How a Lady Weds a Rogue (7 page)

“I am not from London, Miss Lucas.”

She gripped his lapels and pressed her cheek to his chest. So solid. So warm. So
Mr. Yale
. He smelled very,
very
good, of clean linen and something else that was
deeply
nice.

“
Do
cease calling me Miss Lucas.” She squeezed her eyes closed. “I
don’t
like it, but I
would
like to remove this cloak. I am positively
sweltering
.”

Her back met the wall of the building and then he was unfastening her cloak and she was so happy she nearly wept. She danced free of it.

“Oh,
thank
you. Thank you. A thousand thank you’s!”

“One will do.” He followed her across the nubby drive farther into the dark.

She spread her arms. “Am I drunk, Mr. Yale?”

“You are, indeed, Miss Lucas.”

She whirled around to face him, the cool night air swirling in her skirts and across her neck where it felt positively wonderful. “And are you drunk, Mr. Yale?”

“Relatively speaking, no, Miss Lucas.”

“Oh.” She pivoted to a halt. The world spun, disappointment smothering her. “Because if you were you
would
put your hands on me again, I daresay.”

“Then we must both be very glad that I am not.”

There were many thoughts in her head then. Her mouth tasted like paste. She could not bring the lamp-lit tufts of grass poking up from the drive into focus. It was too dark and a big black circle surrounded her tube of vision.

She peered at the building. “Whose carriage are we stealing?”

“Sir Henry’s.”

“That seems
terribly
rude after we enjoyed his hospitality all afternoon.”

“Yet unavoidable. It is the only vehicle remaining at this late hour that accommodates your traveling trunk and the three of us. Unless you wish to make the journey in a hay wagon?”

She laughed. Then she sighed. She could sigh forever if he stood before her. “Four.”

“Four?”

“Ramses.”

“Ramses?”

She pointed behind him. “Our dog, Mr. Yale!”

“Ah.” He nodded.

“It was that name or Spider. He has black eyes, you know. Unlike yours. I
admire
your eyes very much. I will leave my necklace.”

“Your necklace?”

“As recompense.”

“You wear no necklace, Miss Lucas.”

“You told me to remove my valuables from the traveling trunk, and so I
did
. It is in the bandbox. We must leave it in the stable to pay Sir Henry for his carriage and horses. It is very valuable.”

“That will not be necessary.”

“I insist! I hid it, you see, so when my mother stole my sisters’ jewels she did not find it.” She wagged a finger. “It is not right to steal, Mr. Yale, whatever you have been accustomed to doing in the past.”

Her cloak was folded over his arm and he stood three yards away. The drive tilted this way and that, taking him and the spot of golden-orange lamp with it from side to side. She was excessively uncomfortable.

Her eyes widened. “I think I am going to be ill.”

He moved toward her.

She was ill. Violently so.

It was horrid.

Chapter 7

D
iantha awoke in a sticky sweat with her mouth lined in gum paper. Wretched tasting gum paper. She swallowed thickly and her tongue felt large. So did her eyelids, and her stomach, and her head. She groaned a little and tried to breathe.

“Awake, then?” Mrs. Polley spoke close by. “Must feel like old Beelzebub himself. Mr. Polley always did when he enjoyed too many pints at the miller’s on a Sunday.”

Diantha cracked her eyes open. “He drank on Sundays? At a mill?” The room was minuscule, allowing only a small bed, the chair that Mrs. Polley’s little round form inhabited, and a rustic dressing table. The fabric over the window was striped and drawn back to allow in gray light. “Isn’t that blasphemous?”

“Mr. Polley left the praying to womenfolk, miss, as good men do.” She went to the foot of the bed. “
That
man—and I’m not saying he’s a good man—will be wanting to speak with you now. But we’ll have you dressed before I’ll allow him in here.”

She blinked to clear the discomfort in her head and stomach, to no avail. “Whyever would you allow him into my bedchamber at all?”

