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‘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.’
