath his jacket and her gown. He had her stays in his valise to prove it. Which knowledge had given him no option but to take himself off for a brisk walk while reciting the thirteen times table. Fortunately he’d just about retained enough mental capacity to keep half an eye on her, and had made it to her side before those three drunken young fops had done more than give her a bit of a fright.
He’d have liked to have given them a fright. How dared they harass an innocent young woman? A woman under his protection? He could cheerfully have torn them limb from limb.
Though who, his darker self had kept asking, had appointed him her guardian? To which he had replied that he’d appointed himself. And he knew of no higher authority.
Besides, what else was he to do after the way she’d rushed to him and hugged him and said she’d never been so pleased to see anyone in her life? Nobody had ever been that pleased to see him. He hadn’t known how to react. And so he’d stood there, stunned, for so long that eventually she had flinched away, thinking he hadn’t liked the feel of her arms round him.
Whereas the truth was that he’d liked her innocent enthusiasm for him far too much. Only his response had been far from innocent. Which put him in something of a dilemma. She wasn’t the kind of girl a man could treat as a lightskirt. For one thing she came from the middling classes. Every man knew you didn’t bed girls from the middling classes. One could bed a lower class girl, for the right price. Or conduct a discreet affair with a woman from the upper classes, who’d think of it as sport.
But girls from the middling class were riddled with morals. Not that there was anything wrong with morals, as a rule. It was just that right now he wished one of them didn’t have so many. If only Prudence didn’t hail from a family with Methodist leanings, who called their daughters things like Prudence and Charity. Or if only he wasn’t fettered by his vow to protect her. Or hadn’t told her of his vow to protect her.
Or if only she hadn’t gone so damned quiet, leaving him to stew over his own principles to the extent that he was now practically boiling over.
What was the matter with her? Earlier on she’d been a most entertaining companion. He’d enjoyed watching her haggle her way through the market. She’d even induced many of the stallholders to let her sample their wares, so that they’d already eaten plenty, in tiny increments, by the time they’d left the town with what they’d actually purchased.
But for a while now she’d been trudging along beside him, her head down, her replies to his few attempts to make conversation monosyllabic.
Had he done something to offend her?
Well, if she thought he was going to coax her out of the sullens, she could think again. He didn’t pander to women’s moods. One never knew what caused them, and when they were in them nothing a man did was going to be right. So why bother?
‘How far?’ she suddenly said, jolting him from his preoccupation with morals and the vexing question of whether they were inconvenient encumbrances to a man getting what he wanted or necessary bars to descending into depravity. ‘How far is it to wherever you’re planning to take me?’
‘Somewhat further than I’d thought,’ he replied testily. When people talked about distances as the crow flies, the pertinent fact was that crows could fly. They didn’t have to tramp round the edges of muddy fields looking for gates or stiles to get through impenetrable hedges, or wander upstream and down until they could find a place to ford a swiftly running brook.
‘So when do you think we might arrive?’
He glanced at the sky. ‘It looks as though the weather is going to stay fair. It should be a clear night. If we keep going we might make it some time before dawn tomorrow.’
She made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a sob.
‘Prudence?’ He looked at her. Really looked at her for the first time since they’d left the outskirts of town. ‘Prudence, you aren’t crying, are you?’
She wiped her hand across her face and sniffed. ‘No, of course not,’ she said.
‘Of course not,’ he agreed, though she clearly was. Which gave him a strange, panicky sort of feeling.
There must be something seriously wrong for a woman like Prudence to start weeping. A woman who’d been abandoned by her guardians, left to the care of a total stranger, had thought up the notion of singing for pennies with which to buy provisions so he could keep back his gold watch for emergencies, and then gone toe to toe with him about how to spend money she was proud of having earned herself—no, that wasn’t the kind of person who burst into tears for no good reason.
Was it?
‘Look, there’s a barn over there,’ he said, pointing across the rise to the next field. ‘We can stop there for the night if you like,’ he offered, even though he’d vowed only two minutes earlier not to pander to her mood. After all, it wasn’t as if she was crying simply to get attention. On the contrary, she looked more as though she was ashamed of weeping, and was trying to conceal her tears behind sniffles and surreptitious face-wiping.
‘You will feel much more the thing in the morning.’
‘Oh.’
She lifted her head and pushed a handful of wayward curls from her forehead in a gesture that filled him with relief. Because when they’d first set out she’d done so at regular intervals. Without a bonnet, or a hairbrush to tame her curls, they rioted all over her face at the slightest provocation. But as the day had worn on she’d done so less and less. She’d been walking for the last hour with her head hanging down, watching her feet rather than looking around at the countryside through which they were trudging.
‘Well, I don’t mind stopping there if you wish to rest,’ she said.
She was drooping with exhaustion, but would rather suffer in silence than admit to weakness.
All of a sudden a wave of something very far from lust swept through him. It felt like...affection. No, no—not that! It was admiration—that was all. Coupled with a completely natural wish to put a smile back on that weary, woebegone face.
As they got nearer the barn he started casting about in a very exaggerated manner. Tired as she was, she couldn’t help noticing the way he veered from side to side, stooping to inspect the ground.
‘What are you looking for?’ She turned impatiently, as though getting inside that barn was crucial.
‘A rock,’ he said.
‘A rock?’ She frowned at him. ‘What on earth do you want a rock for? Aren’t there enough in your head already?’
‘Oh, very funny,’ he replied. ‘No, I was just thinking,’ he carried on, with what he hoped was an expression of complete innocence, ‘of giving you some practice.’