Her companion held forth stays and petticoat. “We were needing some explanation to these nice folk for you being weak as a chick and none too clear-headed, I told them you were expecting a wee one, and bad off because of it. I’ve seen ladies worse on account of babes in the womb. Seeing as they believed it, they’d surely wonder if I didn’t allow him in here.”

Good heavens; they were not at an inn apparently. She dragged her legs over the edge of the bed and pressed her face into her hands. “Who are the nice folk, Mrs. Polley?” she uttered into her palms, her stomach doing thick, nasty flip-flops.

Mrs. Polley strapped the stays around Diantha’s ribs. “A farmer and his wife, and a pack of children.” She scowled. “He’s charmed the lot of them with his pretty London ways.”

Diantha cupped her splitting brow in one palm and pressed the other over her rebellious midsection. “Has he?”

“Took the four little ones up the hill to see the sheep this morning, and brought them back smiling and so worn-out they dropped right off after lunch.”

The petticoat came over her head. “Is it afternoon already?”

“Near four o’clock, miss.” Mrs. Polley guided her hands through the sleeves and tugged Diantha to her feet.

She swayed and grabbed the bedpost. The night was coming back to her in bits. Awful, shameful, truly appalling bits. She sincerely hoped the bits she did not remember were not any worse than those she did. Her throat felt prickly.

“I think I may be ill.”

“I don’t imagine there’s anything left in there to come up, miss.”

Her modesty? Her self-respect? Oh, no, of course not.
Those
were already thrown entirely to the wind.

She clutched the bedpost while Mrs. Polley fastened her gown, then pinned her hair with the same swift efficiency with which she did all such tasks. It was remarkable that anyone would release such a servant from service. But of course Mrs. Polley hadn’t been of much use to her modesty and self-respect, sleeping the evening away while she drank glass after glass of punch.

“Now there, miss, you go out there and hold your head up.” She clucked her tongue. “It wasn’t your fault that man led you into debauchery.”

“He did not lead me, Mrs. Polley. I drank the punch by my own will.”

Her companion’s bulgy eyes narrowed. “I know what I know.”

Then she knew wrongly. One of Diantha’s few pristine memories of the night was of Mr. Yale gently but firmly removing her hands from his person. Repeatedly. The debauchery had been entirely hers.

She faced the door, heartbeats smacking against her protesting stomach. But there was nowhere to hide, and she did not particularly wish to hide now. Last night she had seized life and lived it with abandon—at least the parts she recalled. She would not now cower in a tiny bedchamber of a farmhouse somewhere in Shropshire for another moment, no matter the certain embarrassment she faced beyond.

She grasped the handle and went out.

It was a long, unadorned room boasting a wooden table flanked by benches and an enormous kitchen hearth before which an apron-clad woman and girl stood. Ramses popped up from a spot before the fire and padded over to her, wiggling happily. Standing at the far window, Mr. Yale turned.

He smiled his slight smile, nothing mocking or knowing or any different from before, and a little chord of dread unwound within her. She curtsied and nearly tumbled over. His smile lengthened only a bit. He bowed.

“Good day, ma’am. How are you feeling?”

“Not perfectly well.”
Wretched
. She smelled wretched too, her skin radiating a treacly acridness that made her nostrils curl. She probably looked wretched too. But the bedchamber had no mirror, which was for the best. Best not to know what he saw now.

Because what she saw was perfection. Even garbed in his usual black coat, breeches, and boots, a waistcoat of exquisite quality and crisp white shirt and cravat, he made her throat tighten up a bit. But today he looked different. His cheeks carried a glow even in the dimness of the gray day filtering through the windows, and his eyes seemed especially clear.

“Mrs. Dyer, may I make you known to our hostess, Mrs. Bates? And this is her eldest daughter, Miss Elizabeth Bates, whose excellent cooking we enjoyed for dinner today.”

