But such an offer was a mistake with her, a bad one, and she bristled accordingly.
“I do not need your words, my lord,” she said. “Not one nor even two of them.”
“Sophie, please,” he began. “Blast, I didn’t intend it like that!”
But off she went again without him, showing far more endurance than he’d given her credit for.
Far, far more, indeed, than did his horse, who decided that moment that he was too weary to walk another step.
“Hell, Thunder, not now,” said Harry, leaning forward as he yanked as hard as he could on the reins. Sophie had nearly reached the inn’s signpost, painted with a cross-eyed portrait of the inn’s namesake bird. “Move yourself, you damned wretched beast!”
With a snort the horse suddenly complied, catching Harry so off balance that he fell stumbling backward into the dust. By the time he—and Thunder—had managed to recover together, Sophie had already disappeared inside the inn.
With the whoosh of the opening door to draw her in, Sophie felt as if she’d plunged into a river teeming and swirling with people of every age—people laughing, eating, shouting, flirting, toasting, singing, drinking, and dancing and everything being done at the loudest, most boisterous level possible, from the front tap room to the hall and up the stairway and down again. Overwhelmed by so much merriment, Sophie pressed back against the door frame, leery of being swept off into another room and never seen again. Crowds always made her uneasy, which was likely why she’d never cared for London. But she could cope with such challenges; any truly capable woman could.
“Ah, mistress, good day, good day!” called the red-faced innkeeper in his green apron, elbowing his way toward her. “John Connor, mistress, your servant. You’ve caught us on quite a night, haven’t you? I trust the lads have seen to your horses in the yard?”
“Thank you, sir,” shouted Sophie, standing very straight and striving to make herself heard over the fiddle player who’d just begun a fresh tune. “But I’ve no horses to be seen to. That’s my problem, you see. I need to find—”
“Beg pardon, mistress?” the man called, apologetically tapping his forefinger beside his ear to show he couldn’t understand her over the din. “You’ve a problem with your horses?”
“No, no, no!” she shouted, then lowered her voice as the man pushed his way to her. “No, Mr. Connor. My driver has left me, and now I must hire a carriage or chaise to take me to Winchester. As soon as can be arranged, Mr. Connor, if you please.”
Connor tucked in his chin and frowned as he shook his head. “Not this night, mistress. I am very sorry to disappoint you, but with all this drinking and frolicking, there’s not a man left sober enough to climb onto the box, let alone drive clear to Winchester.”
Sophie squared her shoulders with determination. “I am willing to pay what is necessary, Mr. Connor,” she said, holding her reticule before her to reinforce her words and her credit. “But I must reach Winchester tomorrow.”
The innkeeper only shook his head again, his jowls swinging beneath his chin.
“Not from here, you won’t, mistress,” he said firmly. “It’d be worth your life to go with one of these—why, my Lord Burton! How long it’s been since you’ve graced us here at the old Peacock! Welcome, my lord, welcome!”
Sophie didn’t have to look to know that Harry had joined her. Why should she, when Connor’s greeting was as good as a royal fanfare?
“How are you, Connor?” said Harry warmly. “And your wife and the little ones? Ah, I’ve been away too long, that’s a fact.”
“Well, well, we cannot complain,” beamed the innkeeper, and then his smile vanished, his face turning solemn as he noticed Harry’s dress. “Oh, my lord, I am sorry! Here I am a-babbling on, and you in deep mourning. My sympathy on your loss, my lord.”
Now Sophie turned, ready to scoff at the notion of Harry’s highwayman’s black being mistaken for mourning. But to her shock, Harry’s expression had suddenly gone shuttered and sorrowful, as if he truly did suffer from the deepest grief possible. She didn’t have to know who he’d lost. Automatically she reached for his hand, pressing her fingers around his to offer whatever comfort she could to ease his suffering.
“Forgive me, mistress,” said the innkeeper, quick to notice their linked hands—though not so quick to hide his surprise, his brows raised as he glanced over her rumpled wool travelling clothes and judged her frankly unworthy of the earl of Atherwall’s attentions. “I did not realize you were with his lordship.”