‘Practice?’
‘Yes. You claimed you weren’t able to hit a barn door when you threw that rock at me. I just thought that now we have a barn here for you to use as target practice you might like to...’
‘In the morning,’ she said, her lips pulling into a tight line, ‘I may just take you up on your generous offer of using this poor innocent building as target practice. For now, though, all I want to do is get inside, get my shoes off and lie down.’
So saying, she plunged through the door, which was hanging off its hinges, and disappeared into the gloomy interior. Leaving him to mull over the fact that, in spite of deciding that coaxing a female out of the sullens was beneath him, he’d just done precisely that.
With about as much success as he’d ever had.
Chapter Eight (#u655ebb25-5855-5bd6-a04e-c82d52bab9e6)
The barn was almost empty. It looked as though the farmer had used up most of last year’s crop of hay over the winter. Though there was enough, still, piled up against the far wall, to provide them with a reasonably soft bed for the night.
Clearly Prudence thought so, because she made straight for it, sat down, and eased off her shoes with a little moan of relief.
His own progress across the barn was much slower. She was too tempting—in so many ways.
‘Miss Carstairs...’ he said.
Yes, that was a good beginning. He must not call her Prudence. That had probably been where he’d gone wrong just now. He’d called her Prudence when he’d thought she was crying, and then he’d started trying to think of ways to make her smile, rather than ignoring her poor mood. He had to preserve a proper distance between them, now more than ever, or who knew how it would end? With him flinging himself down on top of her and ravishing her on that pile of hay, like as not. Because he was too aware that she had nothing on beneath her gown. That her breasts were easily accessible.
He’d tell her that he had her stays in his valise and beg her to put them back on in the morning—that was what he would do.
Though that would still leave her legs bare. From her ankles all the way up to her... Up to her... He swallowed. All the way up. Whenever he’d caught a brief glimpse of her ankles today that was all he’d been able to think of. Those bare legs. And what awaited at the top of them.
Now that she’d removed her shoes, her feet were bare, too. Whatever he did, he must not look at her toes. If thoughts of her breasts and glimpses of her ankles had managed to work him up into such a lather, then seeing her toes might well tip him over the edge. There was something incredibly improper about toes. A woman’s toes, at any rate. Probably because a man only ever saw them if he’d taken her to bed. And not always then. Some women preferred to keep their stockings on.
Just as he was thinking about the feel of a woman’s stockinged leg, rubbing up and down his bare calves, Prudence flung herself back in the hay with a little whimper. And shut her eyes.
All his good resolutions flew out of the door. He strode to her bed of hay. Ran his eyes along the whole length of her. Not stopping when he reached the hem of her gown. His heart pounding, and sweat breaking out on his forehead, he breached all the barriers he’d sworn he would stay rigidly behind. And looked at her naked toes.
‘Good God!’
Her feet—the very ones he’d been getting into such a lather about—were rubbed raw in several places. Bleeding. Oozing. He dropped to his knees. Stretched out a penitent hand.
‘Don’t touch them!’
He whipped his hand back.
‘No, no, of course I won’t. They must be agonisingly painful.’ Yet she hadn’t uttered one word of complaint. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were getting blisters, you foolish woman?’
‘Because...because...’ She covered her face with her hands and moaned. ‘I was too proud,’ she muttered from behind her fingers. ‘It was my idea to walk wherever it is we are going. When I haven’t walked further than a mile or so since I was sent to England. And I boasted about being young and healthy. And I taunted you for not thinking of it. So how could I admit I wasn’t coping?’
‘Prudence,’ he said gently, immediately forgetting his earlier vow to address her only as Miss Carstairs, and removing her hands so that he could look into her woebegone little face. ‘You would have struggled to get this far even if you’d had stockings to cushion your skin. Those shoes weren’t designed for walking across rough ground. It would have been different if you had been wearing stout boots and thick stockings, but you weren’t. You should have said something sooner. We could have...’
‘What? What could we possibly have done?’
He lowered his gaze to her poor abused feet again. And sucked in a sharp breath. ‘I don’t know, precisely. I...’ It seemed as good a time as any to explain about the stocking she’d found in his pocket. ‘If I’d had both your stockings I could have given them to you. But I didn’t. There was only the one this morning...’
She looked up at him as though she had no idea what he was talking about. He’d been trying to explain that he wasn’t the kind of man who kept women’s underthings about his person as some kind of trophy. It made him even more aware of the immense gulf separating them. Of his vast experience compared to her complete innocence.
Though not the kind of experience that would be of any use to her now. He had no experience of nursing anyone’s blisters. Of nursing anyone for any ailment. ‘They probably need ointment, or something,’ he mused.
‘Do you have any ointment?’ she asked dryly. ‘No, of course you don’t.’
‘We could at least bathe them,’ he said, suddenly struck by inspiration. ‘There was a stream in the dip between this field and the next. I noticed it before, and thought it would come in handy for drinking water. But if it is cool that might be soothing, might it not?’
‘I am not going to walk another step,’ she said in a voice that was half-sob. ‘Not even if the stream is running with ice-cold lemonade and the banks are decked with bowls of ointment and dishes of strawberries.’
He took her meaning. She was not only exhausted and in pain, but hungry, too.
‘I will go,’ he said.
‘And fetch water how?’
He put his hand to his neck. ‘My neckcloth. I can soak it in the water. Tear it in half,’ he said, ripping it from his throat. ‘Half for each foot.’