“How do you do, ma’am?” The mistress of the house curtsied with a rustle of apron. “We’re sorry you’ve been poorly. I was ill when I carried my first, Tom, and Betsy here too.” She nodded confidingly. “It’ll be easier with the third.”

“Thank you for your hospitality.” She went forward, the steam from the pot rising to her nose and catching up her throat again. She swallowed tightly and smiled. “I cannot imagine what you must have thought when we were obliged to stop here in the thick of the night like that. You and your husband are very kind to have taken us in.”

“The good Lord says that when we invite in a stranger, we invite Him in, ma’am. And Mr. Dyer being so gentlemanly, we’d no worry.”

The girl bounced a curtsy, all coltish slenderness, the exact opposite of Diantha at that age. But exactly
like
her then in another manner: Elizabeth’s cheeks and brow were peppered with red spots. Each one seemed to radiate brighter as she blushed.

“I’m only Betsy, miss. And my cooking ain’t nearly so fine as the gentleman says.” She directed a starry-eyed glance at Mr. Yale.

“I am certain you must deserve the praise, Betsy.” Diantha had no doubt she’d directed precisely the same starry look at him last night. Because she was madly curious to see how he liked the flattery of awkward girls still in the schoolroom, she mustered the courage to glance at him. But he was not looking at Betsy, he was looking at her, and her gruesomely uncomfortable stomach did another flip-flop.

“My saints, Betsy,” Mrs. Bates said, setting down her cooking spoon and peering out the window. “You run out and close the gate before that goat escapes, and I’ll fetch the . . . eggs. Mrs. Dyer, I’ve set tea for you.” With a thoroughly transparent look at her daughter, she ushered Betsy out.

Mr. Yale moved toward a sturdy oaken sideboard against the wall that bore a set of cups and plates decorated with little pink flowers along the rims. “Can you tolerate food?”

“No.” She watched him pour from a jug into a cup and cross the room toward her. “But I will eat if you do.”

“While you slept away the day, I dined with our hosts.” He extended the cup. She accepted it and lifted it to her mouth.

“It seems we are to—
Oh!
” She spit the spirits back into the cup. “What do you think you’re doing giving me
that
? Do you want to see me cast up my accounts all over again?”

His brow lifted. “Not in the least.” He took her hand and urged it toward her mouth. “But you must trust me on this.”

“No.” She resisted. Her tongue was crimping at its base and her stomach turning over, and also his hand was quite firm and warm around hers. Resisting apparently meant that he would touch her, so she gladly resisted. Clearly she had learned nothing from the failure of her adventure into wicked waywardness the previous night.

He pushed back gently. Rather than spill the liquor on her gown, finally she set the rim to her mouth again.

“They call it taking a dose of the hair of the dog that bit you.” He stood close, looking down at her as she sipped. Her throat revolted, but she managed to swallow.

“An old superstition?” she managed between clenched teeth.

“It has a restorative effect.”

She released the empty cup back into his hand. “I cannot believe you do that all the time. What I mean to say is, it was . . .
uncomfortable
. No wonder you’ve decreased a stone since last I saw you.”

“I’ve not been sick since I was a boy.”

“You haven’t?”

“A man learns to hold his drink if he is wise.”

“Did you really eat dinner?”

“I did. Would you like to know the measures of portions and each item on the plate?”

She chuckled, and he smiled in return. Beneath the blanket of that smile she did not feel her rebellious stomach or smell her putrid sweat or even mind her somewhat weak knees.

“I
am
hungry. And as we are apparently to have those children after all, I probably should eat to maintain my health.”

He laughed. “Unusual young lady, indeed.”

“Well, it wasn’t my idea to assign to me an interesting condition.” Now the whole of her legs felt wobbly. She slipped around him and went to the table where a plate of biscuits sat beside a teapot. “I cannot imagine what Mrs. Polley was thinking to invent that.”

“No doubt she thought it would seem to our hosts a more appealing incapacity than drunkenness. Or disease. And I believe she hoped to impose a veneer of domestic responsibility upon her role in the thing.” A beat of silence. “And mine.”