“Oh, Miss Potts has known me even longer than you have, Connor,” said Harry, threading his fingers more closely into hers, acknowledgement of her gesture, and comfort returned. “Friends from the nursery, you could say.”
And unexpected though it was, Harry’s hand in hers was a comfort, one she’d missed more than she’d realized. The only hands she held these days belonged to children, and once again to feel Harry’s familiar touch, his fingers so strong and sure as they curled around hers, connecting them together, brought a shock of pleasure she thought she’d put aside.
But neither comfort nor pleasure was proper for her to accept from him, and carefully, reluctantly, she now slipped her hand free of Harry’s.
“As his lordship says, Mr. Connor, we are friends, but nothing more,” she explained carefully, reminding herself of all the other women Harry must have brought here before her. “Nothing more at all.”
But Connor wasn’t listening to her. “Perhaps you can make the lady see reason, my lord. We’ve a great wedding feast here tonight, with all the county come to celebrate, and though this lady wants to go to Winchester, I haven’t a man here I’d trust with a horse to take her.”
“But have you a horse you’d trust with me, Connor?” asked Harry. “One fit for a lady to ride?”
“I am an excellent rider, Mr. Connor,” said Sophie, seizing the idea. “Most any horse in your stable would do, so long as it could carry me to Winchester.”
“Only if you’re riding with his lordship here, mistress,” said the innkeeper firmly, looking past her to the other room. “There’s too many rascals on the road for a lady to travel by herself. Now, my lord, would you be wanting a bit of late supper for you and the lady, and your usual bedchamber? As crowded as we are this night, my lord, for you I can—”
“No bedchamber,” said Sophie quickly. It would be one thing to share the road with Harry, but a bedchamber was another matter entirely. “No supper, either, Mr. Connor. We must be on our way as soon as possible.”
“Ah, Connor, you hear the lady’s wishes,” said Harry with a rueful sigh. “No charming supper before the fire, no private room upstairs.”
The innkeeper frowned, studying the crowd that filled the front room. “I know we’re full to bursting, my lord, but I could make places for you and the lady by the fire, if you wish to warm yourselves.”
“Thank you, no,” said Sophie quickly, unnerved by the prospect of squeezing in with so many others. “We are perfectly fine as we are.”
Harry sighed again, more dramatically this time. “You see how it is, Connor,” he said. “No matter how agreeable I try to be, Miss Potts cannot abide to keep my company.”
The innkeeper nodded with pity, commiserating as if Sophie weren’t even there. “Isn’t that always the way with women, my lord?” he said. “But I’ll have the cook fix you a nice supper to take with you in your saddlebag, my lord. We’ll look after you proper, just the same. Maybe a supper by the light of that moon outside will change her heart, yes?”
“Ah, Connor, you’re too kind,” said Harry with a conspirator’s grin that Sophie found intensely irritating.
“Not at all, my lord.” The innkeeper bowed, already backing away to fill Harry’s requests. “And pray come back to us at the old Peacock again soon, my lord, mind?”
“Why did you say I can’t abide your company?” asked Sophie, more wounded than indignant. “You know that isn’t true.”
Harry looked down at he
r, and though he was smiling, she knew him—and that kind of smile—well enough not to trust it. “How the devil would I know that, given how you’ve grabbed at every chance you’ve had to try to run away from me?”
“Because it’s—it’s not true, that’s why,” she said, wincing inwardly at how inadequate this must sound as an excuse. But inadequate or otherwise, what else could she tell him? That she had to keep her distance because she enjoyed his company too much, not too little? That if she didn’t, she’d tumble back into his arms as if nothing—not everything—had changed? “Because I say it isn’t true, that’s why.”
“And that is supposed to be enough for me to believe you?” he asked lightly. “Your word alone?”
Before she could answer, a man with two tankards of beer in each hand came reeling past them, bumping into Sophie. At once Harry put his hands to her shoulders to keep her from falling, steadying her, but at the same time drawing her closer to him. Not to kiss, not to embrace: merely to hold her there, close enough, close enough.
