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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.