She shook her head. ‘No. If you’re going to rip your neckcloth in two, I’d much rather we used the halves to wrap round my feet tomorrow. To stop my shoes rubbing these sores even worse.’
She was so practical. So damned practical. He should have thought of that.
‘I have another neckcloth in my valise,’ he retorted. See? He could be practical, too. ‘And a shirt.’ Though it was blood-spattered and sweat-soaked from his exploits at Wragley’s. He shook his head. How he detested not having clean linen every day. ‘Plenty of things we can tear up to bind your feet.’
As well as her stays.
He swallowed.
‘Why on earth didn’t you say so earlier?’
‘I would have done if only you’d admitted you were having problems with your shoes. I could have bound your feet miles ago, and then they wouldn’t have ended up in that state,’ he snapped, furious that she’d been hurt so badly and he hadn’t even noticed when he was supposed to be protecting her.
Though how was he to have guessed, when she hadn’t said a word? She had to be the most provoking female it had ever been his misfortune to encounter.
‘You weren’t even limping,’ he said accusingly.
‘Well, both feet hurt equally badly. So it was hard to choose which one to favour.’
‘Prudence!’ He gazed for a moment into her brave, tortured little face. And then found himself pulling her into his arms and hugging her.
Hugging her? When had he ever wanted to hug anyone? Male or female?
Never. He wasn’t the kind of man who went in for hugging.
But people gained comfort from hugging, so he’d heard. And since he couldn’t strangle her, nor ease his frustration the only other way that occurred to him, he supposed hugging was the sensible, middling course to take. At least he could get his hands on her without either killing or debauching her.
Perhaps there was something to be said for hugging after all.
* * *
Prudence let her head fall wearily against his chest. Just for a moment she could let him take her weight, and with it all her woes—couldn’t she? Where was the harm in that?
‘You’ve been so brave,’ he murmured into her hair.
‘No, not brave,’ she protested into his shirtfront. ‘Stubborn and proud is what I’ve been. And stupid. And impractical—’
‘No! I won’t have you berate yourself this way. You may be a touch proud, but you are most definitely the bravest person I’ve ever met. I don’t know anyone who would have gone through what you have today without uttering a word of complaint.’
‘But—’
‘No. Listen to me. If anyone is guilty of being stupidly proud it is I. I should have swallowed my pride at the outset and pawned the watch. I should have done everything in my power to liberate that horse and gig from the stable so you wouldn’t have to walk. I will never forgive myself for putting you through this.’
‘It isn’t your fault.’
‘Yes, it is. Oh, good grief—this isn’t a contest, Prudence! Stop trying to outdo me.’
‘I’m not.’
‘Yes, you are. Even when I admit to a fault,’ he said, as though it was an immense concession to admit any such thing, ‘you have to insist your fault is greater.’
‘But I feel at fault,’ she confessed.
It was easy to maintain her pride when he was being grumpy and aloof, but so much harder when he was trying to be kind.
‘It was my fault you lost all your money.’ She’d known it from the start, but had been so angry when he hadn’t scrupled to accuse her of carelessness that she’d refused to admit it. ‘It was my fault you got into this...this escapade at all. If my aunt and her new husband, whom I refuse to call my uncle, hadn’t decided to steal my inheritance...or if you hadn’t had a room up on our landing...’
‘Then we would never have met,’ he said firmly. ‘And I’m glad we have met, Miss Prudence Carstairs.’
Her heart performed a somersault inside her ribcage. She became very aware of his arms enfolding her with such strength, and yet such gentleness. Remembered that he’d put them round her of his own volition.
And then he looked at her lips. In a way that put thoughts of kissing in her head.
‘Because before I met you,’ he said, with a sort of intensity that convinced her he meant every word, ‘I have never admired or respected any female—not really.’
What would she do if he tried to kiss her? She had to think of something to say—quickly! Before one of them gave in to the temptation to close the gap that separated their faces and taste the other.
What had he just said? Something about never admiring a female before? Well, that was just plain absurd.
‘But...you were married.’
He let go of her. Pulled away. All expression wiped from his face. Heavens, but the mention of his late wife had acted upon him like a dousing from a bucket of ice water. Which was a good thing. If she’d let him kiss her or, even worse, started kissing him, who knew how it would have ended? A girl couldn’t go kissing a man in a secluded barn, on a bed of sweet-smelling hay, without it ending badly.
‘Instead of sitting here debating irrelevancies, I would be better employed going to that stream and soaking my neckcloth in it,’ he said in a clipped voice. Then got to his feet and strode from the barn without looking back.
A little shiver ran down her spine as she watched him go. It was just as well she’d mentioned his wife. It had been as effective at cooling his ardour as slapping his face.
It was something to remember. If he ever did look as though he was going to cross the line again she need only mention his late wife and he’d pull away from her with a look on his face as though he’d been sucking a lemon.
Had he been very much in love? And was he still mourning her? No, that surely didn’t tie in with what he’d just said about not respecting or admiring any female before. It sounded more as though the marriage had been an unhappy one.
Gingerly, she wiggled her toes. Welcomed the pain of real, physical injury. Because thinking about him being unhappily married made her very sad. It was a shame if he hadn’t got on with his wife. He deserved a wife who made him happy. A wife who appreciated all his finer points. Because, villainous though he looked, he was the most decent man she’d ever met. He hadn’t once tried to take advantage of her. And he had been full of remorse when he’d seen what her pride had cost her toes. And when she thought of how swiftly he’d made those bucks who’d been about to torment her disperse...