“Yes,” she said finally, startling herself by how that single word had become a breathy sigh. “Because I don’t lie, Harry, not now or before, about this or anything else. You know that about me, or at least you should.”
His smile relaxed, and so did Sophie. The fiddler was playing a quick-paced reel, the floorboards beneath them shaking from the dancers’ feet. “Lord Higginbotham’s Reel”—she’d never hear it again without thinking of this moment. It was vastly strange to her that they could be standing in the front hall of this inn, with scores of people around them, and yet all she saw was Harry before her.
“That is true,” he mused. “You couldn’t lie to save your own life. Look, lass, there’s the fair bride.”
Sophie turned to follow his gaze, through the open doorway into the front room. To the raucous cheers of the guests, the young bride had been lifted onto a table for all to admire and toast, her eyes bright and her cheeks flushed with both exhilaration and nervousness at being the centerpiece of so much attention. She was dressed in a white sprigged gown with more white ribbons in her hair, and, like so many country brides, she was visibly pregnant. Her groom clambered up beside her, and with beer-inspired boldness, he took his new wife in his arms and gave her a loud, smacking kiss to the whooping delight of their guests.
“How pretty she is!” said Sophie wistfully. “I hope they’ll be happy together.”
Harry chuckled, leaning close over her shoulder. “From the looks of her, I’d say they’ve already found some degree of bliss with one another.”
Sophie smiled, still watching the couple. “They look so young, don’t they?”
“No younger than we were,” he said, slipping his arms loosely around her waist as if he’d every right to do so. “Or have you forgotten, pet?”
“No,” she said softly, letting herself sway back against him. “How could I?”
How could she, indeed, standing here in the circle of his arms with her head resting against Harry’s shoulder? Even if she could have forced herself to remove such pleasurable thoughts from her memory, her body would always remember the passion she’d discovered with this man, and her heart—her heart would safekeep the rest for eternity.
Oh, she knew it was wrong to be so familiar with him here in such a public place, wrong to be so openly affectionate, and if any of her employers could have seen her like this, she would have been dismissed outright, without references. But the happiness of the wedding party and the young bride and groom made her forget such hard realities, and instead made her think back to when her world had been this full of love and promise, when the giddy measure of life’s joy could be contained in a single stolen kiss.
“Do you remember watching the parish weddings with me?” she asked. “I had to be there, because of Father, but you always came, too, to keep me company.”
“And for the sweet biscuits that were served afterward,” he said, tightening his arms to draw her closer against his chest. “The shortcake ones shaped like shamrocks were the best, and I’d always be sure to take some home in my pockets for George. You know, Sophie, that when I watched those weddings with you, I always believed you’d be my wife.”
“You did?” She twisted about, wanting to see if he was teasing, but to her surprise, he wasn’t. “Boys aren’t supposed to think of weddings, especially not boys who will become earls.”
“Oh, but I did,” he confessed, his smile lopsided and his blue eyes full of fond recollection. “I thought it had all been arranged, and deuced practical it seemed, too. I’d figured that was why you were so often at the manor with us, that you were practicing to be part of my family. Then, once we were old enough, your father would marry us in that same parish church, just as he did all the other couples who came to him. What ripe foolishness that was!”
She smiled in return, even as his confession stung her heart. He was right, of course. Such a fantasy was ripe foolishness, yet she could hardly find fault for him for wishing the same wish she’d secretly had herself.
“Your father would never have permitted such a match,” she said swiftly, wanting to protect herself once again with the armor of facts and reason. “As much as he liked playing chess with my father, I would still have been too low-born for his elder son. He never let pass any chance to remind me of that. I was common.”
“You were my Sophie,” he said firmly, slipping his hand inside the brim of her bonnet to cup her cheek against his palm, and gently turn her face up toward his. “That was more than enough for me.”
“Beg pardon, m’ lord,” said a pockmarked young man from the stables, “but Mr. Connor said t’ tell you your horses an’ your supper both be ready in th’ yard.”