Her fingers stalled on the teapot handle. “Yours?”

“With each cup of punch you took last evening, her glower at me deepened.”

“Whatever for?”

“I am under the impression that she feels I was responsible for your excess.”

“Well I know you were not.” She poured the tea and drank it and her hands barely even shook, which was remarkable since he was watching her and there were any number of things she and he both could say now that would be highly uncomfortable. For her, at least. “How did we come to be here, and where precisely is here?”

“Imprecisely, somewhere between Shrewsbury and Bishops Castle.”

“Bishops Castle? Isn’t that—?”

“West? Yes. I thought it best to avoid the main road, for both secrecy and safety’s sake.”

“I recall you saying something about driving far enough so that no one would recognize Sir Henry’s carriage and horses, so I suppose this family does not. They were very kind to take us in.” She chewed on a biscuit and took a second. “Oh!” She looked up. “Did you leave my necklace?”

Now his eyes twinkled. “You would have it no other way.”

“It was the honorable thing to do.”

“It is a shame, really, that upon this quest you cannot yourself play the role of the hero.”

“I don’t have to. You are playing it. And . . .” She fiddled with a biscuit, crumbling it between the tips of her fingers. “I am grateful to you for being honorable.” She was also mortified. And keenly disappointed.

Fortunately, he understood her meaning.

“We shall call it even then, shall we?” He said it quietly, but he sounded perfectly undisturbed.

Then, because she feared that her cheeks were red, she flipped a hand in the air and said with mock insouciance, “Anyway, you must play the role of the hero because we are heading south, and Scotland is north, of course.”

“Scotland?”

“Where villains take innocent damsels when eloping.”

“Ah. Of course.” He moved away from her, returning to the sideboard and pouring another cup of spirits. “I suspect your Mr. H would have something to say to you haring off to Scotland to marry another man.”

She nodded.

“Why do you call your intended by an initial only?”

“Because his name is far too silly to say aloud.”

He allowed a moment’s silence.

She released a thick breath. “Hinkle Highbottom. It’s true: his parents should have been drawn and quartered to name him that. But . . .” She sealed her lips.

“I fear I pry, but I cannot withhold my curiosity.
But . . .
?”

“But . . . it rather suits him. Not that he isn’t perfectly amiable. It is only that he is . . .” She turned away from him and went to the stove because she suspected that if she looked at him she would cast him another of Betsy’s starry-eyed looks. “He is a good man and I am sure I shall be very happy with him.”

“What will he think of this mission of yours?”

She took up the long wooden spoon and stirred the stew. Sometimes she helped with simple tasks when Cook was entertaining Faith with biscuits or bread making. In the midst of this wild adventure, it felt familiar. Like this man. Despite the moments she had of pure awareness that he was not entirely safe, somehow he made her escapade to find her mother seem sane.

“He won’t know about this,” she replied. “No one will. Except you. And Mrs. Polley, of course. Will we leave here now?”

“We have escaped Eads’s notice for the time. It is already late in the day. I drove through the night and—despite my heroic status—require rest before taking to the road anew. Tomorrow will be soon enough.”

“Tomorrow?” Her heart skipped. “But . . .” It did several little jigs about her chest. She lowered her voice and darted a glance at the window. “They believe we are married.”

The slightest crease appeared in one lean cheek. Crossing his arms, he propped a broad shoulder against the sideboard. “If you recall, it was your idea.”

“To pretend to the
Miss Blevinses
and
Sir Henry
. Not the entire Shropshire countryside.” Mr. and Mrs. Bates would expect them to share a bedchamber. Diantha believed that she had the courage of a true heroine in her heart. But this she could not face, not with the pieces of her memories from the night before skittering around in her head. In short: she did not trust herself, even sober. The more she looked at him the more she wanted to feel again that alarming excitement she’d felt when he touched her in the stable.