She heaved a great sigh and sank back into the hay, her eyes closing. He might have admitted to breaking into a building, but that didn’t make him a burglar. On the contrary, he’d only broken the law in an attempt to redress a greater wrong. He might not have the strict moral code of the men of the congregation of Stoketown, and her aunt would most definitely stigmatise him as a villain because of it, but his kind of villainy suited her notion of how a real man should behave.
She must have dozed off, in spite of the pain in her feet, because the next thing she knew he was kneeling over her, shaking her shoulder gently.
‘You’re exhausted, I know,’ he said, with such gentle concern that she heaved another sigh while her insides went all gooey. ‘But I must tend to your feet before we turn in for the night. We should eat some supper, too.’
She struggled to sit up, pushing her hair from her face as it flopped into her eyes for the umpteenth time that day. He knelt at her feet, holding a wet handkerchief just above the surface of her skin, as though loath to cause her pain.
And though he looked nothing like a hero out of a fairytale, though he had no armour and had put his horse up for security, at that moment she had the strange fancy that he was very like a knight in shining armour, kneeling at the feet of his lady.
Which just went to show how tired and out of sorts she was.
‘Don’t worry about hurting me,’ she said. ‘I shall grit my teeth and think of— Oh! Ow!’
‘Sorry, sorry,’ he said, over and over again as he dabbed at her blisters.
‘I wish I had a comb,’ she said, through teeth suitably gritted. ‘Then I could tidy my hair.’
‘You are bothered about your hair? When your feet are in this state?’
‘I was trying to distract myself from my feet by thinking about something that would normally bother me. Trying to think of what my usual routine would be as I prepare for bed of a night. My maid would brush my hair out for me, then plait it out of the way...’
But not last night. No, last night she’d had to rely on Aunt Charity’s rather rough ministrations. Because she’d said there was no need to make her maid undergo the rigours of a journey as far as Bath. Even though Bessy had said to Aunt Charity that she wouldn’t mind at all, and had later admitted to Prudence that she thought it would be rather exciting to travel all that way and see a place that had once been so fashionable.
Why hadn’t she seen how suspicious it was for her aunt to appear suddenly so concerned over the welfare of a servant? Why hadn’t she smelled a rat when Aunt Charity had said it would be better to hire a new maid in Bath—one who’d know all about the local shops and so forth?
Because she couldn’t possibly have guessed that Aunt Charity had been determined to isolate her—that was why. So that there wouldn’t be any witnesses to the crime she was planning.
Prudence sucked in a sharp breath. It was worse than simply taking advantage of the opportunity that being housed in that funny little attic in The Bull last night had provided. Aunt Charity and that awful man she’d married had made sure there wouldn’t be any witnesses to what she now saw was a premeditated crime.
‘Did I hurt you?’
‘What? No. I was...’ She shivered. ‘I was thinking about my maid, Bessy.’ She paused. Up to now she’d been too busy just surviving to face what her aunt had tried to do. But her mind had been steadily clearing all day. Or perhaps the pain of Gregory tending to her feet was waking her up to the unpleasant truth.
‘I’m afraid you will have to make do with my clumsy efforts tonight,’ he said. Then reached up and twined a curl round one finger. ‘Though it seems a kind of sacrilege to confine all this russet glory in braids.’
‘Russet glory!’ She snorted derisively. ‘I never took you for a weaver of fustian.’
‘I am not. Not a weaver of anything.’ He leaned back on his heels. His eyes seemed to be glazed. ‘But surely you know that your hair is glorious?’
The look in his eyes made her breath hitch in her throat. Made her heart skip and dance and her tummy clench as though she was flying high on a garden swing.
Oh, Lord, but she wanted him to kiss her. Out of all the men who’d paid court to her—or rather to her money—none had ever made her want to throw propriety to the winds. And he hadn’t even been paying court to her. He’d been alternately grumpy and insulting and dictatorial all day. And yet... She sighed. He’d also rescued her from an ostler and a group of bucks, forgiven her for pushing him out of his gig and throwing a rock at him. Even made a clumsy sort of jest of the rock-throwing thing.
A smile tugged at her lips as she thought of that moment.
‘So you accept the compliment now?’
‘What? What compliment?’
‘The one I made about your hair,’ he breathed, raising the hank that he’d wound round his hand to his face and inhaling deeply.
‘My hair?’
Why was he so obsessed with her hair? It must look dreadful, rioting all down her back and all over her face. A visible reminder of her ‘wayward nature’, Aunt Charity had always said. It was why she had to plait it, and smooth it, and keep it hidden away.
He looked at her sharply. ‘If not that, then why were you smiling in that particular way?’
‘I didn’t know I was smiling in any particular way. And for your information I was thinking of something else entirely.’
‘Oh?’ His face sort of closed up. He let her hair fall from his fingers and bent to dab at her feet again.
Good heavens, she’d offended him. Who’d have thought that a man who looked so tough could have such delicate sensibilities? But then she hadn’t been very tactful, had she? To tell him she’d been thinking of something else when he’d been trying to pay her compliments.
‘I was thinking,’ she said hastily, in an effort to make amends, ‘of how funny you were, searching about for rocks for me to throw.’
He shrugged one shoulder, but didn’t raise his head.
‘How very forbearing you have been, considering the abuse you’ve suffered on my account.’
He laid her feet down gently in the hay. ‘That is all I can do for them for now,’ he said, and scooted back. Looked at his hands. Cleared his throat. Scooted another foot away.
