His Runaway Lady

‘No wonder she didn’t run. That must have hurt like the devil.’

He frowned, the already-creased plane of his forehead crinkling further. She couldn’t be left where she was, that was obvious, but what should he do with her? He could hardly take her back to his modest cottage with the forge, standing some distance apart from the other houses in Woodford Common behind a screen of trees. The woman would wake soon, no doubt, and be frightened half to death at finding herself alone with him, crippled by her injury and unable to escape…

But where else is there?

There was nobody in the village likely to help him, he thought with dark certainty as he rocked back on his heels, hoping for a flash of inspiration. Every community had its black sheep, the one only fit to live on the fringes and draw sideways looks from the rest—and Woodford Common had outdone itself, boasting a half-Roma bastard from who knew what English father. The villagers might tolerate him now for his skill with iron and anvil, but for all his thirty-one years Fell had known how far beneath them he was considered—until he himself had come to accept his lack of value and that he would never truly belong.

Ma had given birth to him in the forest like an animal, the village gossips were maliciously delighted to repeat time and again, a young Romani girl nobody had seen before, alone and unmarried and barely more than a child herself. It was nothing short of a miracle the parish rector had been visiting Woodford at the time and found her, later giving Ma a position in his household as a maid. That had drawn much protest among the busybodies of the community, but Rector Frost stood firm: let he without sin cast the first stone, he’d ruled, showing Fell’s mother the Christian charity some of his congregation preferred to preach rather than to practise. Essea Barden and her baby boy had been allowed to stay, Ma grateful beyond measure to her rescuer, but guarding the secrets of where she had come from and the name of Fell’s father with a determination nothing could touch.

Fell tapped his fingers on his stubbled chin, vaguely feeling the black bristles. If only the good rector was still alive, surely he would have cared for this mysterious woman, but he had passed away long ago and his replacement had shown little interest in the illegitimate son of a former servant. In truth, there wasn’t anyone Fell trusted enough to ask for help and, with a sigh of resignation, he carefully gathered the unconscious shape into his arms.

‘Looks like we’ll be having a guest at breakfast today.’

The dog stirred his wiry tail as if in agreement as Fell straightened up, the bundle of woman he carried as still and passive as a doll. She weighed next to nothing, a mere scrap of a thing wrapped in a cheap cloak and her face, scattered with an Orion’s belt of freckles, relaxed as though in the depths of sleep. Whether it was fear, pain or the sight of the blood on her fingers that had rendered her insensible he didn’t know, but Fell’s brows twitched briefly as a gleam of concern sparked swiftly into life.

What can she have been doing, out here all alone? The night’s no safe place for a woman on her own—and especially not a woman like this.

She was an undeniable beauty, he’d seen at once with a flicker of interest, even if his more rational side had no desire to notice. With a bright copper mane and delicate features the stranger was a rare sight and no mistake, and Fell found himself uncomfortably pleased by the feeling of warmth his soft burden spilled across his chest as he walked, a sensation he hadn’t felt since…

Give that a rest.

He shied away from the thought, the memories it dragged along with it nothing he wanted to revisit. Shunting the ghosts of the past back into the shadows where they belonged was second nature now, years of practice honing the skill until usually he could manage it with ease—but something about the shape of a woman in his arms again threatened to unleash the flood, snatches of images long repressed rising to break through the walls.

Charity’s eyes were brown, not green, and instead of copper her hair was the colour of wheat.

The memory tried to close its hands around his throat, but he flung it away, square jaw hardening in determination. One woman was quite enough to contend with without echoes of the past clamouring for his attention, too. If the stranger he carried stirred something in him he hadn’t felt in years, he’d pay it no mind, and certainly not while she lay unconscious against the rough front of his shirt. When she awoke she would doubtless be frightened and dazed, and nothing in his conduct should give her cause for additional alarm—even if the fine lines of her face tempted him to glance down more than once to take another look.

