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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.’