Which was both a good thing and a bad. Good in that he was determined to prevent another scene from developing in which their mouths ended up scant inches apart. Bad in that... Well, in that he was determined to prevent another scene from developing in which they would be tempted to kiss.
No, no, it was a good thing he wasn’t the kind of man to attempt to take advantage of the situation. They were going to have to spend the night together in this barn, after all. And if they started kissing, who knew how it would end?
Yes, it was a jolly good job he was maintaining some distance between them.
It would have been even better if she’d been the one to do so.
‘We had better eat our supper before the light grows too dim to see what we’re putting in our mouths,’ he said, opening his valise and taking out what was left of the provisions they’d bought in Tadburne Market.
‘We know exactly what we have for supper,’ she said wearily. ‘About two ounces of cheese and the heel of a loaf. Between the two of us.’
‘If it were only a few months later,’ he said, spreading the brown paper in which their meagre rations had been wrapped on the hay at her side, ‘I might have found strawberries growing by the stream.’
‘Strawberries don’t grow by streams,’ she retorted as he flicked open a penknife and cut both the cheese and the crust precisely in half. ‘They only grow in carefully tended beds. Where they have to be protected from frosts over winter with heaps of straw. Which is why they’re called strawberries.’
He raised his head and gave her a level look. ‘Blackberries, then. You cannot deny that blackberries thrive in the wild.’ He picked up the sheet of brown paper and its neatly divided contents and placed them on her lap.
From which he’d have to pluck his own meal. One morsel at a time.
She felt her cheeks heating at the prospect of his hand straying over her lap. Felt very conscious that her legs were totally bare beneath her skirts.
She picked up her slice of cheese and nibbled at it. What had they been talking about? Oh, yes...blackberries.
‘Some form of fruit would certainly be welcome with this cheese.’
‘And with the bread,’ he added. ‘It’s very dry.’
‘Stale, I think is the word for which you are searching,’ she said, having tried it. ‘But then, what can you expect for what we paid?’
No wonder the baker had let them have so much for so little. She’d been so proud of her skills at haggling. But they weren’t so great, were they? This bread was clearly left over from the day before.
‘I had a drink at the stream,’ he said, after swallowing the last of his share of their supper. ‘So I am not too thirsty. But what about you?’
‘I think I can just about manage to get the bread down. Though what we really need is a pat of butter to put on it. And then about a gallon of tea to wash it down.’
‘This will not do,’ he growled. And then, before she had any inkling of what he meant to do, he’d swept the brown paper to one side, hauled her up into his arms and was carrying her across the barn.
‘What are you doing?’
And what was she doing? She should by rights be struggling. Or at least demanding that he put her down. Not sort of sagging into him and marvelling at the strength of his muscular arms.
‘I’m taking you down to the stream so that you can have a drink. And dip your feet into the water. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before,’ he said crossly. ‘I must be all about in my head. Dipping a handkerchief in the stream and then dabbing at your blisters...’ he sneered.
‘I daresay you were attempting to observe the proprieties,’ she said kindly. ‘For this isn’t at all proper, is it? Carting me about like a sack of grain?’
‘Proper? There has been nothing “proper” about our relationship from the moment I stretched my foot out in bed this morning and found you at the other end of it.’
Naked, at that, he could have added.
In the gathering dusk he strode down the field in the direction of the water she could hear babbling along its channel. Without giving the slightest indication that he was doing anything out of the ordinary. He wasn’t even getting out of breath.
Whereas her own lungs were behaving most erratically. As was her heart.
‘And what we’re about to do is highly improper, Prudence, in case you need reminding.’
She looked at his face, and then at the stream, in bewilderment.
‘Watching me bathe my feet in the stream? You think that is improper conduct?’
‘No,’ he said abruptly, and then set her down on a low part of the bank, from where she could dangle her feet into the water with ease. ‘It’s not the bathing that’s improper. It’s what is going to happen after I carry you back to the barn.’
‘What?’ she asked, breathless with excitement.
No, not excitement. At least it shouldn’t be excitement. It should be maidenly modesty. Outraged virtue. Anything but excitement.
‘What is going to happen after you carry me back to the barn?’
‘We are going to have to spend the night together,’ he bit out. He rubbed his hand over the crown of his head. ‘All night. And, since it promises to be a cold one, probably clinging to each other for warmth.’
‘We don’t need to cling,’ she pointed out, since the prospect appeared to be disturbing him so much. ‘Hay is very good at keeping a body warm. I can remember sleeping in a barn a couple of times when I was very little and we were on the march. Papa made me a sort of little nest of it.’
He gave her a hard look. ‘If you were still a little girl that might work. But you are a full-grown woman. And there isn’t all that much hay, Prudence. It is more than likely we will end up seeking each other’s warmth. And, unlike last night, which neither of us can remember, I have a feeling we are going to recall every single minute of tonight. You will know you have slept with a man. You will never be able to look anyone in the eye and claim to be innocent. Tonight, Prudence, is the night that your reputation really will be well and truly ruined.’
Chapter Nine (#u655ebb25-5855-5bd6-a04e-c82d52bab9e6)
‘Oh, my goodness!’ said Prudence as her feet slid into the ice-cold water. She didn’t know whether it was the shock of it, or something else, but suddenly everything had become clear. ‘That was what they were after.’
‘What who was after? What was it they were after?’
‘You know,’ she said, shuddering at the sting of the water on her raw feet. ‘My aunt and that man she married.’
‘I don’t follow,’ he said, sitting down on the bank beside her.