“Oh, hell,” muttered Harry, his hand still cradling Sophie’s face. “My horse and my damned supper, ready exactly as I asked.”
“Yes, exactly so,” said Sophie, her cheeks burning as she drew back from his hand. She swallowed hard, composing herself as best she could before she looked at the stable boy. “Thank you, and please thank Mr. Connor, too, for being so prompt.”
“The devil take Mr. Connor,” said Harry darkly, fishing in his pocket. “Wait, boy, here. Give this to the bride and groom with my best wishes for their future.”
Three golden guineas glittered in Harry’s hand before he pressed them into the grubby palm of the stunned boy.
“Go on, lad, take it to them,” he said. “And pray don’t be tempted to keep any out for yourself, else you find yourself turned into a croaking toad as a reward for your greed.”
“That was very generous of you, Harry,” said Sophie as she followed him through the open door and into the stable yard. “At least your gift was. What you said to the boy wasn’t charitable in the least.”
“Boys don’t deserve charitable thoughts,” said Harry. “I know. I was one myself, and for a good long time, too. That must be your mare, there next to Thunder. Will she do for you?”
“Oh, yes,” said Sophie, rubbing her hands together to warm them. After the overheated inn, the night air seemed even chillier than before. “She’s a good deal better than most hired horses, I should say.”
“Likely that’s because she’s not a nag for hire, but instead belongs to one of the ladies inside.” Harry stroked the white blaze on the mare’s nose. She was a neat little chestnut with white feet to match her blaze, tossing her head and eager to be gone. “But we’ll leave that to Connor to sort out, won’t we? Come, lass, let me help you up.”
But Sophie paused beside the horse, patting her hand on the mare’s rounded side. “Tell me, Harry. Inside there. You would have kissed me, wouldn’t you?”
He looked at her evenly. “Yes,” he said, “and you wouldn’t have minded if I had.”
“No,” she said, troubled by her own answer. “No, I do not believe I would have minded in the least.”
“Ah, Miss Potts,” he said, his laugh warm with indulgent affection. “Miss Potts, you are the most wickedly honest woman I eve
r have known.”
“I cannot help it, Harry,” she said forlornly as she climbed the two stone steps of the block while he held the horse steady for her. His profile seemed all angles in the moonlight, dark shadows and stark pales. The innkeeper had warned her about rascals on the road, but by agreeing to travel with Harry, she’d likely thrown in her lot with the most rascally one of the pack. If she were wickedly honest, as Harry had declared, then he was honestly wicked, his black hair tossing across his forehead and his cape blowing out behind him in the breeze. “I’m sorry, but I cannot help the way I am, not at all.”
“Don’t try, sweetheart,” he said, waiting for her to gather her reins and settle into her sidesaddle before he swung himself up onto the big black gelding. “Especially when I mean to try kissing you again, I wouldn’t wish you any other way.”
CHAPTER FIVE
“YOU’RE TIRED, said Harry, slowing his horse so that Sophie would slow, too. They must have been riding at least an hour by now, though at night it was hard for him to know for sure. “There’s another inn not far from here where we can stop.”
“Not on my account,” said Sophie quickly, visibly straightening her back. “We’ve scarce begun.”
But she was tired. She could deny it all she wished, yet he could see her weariness in every drooping inch of her posture. She was entitled to her weariness, of course. He’d guess that her day had begun far earlier than his, no doubt at some uncivilized cock’s crow rather than his genteel noon, and that as good a rider as he knew her to be, she must still be finding the lopsided seat of a lady’s sidesaddle growing more and more uncomfortable as time passed, even though he’d kept their pace purposefully slow along the empty road to spare her as well as the horses.
But what had struck Harry the most was how quiet Sophie had become. Not the prickly, don’t-touch-me-or-die quiet that she’d made him endure as they’d walked to the Peacock, but the kind that came from being so tired that each word became a trial to speak. She’d had to concentrate so hard on not falling asleep in the saddle that she’d precious little wit left to spare on conversation, even with him.
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