Lash padded ahead of his master and Fell followed with rising apprehension. This wasn’t at all how the day had been meant to start. He’d wanted to gather some kindling and cook breakfast before stoking the fire in the forge, melting iron for the best horseshoes for miles. The villagers of Woodford Common might not truly accept him but they couldn’t argue with the quality of his work—the one part of his existence about which Fell felt any measure of pride. Everything else about him was submerged in the doubt, uncertainty and feelings of inadequacy he’d had, despite Ma’s best efforts, since he was a child.

It was bittersweet when she returned to visit now. Fell could never shake a pang of something close to jealousy when she would arrive with no notice, slipping down from her horse with a cry of delight at his emergence from the forge. Ma was so sure of who she was, what she was and where she belonged, a certainty that always seemed to slip through Fell’s fingers when he tried to grasp hold of it. Neither fully Roma nor fully English, he wavered somewhere between the two worlds, never knowing where his true place lay or what identity he should adopt. Any talk about his father was skilfully dodged, but the question left a huge hole only shame and vague resentment of his mother’s impenetrable secrecy could fill, her stubborn concealment of the truth fostering tension between them even now he was grown. The taint of bastardy followed Fell wherever he went, both his illegitimacy and his Roma blood securing his place among the lowest of Woodford’s residents.

Not that I’m not used to it by now. I’ve had long enough to see how the world works.

His mystery guest had grown heavier by the time his cottage reared up out of the trees in front of him, watching his approach with friendly windows beneath a thick brow of thatch. Another snatched glimpse at her face showed her eyes still closed, amber lashes sweeping on to pale cheeks to free another glimmer of appreciation Fell set firmly aside. It wouldn’t have mattered if she’d been a frail grandmother, or a tiny child, he would still have taken her in. The fact she fitted neither of those descriptions, but was instead the kind of young woman a more foolish man might lose his head for, made not a bit of difference.

A kick with one large boot was enough to dislodge the door and Fell stooped to enter the low building without hitting his head, crossing with only the barest hesitation to place the woman across his own bed. She lay without moving, only the steady rise and fall of her chest signalling she wasn’t made of wax as Fell awkwardly removed her bonnet, his eye drawn to the patch of darkening blood drying stubbornly on her skirt.

That’ll need tending before anything else.

He watched her for a moment before turning away. Hot water, cloth for bandages, rags to clean the wound… There were various things he’d require and none of them immediately to hand. With a sigh of resignation he raised an eyebrow at the dog sitting at his feet, who responded with a thump of that straggly tail.

‘Perhaps there won’t be time for breakfast after all.’

Chapter Two

A ceiling of rough boards stretched overhead as bit by bit Sophia’s senses collected themselves and she opened her aching eyes, the pain in her leg flaring to greet her return to consciousness.

Absolutely nothing in the small room she found herself in was familiar. The simple wooden furniture and plain bed she lay on were entirely alien—as was everything except for the dog that curled next to her on the thin mattress, the same one that had found her in the forest.

With a start of alarm she tried to sit up.

If the dog was here…

‘You’re awake. I was starting to wonder if I should be worried.’

The voice from behind made her jump, a movement she regretted as her injured leg crackled and a gasp escaped parted lips. She tried to look over her shoulder at the figure leaning against the doorframe, her heart slamming into the bodice of her dress as if fired from a cannon as he stepped into the room.

‘No need for that. I’ll not harm you.’

She watched with eyes wide in fright as the tall, dark-haired man she just recalled seeing before she’d slid to the ground moved slowly to sit at the foot of the bed, careful not to touch her. His movements were measured as if he suspected—correctly, as it happened—she might baulk and try to run, and his attempts to avoid startling her slightly dimmed the brightest spark of her fear.

‘Who are you, sir? Where am I?’

Now she could see him clearly Sophia felt herself colour beneath his direct gaze, heat simmering in her flushed cheeks. Her fleeting impression in the forest had been correct: the stranger was handsome indeed, olive-skinned and firm-jawed with a width of shoulder she’d certainly never seen on any idle gentleman. He wore a shirt with the sleeves turned back over brawny forearms and a blacksmith’s leather apron across his barrel chest, the hands that rested on his knees huge and scarred and ingrained with what looked like soot. The overwhelming impression was of a solid wall of male, sitting near enough that she could have brushed him with her stockinged foot—but it was his eyes that made her blink with surprise that veered sharply into wonder.