‘No, well...’ she said wearily. ‘That’s because I haven’t told you everything.’ But there wasn’t any point in keeping her revelation to herself. He was in it with her now—or would be after tonight—up to his neck.
‘I told you I was due to come into an inheritance?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, it is not totally without stipulations. The money comes from my grandfather, you see, and he was livid, apparently, when Mama ran off with Papa. He’d already refused consent to their marriage—not only because they hadn’t known each other for five minutes, but also because Papa was a soldier. A man who saw nothing wrong with drinking alcohol, or gambling, or any number of things that Grandpapa regarded as dreadful sins.
‘Not that Papa was a dreadful sinner—I won’t have you thinking that,’ she explained hastily. ‘It was just Grandpapa was so terribly rigid in his views. Anyway, he cut Mama out of his will. But then when I was born, and Mama wrote to inform him of the event, he put me in it instead. She was still disinherited, but he said that it wasn’t right to visit the sins of the fathers on the children. And just in case I turned out to be as great a sinner as either of them, there was this...stipulation.
‘The money wasn’t to come direct to me upon his death but was to be held in trust. Either until I married “a man of standing”, I think was the exact term. Or, if I hadn’t married such a paragon by the time I was twenty-five, then I could have it without strings, to use however I wish, but only if I am found to be “of spotless reputation”.’
‘In other words,’ he said slowly, ‘all your aunt had to do was blacken your name and...’
‘Yes. Mama’s portion—or rather mine, since Mama didn’t feature in the will at all, and I never had any brothers or sisters who lived more than a few days—would go directly to Aunt Charity.’
‘Villainous,’ he hissed.
‘Yes,’ she agreed, drawing her feet out of the water and pulling her knees up to her chin.
Wrapping her arms round her lower legs, she gazed across the stream to the ploughed fields on the opposite bank, blinking determinedly whenever the chill breeze stung her raw flesh.
‘And it isn’t just what happened this morning. Or last night. Aunt Charity and I have been at war, subtly, for years. I can see it all now...’
She shook her head, the furrows blurring as tears misted her vision.
‘I thought she was just a cold, strict sort of woman, and I made allowances for the way she was because I could sort of understand how she might resent me for being thrust upon her when she obviously hadn’t a maternal bone in her body. But I think it was worse than that. Of late I’ve felt as though she has been doubling her efforts to make me feel bad about myself. Always harping on about my “falling short”, as she termed it. And punishing me for the slightest fault.’
She turned to him and searched his face for his reaction.
‘But what if it wasn’t that at all? What if she was trying to make everyone think I was a terrible sinner? So that she’d have the excuse to say I didn’t fulfil the terms of the will?’
He opened his mouth to say something, but thoughts were tumbling into her head so fast she simply had to let them out.
‘It’s true that at one time—about the time Papa died and I knew I was never going to get away from her—I was...well, a bit of a handful. No, I must be honest. I was downright rebellious for a while. I told her I hated her and everything she stood for. But as it drew nearer to my birthday nothing seemed to bother me so much. Only a few more months, I thought, and then I will be free. Only a few more weeks, now...’
She shook her head.
‘But she still looked at me as though I was a problem she had to work out rather than a real person... Oh, I’m not explaining it terribly well, am I?’
‘No,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘I think I see only too well.’ He sighed. ‘For I have been guilty of seeing my young cousin Hugo in that light,’ he said.
He plucked at some strands of grass. Tossed them into the stream and watched them float downstream.
‘I have shown him scant sympathy whenever he comes to me with his troubles. The last time I refused to bail him out of his difficulties he accused me of having a mind like a ledger. Of not understanding what ordinary people have to go through. And he was right. I did regard him as nothing more than a financial drain. And an intolerable nuisance.’
‘Yes, but you wouldn’t have gone out of your way to destroy him, would you? You’re not that kind of man.’
He reached out and touched her arm, just briefly, as though her declaration of faith in him had meant something to him.
‘I didn’t think my aunt was that kind of person, either. But her husband...’ She shuddered. ‘I wouldn’t put anything past him. As soon as they married there stopped being any money for the things I’d taken for granted before. It started with fewer trips to the dressmaker. When I questioned him he accused me of vanity. And since I already thought he was a terribly pious and unpleasant sort of man I just thought he was trying to improve me. But then there were things like... Oh, he wouldn’t let me have a fire in my room unless it was actually snowing outside. That sort of thing. And I’m sure there isn’t anywhere in the Bible that says you have to go cold to prove how virtuous you are.’
He drew in a sharp breath. ‘It is possible that he has squandered your inheritance—have you thought of that? And this is his attempt to cover it up?’
She thought for a bit. Then shook her head. ‘If it is, he’s gone a very strange way about covering anything up. Surely my disappearance will eventually cause no end of talk? Especially since it looks as though they mean to explain it away by accusing me of improper conduct,’ she finished bitterly.
‘And me,’ he growled. ‘If anyone asks where you have gone, they will drag my name into it.’
‘I don’t see how they can. They don’t know it,’ she pointed out.
‘I will know it,’ he growled. ‘I will know that somewhere people are accusing me of...debauching an innocent. Well, your aunt and uncle picked the wrong man to play the villain of the piece. I won’t let them get away with it.’
‘Good,’ she said, turning to gaze up at him. ‘Because you are not a villain. Not at all.’
He might look like one, with his bruised face, his harsh expression, and his dishevelled and muddied clothing. But she knew how he’d come by the mud, and the bruises. At the time he’d told her about his adventure in the mill she’d half suspected he might have made some of it up, to try and impress her. But that was before he’d rescued her from those drunken bucks simply by looking at them with that murderous gleam in his eyes. Before he’d carried her to this stream just so she could soothe her feet in its ice-cold water. And had listened to her as though her opinions had merit.
