- -
- 100%
- +
‘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
‘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.’