The left was dark and shrewd as a raven’s, obsidian in his weathered face, while the right was the colour of warm honey and moss, the hazel and green mixing together like a landscape in miniature. They were eyes to lose hours in, their uncanny colours the background for a complex mix of curiosity and—unexpectedly, Sophia thought dazedly—concern that danced in their depths. There was a beauty in their strangeness and Sophia felt her blush intensify as she realised how much she wanted to stare, the face they were set in almost as intriguing in its striking appeal.

What are you thinking? The sensible voice inside her head heaved aside girlish sentiment to regard her with a frown. You know nothing about this man. Plenty of dangerous individuals have comely faces—as Septimus should have taught you.

The thought of the man from whom she’d fled made Sophia’s face crumple in fresh fear, Mother’s glare joining it to increase the horrors racing in her mind. It was impossible to tell what time it was, although the sunlight attempting to stream through thin curtains signalled a new July morning, and the possibility her flight had been discovered turned her blood to ice. Would they have begun hunting for her yet? Had the bookkeeper already visited Fenwick Manor, full of apologies for being unable to stop Miss Thruxton from disappearing into the warm night?

The man must have seen the terror in her face and misunderstood it, for when he next spoke his voice was low and steady and, despite the rush of anxiety in every vein, Sophia felt a glint of feminine appreciation for its deep, pleasing tone.

‘No sirs here—only a blacksmith. My name’s Fell and this is my cottage. I found you in Savernake Forest and brought you back here, to Woodford Common. Have you been to this village before?’

Sophia shook her head distractedly, too many worries chiming in her ears to make them ring. Woodford Common? Surely she’d heard the name, or perhaps seen it written on a signpost at the side of the road through the forest. It was close to Marlborough and perhaps a distance of twenty-five miles from Fenwick Manor.

‘No. I’ve heard of it, but never visited.’

Fell nodded and she couldn’t help a swift glance risked in his direction, again glimpsing the dark shine of his hair complemented by skin far richer than she was used to seeing. The combination was alluring, a flit of interest Sophia shied away from in alarm. Any coy appreciation for her mysterious host would do nothing to unravel an already confusing situation, one that without careful management could all too easily get out of hand.

‘Do you remember anything about where you came from, or where you might have been going?’ He crossed his arms over his chest and regarded her narrowly, as though trying to read something in her glowing face. ‘I can’t imagine you came to be in the middle of the forest without good reason.’

Sophia hesitated, the truth stalling on her tongue. He’d rescued her from her initial predicament but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t be tempted to deliver her back to Fenwick Manor if she told him who she was. Mother might offer a reward for the return of her wayward daughter, and with a stab of regret Sophia realised her own purse had been left in the carriage when she fled. She had no way of making a counter-offer without a penny to her name, no way of persuading Fell not to make the transition from rescuer to captor.

She saw how he watched her with those piercing eyes and felt her pulse skip beneath her skin at his scrutiny, unfamiliar and yet…

Not unpleasant.

Her experience of young men was scant, to say the least—even nuns in a convent might speak to the occasional male, more than Sophia had ever been allowed. At the few rare parties she had been permitted to attend Mother had held on to her arm with cold fingers like a vice, turning her basilisk glare on any who might have strayed too near.

She wouldn’t want to risk a kind man looking my way. Not that they’d have reason to.

Only Septimus would do as Sophia’s intended—his malice was exactly the repayment she deserved for her part in the tragedy of almost twenty years before, the weight of guilt around her neck something she knew couldn’t be escaped.

Even so Sophia had chafed under Mother’s pinching grasp, longing to be among the dancing couples and perhaps flirting her fan at some handsome partner. The desire to throw off the restraining hand was always so strong, her natural high spirits aching to be allowed free rein—but she knew what would happen if she disobeyed and the prospect was enough to douse the rebellious spark that glowed deep down inside, never permitted to see the light.