‘So far as I’m concerned,’ she said, reaching up to touch the deep groove between his brows, ‘they picked the right man.’
‘What?’ His eyes, which had been glaring off into the distance as though he was plotting a fitting revenge on her guardians, focussed on her in bewilderment.
‘I know that you will put all to rights, somehow—won’t you?’ For that was what he did. ‘Or at least you will do your very best.’
‘How can you possibly know that?’ He fidgeted and turned his head away.
‘Because that is the kind of man you are. Completely upright.’ And not in the way the male members of Stoketown Chapel were upright. Not one of them would break into a warehouse at dead of night to steal a set of false ledgers in order to uncover a fraud. They’d be too scared of what other people would think of their actions.
She might have been mistaken, because it was growing too dark now to see clearly, but she rather thought her last comment might have caused him to blush.
‘Time to turn in for the night,’ he said gruffly. Then bent to put his arms around her and got to his feet.
Just as before, the ease with which he carried her filled her with admiration. Admiration spiced with a series of totally feminine responses. Because this time he was carrying her to a bed they were going to be sharing.
As though he shared the tenor of her thoughts, he came to a complete halt just before entering the barn and stared into the gloom at the far end. Where they were about to make a bed in the pile of hay.
‘This is going to be damned awkward,’ he grated, before turning sideways to slide through the drunken excuse for a barn door.
And then he stopped again.
And cleared his throat.
Though she could scarcely hear it over the thunder of her heartbeat.
‘Right, this is what we’re going to do,’ he said. ‘I’m going to use my valise for a pillow, then spread my jacket over some of the hay. That is if you don’t mind taking it off.’ He glanced down at the row of buttons, then at her face, then into the gloom again, his jaw tightening.
‘I don’t mind at all,’ she said. In fact excitement fizzed through her at the prospect of undressing in front of him. Even if it was only his jacket he’d asked her to remove. And she would still be wearing her modest kerseymere gown. ‘Hay is very prickly,’ she added hastily. ‘It is a very sensible notion to use your jacket as a barrier.’
‘Sensible,’ he repeated, suddenly breaking into a stride that took them all the way to the back of the barn. ‘I will use my coat to cover us, as another barrier against the hay. I shall pull it over the top of us both.’
‘A very practical notion,’ she said.
One of his eyebrows shot up. ‘Really?’ He pulled it down. ‘I mean, naturally. Eminently practical. So,’ he said, ‘you will remove my jacket while I will divide up the hay, and so forth, to make our bed.’
Our bed. The words sent a flush to her cheeks. And, by the feel of it, to other parts she ought never to mention.
‘I give you fair warning,’ he said gruffly, ‘that if it gets really cold, in spite of all the hay, I shall put my arms around you and hold you close.’
Her heart skipped a beat. But that beat sank to her pelvis, where it set up a low, insistent throb.
‘Will you?’ Was that really her voice? All low and husky and breathy?
‘Yes. But I swear, on my honour, that I shall do nothing more.’
‘I know.’ She sighed.
‘How can you possibly know?’
‘I have told you already—I know what kind of man you are.’ And she wasn’t sure why she’d forgotten it, even for those few exhilarating seconds when he’d been standing there talking about taking her to bed. Wishful thinking, she supposed.
‘How can you? We only met this morning. Can you stand for a few moments if I set you down?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘And that question only goes to prove what I was saying. You are still going out of your way to tend to my comfort. A lot of men wouldn’t bother. They wouldn’t try to reassure me that my virtue would remain unsullied, either. In fact, I think a lot of men—’ most men, from what she’d seen of masculine conduct so far ‘—would turn this situation to their own advantage.’
‘Oh?’ He bent to pick up his valise and held it before him like a shield while she unbuttoned the jacket he’d lent her. As she slid it from her arms he turned swiftly and buried the valise under a mound of hay.
‘Yes, indeed,’ she said as he turned back and took the jacket from her outstretched hand. He dropped it onto the makeshift mattress quickly, as though it was burning his fingers.
‘I have told you all about my fortune,’ she said. ‘Other men have paid court to me to get their hands on it. You could, at any time today, have started to pressure me into marrying you under the pretext of saving my reputation, and then the money would have been yours. As my husband. But you haven’t.’
‘Perhaps I am not a marrying kind of man—had you thought of that?’
‘No. For one thing you have looked at me once or twice as though you were thinking about kissing me. And you said that thing about my hair.’
‘Hmmph,’ he said, swinging her into his arms again and setting her down gently onto the makeshift bed.
‘For another,’ she said as he reared back and began stripping off his coat. ‘You have already been married.’
‘Perhaps that is what has put me off ever getting married again,’ he said bitterly, before coming down beside her and whisking the coat over them both.
‘Is it?’ She watched through lazily lowered lids as he reached for the hay, pulling bunches of it up and over them until it really did feel as though they were lying in a sort of nest. ‘You looked so unhappy when you mentioned your wife. I wondered...’
‘Wondered what?’ He lay down, finally, next to her, though he kept his arms rigidly at his side.
‘Well, why you looked so unhappy. You pulled a sort of face.’
‘Pulled a face? I never pull faces.’
‘Well, you did. And it wasn’t the sort of expression a widower makes who loved his wife and misses her. It looked as though...’
He made a low growling kind of noise, as though warning her not to proceed any further. She ignored it.
‘And anyway, now you have as good as admitted that you weren’t happy. What went wrong?’
He sighed. ‘I never speak of my wife,’ he grunted. ‘She and I... We...’
Somewhere close by an owl hooted.
Gregory folded his arms across his chest.
She rolled onto her side and curled up a bit. Just until her knee touched his leg.
Which was warm. And solid.
‘There was never any we,’ he said, with evident irritation. ‘The match was arranged by our families. I thought she was happy with it. She seemed happy with it. And I was...content to go along with the arrangement. She was pretty. Very pretty, if you must know. Which I thought was better than being saddled with a woman I would struggle to bed.’
Somehow it seemed rather brazen to be snuggling up to him, hoping he might snuggle up to her, while he was talking about having marital relations. She stealthily straightened her leg so that her knee was no longer nudging his thigh.
But she hadn’t been stealthy enough.
‘If you didn’t want the sordid details,’ he snapped, ‘you shouldn’t have pressed me for the confession.’
She hadn’t pressed. Not really. But perhaps it was the strangeness of the day, the enforced intimacy they’d shared and were still sharing, that made him feel compelled to tell her all about it. Or the fact that they were lying in the dark, in a barn, feeling extremely awkward, and it was better to talk of something completely unrelated to themselves.
Besides, if he truly hadn’t spoken of his miserable marriage ever, to anyone, he probably needed to unburden himself. He’d obviously never felt close enough, or safe enough, with anyone to do so.
She reached out until she found his hand in the dark, and clasped her fingers round it.
‘I didn’t mean to pry,’ she said. ‘But if you want to talk about it...’
He gripped her hand hard.
‘She didn’t like me touching her in bed,’ he grated. ‘She would never have curled into me the way you have just done, or held my hand, or smoothed my brow when I frowned. Or hugged me because she was pleased to see me.’
The poor man. She ran the fingers of her other hand over his. Squeezed it. The poor, lonely man. No wonder his face had settled into a permanently severe expression. No wonder he glowered at people in such a way that they kept their distance. He must find it easier to keep people away than let them get close enough to hurt him. As his wife had done.
‘I was only seventeen when I married her. Not very experienced. And she, of course, was a virgin. It wasn’t... The consummation wasn’t entirely a pleasant experience for her. When she was reluctant to allow me to return to her bed I tried to be understanding. I thought I ought to give her time to become accustomed.’ He gave a bitter laugh. ‘And then she confessed she was with child.’
It sounded as though he was grinding his teeth.
‘My father congratulated me for ensuring the succession so swiftly. It was about the only time he ever seemed pleased with me. But the irony was that it wasn’t mine. The baby she was carrying. It couldn’t possibly have been mine. And I was furious. All those months, while I’d been trying to be considerate, she’d been...’
‘Oh.’ It sounded such a feeble thing to say. But, really, what could she say to a confession like that?
‘When she died I struggled to feel anything apart from relief. You think that was wicked, don’t you? That I was relieved I wasn’t going to have to bring up some other man’s get as my own? Or to face mockery by admitting she’d cuckolded me within six months of marriage?’
‘She... Oh, no. The baby died as well?’
‘The pregnancy killed her. That’s what the doctor said. Something to do with her heart. I wasn’t exactly in a frame of mind to take it in. My father had not long since died as well, you see. I’d just...stepped into his shoes.’
She heard him swallow.
‘Later, I did feel sorry about the baby. And that was when the guilt started to creep in. I kept remembering standing by her graveside, feeling as though a huge burden had rolled off my shoulders. How all the problems I’d thought I had were being buried with her. How could I regard a child as a burden? As a problem? That wasn’t right. It wouldn’t have been the child’s fault. You, of all people, must know it isn’t right to inflict upon a child the feelings you have for its parents.’
‘No,’ she whispered. ‘It isn’t. But you wouldn’t have done. I know you wouldn’t.’
‘You can’t possibly know that,’ he grated. ‘Hell, I certainly couldn’t.’
‘I do know,’ she said, raising his clenched fist to her mouth and kissing the grazed knuckles. ‘You might have struggled to be kind to the child, but you would have tried. Otherwise you wouldn’t have experienced any guilt over the way you felt when it died. You would have just shrugged your shoulders and walked away. You are a good man,’ she said. ‘And you deserved to have a wife who appreciated just how good and kind you are. A wife who would have at least tried to make you happy. A wife who wanted you to touch her. Give her children. None of what happened was your fault.’
He shifted in the hay beside her and gave a sort of disgruntled huff. Then he rolled onto his side, so that he was facing away from her. She might have thought he was putting an end to their conversation and establishing some distance between them if it hadn’t been for the fact that he kept tight hold of her hand, so that as he rolled the movement tugged her up against his back. Just as though he wanted to drape her over himself like a human blanket.
She snuggled closer. For he’d made it clear he hadn’t been rejecting her. It had been pride that had made him turn away, she was sure. Men didn’t like appearing weak, and he probably regretted spilling all those secrets he’d kept hidden for years. He’d made himself vulnerable to her. Because he trusted her. Or thought she’d understand what rejection of that sort felt like after the way her own aunt had betrayed her.
Yes, if any two people knew what betrayal felt like it was them.
She hugged his waist, wishing there was something she could do to ease his pain. To let him know that she didn’t think any less of him for struggling the way he had in the coldness of his arranged marriage, and with his feelings about the way it had ended.
And suddenly it occurred to her that there was one obvious way to do both.
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Энни Берроуз
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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