She’d lapsed into silence again without meaning to, only the slight sigh of the man waiting for her reply dragging her away from the thoughts that gnawed at her.

‘Your name, then? Will you tell me that at least?’

The mismatched gaze searched her face more and more doubtfully the longer she took to speak, her confusion and discomfort growing with every second she cast about for an answer. The novel sensation of being so close to a man, unchaperoned and on his bed of all places would have been mortifying enough without the added complication of his being so confoundedly attractive. She would have to conjure a story to explain how she came to be lying in the forest and a new name to match—both things that required more time to think than Sophia currently had at her disposal. With her cheeks burning, she blurted out the first thing that sprang into her head.

‘Marie. Marie—Crewe.’

Where that flash of genius came from Sophia wasn’t sure, but after a short pause Fell gave a small nod.

‘Well then, Miss Crewe, as I said, my name is Fell and this—’ he jerked his head towards the dog that lay near her with its head on its paws ‘—is Lash. As a pair of poor bachelors we weren’t expecting company, so if it’s any comfort we’re as surprised by this turn of events as you are.’

Surely nobody could be quite as surprised as she was, Sophia thought as she willed her heartrate to slow back to an acceptable speed. Opening her eyes in a strange man’s bedroom was not how she’d expected her moonlight flit to end, the most intimate encounter with a male she’d ever had—but then again, what had she expected? There had been no plan other than to escape Fenwick Manor and its inhabitants, her movements after that as unknown to Sophia as to anyone else. Perhaps stumbling into Fell’s path might turn out to be fortunate after all. For all her misgivings she was now under a roof, at least temporarily safe from the eyes of those hunting her, and for that she ought to be grateful.

The frenetic thumping of her heart under control a little more, Sophia shifted slightly higher on the bed to lean against the headboard. Fell sat impassive, awaiting a response as she settled herself, stalling for time while she groped for a plausible story. His silent presence was a curious mixture of calming and unnerving, determined patience strangely at odds with such a huge frame. Despite what could have been an intimidatingly large build there was no shadow of the subtle menace Septimus had always radiated, the difference between the two men like night and day, and Sophia’s sudden appreciation for the fact brought her thoughts to a sharp halt.

No more of that. Remember what you ought to be concentrating on. The man’s a blacksmith, for goodness’ sake, and you are…well, yourself.

That was the truth and there was nothing more to it, Sophia acknowledged grimly. He was far below her in status, but even if he’d been an earl there was no reason a man like Fell would so much as look at her twice. Handsome and clearly capable, if any other rank he would have been exactly the sort of man Mother had taught Sophia never to hope for. A suitor with those qualities could have his pick of women—why would he waste his time with her?

Thoughts of Mother helped focus Sophia’s mind, her fear rising again to stick in her throat. She would have to make the most of the chance she had been given and, to do that, she would have to lie.

‘I was in service to a family in Salisbury, as—as a maid. I had to leave suddenly and in the confusion of travelling I found myself lost in the forest, without any of my luggage and unable to find my way in the dark.’

Fell half-raised one eyebrow but said nothing to disagree, merely inclining his dark head as she spoke. For a horrible moment Sophia was sure she saw a glimmer of scepticism in his expression, although the next it disappeared back below the surface.

‘A maid?’

‘That’s right.’

‘I see. And where was it you were headed that made you take such a detour…in the middle of the night? Somehow deprived of your luggage?’

Sophia dropped her eyes to the patchwork quilt she lay on, thinking fast as dismay seized her.

You’ve always been a terrible liar. Yet another thing you could never do right.

‘It was—I thought, perhaps…’ she stuttered, stumbling over the words. ‘I didn’t have a precise destination in mind. I thought I’d get to Marlborough and then decide my route from there. Cutting through Savernake Forest seemed a good way to save time, but as I said, in the dark… My case and purse were left behind when I had to get down from the coach unexpectedly and, by the time I realised, it was too late to return for them.’

She tailed off, still refusing to meet his eye as she ran out of thread to spin her pitiful cobweb of a lie. There was no way he’d believe such a pile of garbled nonsense, surely, yet when he replied Sophia felt herself wilt with relief.

‘Fortunate I found you, then. You wouldn’t have got much further with that leg left the way it was.’

In the whirl that had spun her since she woke Sophia had almost forgotten her pain, but now Fell mentioned it she felt a renewed shard rake her. She looked down swiftly, her insides contracting briefly at the ugly stain of dried blood on her skirts. The stiff patch was as much as she could stand—any fresher and her innards would have turned, her horror of all kinds of gore so vivid even the memory was enough to make her swoon.

‘Nasty wound about this long.’ Fell gestured with his fingers, although Sophia’s thoughts were abruptly diverted by a new dread dawning in her stomach. The only way he would know what kind of injury she’d sustained was if…

‘I’ve cleaned and dressed it, but it’ll need time to heal. Your ankle seemed as though you’d turned it, too.’

Sophia’s blush gripped her entire body, roasting her in the fire trapped beneath her own skin.

He had looked. He had actually looked!

Even her eyes felt hot as she thought how Fell must have swept her skirt to the side to treat her leg, a liberty absolutely no lady of her standing would allow. To uncover something so private, so forbidden, went against every lesson in decorum Sophia had ever been taught. Only a woman’s husband might catch a glimpse of her calves, or even a scandalous knee if he was exceptionally lucky. Certainly no lady would so much as countenance a blacksmith, of all people—but of course, she wasn’t a lady here. In Fell’s cottage it was vital he believed she was a maid—Marie—and surely women of the lower classes had different standards. If she let her shame show in her face he’d suspect her even if he didn’t already, her safety dependent on sustaining her feeble lie.

‘Oh. Well. Thank you very much,’ she answered through teeth clenched in mortification, although Fell didn’t seem to notice. He was too busy softly rubbing the dog’s brown ears, huge calloused fingers again surprising Sophia with their gentleness. They were the same fingers that had cleaned and dressed her wounds, strong and tanned and scattered with healed burns shining here and there, and the knowledge increased the heat in Sophia’s cheeks to positively scalding. It was an unspeakably intimate thing for him to have uncovered her pale legs and washed the blood from them, all carefully enough not to rouse her. A large part of her was still appalled, embarrassed, thinking she ought to be offended, but another part, secret and more scandalous than anything else, couldn’t hate the notion he had touched her skin. He must have carried her in from the forest before anything else, she realised belatedly—his arms were like nothing she’d seen up close before, power barely contained by the scorched sleeves that covered them, and to know she had nestled within them lit a taper Sophia hadn’t known existed. It was unacceptable, and distinctly unladylike, yet there it was: an instinctive and irrepressible recognition of the attractions of a good-looking man over which she found she had no control.

The man responsible for such an unfamiliar reaction shrugged his sculpted shoulders. ‘Doesn’t take much skill to bind a leg. I’ve plenty of experience doing the same for horses and they’ve twice as many to contend with.’

Before Sophia could decide how she felt about being compared to a horse Fell got to his feet, towering above her with his hair almost brushing the low ceiling and for a half-second she felt a twinge of fear. He was truly one of the biggest men she had ever seen, obviously more than capable of lifting her if he chose. She couldn’t escape, her injury throwing her entirely into his power—yet the flicker dimmed as she saw how carefully he stepped away from her, such unfamiliar consideration for her comfort sending her pulse skipping again like a spring lamb.

‘You must be half-starved by now. I’ll find you something to eat.’

Fell stirred the tea leaves slowly, his thoughts too full of the woman lying in his bedchamber to notice it had begun to stew. The remnants of yesterday’s loaf and the last of his cheese were already on a tray and he wondered if it would be enough to sate his mysterious guest’s appetite—but that was the least pressing of the concerns that currently circled through his mind.